Spurs v Gent: The moment you just knew

You knew it. You just bloody knew Thursday would go that way. The focus just wasn't there. 

Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino might have spotted it within his much-publicised 50-second rule. But for the rest of us it was made painstakingly clear at a Spurs corner in the 29th minute.

Harry Kane's own goal might have left us needing to score two more in the right end but you still felt Gent were there for the taking, such was the space and license we were being given to play in the final third. 

But when you have just conceded - and are desperate for a quick route back into the match - you expect your players to be switched on. 

Christian Eriksen whipped his corner across the box and totally wrong-footed the Gent defence. 

Dele Alli hurdled the ball, getting the slightest of touches to steer it right across the six-yard box. 

But it wasn't just the Belgian side caught napping as any Spurs players within any sort of reach were oblivious the set-piece had even been taken.

This looked like a training-ground routine gone wrong - executed perfectly by Eriksen - and should have been seized upon and easily turned into the net, even if the move wasn't intentional. 

But Eric Dier and Victor Wanyama were so slow to react the ball was nearly out of play before they saw it.

What's more, if it was a set-piece routine, it is now worthless. Everyone has seen it on national television and Mark Hughes will be preparing Stoke to deal with it on Sunday. As will every other Premier League manager we are left to face this season.

This was not the only instance where Spurs' focus deserted them: Mousa Dembele doing the hard work and beating his man from a short corner, only to turn back into him and commit a foul. 

Kyle Walker, admittedly one of our best players on the night, bombing past the full-back then slicing a near-post effort high into the Wembley gods.

Jan Vertonghen attempting a one-two in an advanced position, only to clatter into the ref. 

Obviously there were far bigger flashpoints that had a more damning effect on the game's outcome. Dele doesn't need any more criticism. Everyone already knows the situation.

But this lack of concentration - which Poch had warned the players about in the build-up to the match - gave the game away that Tottenham were just not switched on enough for a big European night. 

Scratch that, they just weren't switched on enough. Full-stop. Because this should never have been a big European night. It should have been a walk in the park. Gent were rubbish. 

We played Gent off the park in the second half despite being a man down - finding space that no Premier League team would have given us and still wasting chance after chance. That is also something that has to change. 

Dier's mind was again wandering before the goal that killed us off with eight minutes left. 

After two thirds of a season spent rebuilding a reputation shattered in the final weeks of last season.Our mentality is now right back under the spotlight. And with good reason.

Pochettino's dramatic change of message

No amount of talk about training-ground summits or crunch meetings can hide the fact for me that Tottenham have dramatically changed the rhetoric. 

Before the Liverpool game Mauricio Pochettino was claiming his players “dream they can be important here and lift trophies". As far as his ambitions went: “A few trophies, that would be perfect."

Even after the 2-0 defeat at Liverpool, Poch turned his attentions to Europe, insisting: “The mentality must be to win the Europa League."

Two bad results later, the FA Cup victory at Fulham brought an entirely new direction. Pochettino said: “It's too early to start to speak about whether we will win some trophies. Now we’re not allowed to speak about the FA Cup - we can see the draw but after that moment we must forget and focus on Thursday and Gent."

Hold on. Not allowed to speak about the FA Cup? After losing at Anfield, Eric Dier was telling the press you can “Never say never" about the title, let alone the Cup.

Quickly and decisively Pochettino has changed the message - from titles, trophies and ambitions to focus and the next game. He is now describing the Europa League second leg with Gent as “another final". 

You just wonder if the Argentine, 44, has realised that - with all the buzz around Tottenham’s big future, impressive setup and new stadium, everyone might just have been getting a bit ahead of themselves.

There is nothing wrong with a bit of belief and all the tub-thumping looks great in black and white, as long as you can back it up on the pitch. 

When the air of invincibility created by an unbeaten run gets washed away with a defeat, the empty promises of silverware and even dynasties do little except pile on the pressure. 

