by If only there was a word for this kind of performance from Tottenham. At half-time they were 2-0 up and looked totally in control, with Dejan Kulusevski and Brennan Johnson ripping Brighton apart down the right.
They were so dominant that the instinct was to start recalling the great Spurs collapses of the past – 3-0 against Manchester United in 2001, 3-0 against 10-man Manchester City in 2004, leads lost in both 5-2 . defeats to Arsenal in 2012, 2-0 to Chelsea in the Battle of the Bridge in 2016, 3-0 after 82 minutes to West Ham in 2020 – if only because it seemed so unlikely that something similar could reproduce. But Spurs’ spursiness should never be underestimated.
Related: Danny Welbeck caps spectacular Brighton comeback as Tottenham collapse
It was the 10th time Spurs had lost a Premier League match by two goals. No other team has done it more than seven times. As Giorgio Chiellini observed after Juventus scored twice in three second-half minutes to turn a Champions League tie that looked to dominate in 2018, “this is the Tottenham story.”
Perhaps in retrospect there were only a few warning signs in the first half, the feeling that Brighton had the ability to blow Spurs open. But the story at the break seemed to be one of Brighton’s fragility, of the remarkable vulnerability of their high line. There was the unusual sensation of seeing a dogmatic approach unraveled in a Spurs game and Ange Postecoglou finding himself on the right side.
The tone was set after 16 seconds when Dominic Solanke released Timo Werner behind Joël Veltman; again and again the away team hit the space Chelsea had exploited last week. Fabian Hürzeler insisted the problem was 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 ‘there is no built-in security like, for example. For example, Spurs value the pace of Micky van de Ven. Losing Webster to what appeared to be a hamstring injury after nine minutes only complicated matters further. Igor Julio came on, but Jan Paul van Hecke was badly missed.
Even allowing for the fact that Werner is, it’s fair to say, not as lethal as Cole Palmer, the surprise was that it took Spurs 23 minutes to take the lead. The method, however, was entirely predictable, as Georginio Rutter was dispossessed and Solanke fed Johnson to score his sixth in six games. The second, similarly, resulted from a simple transition, with Solanke retaining Igor to play in Werner, who replaced James Maddison.
Spurs could have got more before the break. As Postecoglou said, Spurs should have “put the game to bed”. He seemed almost shocked afterward, staying on the field for a long time and then acknowledging that his team hadn’t done the basics, that they hadn’t competed after halftime. It’s not just that they were open in the second half, it’s also that they lost all their life. If more than three players from this team had played against Ferencvaros on Thursday, one might have been tempted to blame fatigue, but there was no obvious explanation and, from Postecoglou’s point of view, no excuse.
After a promising start to the season, Brighton had endured a slightly tricky period, having failed to win any of their previous four league matches. There are now 20 goals in their last four matches in all competitions; it may not be sustainable, but it’s fun. The arrival of Pervis Estupiñán in place of Ferdi Kalioglu at left-back helped strengthen this team and, with a stronger platform, Kauro Mitoma was suddenly able to impose himself.
For all that Brighton had improved, for all that they had become more compact, for all of Rutter’s determination and Danny Welbeck’s aerial threat, it was hard to avoid the feeling that Tottenham had given up. Brighton’s first goal came after an aerial shot from Van de Van and a fake kick from Destiny Udogie. The second came after Mitoma had a point and Udogie’s push almost seemed to give Rutter the momentum to overtake Van de Ven. And the third was a result of Rutter beating Udogie far too easily and that Rodrigo Bentancur was then indecisive, allowing Rutter to cross.
Brighton deserve credit of course, but this was Spurs’ collapse. Postecoglou said he had not seen anything like this from him before but there had been elements of similar waste against Leicester and Newcastle, games in which Spurs were the better team for significant periods but failed to win. And perhaps that is the true curse of Spursiness, the feeling that there are always three teams on the field: the Spurs, their opponents and the demons of their worst nature.
