Picking The Bones Out Of Madrid

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Well that didn’t quite go to plan did it?

A word on the opposition first if I may, who were everything we weren’t. Whereas the previous round saw talented Milan footballers stroll around the park and rely on talent alone to overcome, Real Madrid, possessing even greater levels of ability were prepared to put in a big shift and do the ugly things well to allow their creative players to shine. They didn’t give us a second on the ball, and our usually tidy passing turned in to all sorts of crappery, meaning we were unable to count a 5-pass move during the whole game. I don’t even know what the possession stats were in the end. Something in the region of 90-10 wouldn’t surprise me, such was their dominance and our horrible lack of composure.

So to the Lennon debacle. Did he bottle it? No, I don’t think so. However, if he’d been suffering since Sunday, where at least one or two training sessions of varying intensity would have happened in the mean time, why did Harry’s amazing ability to see a player struggling only kick in as the teams were about to emerge? As a paid pro, Lennon should have been far more insistent of course. Who knows what really happened, but to throw Jenas in, make him go middle, move Modric left, Bale right, just as the lads were emerging seems even more ridiculous in light of our sheer inability to hold on to the ball. These lads would have been a bit nervous as it is; changing a game plan to accommodate Jermaine Jenas 2 minutes before the CL anthem is beyond suicidal and would have had their heads spinning at exactly the wrong time, and very poor judgement from a guy famed for his man management skills. But Harry can only take a small portion of the blame on this one.

The experience and patience that radiated from Peter Crouch’s performance away in Milan disappeared. Not so much radiating but haemorrhaging and dribbling mojo at an alarming rate, with each ridiculously miss-timed challenge, Peters meltdown when we needed him most was a crushing blow from which we never recovered; VdV getting booked minutes after for kicking the ball away in frustration meant that our remaining ‘experienced’ contingent were just not able to drag us back up.

The defending for the goals was poor, obviously. Jenas on Adebayor (Bill Cosby with that barnet, right?) for the opener? It’s not as if Lennon was going to have that job anyway so who was supposed to be picking up their main aerial threat… 4 minutes into the game… with no particularly special movement to have bamboozled our back line? A by product of the confusion that had permeated the whole team. In terms of individual performances, it’s hard to pull out any ratings. I saw Sandro run with the ball at one point, and as this is the only piece of possession I can remember, I’m going to say he was our best player. Jenas gets the same mark as Crouch.

Moments, however, turn a game. Bale’s quick thinking from the throw in gave VdV a cracker of a chance, but unfortunately, the ball came right at his middle meaning it was too high too volley and too low for the flicked header. Bale, created by himself, had the best of our 2 chances and was unlucky to hit the side netting after Casillas had shown ample room at his near post for a shot to have got past him. Our one chance taken in Milan. Our one chance missed in Madrid.

To give credit, we fought bravely to keep it to one for a very long time. We rode our luck a bit with the Dawson penalty claim, but there were enough other blocks, headers, and marshalling the Madrid lads away from our goal as to redress the karma and keep us in with a shout. Even at 2-0, the next goal was going to be the difference between elimination and a fantastic result. Sadly, they got it… but even at 3-0? Still not impossible. An Inter Milan style performance, a couple of early goals and you never know… but the 4^th goal killed it. It was harsh on the lads who’d battled so hard to keep the score in the realms of respectability and has all but ended our fantastic run in this great competition. We were beaten by a better team in every aspect of all that’s good about being a team. No shame in it, I’ve not seen us outplayed like that in a very long time.

So what now for Tottenham? The dissention threatening to leak from the rank and file needs quashing. Forget Madrid on Wednesday, get everyone who can play on the pitch for Stoke on Saturday as the league is back to being our best chance of a repeat show in the Champions League next year. It’s not the knocks along the way that will define us, but how we recover from them. Someone mentioned how we lost an FA Cup semi-final last year, only to recover to beat arse, chelski and citeh to finish fourth. Let us take the same level of retribution for the indignities suffered in Madrid on Tuesday.

No more mistakes, lest Thursday night football beckon.

* Picture courtesy of @mattcg. Link to the rest of his Spurs-inspired work is at the top left of this blog.