It had seemed almost as if the manager was happy to apply as much heat as possible to his young squad, maybe priming them to work under the spotlight. He has even compared youth prospect Marcus Edwards, 18, to Lionel Messi to make clear the level of his expectation.

But it does not really work like that. 

Nearly every title-winning manager in the history of press conferences has used the "one game at a time" line to lower the intensity and lighten the load on his players. 

Claudio Ranieri was a master of it last season. Leicester were five, six, seven points clear at the top and he still refused to concentrate on the title race - instead reluctantly admitting that the Foxes may just be in line for a top-four spot. 

Even this season, Antonio Conte is adamant that Chelsea are in a six-way fight for the title despite being 12 points ahead of sixth-placed Manchester United. 

You can almost pinpoint the moment Tottenham made the decision to talk up their ambitions. It was the 2-1 win at Manchester City last season, after which Poch declared the fans should be willing to dream.

Since then we have become pretty much self-proclaimed title-challengers, collapsing last season under the weight of our own expectation in a haze of rally cries in the press and pictures of lions on social media. It was all a bit of fun but it was definitely a distraction. 

You can understand that Pochettino wants to instil the mindset that challenging at the top is the club’s minimum requirement. But that mindset can only come with the knowledge that you have what it takes to get through the rough patches, the big games and the cup finals. 

This team does not currently have that and no amount of talking about it will change it. The only thing that will is focusing on the next game. And winning it.

Liverpool v Tottenham: the aftermath

Scanning the forums and social media on Saturday night you would have thought Tottenham had been relegated. 

Talk was of a "weak mentality", worrying trends and even our "worst performance ever". Well, I don't buy into it.

If there is any worrying trend it is the section of fans that will never ever be pleased whatever happens at the club, and they are only too happy to whinge and whine at the first sign of trouble. 

I'm not saying the performance at Liverpool was acceptable, it wasn't. Certainly not if our aims and aspirations are as high as the club will have us think. 

There was certainly a lot of valid criticism from well-respected quarters of our support after the match. 

What I'm saying is that we are still second, you don't become a bad team overnight and sometimes people just get things wrong.

So our away record against top six clubs is not littered with wins - but look at the same record for other clubs in that group and it's really not that different. 

The reason the top six are the top six is because they are all top teams that do not give much away at home. 

It seems that just because the press pointed out our record ahead of yesterday's 2-0 defeat at Liverpool, it was presumed that now was the time we have to win at Anfield.

Liverpool plainly had more desire than us and they won both the tactical and pressing battle. 

But it's no massive issue. Liverpool are an excellent football team who, after a shock run of crappy results, absolutely had to win that football match.

They also whipped the locals into a baying frenzy by banning The Sun from their stadium 24 hours earlier. It got the fans back on side and sent out a huge rallying cry of "don't f*** with us". 

Spurs probably didn't account for that and they should have done. Anfield is a difficult atmosphere for visiting players even when at its most subdued, let alone its most raucous. 

Mauricio Pochettino knows they got it wrong. He came out and made some big admissions. He questioned the players' mentality, he insisted the club needs to learn - and you know he includes himself in that. 

Poch is determined to take this club right to the top and, yes, losing to Liverpool proves we're not there yet. 

Is that really a surprise? We're nowhere near. It's not as if we are within sight of a day when we steamroller everyone in sight. Few clubs ever reach that situation and even then it never lasts. But it seems for some fans that is the minimum expectation.

Eric Dier said in midweek that there were no superstars at Tottenham because the gaffer wouldn't have it. But in all honesty, it is also because there literally are no superstars here yet.

Harry Kane and Dele Alli have the potential to reach that level but there is a long way to go and that, realistically, goes for the club as a whole. 

We have had an amazing start on this journey but, however disappointing it might be to admit, we are punching above our weight and maybe the reality check will do us all some good.

As far as the game goes, the first goal saw Toby Alderweireld charge into midfield for a challenge he really couldn't afford to lose - but lose it he did - and the second saw Dier get picked off dawdling on a ball that should have long gone out wide.

