NORMAN GILLER'S SPURS ODYSSEY BLOG No 488
Submitted by Norman Giller

So Spurs send us into the international-break week feeling disappointed, dispirited and disillusioned after yesterday's devastating defeat at Brighton. I have always avoided using the phrase, but this was 'Spursy' in spades.

It was like watching two totally different teams. In the first-half they produced football from the gods, touching standards that we have not seen since the peak-Pochettino days. Brengun Johnson found the net for a sixth successive game, and Maddison's breath-taking goal from a length-of-the-pitch movement started by goalkeeper Vicario was like something out of a classic textbook.

The 2-0 scoreline at half-time flattered Brighton and we of Lilywhite heritage looked forward to Spurs properly flattening them after the interval.

But the second-half featured eleven passing strangers who turned our dreams of challenging the League leaders to dust.

You won't catch me leaning on the cliche of it being a game of two halves (uh, you just have Norm, Ed).

Along with everybody else, Ange Postecoglou was lost for words after the collapse. He looked as if he had come from a funeral as he tried to explain away what went wrong and how Spurs had managed to turn a 2-0 lead into a 2-3 catastrophe. He reached for a description and came up with, "the worst defeat since I took charge."

My Spurs Odyssey team-mate Declan Mulcahay has got the short straw job of describing the Jekyll and Hyde performance HERE. He has my sympathy. Nobody could report that second-half shambles without feeling they have been a witness to a suicide.

I am laughed at and mocked on line as 'Mr Eternal Optimist' but even I was left feeling disenchanted by a collapse that could be measured on the Richter Scale.

When the players come back from their international duties they will find a raging Postecoglou waiting for them, and he will be winding them up for a West Ham challenge that must be won; or else ...

Can we please stop this nonsensical talk of axing Ange. He had five wins on the trot, the superior side at Leicester and Newcastle, worth a point in the NLD and played some incredible football in the first half at Brighton. Bill Nick and Keith Burkinshaw would have been run out in their first seasons with the type of shallow thinking I see from so many Spurs supporters. Yes, that second-half performance against Brighton was tough to take, but let's show some patience and get behind the team, not in its way.

I will be back here on my Spurs Odyssey platform on Monday week, promoting a 'Sir Bill' Nicholson biography I've compiled with my writing partner Steve Perryman. You can order dual-signed copies from us at www.steveperryman.com.

Unlike Spurs, you can count on us.

COYS!

Week EIGHT of our eleventh season of the Spurs Odyssey Quiz League, and the question is:

Who has won 145 caps, used to captain Spurs and in which country does he currently play his club football? Please email your answer to me at soqleague@gmail.com and make the subject heading Quiz Week 8 (sorry I called it No 6 last week; a senior moment). Deadline: midnight this Friday. I will do my best to respond to all who take part.

The rules are the same as in the previous ten seasons. I ask a two-pronged question with three points at stake - two for identifying the player and one for the supplementary ques-tion. In the closing weeks of the competition I break the logjam of all-knowing Spurs-history experts with a real stinker of a tie-breaking poser that is based on opinion rather than fact.

This year's main prize will be a framed certificate announcing the winner as SOQL champion 2025, plus three signed books to be revealed at a later date. Last week's question: Who has won 136 caps, been a World Cup runner-up and which Dutch club does he now play for after his stint at Spurs?

Answer: Ivan Perisic, PSV Eindhoven

See you back here on Monday week. COYS!

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