Painful, predictable Spurs reach end game with Conte looking out of time

The Italian sent on Davinson Sánchez when a goal was needed on a night of trapped rage and basic patterns

WHERE TO NOW? Tottenham Hotspur's Harry Kane stands dejected following the UEFA Champions League round of sixteen, second leg match. Pic: John Walton/PA Wire.

Before this last-16 second leg, Son Heung-min had announced that Tottenham Hotspur intended to “make a statement” And so they did. That statement was: this is not a very good Tottenham Hotspur team. Rather this felt like a Spurs team reaching the end of something, without clarity or craft or any real sense of life; a team that is facing up now to another season of chasing another season of chasing another season of … well, what exactly?

There are good 0-0 draws. There are heroic exits, games where you chase the sun and come up short. This wasn’t any of those things. Instead, this was a night that seemed to raise some very basic questions about what Spurs are for, what this entity is intended to express.