I don’t even know what to say. Four days after Tottenham Hotspur manager Thomas Frank saved his job by running roughshod over Dortmund at home in the Champions League, this same Spurs side came to Turf
Moor to play relegation-threatened Burnley and again were unable to come away with a win. Spurs opened up the scoring in the first half with a strike by Micky van de Ven off of a corner kick, but couldn’t keep the lead, letting Axel Tuanzebe equalize on a defensive mistake just before halftime. Spurs then capitulated in the second half courtesy of a Lyall Foster go-ahead goal before Cuti Romero pulled back the equalizer from a late header.
Thomas Frank made a tactical tweak for this match, bringing Kevin Danso into the side and playing three at the back with Djed Spence and Pedro Porro as advanced wingbacks. That worked pretty well with Spurs having the majority of possession in the opening 45 minutes, though Spurs wasted numerous opportunities in and around Burnley’s box to take what could’ve been a commanding lead. At halftime, Frank fulled Pedro Porro for Destiny Udogie as Spurs locked into a 3-4-3 that turned out to be mostly ineffective. Spurs’ passing was woeful, their offense worse, and Burnley keeper Martin Dubravka had nine saves for the Clarets. Things got interesting late after Mathys Tel forced another good stop from a diving Dubravka and Xavi Simons clanked a rocket off the bar.
But in the end, it the match ended as another disappointing result against a team that Spurs really should be beating. Tottenham have now dropped points to all three teams in the relegation zone and are now only eight points above the drop zone with a brutal stretch of matches upcoming.
Here are my match reactions. Spoiler: I’m pretty mad.
Match reactions
- The back three formation is an interesting wrinkle for Frank as it allows Djed Spence to play as an attacking winger, something that worked really well vs. Dortmund. It kinda worked here, but Spence was pretty up and down during this one.
- Early brightness from Tottenham in attack, though as usual the finishing kind of let them down. A couple of moments where players didn’t see others making good runs into space and choosing to lay off or dribble into traffic.
- The plan seemed to be, at least initially, to let Burnley have the ball and hit on transitions. It worked, kinda, but Burnley broke through the defense a couple of times for chances that ended up flagged for offside.
- Shoutout to Yves Bissouma who looked really good in central midfield, at least until he ran out of steam late. He looked super motivated, which is good, because we need him to be motivated like this, maybe he understood that this was probably his last chance to make a good impression at Spurs.
- I have Dubravka in my fantasy team because he’s a good keeper and he had some really annoyingly good saves in this match.
- Another lovely goal from Micky though again it’s noticeable that the goal came on a corner kick and not from the myriad of chances Spurs wasted from open play.
- I had a comment written about how Kyle Walker looked absolutely cooked and then he put a ball on a plate to Tuanzebe for the equalizer and now I’m just mad because that was just terrible defending from Spurs not to track the runner into the box. That was Solanke’s man and he just let him go.
- Another Frank first half where Spurs actually played decently well but wasted so many open play chances because the front line players aren’t especially great and/or aren’t being coached to look for open runners and cutters, and then they made one stupid defensive mistake in an otherwise good performance to let in an easy equalizer. This team is so aggravating.
- Interesting choice to take off Porro for Udogie at halftime, which locked Spurs into a 3-4-3 formation that didn’t really work at all in the second half.
- I’m still an Odobeliever and think he’s made a leap this season, but holy smokes his passing was atrocious today. He’s not the only bad passer on this team (Conor Gallagher couldn’t pass his way out of a paper bag today, Vic’s distribution was again catastrophic) but it was especially noticeable when Spurs got the ball around Burnley’s box.
- That late Burnley goal was coming for a while and everyone knew it. The only surprising thing was that it didn’t come from Walker or Marcus Edwards to make it a truly #narrative-laden goal.
- Wonderful header from Cuti to level the score, but does it bother everyone else that we only seem to get goals from our defenders right now? Micky is now one goal short of Richarlison for the team’s top scorer, and that’s… well, that’s bad.
- I’m putting this draw on Frank, 100%. Spurs actually looked decent, if flawed, in the first half and while I can understand making a tactical change for this match he actually made us worse by not making good and timely subs and sticking to something that it was clear was not working. This is a loser team with a loser head coach playing loser football. He’s got got GOT to go, man.
- Spurs are now only eight points out of the relegation zone and have a brutal stretch coming up including games against City, United, Newcastle, a surprising Fulham, and Arsenal. This could get seriously ugly very, very fast.
- This team. I say we give up this Premier League lark and go, IDK, win the Bundesliga or something because I’m just so tired of watching us on the struggle bus against beatable teams in England.
