A month of Halloween horrors for Spurs

Never mind tonight's Halloween festivities and creepiness. Over the course of October, Spurs have provided us with a horror show in every one of the five games with the exception of a 5-0 win over Crvena zvezda, who have an awful recent away record in Europe anyway.

Things have been so bad that we have dropped into the bottom half of the table for the first time at this stage of the season since October 2008. You'll remember that there was a point then when at which we had just two points from 8 games. Harry Redknapp arrived and (whilst he was not officially in charge) we beat Bolton, before managing that amazing 4-4 draw away to Arsenal (he was in charge then). On 1st November, 2008, we beat Liverpool 2-1 with a 90th minute goal by "Super" Pavlyuchenko. You'll remember Harry's coaching style - "I just told him to f***ing run about a bit"!

Spurs might achieve a bit more this season if some of the players ran about more. The spursometer totals for that October, and even September 2008 were better than this month. In September that year Juande Ramos's side had beaten Wisla Krakow in a UEFA Cup match, and had managed an away win against Newcastle in the League Cup.

The fact that Spurs surrendered meekly at Colchester in September this year meant no appearances this month for fringe players such as Kyle Walker-Peters, Victor Wanyama and Oliver Skipp. Some would argue that Walker-Peters, who does appear to have been sidelined recently, would be a better option than the too-often reckless Serge Aurier, who you will remember was sent off against Southampton last month, and last Sunday gave away the decisive penalty at Anfield. Serge might have been unlucky to be up against the malevolence of Sadio Mane, who we all know is well versed in the evil arts of winning penalties.

So, this month we've had to endure the horror of Hugo Lloris's early mistake at Brighton and the agony of his injury which will keep him out of the team until 2020. Paulo Gazzaniga stepped in makes his own mistakes at times but he did give a scintillating performance at Anfield and was regaled with chants of "Super Gazzaniga".

In that game we had to endure the wizardry of 19 year old Aaron Connolly, who scored two goals. (He's done nothing since by the way). Then came more tricks, demonstrated by Bayern Munich who trounced us 7-2 including four goals by an ex-Arsenal player Gnabry. The Watford game was nearly another disaster until Dele Alli scored a late equaliser. That was Dele's first goal since our last away win in the Premier League - at Fulham in January. That's the longest such barren spell since the days of George Graham. There's another ghoulish fact for you!

In fairness, to lose by the odd goal at Anfield was no disgrace, but we could have done so much better, after leading for so long, and nearly doubling our lead early in the second half. Both player of the month Son Heung-min and Harry Kane have scored three goals this month. Kane has now drawn level with Martin Chivers on 174 club goals, putting him equal third in our list of all-time scorers. Just the small matter of Bobby Smith (208) and a certain James P. Greaves (266) to catch now Harry.

"Sonny" has moved very marginally above Harry Kane in the accumulative player grades, but levels are incredibly poor so far this season. Most players have deteriorated this month, but Gazzaniga, Ben Davies, Davinson Sanchez, Son, Lo Celso, and Dele Alli have managed small improvements. There has been no sign yet of Ryan Sessegnon, who I sincerely hope gets a chance to shine really soon.

Last month's Spurs Odyssey Player of the month Harry Winks has suffered a severe drop of form, and could be labelled as the player most responsible for our too-often seen crab-like progress up the pitch. The trouble, of course is that advance rarely shows the benefit of pincers.

Of more concern is the lack of form of want-away Christian Eriksen, who in 12 appearances so far has scored less than 5 out of 10 in 7 of those games. He's been as much use as an over-ripe pumpkin for much of the time. Eriksen has some excellent past statistics regarding involvement in goals, but he is currently a skeleton of his former self in terms of his contribution to the club. Christian's lowest mark (2.8) was given for the Brighton game, which he did start.

Michel Vorm has re-signed for the club as cover for Hugo's injury, but has yet to make even a bench appearance as yet. Signing him was a good decision, of course, with all his experience.

We've got 6 games in November, two of which are in the Champions League. By the end of the month, we should know if we will feature in the Round of 16. First up though is the bread and butter of Everton away. When was the last time both these teams started a game in the bottom half, I wonder? I can tell you it wasn't 2008, because Everton were 10th while we were in the bottom half in November 2008. That was the last time we lost at home to the "Toffees" too

After the evil of Halloween (it is the witches' Sabbath remember) comes the glory of All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. Let's hope I can report some saintly Spurs performances at the end of November!

· Review the 2019-20 Premier League season here

Don't forget to check out the players' current figures re. appearances, cards, goals scored and accumulated ratings to date at the bottom of this page.

...if you want to read reports of the matches played during this season, then links are on the Spurs Odyssey Fixtures/Reports page here. By working your way back through the previous month's figures, you can review the performances over the last 19 years!