They were bad decisions that cost us two goals in three minutes and knocked the stuffing out of us. Simple as that. 

Those saying Pochettino did not react tactically to the threat of two-goal Sadio Mane are wrong. Shifting Mousa Dembele across the midfield rendered the Senegal forward effectively useless in the second half, when he had threatened to tear us to shreds. 

It didn't make nice viewing, listening, reading or whatever but it is hardly worth the witch-hunt conducted by many in the aftermath.

Tottenham's Dele Alli ready to push on

Dele Alli was rightly praised for his low-key reaction when Victor Valdes shoved him in the face but, as far as Tottenham are concerned, that's not the half of it. 

Pundits, journos and fans all hailed the 20-year-old for refusing to lash out at the Middlesbrough keeper, completing his journey from "hot-headed kid" to "level-headed young man".

But to laud Dele so highly just for behaving in the right manner loses sight of something far more important to Spurs and, hopefully, to English football.

The midfielder's performance against Middlesbrough capped a few months that demonstrate his understanding of the game is developing every bit as quickly as his temperament.

Quite how the Middlesbrough keeper escaped a ban for such a blatant show of tactical aggression is difficult to comprehend. 

An elder statesman of the game with bags of experience, former Barcelona and Manchester United keeper Valdes, 35, knew exactly what he was doing by taking aim at the player he will have seen as most likely to retaliate.

But it all plays into the rhetoric of just how ready Dele Alli is to push on.

We already knew about the explosive finishing, the eye for a pass and his ability to do something out of the ordinary.

But add to that Dele's awareness, desire to find dangerous space - with and without the ball - as well as his willingness to drop deep for possession, he is now beginning to control the whole flow of a game.

For long periods last season the midfielder had looked a bit of a time bomb. Precocious but precarious. Undeniably talented but always skirting a fine line that ultimately led to suspension when he met West Brom and Claudio Yacob. 

In all likelihood, it is not the last we have seen of his dangerous flip side because, as is so often pointed out, iron out that “naughtiness" (as Mauricio Pochettino calls it) and you invariably lose some of the genius. 

But in recent weeks Dele has been nothing short of a joy to watch and it is having a positive effect on everyone around him - team-mates and fans.

Against Aston Villa he came off the bench and was a shot in the arm to a young team struggling to find a breakthrough. Coming off the back of two headed goals in the 2-0 win over Chelsea, you half expected him to go looking for glory himself. 

But instead he just served to up the ante immediately, boosting the support, bringing in players who needed a touch and playing a key role in Ben Davies' opener.

Against Middlesbrough we may have struggled to get over the line - ultimately needing a penalty to win the match 1-0 - but anyone who watched it will confirm that Dele Alli was outstanding. 

First, early on, he nicked the ball deep from Boro's midfield, surging forward to set up Heung-Min Son in acres of space. And before the break he teamed up with Christian Eriksen to run onto a seemingly impossible through ball and nearly finish at the near post. 

If I'm banging on about it, it's simply because there is a lot to say. And it is easy to forget that Dele, still just 20, is only in his second season at White Hart Lane and fourth as a senior pro. 

Have a look back through the YouTube videos - the skills, the deft touches and the way he tends to shift the ball past one opponent before nicking it out the way of another - and and you'll watch him in a different light the next time around. 

His quick feet, the driving runs, the positive attitude. This is a guy who runs with his head up - like we were all taught at school, but nobody could really master - taking in everything. 

He also does the business when really needed - just look at his comeback-inspiring goals against Wycombe and Manchester City.

At times he has the spontaneity of Gazza, the excitement of Gareth Bale, or the professor-like wisdom of Dimitar Berbatov. Oddly he still manages to bring something different to all of the above. 

At Spurs we are privileged to have seen those guys at close quarters, week-in week-out, however brief it was. But at the moment, Dele Alli looks like he has all the ingredients to eclipse all three.