Although, yeah,

the Harris is here now. He's up from London. Bow down, everybody.

It's not really that special. Picked up my instant hot chocolate. And yeah, I love going to non-league grounds. I spent a little bit of time working for a non-league football club when I was at university. And I just love how real it is. You're so close to the action on the pitch. I don't know if people have seen my photos, but I was in the corner flag where Spurs scored their final two goals. So Kulicevsky's goal and Johnson's goal. So I saw so much, so many corners. I had a front row seat to the Mikey Moore show in the second half. So it was fantastic access. And then after the game, in terms of the media, it was a bit of a free-for really there were so many Tamworth players bringing their families onto the pitch to try and get photos with Madison Son, Poster Coglu you know I was right next to Archie Gray when some kid said Oi Archie give me a boot and he went go on then which I just thought was such a lovely touch for for an 18 year old um Archie Gray has such wise um such a wise head on young shoulders and um then I was part of this I don't know maybe 10-15 man scrum that's interviewing Ange Postacoglu you know all our phones uh shoved in his face and he was pretty relaxed he wasn't he wasn't really angry about what had happened um so overall it was a it was a great Got the train back. And it was definitely the experience that will stay with me. But I should temper with all of this by saying, had Spurs lost, it would not have been an amazing experience. And certainly in that final minute, I was at the other end of the ground of normal time when Tamworth had a corner. And I think the shot got cleared off the line. It was quite hard to tell from where I was I was thinking oh my you know this day is going to come crashing back down to reality quickly I

hope you heard that James that your your star reporter was chasing around after the Tamworth coach I should

also say before I forget that I didn't realize this but Tamworth's manager Andy Peaks is a big Leeds fan because after game, I saw him taking a photo with Archie Gray. And I thought, you know, you've just lost to this guy. And apparently he said to Archie, you've got to give me your shirt. So that's another nice moment. He

did like, he made a beeline for him before the game, didn't he? He went out and did the handshake. The manager did the handshakes before the game with the players. And he like kind of collared Archie Gray then. And they also had, you know, of them had their little kids um

sort of picked up like baskets of fruit for the for the handshakes and all the rest of it um James I take you watched it from a distance on a tv screen an altogether

different experience yeah from a distance of approximately the depth of my sofa yeah the back I think probably by the second half. Right, what I would say is Spurs would, I've seen a few people suggesting Spurs was fortunate in this game and that is definitely not the case but what I would say is they put themselves in a position where they could have been very unfortunate. So, you know, they were the better team and obviously this is all caveated with them playing a team from four divisions below. They were the better team throughout the game. I thought for the most part, they looked incredibly comfortable. There wasn't loads of like scrappy defending of set pieces or, you know, people slipping over and both one or two instances of that. For the most part, they were composed and lacking the kind of ingenuity that we've talked about them lacking before in Premier League games. We'll come on to that in a minute. But that just meant that when it gets to 0-0 after 88 minutes, you know, Solanke slips and the guy you just mentioned has that shot from a tight angle that I think, was it Basumo, kind of tipped around the post that that was the only moment in the entire thing where I was worried there was a lot of moments in that game where I was annoyed but that was the only moment where I was worried I don't think we've learned loads from the game but I think you probably learned a bit about that front three and that is they're not really compatible as a unit in terms of being able to break down a packed defense and I'm not kind of I wouldn't be too harsh on the manager for that because I think he's he's picked a team almost on the basis of who he doesn't want to play rather than who he does want to play if you see what I mean which I think is entirely sensible in the circumstances and he should be able to put out more or less any 11 players and expect to beat a conference team, a National League team, I should say. But, you know, if you break it down, that front three, so let's go with Johnson first. He's the one who's kind of the closest to first choice in the position he started. But we know the things he does, the two things he does, you know, attacking the far post without the ball and dragging balls across the six yard box when he's got it and in a game like that when the team you can expect to defend that deep at 0-0 as long as it's 0-0 uh but both of those two things he's not going to do and then everything else from there Werner isn't going to get any chances in that system Mikey Moore I mean we've not seen loads of him but it doesn't strike me as someone who's going to drag loads of balls across the box like that, particularly, again, as the defence is set so deep. It's just incredibly difficult for him to do those things. And I just don't think any of it really slots together. But at the same time, like which player do you put into that attack who kind of is a tactical solution rather than a solution on the basis of ability? Because I know the answer was put on Son and Kulisevski and they're better players and it all kind of worked and they kind of bludgeoned them after that and it's fine. Against a tiring team obviously, yeah. There's not really a tactical thing. It's kind of like

a slightly heightened version of the same thing. Well there is I think a tactical issue with it but we'll come on to that a little bit later. But this

