Post Match Reaction: Tottenham (A)

It's always sickening to lose to Spurs, but when you dominate for large periods and end up losing to a goalkeeping error and losing your most consistent player to injury for 3 months, it makes your day that bit worse.

Positives:
Thrust into the heart of the midfield in a North London derby, young Francis Coquelin excelled and atoned for his awful display at Old Trafford. Alex Song looks like he has played centre-back all his life and we dominated possession for large periods and should have had the game out of reach long before Walker's winner. His error aside, Wojciech Szczesny excelled once more and kept us in the game with a smart stop from Adebayor towards the end.

Negatives:
Yet again, we struggle to find consistency in an away run now stretching to 10 games without a win. Defensive lapses were once again our nemesis with Mertesaker run ragged by Defoe and a lapse in concentration from Szczesny costing us the game.

"It is two steps forward and one step back," said Wenger. "Sunday was a game we could have come out of with a point but it [our inconsistent form] is down as well to a lack of confidence. We will come back because you could see again that there is a strong spirit in the team. But we have to become a bit more realistic and do our job better in certain situations.

“We lost the ball from good positions in the final third so we could have done better with our passing. Tottenham's second goal made the difference. After that they could sit back and play on the counter-attack. That is why we are guilty because we did not do our job properly, we didn't defend properly on the winning goal."

Conclusion:
It was more of the same for us at White Hart Lane as wasted chances up front and schoolboy defending cost us the game. Per Mertesacker, a man with 76 international caps, was made to look like Igors Stephanovs, whilst Bacary Sagna, our most consistently excellent performer in recent seasons was ruled out for three months with a broken fibula. His replacement, Carl Jenkinson was made a fool of by Bale and in truth Tottenham could have added a third and fourth late on.