Tottenham capitulate on baffling night against equally ridiculous Fulham

Spurs’ non-performance against an excellent Fulham was both entirely baffling and somehow thoroughly predictable from a tirelessly unserious football club.

In hindsight, we probably should have seen this seemingly unlikely game panning out exactly like this.

Fulham have been at it all season, shifting between perplexingly bad and strikingly good depending on which would be funnier on any given day, and, no matter what else may change, Spurs are and will always be Spurs.

We’re sure there have been clubs before who have followed up their best and most important performance of the season with comfortably their worst, but it does feel like a powerfully Spurs piece of behaviour. Maybe Everton.

This was a harrowingly bad Spurs performance. The sort where you cast around for some positives and find not a single one anywhere on the pitch. If you want a positive, it’s that it wasn’t even worse than a 3-0 scoreline that flattered Fulham not one bit.

There was even time in the closing 20 minutes, after Spurs had belatedly realised there was a game on, for the visitors to miss a couple of pretty presentable chances to at least extend their 39-game Premier League scoring run, but that too is gone now as are the hopes of scoring in every game of an entire season. Spurs now can’t even win ‘worra trophy’ trophies.

The most significant disaster for Spurs might prove to be the miserable full debut for Radu Dragusin. No centre-back should be written off on the basis of one game, but let’s just say at this stage he doesn’t particularly look like an upgrade on Eric Dier. Or on Ben Davies, come to think of it.

Son Heung-min had one of those games he remains forever capable of throwing in, apparently at random, where it looks like he can’t actually remember what sport he’s trying to play as passes attempted go 15 yards astray and passes collected bounce just as far off shins and ankles.

The most conspicuous and perplexing holes, though, were to be found in midfield, where for the first hour in which the match was settled Spurs’ central midfielders simply abdicated responsibility entirely. We’re not sure exactly where Pape Matar Sarr and Yves Bissouma were, but it was routinely and repeatedly not where they were required.

Fulham’s decisive goals either side of half-time both came with attacks allowed to go from promising to threatening with almost no meaningful resistance whatsoever. The defenders may not have covered themselves in glory, but they were left harshly and unnecessarily exposed far too often. Spurs rode their luck to make it as far as they did without conceding.

James Maddison, perhaps still giddy from Coventry’s exploits earlier in the day, had a night that passed him by, a performance – or rather non-performance – that Leicester fans will certainly recognise.

The sense remains with Maddison that he’s not quite the same since his comeback from injury. If he finds himself on the ball plenty of times with plenty of space he is still doing plenty of useful things with it, but he doesn’t now quite seem to be seeking out either the ball or that space with quite such enthusiastic alacrity.

And blame doesn’t just rest with the players, either. We’re unashamed fans of Ange Postecoglou here as you know, but we’re really quite puzzled as to what he saw in the first 65 minutes that convinced him to stick with it until all hope was gone.

With the result duly confirmed by the third goal – and very nearly an instantaneous fourth before the offside flag did more to curtail Fulham’s joy than Spurs did all evening – Postecoglou finally replaced both his starting central midfielders.

Fulham’s shift in focus to sitting back with what they had and quite reasonably relying on ever-threatening counter-attacks for any further joy was a big factor, but it was noticeable that Spurs gained some kind of a foothold for the first time after Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Rodrigo Bentancur replaced Sarr and Bissouma.

It would be a stretch to say either man particularly played well, but they did at least attempt and sometimes even accomplish the rudiments of midfield play, with Fulham at least obliged to find a way to play through or around them rather than simply sauntering straight through the wide open acres they’d been afforded before.

For all the generosity of Spurs’ performance, it would be remiss not to note the impressive manner in which Fulham accepted the gifts. They remain on their best days a markedly well-coached and drilled team with sufficient quality and steel dotted around the place to exploit even the best if they are in any way off it. It’s really not that long ago that Fulham were pulling down Arsenal’s pants here, just before the Gunners became an unstoppable winning machine scoring four or five or six every week.

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Just as it looked like Fulham would frustratingly end a first half they had controlled without a fitting scoreline to reflect it, Antonee Robinson sent over a delicious cross from the left which Rodrigo Muniz, having been afforded far too much room by Dragusin, accepted and finished with what can legally only be described as aplomb.

The goals that followed in the second half might not have been quite so easy on the eye, but they perfectly reflected the game as it was unfolding.

The second goal did feel crucial. Spurs, for all their work-in-progress, up-and-down faults, have proven to be notably and specifically dangerous in recent weeks right after the break. Invigorated no doubt by being called mate and encouraged to enjoy their lunch for 15 solid minutes of Angewisdom, they have come out of the blocks brilliantly in multiple recent second halves.

It was in this period that they took down Villa last week, of course, while goals between half-time and around the hour mark have proved significant recently against Brentford, Brighton and Manchester United. Even in the limp home defeat against Wolves they still summoned up an equaliser just after half-time.

Fulham would therefore be forgiven for starting the second half readying themselves for something approaching a barrage. When they were instead greeted with the same wide open spaces and laissez-faire misplaced passes as before, they could easily have been thrown off-course by such an unexpected development.

There may have been an element of fortune about the finish for the second goal, but none about the move that got Fulham into that position or the embarrassing ease with which Spurs’ responsibility-abdicating midfield allowed it all to occur.

The third goal, stabbed home from close range by the wildly and improbably in-form Muniz was the whole match in microcosm. As that ball rolled tantalisingly across goal, one team’s players saw opportunity and the other team’s barely noticed anything was happening at all.

The paradox of this match is that while neither it nor its teams really makes much sense it was in its way entirely predictable. It’s not even Fulham’s first eye-catching 3-0 home win this month against a team that had recently gone on a run of over 30 games without failing to score.

And a ground where Spurs had won their last seven Premier League games was of course the best and most obvious for their scoring record to come undone.

When Fulham are good they can be really very good indeed and tonight they toyed with a Tottenham side who when they’re bad can be really very bad indeed.

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