[Slick_Footwork]

I fancied that we might get something today on the basis of Kane not playing. But when I saw him in the team, I feared the worst. Spurs are a completely different team with him playing and no shock that he was involved in both of the goals. Had we played Spurs 3 or 4 days earlier, maybe we would've been able to keep them out with our backs to the wall job...

That said, you have to perform against the team in front of you...

I understood most of the changes because O'Shea, Pereira, Livermore and co didn't turn up against Sheffield Untied. There we're either dreadful or in Pereira's case, didn't break sweat...

But what I can't understand is Sawyers coming back into that defensive midfield role. We have seen time and time again that he can't head the ball before the bounce, can't tackle and can't mark. For the Kane goal his marking is simply unacceptable as a professional. He's walking away from Kane in the 18 yard box when anyone with a smidgen of defensive awareness knows you have to pick him up. Who walks away from the best striker in the league when a midfielder is running at the defence? Dreadful is an understatement. Despite the fact he's probably our best passer, you simply can't afford to have a player who is so defensively inept playing that deep. Unless we can fit him in a position higher up the pitch, he should never play. If Sam can't see it, he's clearly going senile. As much as a fan of Sam as I've been in the past when he was at Bolton, persisting with Sawyers in this role is criminal. Time is running out for Sam to show that he still has his wits about him.

Yokuslu had to start. I don't care that he's only trained for a day. When you need points you can't play players who are miles out of their depth and have superior players on the bench.

He put in stronger tackle 5 minutes after coming on than Sawyers has done all season...

There were a couple of flashes of improvement when we broke with a bit of quality with Snodgrass and AMN. Unfortunately Diagne seems to have a fetish for standing in offside positions, which meant the majority of good openings were met with a raised flag. But at least we got forward, which we struggled with earlier in the season. In Diagne we clearly have a proper striker who will score goals, I can feel it. This is the type of player we should've signed in the summer rather than pissing all that money up the wall on Grant.

As for Grant, credit to him for his work rate. However a lot of moves broke down with him. I've not seen any evidence that he can play yet. No idea why we spent so much money on him... Grady and Robbo are both superior in that role and he doesn't look like a striker either...

For the next game Yokuslu and Pereira have to start in place of Sawyers and Grant. Then we will at least have something that half resembles a Premier League team. I just hope Pereira is able to up his work rate because you do need to earn the right to play at this level. He's our most talented player, but he does need to offer something in terms of a defensive contribution. Against Sheffield United he couldn't be arsed to even jog across to put an obstacle in front of Basham when he broke out of defence. He has to do that if he starts against United because both Maguire and Lindelof will break out with the ball.