So Kane says it is not Mourinho that tells them to defend deep towards the end of games but the players. This is not the first time we have gone through a run of conceding late goals and will not be the last. Normally fans fear it happening as we all do but despite there being no fans in the ground the players are still paralysed by fear. Part of it is the other teams knowing the recent history put more pressure on. In the team some players like Kane have no fear they will get dropped and can take more chances but many do not have that comfort and Mourinho does not help by installing that fear by castigating mistakes and dropping players who make mistakes.
How do we get out of this? Well it really is up to Mourinho to install confidence to continue to go forward and not be ultra cautious in team selection by picking all 3 holding midfielders. Only time will solve the problem but for the next few weeks the last 10 mins of matches will be a nightmare for us supporters.
Thing is,
When a team is winning 1-0 with 5 minutes left, the attacker will run the ball into the corner as an age old recognised safety tactic. Hold the ball up. waste some seconds, maybe win a corner and kill some time.
Pundits all get a hard on and call it "game management" and credit the coach for drilling it into them.
But when it goes wrong and you concede, in exactly the same scenario, it's no longer good game management, and it's all negativuty etc etc.
Football pundits, commentatirs and "journalists" are skewing the fans opinion of what is going on in front of their eyes.
Goals completely change peoples perception of a game.
You can be in almost complete control of a game but be desperately unlucky not to score a 2nd (or more goals) and one fliuke at the other end changes the context from;
Spurs were dominant and won at a canter, to
Spurs were negative and holding their lead cost them
MOTD is criminal. I stuck MOTD2 on last night from Sundays game and they showed SU having more chances than us in their main highlights. If you only watched that, it would appear to many that we were on the back foot.
We were not. We had total control.
In the discussion after, they talked about how good we were and showed clips not included in the highlights - what the hell!