Where was the 'Plan B'?

Quick blog-posting (with no hyperlinks) before I head off abroad for an Autumn, last-blast of warm sunshine. And, sadly, it's a whinging one after a defeat at White Hart Lane.

It just wasn't working...

This d***ing around with it at the back scares the HELL out of me at the best of times but - and not for the first time - it was part of our undoing yesterday.

But, as both of my headings suggest, what worried (and slightly worries) me more than anything else was a lack of wanting to change it, when it clearly wasn't working. Spurs had done their homework but, let's be honest, we're now so predicable at-doing it; it doesn't take too much studying, does it?! They simply pressed us using at least 2, sometimes 3 players and then, most of the time, all this tippy-tappying around with it at the back resulted in us then panic-pumping the ball up in the air for it to drop onto a 50/50 challenging header somewhere up the pitch.

But Spurs had us nailed all over the place too and it took more than 45-minutes of the game for us to put any sort of decent passing together and muster anything LIKE a treat to their goal. Simply put, they were far more organised; closed us down all over the place and passed the ball far better than us. Their defending was excellent and, as far as their attacks on our goal; we simply helped them with a second-game-on-the-trot shambolic performance at the back.

They fully deserved their win.

Oh well...you can't win 'em all - bad day at the office an' all that and, hopefully, one that we'll learn from; including the lesson to move the ball into midfield far quicker when the 'oppo' closes our 'defensive passing game' down.

International break now, sadly; not an ideal time to work on those failings when you have a lot of your squad all over the world and can't 'get it out of your system' quickly...

Whatever you're doing over the next 10 days or so, take care and enjoy.