Frustrated Michel Vorm laments Tottenham’s lack of clinical edge after Champions League draw with PSV

Mauricio Pochettino said after the game that his team needed to be more ruthless when they were on top, and for Vorm that was one of the very obvious lessons of the night

(Getty Images)

On the Tottenham bench, they knew what the team had to do. “From the bench we saw it,” said Michel Vorm. “Come on boys, we need to score the third. We need to score the third.’” Spurs were 2-1 up and in total control against a PSV side who had run out of steam and ideas. But that game-killing goal never came, as Harry Kane and Erik Lamela missed chances to secure the win. And you all know what happened next.

Vorm, of course, did not stay on the bench all night. He had to come on for the last 10 minutes, after Hugo Lloris was sent off. But he reflected thoughtfully afterwards on another missed opportunity for Spurs, one that likely spells the end of this year’s Champions League campaign. This was their third season in the competition under Mauricio Pochettino, and while they made obvious progress last year – beating Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid, reaching the last-16 – this year they have gone one step back.

What makes this season, and specifically last night even more frustrating for Spurs is that they were the authors of their own downfall. Getting picked apart by Lionel Messi is one thing, but in Eindhoven they threw it away against a team who they should be beating in their sleep. Vorm did little to hide his frustration about their failure to put away in inferior opponent.

“We did not draw because PSV was that good,” said Vorm, admitting that the draw felt like a defeat. “We had to kill the game at 2-1. We had enough possibilities to score a third, but we didn’t. Obviously everyone on the pitch tried to score and do their best. I think if we win 4-1, 5-1, it’s [deserved], you know what I mean. And that makes it even harder, because now it feels like we lost.”

Pochettino said after the game that his team needed to be more ruthless when they were on top, and for Vorm that was one of the very obvious lessons of the night. “That is something you don’t even have to talk about,” he said, with clear frustration in his voice. “We know that. Especially in European games. Against teams like PSV, waiting for the counter-attack. But if you don’t score a third goal you can see they come out with the pace they have. You see what can happen.”

You can focus on the specific details that cost Spurs the win: Davinson Sanchez’s disallowed goal, the missed chances at 2-1, Toby Alderweireld’s mistake for PSV’s opener, or Lloris’ late red card. But put them all together and they add up to a bigger, familiar problem that is just as much technical as it is mental: a pervasive sloppiness and softness that undermines Tottenham’s game on these big European nights.

Hugo Lloris was sent off after 79 minutes (Getty)

But that means this is harder to fix. How does the whole team sharpen up its collective dull edge? “It’s a difficult one”, said Vorm, when asked what the answer was. “If there really was a solution, to say ‘if we do this’, ‘if we do that’, [we would do it]. Because we played very well. We just need to score more goals. I can’t say ‘this is it’ or ‘this is it’, it’s just a shame. We need to learn from it.”

The frustration for Spurs is that they seemingly have not learned from similar occurrences in the recent past. It was less than eight months ago when Spurs hosted Juventus at Wembley. They were 25 minutes away from qualifying for the quarter-finals but they switched off, conceded two goals out of nowhere, and were knocked out.

Christian Eriksen, speaking to The Independent soon after, said that Spurs were “over-confident that it could not go wrong” that evening. That they were “in an almost perfect position” to qualify but that they fell down on “the clinical part”. Juventus had more experience and more ruthlessness than them. “They were more used to the bigger stages, they didn’t need the ball as much.”

Spurs have not faced anyone as good as Juventus this season. But they have been making the same mistakes. Away at Inter Milan Spurs were 1-0 up, five minutes left, and again had failed to kill the game. They were in an “almost perfect position” to win, but again, they failed on the clinical part. Inter scored twice in the last few minutes to win 2-1.

Vorm, when asked to draw a connection between the Inter defeat and the PSV draw, said that the games were “a little bit different”. In part because Spurs were “much better” than PSV, in a way they were not against Inter. But you can still identify the same mistakes: failing to put the game away when on top, conceding sloppily at the end. And it is the repetition of the mistakes, even when everyone knows this is what they have to improve, that “kills” the team, as Vorm put it.

“We always say to each other, ‘we need to learn from this, we need to learn from that.’ Then if it happens, I think it kills the team as well,” Vorm said. The frustration that one step forward had led to one step back was obvious. “One season is not the other,” he said. “One season doesn’t mean that the next season will be better or similar. In all games, especially today, we played good football. And European football is totally different from the Premier League. And we’re still in a process of learning in these kind of games. It’s harsh though.”