The Ghost of Christmas Past came back to haunt Tottenham Hotspur, although technically Nuno Espirito Santo didn’t actually make it to the festive period during his brief tenure in north London. The Portuguese was the awkward past for Spurs but Ange Postecoglou will be more concerned that there might not be a Christmas future if the painful present doesn’t ease up sooner rather than later. If you want to sum up the ridiculous squad situation that Spurs find themselves in right now, you need only look at Postecoglou having to pair up central midfielders Yves Bissouma and 18-year-old Archie Gray as his centre-backs. That happened late in the game because Radu Dragusin’s ankle injury ensured that Postecoglou did not have a single one of his four centre-backs available.
The irony was that after all of the criticism that came Spurs’ way after shipping six goals against Liverpool – the first time they’d lost by more than one goal this season – their defence did pretty well on the whole against Forest and especially Chris Wood’s aerial threat. The one time the hosts crucially got through was when Tottenham’s midfield went AWOL 28 minutes into the Boxing Day contest and allowed Morgan Gibbs-White to sweep through the centre of the pitch before playing a pinpoint pass into the path of the speedy Anthony Elanga. The winger had left the returning Destiny Udogie in his wake and touched the ball deftly past the onrushing Fraser Forster. That allowed Forest to sit back, stay compact and mostly shut up shop yet Brennan Johnson still had chances to take the points back to N17.
He’d been set up before the Forest goal by Rodrigo Bentancur, back from his suspension, only for Matz Sels to push away his low shot from the right. Then before the break, Johnson linked up with Dejan Kulusevski and sent a powerful effort towards goal that Sels pushed over his crossbar acrobatically. The Forest goalkeeper made it a hat-trick of saves in the second half from the Wales international. Johnson executed an excellent turn, taking Spence’s header into his path before Sels rushed out to deny him in the six-yard box.
At the other end, the only other real moment Forster had to deal with was getting to a cross before Wood and then rushing out to deny Gibbs-White in the same phase. For Forest though, one goal was all they needed because the Premier League’s second highest scorers just couldn’t find a way past Sels, as the experienced Belgian kept his seventh clean sheet of the season for the now third-placed Forest, who have won four in a row. “Very important, we cannot ignore Matz made huge saves to keep us in the game,” said Espirito Santo after the final whistle. Archie Gray, who again gave everything in central defence, looked absolutely devastated when he stepped up for his club interview.
“Not the result that you want. We played some good football at times but it’s not good enough,” he said. “I thought we could have been a bit more patient at times and stuck to our principles, but that’s football sometimes, especially when a team sits deep. They did well, they did what they do well so fair play to them, but we need to be better.” Postecoglou tried to introduce three changes to his starting line-up in Bentancur, Udogie and Johnson but the bulk of his threadbare side continue to look lethargic and unable to play his football to its maximum. Dominic Solanke is being run into the ground without a viable alternative, Dejan Kulusevski is too important to rest and looked tired as the game wore on and neither recent goalscorers could add to their tallies.
Son Heung-min has contributed three goals and two assists in his past six games but was struggling for ideas at The City Ground, while the fresher Johnson ended up being wasteful in those three key moments despite getting into good positions. There’s an irony to Spurs needing Bentancur’s fresh legs in the engine room yet the Uruguayan looks like a player who has played just two out of the past nine matches. He looked off the boil in both of his Europa League performances and Tottenham need him to rediscover his groove quickly. There were positives in Gray continuing to adapt to his new role as well as Dragusin’s battling with Wood and both players’ surging out of the box with the ball drew applause from Postecoglou at times. That the powerful Romanian had to come off with an ankle injury does not bode well for the severity of it.
Ben Davies’ return to fitness has come at a helpful time but it means Gray will have to continue his fast-track education as a centre-back and Dragusin’s injury keeps Spurs so light at the back. In front of the defence, Lucas Bergvall emerged for another bright, proactive cameo as the number six and he deserves a bigger role against Wolves on Sunday. Spence brought positives and one negative. It was another bright and hard-working display from the 24-year-old full-back but his two yellow cards, one for throwing the ball away and a second for stopping a late break, mean he will miss the Wolves match through suspension at a time when Spurs just can’t afford to be missing more players.
Postecoglou was clearly down after the game as he continues to work with what he can. “It’s obviously disappointing the defeat, tight game, it was never going to be the kind of game where there would be too many chances. I still thought we had a fair chunk of it where we could have got something out of the game, but it was never going to be a game with a lot of opportunities,” he said. “It was a disappointing goal we conceded, but aside from that the boys worked hard and we tried to generate as many opportunities as we could considering the context of the game and how Forest play, but we just couldn’t get over the top of them.” He added: “We’re asking a lot of this group of players, a lot of these guys are playing every three days. It’s only logical they are not going to be at their sharpest but they are trying and that’s all I can ask of them. “[Not scoring], it’s a bit of, like I said, game state. I kind of knew that if they can get a goal up, it was going to get even tighter for us to find space behind them. It was never going to be a game with a lot of opportunities.
Having said that, I still thought we created some good ones and we just weren’t able to capitalise on them. The keeper has pulled off a couple of good saves to keep them in the game. We just needed a goal to break them open and we didn’t seem to get it.” Postecoglou’s press conference at The City Ground lasted only two minutes or so but that wasn’t down to the Australian. With fewer television and radio interviews to do than in recent high profile games, he emerged quickly into the conference room, catching many journalists out who had not come down from the press box. On top of that, some of those present in the sparsely-populated room were well aware that Postecoglou had to sit in front of them again in just over 18 hours at Hotspur Way for a longer press conference ahead of the match against Wolves. The 59-year-old is normally more thoughtful with lengthy answers in his pre-match press conferences than amid the pain of defeat, so all of the above meant he only got a handful of questions before a lengthy pause brought the end of the press conference. Some outlets that were not present made it sound like Postecoglou dashed out as quickly as he could, when in fact it was a case of questions for him being saved and not asked in the moment. Gray was asked about the players’ tiredness after the game but he did not want to lean on it as an excuse. “Obviously it’s difficult with the amount of games that we have, but I’m not going to stand here and complain about it because as a young player it’s something I want,” he said. “For some people it’s tough, and for me some times it’s tough, but I’m not going to moan about that. It wasn’t good enough from us today and we’ll work hard to bounce back from it.” The truth is that Tottenham’s injury crisis is providing a clear and present danger of derailing any chance Postecoglou has to succeed at the north London club.
To have all four centre-backs out at one time as well as his clear first choice goalkeeper is something other clubs and managers just aren’t having to deal with. It’s a killer for the Australian as is the inability to freshen up the attack with options such as Richarlison, Wilson Odobert and even the gifted teenager Mikey Moore. Postecoglou needs help and he needs it quickly. The Australian has been at pains to stress that he is trying to build for the long-term and doesn’t want to look for short-term gains purely to help himself. As an example, he told football.london earlier this season that the reason he did not want just any extra centre-back in the summer window was because he did not want to block the path of players like Luka Vuskovic, who scored a sensational scissors kick goal for Westerlo – his sixth of the season – on Thursday, or Ashley Phillips. The cruel gods of football fate have slapped Postecoglou squarely in the face over that decision and so has the call, whether his or the club’s, to bring in so many teenagers for the long-term rather than experienced professionals for the now. Postecoglou needs to think about himself but it’s something that will also help his team, for the short-term
