If only there was one word for this Tottenham performance. They were 2-0 up at half-time and looked to be completely in control. Dejan Kulusevski and Brennan Johnson tore Brighton apart on the right.

They were so dominant that the instinct began to recall Spurs’ big defeats in the past – 3-0 against Manchester United in 2001, 3-0 against ten-man Manchester City in 2004, both leading 5-2 defeats against Arsenal in 2012, 2-0 against Chelsea in the Battle of the Bridge in 2016, 3-0 after 82 minutes against West Ham in 2020 – if only because it seemed so unlikely that anything would happen Something similar could happen again. But the spursiness of the Spurs should never be underestimated.

This was the tenth time Spurs had lost a Premier League game after leading by two goals. No other team has achieved this more than seven times. As Giorgio Chiellini noted after Juventus scored two goals in three second-half minutes to convert a Champions League draw, Spurs appeared to dominate in 2018: “This is the story of Tottenham.”

In hindsight, perhaps there were only a few warning signs in the first half, namely the feeling that Brighton had the ability to tear Spurs apart. But the story at the break seemed to be about Brighton’s fragility and the remarkable vulnerability of their top line. It was the unusual feeling of watching a dogmatic approach being overturned in a Spurs game with Ange Postecoglou on the right.

The tone was set within 16 seconds when Dominic Solanke released Timo Werner behind Joël Veltman; The away team repeatedly used the space that Chelsea had exploited last week. Fabian Hürzeler has insisted the problem is not the height of the line but a lack of pressure on the ball, but playing such a high line with players as slow on the turn as Lewis Dunk and Adam Webster means that it is no failsafe function such as B. Spurs enjoy the pace of Micky van de Ven, for example. The loss of Webster to an apparent hamstring injury after nine minutes only complicated matters. Igor Julio came on as a substitute, but Jan Paul van Hecke is sorely missing.

Even taking into account the fact that Werner isn’t as lethal as Cole Palmer, the surprise was that it took 23 minutes for Spurs to take the lead. However, the method was entirely predictable as Georginio Rutter was dispossessed and fed Solanke Johnson, who scored his sixth goal in six games. The second attack also resulted from a simple substitution, with Solanke holding back Igor and bringing in Werner, who fed James Maddison.

Spurs could have achieved more before the break. As Postecoglou said, Spurs “should have finished the game.” Afterwards he seemed almost completely shocked as he stood on the pitch for a long time and then admitted after half-time that his team had failed to do what was essential and that they had not competed. It wasn’t just that they were open in the second half, but that they ran out of life. Had more than three players from this team played away at Ferencvaros on Thursday it might have been tempting to blame fatigue, but there were no obvious explanations and, from Postecoglou’s perspective, no excuses either.

After a promising start to the season, Brighton hit a difficult patch and failed to win any of their last four league games. Across all competitions, 20 goals have been scored in the last four games; It may not be sustainable, but it’s fun. The arrival of Pervis Estupiñán for Ferdi Kalioglu at left-back helped strengthen this team, and with a more solid platform, Kauro Mitoma was suddenly able to assert himself.

Still, one couldn’t help but feel that Tottenham had given up, even though Brighton had improved, even though they had become more compact, despite the determined running of Rutter and the aerial threat of Danny Welbeck. Brighton’s first goal came after an aerial shot from Van de Van and a miss from Destiny Udogie. The second came after Mitoma allowed a run and Udogie’s push almost seemed to give Rutter the momentum to get past Van de Ven. And the third point came from Rutter beating Udogie far too easily and Rodrigo Bentancur then being indecisive, allowing Rutter to cross.

Brighton deserve credit of course, but this was about Spurs’ collapse. Postecoglou said he had never seen anything like this from his team, but there had been elements of similar wastefulness against Leicester and Newcastle, games in which Spurs were the better team for long stretches but failed to win. And that is perhaps the true curse of Spursiness, the feeling that there are always three teams on the field: Spurs, their opponents and the demons of their worse nature.