One by one the safety nets protecting Ange Postecoglou from a catastrophic fall into footballing oblivion are being removed. If Liverpool hacked at one cord in demolishing Postecoglou’s Tottenham in one domestic cup competition last Thursday, then Aston Villa methodically undid the knot holding another here in the other one at Villa Park. Now there is almost nothing left but a long drop down to the darkness for the Tottenham manager. Spurs remain in the Europa League but that’s where the good news begins and end. The Premier League became an embarrassing and soulless slog long ago. Tottenham, weighed down by diminished confidence and a long injury list, sit in 14th position.
Tottenham have gone from a ‘must watch’ team to a ‘can’t bear to watch’ team and it’s now up to chairman Daniel Levy in terms of what he wishes to do about it. If he believes in Postecoglou then he should hold his nerve. Spurs will not go down and there is a group of players waiting to return. Equally, if he wishes to jettison yet another manager then there is a long list of poor results – just two domestic wins since December 19 and only two in the Premier League since November 23 – that he could point to as justification.
Here in Birmingham against a superior Villa side, Levy’s name was sung unkindly throughout. Nothing new there. But after conceding a disastrous goal in the very first minute, Postecoglou’s team was lampooned by the travelling fans too. And that is a new and worrying development for Postecoglou. Villa were also down on bodies here. Manager Unai Emery didn’t bring on Marcus Rashford until after the second goal. They were typically energetic and purposeful, though. Tottenham goalkeeper Antonin Kinksy gifted Jacob Ramsey a goal after 60 seconds and then formed a one-man barrier between Villa and a few more. Spurs did rally a little and captain Heung-Min Son missed two good chances. The South Korean is typical of his team’s struggles at the moment. He looks a broken footballer.
But there was an inevitability about a Villa win. Tottenham are just too chaotic at the moment. Here, the resolution they had shown in winning at Brentford last Sunday was gone and when Morgan Rogers scored Villa’s second shortly after the hour this tie was done. Spurs did score in added time as new loan signing Mathys Tel converted at the far post. But that was as good as it got and when Djed Spence passed the ball straight out of play to signal the end of the game a few minutes later, it seemed appropriate.
The opening goal was a disaster for young Kinsky. The 21-year-old was at fault for the first one Tottenham conceded in the Carabao Cup defeat at Liverpool in midweek but this was on another level altogether. Villa broke fast and direct through the centre of the Spurs midfield – something that was to be a feature of the first half – and when Rogers slipped the ball left to Ramsey, Tottenham were in trouble.
The odds were still against Ramsey as the angle was tight enough to favour the goalkeeper and what the Villa player delivered with his left foot shouldn’t really have been good enough. All the shot had to commend it was power but that proved to be enough as Kinsky got his dive all wrong and the ball found the back of the net off the goalkeeper’s forearm. Kinsky looked bereft and no wonder. It was a quite horrific personal moment and it left his team facing yet another long afternoon of football. Tottenham were down on numbers again here but then so were Villa. Injuries have long since been an excuse for Postecoglou and with good reason. But there comes a point when the players you send out on to the field just have to do a little better.
Here Spurs were overrun early on. Villa, with Rogers and Youri Tielemans excellent, had the run of the central areas. Time and time again, the home team broke on to the Spurs backline that had Archie Gray – a midfielder – and new signing Kevin Danson at its heart. Kinsky actually went some way to paying his team back for his earlier error as he saved well from Leon Bailey and indeed from Rogers. Equally there was another terrifying moment when he miscontrolled a ball on his own goal line and then immediately gave it away. When it came back towards him down the Villa right, Rogers shot over.
Behind the goal at that end of the ground the Tottenham fans started to mock their own team. It’s not unusual to hear them call for the head of chairman Levy – they did it as Tottenham won at Brentford last Sunday – but there was an edge to the atmosphere in the away end that seemed to indicate that patience is ebbing away ever faster. The only positive here for Spurs was that they didn’t concede again before half-time. They were nervous and error prone but they just about saw off the early storm without taking further water on board. Indeed they should have been level in the 24th minute when Dejan Kulusevski sent Mikey Moore away down the right and when he crossed to Son a goal seemed inevitable. The sprawling save made by Emiliano Martinez was terrific but Son – shooting first time from 12 yards – should not have given the World Cup winner a chance.