is my point but it's not a thing he can change with the players he's got all

the players he's put

out it's it's it's the way this team plays and it's the way the squad is built to do that thing and although there are tweaks and altercations that you can make it i think it's very difficult to check to it comes back to what we said before but there just aren't loads of lock pickers in this squad. And that showed in the 90 minutes where the only hope of scoring a goal would involve Maddison. There's nobody else there that could really do something out of nothing without him being involved. We'll come back

to the forward players and what they did and didn't do, if I may. I guess my own reaction, I had to interrogate myself a little bit last evening because on the places where anger is the currency i you know um youtube spurs fan channels and bits and pieces of social media they were going absolutely insane about how bad spurs were and at one stage ange out was trending on x um and all the rest of it um and yet my own reaction for most of the game, I must have shared some of your feelings, James, about this not being terribly dangerous for Spurs until that last couple of minutes, because my own reaction, I was laughing through most of it. I mean, I'm not belly laughing, not blazing saddles laughing, but just giggling at the ineptitude. And Jay, you're a sensible fellow. Was it okay to be laughing? And what, let's be honest, was an individual and collective failure, small f, of Premier League players to at least impose themselves to any great extent? Because if Spurs, and you're're right James they Spurs weren't in obvious danger most of the time but Tamworth's goalkeeper made maybe three saves in in in the first 90 minutes um because Jey Spurs were inert if nothing else for most of the game themselves as an attacking force the

stadium definitely has an impact on that game. I was so close to the warm-ups. I was watching Alfie Whiteman, the reserve goalkeeper, talking to one of the goalkeeping coaches, basically saying it's so narrow. And you can sort of, on a slightly bigger pitch, where there's more space, the way that Spurs want to play is much easier. You're going to get more... It's going to be harder for players of that level to cover the requisite space when Spurs are sort of pulling them apart. And when it comes to Maddison, part of me was a little bit irritated that he didn't take any of those chances. But I remember at least one of the saves Singh made was outstanding. I remember watching it from, I think, the other end of the ground and had a really good angle of it. I went, wow, that's going... I can't remember if it was bottom corner or top corner. I went, that's in. And then he just suddenly sprang out of nowhere. We do have to remember that this was the game of these players' lives. They were going to do everything within their power to make it uncomfortable for Spurs. And they've seen the blueprint from other teams this season where if you sort of sit deep against Spurs, it's not going to be an easy ride. I remember the two centre-backs for Tamworth as well. Every time they had a corner were just pushing Archie Gray, pushing Raleigh Dragosin. They made it uncomfortable. They sort of did their job. We have to give Tamworth a little bit of respect for that. At the same time, as James has alluded to, was it frustrating that the forward players who've you know Timo Werner is a Germany international he might not I don't think he's played for them recently but he is an experienced international Madison wants to be in the next England squad so for them to have not hit a particular level against a team of this calibre did feel a little bit silly and you know I know you mentioned Bec Rehanoru our good friend who who works at Zara and I'm told has recently got a promotion at Zara and

who fixed the crossbar before the game started and

who fixed the the crossbar on the net before the game he did turn Porro three or four times in that first half and just clearly ran ran out of gas and couldn't do it anymore. If he could have kept doing that, Tamworth might have had another good opportunity. Well, Porro I would pick out as one of the players who I did think had a bad game.

I don't actually think there were many Tottenham players who had a bad game, but Porro definitely looked not great. Not so much in the first half where it was competitive down there and he sort of did okay even though he did get done once or twice but in the second half I thought like he really he looked shattered and like he was really struggling with the kind of uh the battle and I want to say he ended up playing two hours that is right isn't it he played the whole game yes he did

yeah which

when you can expect him to start on Wednesday night. It does seem mad that, and I mean, I know a lot of people want Spencer to play on Wednesday night, and I suspect that's going to end up being true as well. It does seem mad to me that a player that we know is almost certainly going to play on Wednesday night has ended up playing two hours there.

Yeah, and I was shocked when I saw him in the starting line-up. It's a shame that Spurs toiled for so long, and the way I described it in the article for The Athletic was if this was a boxing match, Spurs won on points, they didn't knock out Tamworth like you would have expected them to. It was sort of a bit of a it was a boring from a boxing perspective, it would have been a boring watch, it just would have been a more technical boxer, outlasting, keeping the distance etc and that's not what we wanted to see. But the only way Spurs would have come out of this game with mountains of credit was if they'd won 6-7 in normal time and then everybody would have gone, well, what did you expect? Spurs should have done that. So I think there's a lot of certain things, like I said, with the size of the pitch, etc. Some players being absolutely knackered and Porro is a case which caveat the performance. Porro, since

