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No desire or bravery

This was by far the worst Tottenham Hotspur performance put on for the 60,000 people at the new stadium so far.

Even Mauricio Pochettino said before the game that this was a match he expected his team to win.

They didn't come close and despite 80 per cent of the possession the hosts didn't even look like they were going to take a point, let alone all three against a struggling Newcastle side.

Tottenham's stadium should be a fortress, with the size of it and the sheer noise the fans produce.

However, Spurs have to accept that visiting sides are going to come to the enormous new ground and raise their game, the crowd is going to grow frustrated and quieter if the players don't provide them with something to cheer about.

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Few players emerged from this game with any real credit. The defence failed to deal with the few attacks that came their way and the attacking players were all as bad as each other and that included those who came on.

Spurs missed the tempo upping of new boy Tanguy Ndombele as their midfield looked pedestrian.

"We created some chances, not too many, not enough to be honest," said Pochettino. "That is why we're very disappointed with the performance and the result but we cannot justify our performance.

"We should be playing better, more desire, more capacity to be more aggressive in this type of game, because 80 per cent of possession is too much for only a few shots on target."

If this Spurs side can't raise themselves in front of a packed home crowd then how are they going to do it inside the hostile Emirates Stadium next weekend?

Then there was that VAR decision. Not that Tottenham deserved anything out of the match, but how the VAR team decided that a player falling over and tripping an opposing player in the box isn't a penalty is odd to the extreme.

It doesn't matter if it's accidental, whether it was his foot, shoulder or head, Jamaal Lascelles brought Harry Kane down in the box as he was trying to get to the ball. It's a penalty every day of the week except Sunday it seems and it shows that the system is still fallible.

The Eriksen question

It was a simple question to Pochettino. Did he think this was Christian Eriksen's last match in a Spurs shirt?

"I don't know," he said with a shrug. "I don't know. Why do you ask me? Maybe you know something. It's so difficult, the situation. We cannot blame one party or another.

"That is the situation, the circumstances. We arrive today with different players and different situations in the squad but I don't want to justify our performance because of that. I want to make clear the point. When you play football and are on the pitch you don't think about these situations.

"Of course the problem is during the week, when you arrive at the competition maybe it can affect but I think we should with a bit more today be winning.

"This type of stuff happens in the Premier League and that's why you not only need quality players, you need a very good dynamic, and strong team bond and at the moment that situation in our group is still far far away from what we expect."

There were plenty of questions over who would start in the attacking midfield slots against Newcastle but nobody expected Eriksen to be the one on the bench.

That he was suggests that not all with the player is as calm, collected and unaffected as the manager stated just days before.

If that were the case then he would have no qualms about putting the Dane in from the start in every game.

The problem for Eriksen is demand. At the moment there does not seem to be a queue of suitors knocking at his door and his performances when he has played haven't exactly been the greatest advert for what he is capable of.

Eriksen expected to have left the club by this point in the summer, Spurs expected him to have been long gone, yet here he is with Pochettino stuck in the middle.

There is every indication that Tottenham would take a reasonable fee for the Dane in the week ahead so as not to lose him for nothing next season.

The new contract offered doesn't look like being signed at this moment in time and with the prospect of Eriksen being able to ask for mega money with his pick of clubs as a free agent next summer - with negotiations able to begin in just four months - why would he?

Another problem is that Spurs have become so reliant on the Denmark international that when he doesn't play they look devoid of ideas, even if he didn't add much on this occasion when he came on.

Forget having no Plan B, there isn't a Plan No CE. If Pochettino knew Eriksen wanted to leave, and he would have for some time, then that should be in place.

It looks like those previous successors were Ross Barkley and then Jack Grealish and now it could well be that Pochettino sees Giovani Lo Celso as the playmaker in waiting but it's going to take some time to get the young Argentine up to speed and whether the fans will be patient while he does remains to be seen.

No case for the defence

At the start of the match Pochettino had some justification for sticking with the Davinson Sanchez and Toby Alderweireld partnership and leaving Jan Vertonghen, complete with his mystery black eye, on the bench.

On paper, Spurs had not lost yet and the duo had done well on the whole at the Etihad Stadium in the face of wave after wave of Manchester City attacks.

However, it would be struggling Newcastle who exposed the problems with the current back four.

The Alderweireld/Sanchez partnership is unbalanced. Despite being the older, experienced player, the Belgian can't operate on the left and the Colombian just doesn't look as comfortable there.

Danny Rose, suffering from his own form struggles, doesn't look happy alongside Sanchez and doesn't get the same cover that he receives from the left-footed Vertonghen.

It's no coincidence that teams seem to be targeting that area of the pitch. Aston Villa's goal in the opening weekend came from a ball over the two of them and Newcastle played lofted passes into the area three times. They scored from one of them and really should have scored from all three.

