We cannot defend to save our lives. It's been like this all season long, and again I see nothing that suggests it's been identified and worked on. NOTHING. This is absolutely shambolic.

I wonder if the ref bottled it, knowing that he'd already booked Keane once for diving and would have had to send him off, just like the Ashley Young v Palace incident last season?

Final Score on BBC2 are clear where their sympathies lie, and it ain't with the home team.

Yet another win where we can shake our heads and wonder how.

If we do make top four, I dread to think what this lot would be like in the CL.

Poor performace for sure, but a win is a win so i'll take it. No good getting involved in the usual hyperbole about how awful everything and everyone is because we know the squad needs an overhaul and we know we've got to muddle through until the end of the season.

I'm dreading the run in now. We can't keep a clean sheet for toffee and it's only by the good grace of Harry Kane that we will pick up some points. Forget top four, there are 6 other teams with much decent form ahead of us.

Don't think you can blame the Coach for our displays. He wants them to a play a system, a system some of them seem to forget as soon as the game starts. Also, individual mistakes of which we seem to making plenty of is not down to bad coaching. As a Coach you need your players to show up for games and first do the simple things right. Walker's brain farts, Bentaleb giving the ball away cheaply, Vertonghen challenging half heartedly and chadli missing open goals are nothing to do with coaching, they are individuals lacking concentration and commitment.

We know at the end of the season there is going to be a big clear out and everything is pointing to us bringing in busier, more energetic players. Certainly, on today's showing not many those on show will be missed.

We know some of our players are not good enough. For me that's primarily Chadli and Townsend. It doesn't say much for Dembele and Lamela that they can't get a game.

Most of the others are going through a run of poor form, particularly Walker. They can play better than they have recently although we still need to sort out the defence and have some better alternatives.

I still have confidence in Poch and I hope this isn't going to be a start of a campaign for him to be replaced. He needs better players.

My main gripe today was that I thought a lot of the problem was down to attitude. It looks like a lot of them believe the season is over. For that reason alone, I would give a fair number of them a "rest" in the next game.

Both of you summed it up well. I've also still got confidence in Poch - it's still his first season in charge with a squad he inherited, let's not forget. He does need to be slightly more willing to drop players out of form though, to be fair.

Two week international break now which I do think we need.

see, here's my problem with all this. all these individual mistakes you've mentioned (and more) keep happening every single game. surely when we're analysing these games afterwards, SOMEONE should be pointing out these things to the players and, more importantly, working on them in training? but yet, week after week Walker is getting caught out of position and relying on his pace to get back (after his horror show last Sunday, it took all of about a minute and a half for exactly the same thing to happen again), Rose's delivery is terrible, Mason is flying into challenges he has no hope of winning, he and Bentaleb continually squander possession, Townsend is running into and down blind alleys, Eriksen is drifting out of games, Kane is trying to do everything on his own etc etc. worst of all, we just cannot defend in ANY situation. so if these things are being picked up and the players are refusing to change them, why are they still being picked week-in week-out? IMO the only logical assumption to make is that they're not. if they were, then surely we'd see SOME sort of improvement in these areas?

it's all well and good rigorously coaching a system, but to me it just seems like they've just become robots that don't really know how to function once the opposition turn up and do anything that wasn't covered in system training.

I'm guessing that our Performance Analyst has been through all this with Pochettino and his Coaches many times and I'm sure that the Coaching team is doing its best to improve the individuals we all know mostly cause the problems. I bet if you watched our team training you'd see inch perfect passes and crosses and moves that would make you drool. It must be that those same players we are berating again today show the most zip, technique and tactical awareness in training and that's why they are being selected.

However, no amount of work on the training pitch can replace actual game time and game situations. The Coach(es) can only send the players out with the hope that they perform to the level expected of them and do the things that were drilled into them as efficiently as they can. No Coach in the World at any level can plan for individual errors or players suddenly forgetting the basics or not adhering to a tactical plan during a specific game. Players themselves have to have enough intelligence, responsibility and nous to know their jobs and perform their role. If one or two don't then ok the Coach can haul them off and the team gets back on track but if 5 or 6 or 7 of them are suddenly having a bad day it comes down to the other players in the team to start leading by example. Today we only had Kane and Rose leading by example and 9 other players having another off day.

If players can't or won't follow the Coach's instructions and continually make poor decisions in dangerous situations then they give the Coach few choices; drop them or replace them. All the news reports and links filtering out seem to point to us planning to replace a number of current squad members. My hope is that we bring in more intelligent players as bringing in like for like bang average replacements will just see us treading water again.

we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one then, I'm afraid. of course no coach can plan for individual errors, but I'm pretty sure good coaches can eventually eliminate the continuous variety.

I can see evidence of a system, for sure, and sometimes it works better than others. I really can't see that many (if any) individuals are actually getting any better. defensively we're a complete shambles too, are we really saying there's nothing our coaching staff can do to make us more solid, or that all our players just happen to be too incompetent to be able to defend any better?

