Spurs’ Seaside Trip Ends in Stalemate

You can’t always get what you want, as ripened rock slenderman Mick Jagger once sang. Just ask Marseille’s Clinton N’Jie. I’m sure he wasn’t too thrilled about being lugged off at half-time in Le Classique on Sunday night.

In a puzzling forty-five minutes against PSG, the on-loan Spurs winger managed just 8 touches and created a grand total of zero chances. What about shots on goal, I hear you ask?

There were no shots on goal.

On Saturday, some 618 kilometres away, on the South Coast of England, Tottenham were busy not getting what they wanted, as the North London club failed to take the necessary points from Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth that would’ve— temporarily, at least— propelled them to the summit of the Premier League table.

Like the biggest club game in the French calendar, this one also ended in a goalless stalemate. For all the endeavours of Clinton N’Jie.

Oddly enough, in a game which was crying out for a bit of virtuosic spark, to break The Cherries spirited, hard-working resistance, the person who was purchased as an upgrade on N’Jie, Georges-Kévin N'Koudou, once again remained curiously absent from Spurs’ matchday squad.

We’ve seen only a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo from the young Frenchman, in a Champions League group game in Moscow, but one feels that it was a promising enough of a turn for him to be deployed at least as an attacking option from the bench. A bench which offensive alternatives included Vincent Janssen and, at a push, Moussa Sissoko on Saturday. Hardly the most trustworthy of cavalry.

So why no N’Koudou? Who, if nothing else, is fast, tricky and direct. As opposed to Tottenham, who, at times on Saturday lunchtime, were ponderous, laboured and, well, mediocre.

A chance missed, then.

Many will look to the tightness between 1^st and 5th for solace; Tottenham remain just 1 point from the top after City and Arsenal both managed only draws, with Chelsea and Liverpool also shimmying up in to the power positions.

So too might they cling to the fact that Tottenham are still the only unbeaten side in the League, a record which value diminishes with each passing, frustrating draw.

It might be argued that 0-0 against a rapidly improved side like Bournemouth, who Eddie Howe has got running through the smouldering vestibules of Hell for, is a point well-earned. Everton, remember, fell on their arse at the Vitality last month, and presumably more big clubs will struggle there as the season unfolds.

But, just as they had the chance to move into pole position with victory over West Ham in March— and lost— Spurs still sometimes have that habit of swinging hard, but not quite connecting when it matters most. Call it a psychological blind-spot, call it Spursy.

It’s a golden opportunity not taken.