Ok, now it really is time for Tottenham's painful rebuild

Tottenham's fixture with Chelsea on Thursday night had all the ingredients to turn affairs at the club toxic.

A defeat to Liverpool, a severely depleted Liverpool who looked there for the taking, was hurtful for the fans. The tactical decisions that were made during the loss seemed to harm Spurs' chances of taking anything from the game having already trailed 1-0.

But the Reds remain Premier League champions, a team still packed with star quality, so while the defeat was met with the inevitable 'Dr Tottenham' and 'Spursy' tweets and memes, it was somewhat understandable, especially with Harry Kane going off injured.

Then came the trip to Brighton. An absolute shell of a performance came on the south coast as Jose Mourinho's side went down 1-0 with little fight and barely any shots on goal.

There was simply no pattern to Tottenham's play. No attacking plan. No cohesion going forward. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

The defeat at the AMEX did more to split the fanbase than any other loss under Mourinho prior to Thursday's, and it's easy to see why. It's been over a year since the manager was brought in as Mauricio Pochettino's replacement, and they look just as fragile and disorganised.

Stylistically, it's a lot tougher to watch, too. And it was exactly the same on Thursday night.

Sure, there are some things a manager cannot fix. One of them being the consistent defensive errors those at the back make over and over again. Mourinho made a big bet on Eric Dier being his dependable centre back, but the England international has cracked under pressure time and time again. It happened in the defeat to Chelsea on Thursday night, Tottenham's third in a row, when he fell to the floor when attempting to tackle Timo Werner, waggling his leg and catching the German with the fifth bite of asking.

There's a manager issue and a squad issue, and both need addressing sooner rather than later.

Pochettino once spoke of the need of a painful rebuild, but for a variety of reasons he wasn't granted one. Then when the squad ran out of puff and the miracle results started to dwindle throughout the whole of 2019, he was sacked.

Unfortunately, however excellent certain players may have been as servants to the club, the consistent mistakes and limited ability are no longer of use or benefit to an institution looking to really establish itself as an elite presence on the European circuit.

They can't serve the 'sit back and counter' purpose Mourinho wants to any decent effect now that teams have sussed them out. Mourinho isn't a rebuild manager, so it does beg the question as to why he was handed that opportunity in the first place.

Chelsea did the absolute minimum they needed to on Thursday night to pick up all three points. They were gifted a joke of a penalty by Dier, Jorginho smacked it in and from that point most Spurs fans were resigned to defeat.

A couple of Tottenham players will come out with the usual 'we must regroup' tropes and we'll see if Mourinho digs out any of his squad.

Regardless, it's clear a massive rot has set in at Tottenham, and it's time for those responsible to start identifying the deadwood and clearing it. Mourinho may well fancy the challenge of building the squad back up to one that can clearly compete, but the whole situation seems to have turned far too sour to be salvageable. Daniel Levy is clearly in awe of the former Chelsea and Real Madrid boss, but Spurs have wasted those good seasons between 2015 and 2019 by not making the correct decisions at the highest level.

Instead, they're in serious danger of wasting the peak of a player like Kane, one of the club's greatest ever who missed Thursday night because of his dodgy ankles, and Son Heung-min, who looks lost without his strike partner.

Thursday night always had the potential to get ugly, and it certainly did. Are Tottenham fans excited to watch their side who cannot build any effective attacking play in the final third face Sam Allardyce's West Brom on Sunday? Probably not, no. And that might be the most damning thought of all.

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