What I am saying is that on the training pitch I expect our Back 6 defend as a unit but in real game situations they obviously don't or we wouldn't be leaking so many goals. So Yes we have incompetent defenders who regularly fail to carry out their defensive duties efficiently. Individually, Walker is always a disaster waiting to happen; Dier is young and still learning the game and with that mistakes will happen. Vertonghen, for all his experience can be a real pussy at times as shown by his lazy challenge on Nugent and Rose wants to be an attacking midfielder, ok, but he's slow to get back and that often exposes us down his side. Bentaleb and Mason are trying their best but suffer from a lack of real support from Chadli, Townsend and Eriksen none of whom are willing to put their foot in when it matters.

we've conceded more goals than Sunderland, Villa, Hull, Everton, West Brom, Palace, West Ham, Stoke, and Swansea. that's 9 of the 13 teams below us. are we really saying our players are worse than theirs now?

we've scored just 12 less than the highest-scoring team in the league (Man City) which isn't actually that bad. it's defensively that we're just attrocious. there's no organisation at all.

It's an old adage in football but defending starts from the front. We know Kane works his socks off, chasing and harrying, Eriksen does to a lesser extent but can't tackle to save his life. Today, Chadli and Townsend contributed nothing defensively or attacking wise. In fact there was one laughable situation in our right corner when Chadli allowed the Leicester player to steal the ball and then fell over claiming a foul instead of working to get the ball back or block the inevitable cross. Positionally, Walker is clueless and again can't tackle to save his life. So we have Dier trying to play two positions and Vertonghen doing the same in the LCB position because Rose is so far up the pitch. Leicester attacked today with two wide players and at least three charging through the middle therefore outnumbering us in critical areas.

Leicester's first goal was a cross from Nugent who was in the space vacated by Rose. He hit a quality cross which took out our CBs and Walker who once again was in the wrong position and was also caught ball watching. Their second was just awful marking. We had Bentaleb initially marking their CB, a size mismatch to start with. Bentaleb then loses him and he gets a free header to score. Look at the reaction after, they are all stood looking at each other obviously thinking who should have been marking him. The third was a bigger joke with Vertonghen not reading the danger soon enough.

I said earlier in this thread that these lower placed teams will all fancy their chances against us in the remaining games as they keep seeing us crumble when under pressure. They will all have a real go at us knowing that we will give away goals and hope they can stop us scoring at the other end.

I don't disagree with any of that. I just disagree with the suggestion that there's nothing more that can be done by the coaching staff to address the problem.

I don't understand the surprise, it's been a mid-table defence all season. The miracle is we're still talking about CL.

It's not only that, Andros Townsend: the name doesn't exactly send shivers down the spine of opponents. There's almost nothing Poch can switch on the bench. The current back up to the striker is a piece of decorative hallway furniture. I don't even know what to think of Lamela. In this system, Paulinho is a donkey.

There is proper money in selling some of these player - it going to be a very, very busy summer. And while Levy is undoubtably pleased as hell he's spent nothing net on players in at least 4 years, he has to this summer.

We don't have a team never mind a squad.

That is the problem. Poch has got his system, and is trying to fit players into it, but most of them are not good enough.

We have skilful players who can the ball about the middle, but no real leadership, or workers in there.

Lamela, Townsend, and Chadli do nothing, yet two of them have to play for the system.

Rose works, so put him further forward, with Davies behind him, and play Eriksen wider, with Dembele in the centre. it's got to be better than what we have.

The skill the players have somehow managed to keep us in the hunt, but they are not a team with any balance, or passion to go with that.

MotD: what is Neville talking about 'his leves have dropped in the last week games' - that is exactly Kyle Walker's defensive game at all times.

Thank f**k someone is at least calling him on it to some extent.

why are then we then insisting on a system that we apprently don't have players good enough for? how good is a manager that has only "his system" with no flexibility? and how come some of these same players have been perfectly fine in their previous roles before Tottenham? and I still cannot understand how we supposedly don't have players good enough to be able to beat Leicester comfortably at home. if they were really that bad, surely we'd be in the bottom 3 alongside Leicester? on goals conceded, we're 16th. that's not mid-table, it's bottom pretty much.

these arguments really aren't adding up...

I see Rose has made the England squad after all following Shaw's withdrawal.

That did make me laugh


Probably deserved I suppose - if Townsend can get called up, then Rose certainly should be in.

Just out of interest:

1) Who do you think was the last good Spurs manager?

2) Would you favour replacing Pochettino?

a) Pochettino b) no, I just believe he needs to modify his approach

Fwiw, the Liverpool vs. Man Utd result was what I hoped for.

We were expecting Utd to drop more points than the other challengers and, since we lost at Und, we now really need them to. We alss need Liverpool's impressive run to stop.

Given where we are, yesterday result seems fine. The huge concern now though is the sudden discovery of this bloke called Juan Mata, where did he come from ....

April will be an important month in that respect as United have got City and Chelsea back to back. Liverpool have got Ars*nal next and Chelsea in May as the only two teams who can really give them any kind of trouble because the rest of their run in is very favourable for them.

I suppose it leaves us in the rather amusing position of needing Ars*nal to do us a favour by beating Liverpool, which will almost certainly secure them their much coveted 4th place trophy for another year while helping us maintain an outside chance of making the top 4 as well.