Krul result is no need for Spurs to hit the alarm button, yet

MAN the lifeboats, pull the emergency cord and take up your allotted panic stations immediately.

Spurs have lost at home again and no matter the performance, the number of chances or the opposition keeper, we must be at crisis point.

Why? Because this is what football fans do.

In the grand scheme of things, Spurs lost 1-0 to Newcastle and are three points off second place but you would be forgiven for thinking the banks had crashed.

The frustrated and popular outcry is that this profligacy in front of goal can not go on and something has to change.

And those clean-and-efficient 1-0 victories that started our season are now being painted as a barren wasteland of goal-starved good-fortune.

Those who praised the arrival of Roberto Soldado are screaming for Jermain Defoe, and even Emmanuel Adebayor, to get a chance.

This is despite the fact that everyone spent last season panning Manu's attitude, and despite the fact that Defoe scores for fun until he reaches the Premier League squad and, as against West Ham, he curls up in a ball like a hedgehog.

The nail-biters do have one thing right, this can't go on. But change is not the way forward, change is the cause - patience is the way forward.

Spurs' display in the first half against the Toon was nervy, reserved and verging on impotent - certainly lacking verve and urgency.

But the second half was driven and creative with an abundance of well-worked chances that either weren't finished well enough or somehow clipped Tim Krul's outstretched appendages and bounced clear.

We had 31 shots. 

Some of those we're a waste of time, possession and ticket/Sky TV money.

But some - like Soldado's first-half header from a Christian Eriksen free-kick, Jan Vertonghen's header that rattled the woodwork, and the clever Townsend-Soldado-Defoe move that led to Paulinho's must-score chance late on - were inspired.

In flashes- albeit all too rare - Spurs' football is a joy to watch. It just needs an end product. The longer these players play together, the better it will get and the goals are bound to come. 

If they don't, and come christmas we're languishing around 14th, then panic permits will be issued.

But this is an unpredictable season where anyone can beat anyone at anytime. Newcastle, more than anyone, have proved that.

We just hope the performances in front of goal turn before the fans do.