There’s no match reaction thread today – my bad. There was a misunderstanding with Matty and it was my turn to do it and then I had to make dinner so… sorry about that.

But it does give me the opportunity to quickly move on to an article I had planned for this evening anyway – my usual “things we learned” article after cup and European matches.

So what have we learned after coming from behind at the last moment to win 2-1 against mid-table Championship side Coventry City in the League Cup? Some potentially harsh truths about this Tottenham team and its depth.

Good win, terrible game

OK, seriously, the game-winning goals from Djed Spence and Brennan Johnson were nice and entertaining and exciting, but overall it was a TERRIBLE game of football from Tottenham Hotspur. Spurs’ problems converting possession into attacking play continued in this game, only it was even worse than before, and most of Spurs’ reserves looked even more like headless chickens who have no idea what to do with the ball once it’s in the box.

Timo Werner and Wilson Odobert were both pretty bad, and I feel bad saying that because both were out with injuries (as was Destiny Udogie, who appears to have pulled his thigh). In Odobert’s case, it looks like he just needs more time to adjust. In Timo’s case, he just seemed helpless and had no sense of what to do with the ball once he had it. Pape Sarr ran around a lot, but didn’t run into the box like we saw last season. The less said about Rodrigo Bentancur, the better.

Even when Ange Postecoglou brought on first-team players like Son Heung-Min and James Maddison, they couldn’t convert their xT into meaningful xG… until near the end. At one point in the second half, Spurs had 73% possession and an xG of 0.10, leading to a thoroughly deserved 1-0 deficit. That’s just not good enough.

Only the two late goals prevented this from being the worst Tottenham Hotspur performance I’ve seen since they lost to a Europa Conference League team whose manager was in jail. Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad we won! It was cool, and now we have a chance to do better in the next round and hopefully get to a point where we have a chance of winning the competition.

Maybe it was just a bad day at the office. That happens sometimes. But Tottenham’s problems today looked like a continuation of the problems we’ve seen in the first four Premier League games and that is very, very worrying.

Spurs urgently need to part ways with Fraser Forster

This may sound harsh, but after this game I no longer have any faith in Fraser Forster as Tottenham’s backup goalkeeper. He started the game with a big mistake that almost gave Coventry a goal in the first few minutes, and although he made a couple of saves and looked reasonably confident from set pieces, he was slow both on his line and off it, and kept falling like a fallen redwood. When Spurs were tied going into injury time, I expected the game to go to penalties and Spurs to lose – again like they did against Fulham last season – because Forster is a liability from penalties.

I don’t know what Brandon Austin did to incur the ire of the Tottenham coaching staff, but I saw him a lot in preseason and he at least looked like a goalkeeper who could get things done in goal without making me break a sweat. If Forster really is Tottenham’s second goalkeeper, we better pray that Guglielmo Vicario never gets injured, because then we’d be in real trouble.

Back from Djed

We were all wondering why Djed Spence wasn’t in the starting lineup today. Since he’s not in the Europa League squad because Postecoglou preferred to start Fraser Forster, we all assumed he would get the nod here as there are few games now where he actually gets decent minutes unless Pedro Porro or Destiny Udogie get injured. He finally came on as a substitute at half-time and while he didn’t have a perfect game, he looked pretty good. Djed was one of the few players out there who looked determined to get the ball forward and run at Coventry’s defenders and he was rewarded with Spurs’ first goal (after a nice shot from Dejan Kulusevski). I still don’t know if Djed Spence is the one or not, but I feel like he deserves the chance to play more minutes and I’m not sure why he didn’t do that tonight.

We’ve thrown a lot of criticism at Brennan Johnson on this blog – much of it deserved, unfortunately – but I was very, very pleased to see him score that winning goal. And that’s because a) it proved he can be effective as a late substitute, which is probably his best role at the moment, and b) it’s a slap in the face to the idiotic Spurs fans who have been bullying him into deleting his Instagram with absolutely vile abuse. I don’t think BJ has played particularly well this season, but he doesn’t deserve the crap he gets on social media and I’m very happy he scored tonight. Hopefully this is the confidence boost he needs to improve his performances in the league, because if Wilson Odobert is out for an extended period of time, Johnson will have to fill that void.