Antonio Conte was left a disappointed man at the final whistle of Tottenham's flat 1-0 defeat at home to Brighton on Saturday and a quick dip into his players' stats show exactly why.
Spurs had been on a run of seven wins out of nine Premier League matches but they produced a dismal display at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium against Graham Potter's well organised side. Tottenham will have had a week to put things right before they travel to in-form Brentford side with former Spurs midfielder Christian Eriksen pulling the strings.
After the defeat to the Seagulls, Conte explained: "Brighton were very good to close every space, but we helped our opponent because we moved the ball slowly. We are able to do much better than today. Maybe a more fair final result was a draw, but Brighton played a good game. They're a really good team, well organised with a good manager, and if you win against Arsenal and Tottenham away, it means your team is a good team."
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Spurs skipper Hugo Lloris pinpointed some of those mistakes he was seeing being made in front of him on the pitch.
"Today there are plenty of questions about the performance that we need to answer, why we could not increase the intensity, why we could not change the rhythm at some point in the game and then today we were a bit too slow in transition by passing the ball and we lost a lot of easy balls," said the goalkeeper.
"This doesn't help the confidence individually and of course for the team. The atmosphere was so great. The warm-up before the game, we didn't use well this positive energy and we can understand well the frustration from the fans. We are so very disappointed and we need another run of wins, if they are six games left, we need to continue to win."
Brighton nullified Tottenham's front three, who had been firing on all cylinders in 2022 ahead of the game with Dejan Kulusevski bagging three goals and six assists, Son Heung-min nine goals and four assists and Harry Kane eight goals and seven assists.
Yet on Saturday, their stats said everything as Tottenham did not manage a single shot on target, evoking memories of the Nuno Espirito Santo days.
Kane touched the ball just 27 times, had one weak shot on goal, attempted just one dribble and had a pass success rate of just 57.1%. He lost the ball four times with bad touches and was dispossessed twice. He did make two key passes, one a throw to Son for a chance and another a late flick-on to Steven Bergwijn.
Son had a couple of shots on goal and also attempted just one dribble while slinging five inaccurate crosses into the box. Kulusevski was nullified the most, touching the ball less than any other player in a Spurs shirt, having it just 18 times in his possession. His 10 passes were safe, predictable choices and for a player who has been driving at defences in recent games, he did not attempt a single dribble, fire off even one shot or play a key pass.
With Brighton flooding the centre of the pitch, Conte needed his wing-backs to flourish but again they fell short on the day.
Emerson Royal did not put a single cross into the box against Brighton and did not make a single attempt to dribble the ball forward. The Brazilian still has just one assist to his name from 38 appearances this season.
On the other flank, Sergio Reguilon had a lower passing success rate than anyone in the Spurs starting line-up barring Kane, with just 61.5% of his 26 passes finding their target and his one attempted cross was off target. Like Emerson, he did not attempt a single dribble forward.
If Ryan Sessegnon is fit enough, Conte could well be toying with the idea of restoring the 21-year-old on the left for Saturday's trip to Brentford.
The key for Tottenham was the low speed of play and the intensity, which was inexplicably flat despite the noisy surroundings of a pumped up crowd, as well as the high number of individual errors.
Brighton did not create too much on the day - their goal was enough to do the job - but they simply flooded Spurs with numbers high up the pitch, not only through the middle but also on the wings.
Tottenham average positions on WhoScored show a withdrawn formation with only Kane and Son in the opposition half, the latter more advanced, with Kulusevski almost on top of Emerson in his own half. Similarly Rodrigo Bentancur and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg took up a near identical average position in the middle.
In contrast, Brighton's average player positions show six of their players in the Tottenham half as they pushed up the pitch frequently to starve the hosts of space in which to operate. That is when Conte's men needed to play around or over their visitors, but failed.
The Seagulls had 12 shots to Spurs' five, with five of the hosts' efforts coming from set pieces. Tottenham did not manage a single counter-attack on the day, something that has become their trademark in recent seasons with their speed of play.
Brighton played 522 passes to Tottenham's 490 and put more than double their crosses into the box with 16. Neither team managed more than five passes without losing the ball though.
Conte will have studied the stats and videos with his coaching staff after the game and this week at Hotspur Way will be spent coming up with solutions to the problems posed by the opposition.
It was a bad day at the office in what has been a great run by Spurs and the Italian will want to ensure that's all it was ahead of the trip to Brentford this weekend.
