Tottenham lack a lock-pick player while Christian Eriksen remains in purgatory

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR STADIUM — Son Heung-min is the expert at direct dribbling and creating that little bit of space for a shot. Lucas Moura is ever so quick. Harry Kane a thriver on clever passes and intricate through balls. Erik Lamela… okay, Lamela is still a relatively unknown element in spite of six years at Tottenham, but he plays well sometimes.

Moussa Sissoko would dive into a choppy river to save a puppy being swept away, while a crowd of onlookers watched on, too afraid to do the same, but the midfielder is never going to find a graceful, outlandish pass to confound five Newcastle defenders with one sweep of his foot and set up one of the above for a goal.

And so, for an hour, it was left to Harry Winks, the purest chance creator on the pitch against Newcastle United, in what should have been a straightforward victory against Steve Bruce’s point-less (as in zero points, rather than pointless) Newcastle United. But while Winks is a wonderful passer, he is more of a knitter, and only rarely does he stick one through the heart of an opponent with a killer pass.

Possession dominance

Spurs were behind at half-time, despite 75 per cent possession, peaking at 82 per cent during some spells, and had managed only a single shot on target, a Son volley at the back post sharply saved by Martin Dubravka, the Newcastle goalkeeper.

Newcastle, meanwhile, found one such pass. Christian Atsu, on early for the injured Allan Saint-Maximin, clipped a ball perfectly over Davinson Sanchez’s head for Joelinton to control and bury.

All the while, Tottenham’s lock-pickers sat on the bench: Christian Eriksen – arguably Tottenham’s best player but wanting away from the club and in football’s equivalent of purgatory – and Giovani Lo Celso – on loan from Real Betis and hailing from Rosario, the same Argentinian city as fellow left-footed creators Lionel Messi and Angel Di Maria, yet deemed not yet fit enough by manager Mauricio Pochettino.

Eriksen has been a sticky issue for Spurs which will potentially not be resolved until the European transfer window ends next Monday, leaving them all still unsure and unsettled with a north London derby to play at Arsenal if any deal goes down to the wire, as tends to happen.

Lack of options

Pochettino has not been helped, either, by the recent absences of Dele Alli and Tanguy Ndombélé. Although, admittedly, Alli has also struggled in the final-pass regard for Spurs and England, since that lengthy period of almost elastic connection to Kane.

Eriksen and Lo Celso came on together just after the hour. Lo Celso previously with only five minutes played this season, from the bench against Manchester City, and Eriksen reduced mainly to appearances from the bench, too. The frustration was clear from Pochettino at the predicament he finds himself in, not long ago a Champions League runner-up, when he was involved in a heated argument with counterpart Bruce on the touchline when he felt Joelinton was feigning injury to waste time, midway through the second half.

In response, Newcastle went from a back five to a back nine – 10, at times – so that Lo Celso and Eriksen were tasked not so much with picking them apart but breaking down a giant wall. It was Eriksen who came closest to finding the equaliser with a 25-yard effort through the mass of bodies inside Newcastle’s penalty area, but it bounced tantalisingly the wrong side of the far post.

You suspect that had Tottenham had a fit Lo Celso and an Eriksen who wanted to play for them, as he has done for the past six years, for the entire match then a defeat which will prove costly in the Premier League for them could easily have been a draw or a win.

But half an hour was nowhere near long enough to succeed in such a monumental task, and the Bruce Wall stood firm.