After having some time to discuss, reflect, and digest I'd say my thoughts are as follows:
Everyone takes some of the blame today, piss poor first half, some selection errors, and apathy on the pitch from some of the players.
Sandro should have started today's game. Dembele and Paulinho don't work together as neither wants to help out the center backs defensively as a destroyer or going forward by creating space and dragging strikers out of position. If Sandro was fit enough for the bench, he was fit enough to start. If he couldn't go the full 90, take him off late on, not bring him on as a sub. Similarly, Dembele was poor today and has been unconvincing all season. I love him as a player but numerous times he got himself into bad situations with the ball and was unable to recover. He will need to improve vastly if he wants to start again IMO.
Sigurdsson was also an odd choice. I was okay with him starting, but only with the idea to bring Lamela on as an impact sub against tired legs. Today, besides the deflected free kick that almost went in, I can't recall Siggy doing anything of note. If AVB is going to reward form as he has earlier in the season, then why not repay Lamela's performance on Thursday with a start and at the very least a 30 minute impact cameo. Personally, having played, it would be crushing to have a great game and follow it up by riding the bench while the team struggles the next game.
Vlad going off hurt us dearly because it took away one of our subs. Similarly, I though he was great today, both carrying the ball forward and mopping up. Yes, he was out of position on the goal, but I think that falls more on the midfield losing the ball carelessly than him.
If Hugo plays, I don't think we concede that goal. Yes its a case of "what-if" but I think Hugo knocks the ball away from Remy's feet. You can see that as Brad came out, he hesitates when Remy goes to take a touch, even though it is fairly clear he can only take the ball to his (Brad's) right hand side. Knowing this he should have been able to get a touch on the ball. Otherwise today Brad played well enough, but when you concede an early goal, at times that is all that matters.
4-4-2 is pointless with two similar strikers. This has been said ad-nauseam but Defoe and Soldado are too similar in their approach. While Soldado didn't have a great game today and should have scored from his free header from a corner, I don't think Defoe should have even been in the conversation to come on. I'd have rather had Kane come on simply because he would offer us a different style of 4-4-2. In the end though the right choice of sub would have been Lamela. We were all over them and we didn't need to change shape at the time. By changing shape, we lost some of the impetus and our attacking power petered out some.
Townsend didn't have a great game, along with Eriksen (except his abysmal finishing), but I can't fault either of them too much today. Similarly Walker didn't have his greatest game but he wasn't bad either.
In the end it was a poor all around performance and the player should realize that. The most worrying thing for me was why it took until halftime for our players to start showing fight and impetus. Why didn't we play like that for the whole first 45? Why didn't we come right back at them after scoring? Some of it has to do with formations and players on the pitch, but some also has to go down to hunger and desire. TBH we simply didn't show that in the first half.
Poor performance today, some poor decisions were made, team needs to pick themselves back up. We need a leader to kick the team up the arse and get them playing hard from the off. AVB needs to play a role in this as well. He had a poor managerial performance in some aspects but we simply need to come back stronger. Can we do this though? Personally, I really don't know.
-Trying to keep the faith