Toby Alderweireld has said the opposition often plays a part when it comes to Tottenham’s inconsistency in attack.
Spurs lacked a cutting edge in the final third against Arsenal on Sunday and often struggled to even get near the Gunners’ goal.
It wasn’t the first time the Londoners have failed to make the most of the squad’s wealth of talent up front this season, and Jose Mourinho has taken plenty of flack for his team’s failure to take the game to their opponents.
Despite looking better going forward in recent weeks, the derby was a painful reminder of Tottenham’s shortcomings.
But Alderweireld has attempted explained why it isn’t always easy to attack with consistent quality.
“If it was that easy I think everyone would play 100 per cent attacking football, so I think you have to give credit to them [Arsenal],” said the Belgian (via Sky Sports).
“In the games before we scored a lot of goals, played attacking football and pressed – that’s what we want to do.
“But sometimes because of the opponent or because of ourselves we don’t get to that stage we want.
“We want to attack, we have the players to attack but sometimes it’s the opponent as well.
“Of course we can improve, we know that. We can play a lot better. I think our best moments in the game were when we played with 10 men, so that says enough.
“I think we’re playing attacking football and we’re scoring a lot of goals, so we need to be consistent.
“We have to be back on the way we played before the Arsenal game and that’ll bring us success, for sure.”
Arsenal definitely did well to dominate long spells of the game and thwart Spurs’ offensive threat, but Mourinho’s men have put in similar performances far too often this season.
They have failed to fashion enough chances to beat much worse teams than Arsenal, so it’s difficult to take Alderweireld’s comments as anything but an excuse.
Of course, the centre-back isn’t to blame for Tottenham’s attacking failings – Mourinho must begin to find more solutions.
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There is something wrong with the communication betweeen Mourinho and his players. No team can win a match by just passing the ball to one another across the pitch continuously and then back to the goalkeeper. That is why Spurs could not score in the first half apart from Lamela’s brilliant strike. Just before he scored we were moving forward as a team and became dangerous to the opposition. In the second half we improved because we were trying much harder to move forward and score. Also we must give credit to Arsenal for defending so well and for the brilliant play of Rowe Smith.
Harry Kane was very unlucky not to score in the second half but Arsenal were unlucky not to score twice in the first half. If we continue playing like we played in the first half, in our next matches we will be lucky if we finish in the top half of the table. Champions league qualification is now in tatters for next season.
Champions League qualification is NOT beyond us!
In my 60 years supporting Spurs we have always been capable of beating the best and shooting ourselves in both knees on a game by game basis.
Keep the faith or move on to a club with limitless funds if you cant handle it.
COYS!
a player to hold the ball and use it wisely, a la john barnes , this is what we need –who does lloris give the ball to in a clearance mode –someone who can hold it and protect the ball until an avenue presents itself —
possibly Zaha might fill this role