Tottenham fighting to keep Premier League season alive

If you're amending your diet in order to lose weight or gain muscle, then it's acceptable that sometimes you won't necessarily enjoy the meals you're eating because they'll be bland or you'll be forcing things down just because they're nutritious. 'Cool, I'll get this vomit-flavoured protein shake down me in five seconds flat if I really have to, for the greater good'.

But if you're eating these bland meals that are meant to make things better but they taste rubbish and are also making you unhealthier, then why would you keep persisting with them?

That is how it feels watching Tottenham play aimless football under Jose Mourinho in the pursuit of ending their trophy drought.

Mourinho's philosophy is a simple one - win or bust.

He sets up his teams in the hope that they make fewer errors than the opposition, but he's found that this is harder to implement at a side like Tottenham than the European conquerers he's usually in charge of (though Spurs did reach the Champions League final a few months prior to his arrival). It's easier to defend your way to the top with John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho rather than Eric Dier and Davinson Sanchez.

But this is a team that Mourinho insisted that he loved, that he wished to have picked apart with Chelsea and Manchester United but could ill afford to. He was backed in the summer window with seven first-team signings despite the pandemic hitting Tottenham's finances.

Daniel Levy's reluctance to give up on Tanguy Ndombele when his head coach did has also paid off with the midfielder having a stellar season, and his faith in Dele Alli could still prove beneficial. Make no mistake, this is Mourinho's team and then some - it was widely considered that he had his 'dogs' in lilywhite when things were rosy in the autumn.

According to Opta, only one team in Premier League history has depended on the strikes of a duo more than Tottenham with Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, who have scored 71% of Spurs' goals this season. Now Kane is injured and the wheels are threatening to fall off like they did last season (take a look at that big red run on the spreadsheet linked above).

Mourinho's entire reign at Spurs has been based off of hypotheticals. How low would you go to win a trophy? Would you watch turgid football every week and finish lower in the table with far fewer points for a whiff of a League Cup? That's the route we're going down.

It wasn't even that long ago that Spurs were considered genuine title contenders. But instead of following up on big wins and good performances with more of the same, Mourinho's side have retreated more and more until the fine margins needed to win this way are so thin that you'd be mistaken for thinking Tottenham weren't trying to win at all.

Now, they're eight points off the top, four points off the top four - with a game in hand, but evidently far inferior to Liverpool. They're only three points ahead of Arsenal, an unthinkable situation following December's north London derby when table-topping Spurs moved 11 points clear of their rivals, who were languishing in 15th.

A big week against Brighton, Thomas Tuchel's Chelsea and West Brom could decide Spurs' goals for the second half of the league season - are they going to step up again and fight for a Champions League spot, or are they going to fall away back into the midtable pack and put all their eggs in the trophy basket? If they can't get past two top tier sides with the word 'Albion' in their name and a team whose new manager has barely had time to talk tactics with them, then there's only one answer.

The saving grace is two of those fixtures are very winnable and there's clear quality in the team in spite of Kane's injury. It's just largely been neglected all season and needs to suddenly spring into action at Mourinho's approval.

If fans had been allowed in stadiums this past year, then maybe Spurs would have had a little bit more adrenaline and momentum to attack - because I can assure you that supporters wouldn't have accepted some of these performances. But that's a problem every team has had to battle, and it's one Mourinho has failed to overcome. It all comes back to the manager.