Hello, happy new year and welcome to The View from the Lane, our Tonham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic. My name's Jack Pitbrook. I'm joined again today by Charlie Eccleshare and James Moore. At the end of Tottenham's Christmas period, which can probably be best described as mixed. After losing to Chelsea, they scrape past Brighton, Drew at Norwich, lost at Southampton and Drew at Middlesbrough. They haven't really played at all well. They've lost Harry Kane to a hamstring injury.

Hugo Larissa is still out. Tanki and Dombaise injured again. Christian Erickson looks like he might be on its way. It's becoming quite hard to find things to be optimistic about at Tottenham right now. Is that fair, James? I think you've been quite generous when you described that as mixed because most of that sounds pretty pretty terrible to me, to be honest. Charlie, what did you, I mean, was yesterday as bad as it got? No, Southampton was worse, definitely, but yesterday was pretty bad. I mean, when you name a really strong team like that, you know, you're doing it because you want to send out a message and also you and avoid a replay and they didn't do either of those things and they didn't give any minutes to some of the

younger players which you know can be a benefit of the FA Cup so it was pretty disappointing

all and all yeah what um for those that didn't see the game or couldn't get up there what what went

wrong they were a bit better in the first half after the kind of Middlesbrough came out at them and it looked pretty shaky for the first 10 minutes and then they got a foothold and had a bit more spark about them than they have in previous weeks. But they didn't get the breakthrough goal and you did sense it was going to be one of those games where if they had scored first I think they would have won it reasonably comfortably but they didn't um a bit slack defensively again you know

they haven't kept a clean sheet away in the league for over a year um and conceded a pretty soft goal

left themselves with quite a lot to do they thankfully they got the equalizer back pretty quickly

but again it was a case of they only

really started playing properly once they went behind. We've seen that again and again over

this Christmas period, did get the equalizer and then push for the winner, but, you know,

I thought Middlesbrough was still well in it and played well, so just again lacking that spark and still, shake you defensively. I mean, it's been, whenever Spurs have played bad over the last couple of years, the main thing I think I've noticed is that they've been moving the ball so slowly. And that was really evident in the first half yesterday. They were moving the ball around so ponderously. It didn't look like there was really any urgency at any point. It was only when Lamello and La Cholso came on at half time, sorry, after the goal. Yeah. That suddenly there was a bit more dynamism in the way they played. But it just, you know, they're really lacking that focal point, obviously, that Harry Kane provides. And it just, it just felt like having found the way of playing without him last season that they'd almost kind of but that's at the back of their minds and kind of forgotten it that they did well without Harry Kane in that run in the early last year I think they were probably had a better points per game average in that part of the season than they did after it when he came back. Do you think that there's any kind of solution in sight for these issues of creativity

that Tottenham are having right now? It's hard because there is such an imbalance and like

yesterday they did look better with those second half changes but in a way that it was just

like they need to go for it so that you know handbrake was off and they just, you know, lots of attacking players.

They need, you know, a proper defensive midfielder to give whoever's playing in that more creative role, a bit more license.

Obviously, Dyer really is the only option, and he's been okay, but he's also had issues with fitness again.

So that is the problem area.

That is something that they really need to address, have a bit of a better balance,

and whether that means going out and signing someone, but they've got a lot of creative

midfielders.

That's probably the part of the squad where you feel like they're almost the most overstuck.

We'll talk about Erickson as well, and it looks like he may be off, but you've got Erickson, Ali, Lesotho, Lamella, Lucas and Son, maybe you'd put in that group as well. It shouldn't really be where they're struggling, but it just seems to be the creating good chances. It's been a problem for the whole season, really. Completely, yeah, yeah. And I think that is just giving them the platform to do that, you know, and if you don't have a reliable defence midfield giving you that platform, it becomes a lot hard. But it's like what we said about that Winks and Sosovo partnership before Christmas, that they're two good players, but when they play together, they both just, it feels like they both are kind of holding something back

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