Sanchez's positioning was poor, unable to get his head to any of the balls, and the experienced Rose just did not look to step over at all, closer to his team-mate to handle the man in front of him on repeated occasions.

I asked Pochettino after the match whether it was a concern that teams were finding joy by exploiting the combination of those two players. He of course rallied behind them.

"Only if you see the end of the situation. We need to analyse, like VAR, we need to go back and see maybe 10, 20 or 30 seconds before what happened and why this situation arrived. We cannot blame them," he said.

"First of all it's to blame me and then blame the collective performance when you concede a goal like this."

Privately though Pochettino will analyse the performance of his defence and know that it's just not working at the moment, the balance isn't right.

He needs Jan Vertonghen, but is the Belgian in the right frame of mind? That leads us to the most worrying part of the day.

Real squad problems

Teams can put in poor performances, players can fall out of favour but what Pochettino hinted at after the game was far more worrying.

The Argentine's whole philosophy requires the utmost in squad harmony, with every player fighting for another with a common goal.

Pochettino let more slip than recently after the match and gave the impression that there's even more he can't share about the disarray behind the scenes.

"I think this is my sixth season and the most unsettled group we are working with," he admitted.

"That is why we are relaxed and calm. Some situations we cannot fix. Nothing to say about that, situations that are going on in the squad. Still we need to wait.

"That is the circumstances after playing the Champions League on June 1, we knew that some situations like this would happen but for us and the club it's difficult to handle.

"What can we do? We can only wait. I say again, you have for sure more information than me about what's happening in the market.

"That's why I cannot do more than try to help the team find the best dynamic to train and not to create too many problems and be a person who is not being very emphatic, but understand every single situation and try to get a good result."

His comments hint that there are numerous players who are looking to leave the club before the foreign transfer windows close, or that Spurs want to move on but can't shift them out the door.

The problem is that, despite his claims to the contrary, we know Pochettino isn't always completely honest in press conferences about players who want to leave the club.

The reason we know that is after the whole Kyle Walker saga he admitted in his book that he had been covering the whole time after the defender's request to leave by saying that it was simply that he was playing the better player in Trippier. Sound familiar?

Having seen him admit that before it makes you think twice about the situation with Vertonghen, Eriksen and anyone else who isn't starting matches.

How unsettled are Serge Aurier, Victor Wanyama and even Eric Dier? What is going on in Rose's head after he couldn't get the move he expected when he was given permission to miss the pre-season tour to find himself another club.

So where do Spurs go from this?

What next?

The one ray of hope in all of this mess for Spurs fans is that Pochettino recognises it's happening and with his ability to adapt to all the firefighting he's been doing in recent seasons, he must have plans in place.

His comments this week ahead of the game made it clear that he has begun the process of transforming the squad.

"We love to try to be better every season and we are working hard on that. We are settling the team, trying to find the best dynamic in the group," he said.

"It is a natural evolution and we are looking to find that balance. This season looks like it will be the one where we will start the regeneration of the squad. This is a new cycle."

Every team needs a shake-up, even the very best title-winning ones, as each cycle comes to an end. After six years under Pochettino he knows he needs to freshen things up for him and his coaches and some players need to leave to do so for themselves.

It's the painful rebuild Pochettino spoke about months ago, but the staggered transfer window closures have meant the band-aid is being pulled off slowly rather then ripped off in one go and it's prolonging the pain.

The Spurs boss might seem like he's deeply unhappy about it all with his tetchy replies in press conferences but this is something the Argentine has been aware was needed for some time.

The Champions League run last season papered over the results of a team that had stagnated to a worrying degree.

Spurs have managed just seven wins from their last 21 games in all competitions, with 11 defeats and three draws. If you focus on the Premier League only, it's just four wins from their last 15 matches.

That's not the form of a top four team, it's barely the form of a mid-table one, perhaps even those in real danger.

Fans will be attached to players they don't want to see leave, the coaching staff will have close relationships with them as well and in the short term the team might go backwards before it can push on, but every team needs to stop the rot before it spreads.

Some tough decisions will be taken by Pochettino and Daniel Levy in the next week and the manager might have to hold the ship together before the club can bring in new players in the transfer window the Argentine likes the least - the January one.

The immediate issue is that Spurs' next game is against that team down the road at the Emirates and it comes the day before the foreign windows close.

Tottenham could well be at their most vulnerable at that point, awaiting deadline day bids for those whose time it is to move on.

Pochettino will have to pull out all the stops during the course of this week to hold it all together. He does not want to segregate the players who are on the potential exit list because they've done their jobs for him and the club over the years, but a north London derby is no place for those who have one eye elsewhere.

The Spurs boss desperately wants to get to the end of September 2 and come out the other side with a squad he knows will have to pull together in one direction for the months ahead. There's just that pesky match in the way first and it's one nobody wants to lose.