Tottenham Hotspur v. Crystal Palace: Final score 0-0, thank you based Hugo

Tottenham Hotspur hosted Crystal Palace today, as the team looked looked to bounce back from midweek defeat to Chelsea and recapture the form that saw them put away Everton last week. Alas, it was not to be.

Palace came out with tons of energy and hassled us all over the pitch. Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha took turns terrorizing Eric Dier and Spurs were lucky to escape the first fifteen minutes without conceding. But Spurs gradually took back control of the game, and over the course of the first half looked to be heading in the right direction.

Roberto Soldado had two golden chances to put the home side up, but in unfortunately typical Soldado fashion, he missed both of them. First, Erik Lamela dribbled across the top of the box and found Ben Davies bursting down the left. Davies's pullback found Soldado unmarked at the top of the box but he contrived to put over the bar. He later found himself on the end of a free header in the box, but mistimed his jump and put it over the bar.

The second half saw Erik Lamela, who had one of his better games in a Spurs shirt, replaced by the completely ineffectual Nacer Chadli. We never regained the momentum we had put together in the first half, and Spurs struggled to create anything of note in the second half despite dominating possession. Meanwhile Palace were terrifying on the counter attack, and the pace of their wide men gave Tottenham's back line nightmares. Luckily, Hugo Lloris was in god mode and made about seven million saves to keep Spurs in the game.

Despite some early struggles Spurs looked like they were going to put something together, but ultimately Pochettino's changes seemed to manage us out of the game, and the team grew worse as the match wore on. As wonderful a job as he did last week against Everton, he was the source of most of our problems today. Unsurprisingly, boos rang out after the final whistle. Probably because of grit.

Thoughts:

- That was incredibly frustrating.

- Erik Lamela was a lot better. He put in successful tackles, stayed wide, and did the simple things right. It wasn't flashy and it wasn't breathtaking, but it was effective and composed. And then Pochettino mysteriously took him off and we got terribad.

- Pochettino seems to have a worrying tendency when it comes to substitutions. When he needs a goal, he throws on players like Chadli or Paulinho who are nominal goalscorers, without thought to how they will impact our shape or our ability to create chances. For 30 minutes Eriksen struggled to carry the entire creative workload while Soldado, Kane, Paulinho, and Chadli stood around starved of service.

- A lot of our players, particularly Harry Kane looked exhausted out there. We need some rotation.

- This game was crying out for the introduction of Aaron Lennon for a while and Pochettino took entirely too long to make the switch.

- More right backs please.

- Ben Davies continues to look excellent, which is a nice silver lining. Danny Rose isn't getting his spot back any time soon.

- Hugo Lloris was out of his mind good today. He's going to leave us one day and it will be very sad. Because he is unbelievable.

- Please go win the Europa League?