you brought him up, Porro was continuing his season insofar as statistically he has given the ball away more than any other player in the Premier League. Now a lot of that is the way Spurs play. He's always attempting tricky passes into the path of people who are moving with defenders in a penalty area. He gave the ball away more times than anybody else yesterday. And it makes him, I think it makes him look worse than he is. But he also, let's be honest, he's sometimes just downright careless with the ball. And some of that you can put down to tiredness and all the rest of it. And while I accept, Jay, 100%, I accept that you must give Tamworth credit for doing what they did. Spurs' players are top professional players, and I'm not sure that they impose themselves in the way that I would expect them. That's their job. Tamworth did their job, Spurs have different jobs do, and I'm not sure they did it very well. In fact, I'm damn sure they didn't do it very well.

But quickly, I think I just don't want to turn this into the Timo Werner's not the world's greatest footballer show because we already know that. But he was playing up front and that doesn't help because he's clearly not a centre forward. I thought I loved watching Mikey Moore in the second half. Mikey Moore in the first half played like someone who has not played football for three months. And also this is still only his second or third start at senior level anyways. So that sort of awkward fit with the system of Werner just playing in a role that doesn't suit him whatsoever. Johnson trying to send crosses into the box for a forward who is never going to win it in the air. That didn't help the situation. So it did feel like they were a bit over-reliant on Basuma and Madison to sort of, because they are exceptionally good dribblers and have incredible close control, to sort of weave their way past two or three of the midfielders and then try and shoot on goal except there were normally three or four bodies in the way and that's before they even got to the goalkeeper.

I can't believe they didn't start Lancashire in that game I

mean that

that seems that seems pretty nuts to me that would have given them like a focal point and like a way more logical shape. It just feels to me, I don't know, I mean, look, I don't know what's happened behind the scenes, whether there's been, whether there were like ramifications for that red card he got in Turkey or whatever. But it just seems mad to me that he hasn't played it. And having bar that red card, played very well at Galatasaray and obviously scored. Like to not, I think to like two minutes of football or something since then it just seems mad to me that you do something like play Timo Werner up front rather than play him I

think for me my perspective I did think about that and I thought maybe Poster Cogli just thinks I don't want to put two teenagers in my forward line and sort of take Tamworth for granted and the sort of cautionary tale is Brentford, who put out quite a weak side against Plymouth. And I know that Plymouth are in the championship, although they're at the bottom of the championship. But I think Brentford handed first starts to a couple of teenagers, a couple of people who are from their B team, etc, and end up losing 1-0. So he went too far the other way and I agree I would have I would have loved to have seen Lanxier everybody talks about him as being a really good goal scorer and you know the fact that they have kept him and not sent him out on loan you would have liked to have seen him play a little bit more and this did feel like a good opportunity but I just think is he thinking if I put more in Lanxier in then almost it's just going to be harder for us to sort of control the game a little bit more maybe it becomes well

that that might be true but then you play Lanxier and play Werner on the left and leave more on the bench you know the the 17 year old who's been ill for the last two months or recovering from being ill for the last two months like is it not a more logical thing to start him on the bench and start a centre forward to me maybe that's me speaking with the benefit of hindsight but I didn't have much confidence in that front three not really just based on just based on ability but based on the kind of expected cohesion there but like I say like in German I think if you go through that team despite drawing 0-0 with a National League team in 90 minutes, like I think if you go through that team, I don't think there are too many players that you'd actually say, oh, he had a stinker. Maybe only one or two, and even that might be a bit harsh. I

mean, you know, at the other end of the scale, Bissouma, who we often ask questions about, clearly, to use the parlance, the game is about levels. I mean, he was miles in a way too good for everyone else playing around him. It was like watching an adult playing against children at times. And so credit to him on a different – I don't know. I've not played on a 3G pitch for – the plastic pitches when I was playing were sort of green, hard green stuff that used to come up in chunks if you fell on it. I suppose it's very different now, but you could tell. It looked really

greasy, that pitch. I mean, I've watched football at a lower level than that, like three divisions that on artificial surfaces that have looked like less kind of awkward to play on. I don't know if that was just the fact that it was a bit wet or how it came across on TV but it's looked like a slightly awkward surface. Yeah, I mean look, again we're not making excuses for the Premier League team against a non-league team. The other thing I'd say by the way, about the game is if Spurs had scored, I know this is almost bordering on the cliche, but if Spurs had scored in the first 10, 15 minutes, they would have won like 5-0 in 90 minutes. Like they needed that first goal. Once they got the first goal, and I mean this, not just in terms of like confidence and momentum, I mean like tactically, the way the game changes after that. And if they'd scored in the first 10, 15 minutes, I think they would have won incredibly comfortably, even with the team they started the game with.