Darren Bent described Tottenham’s first-half display in their defeat to Arsenal as a ‘shambles.’
Nuno Espirito Santo’s side suffered an embarrassing 3-1 defeat to their rivals in the north London derby as Arsenal ran riot.
The hard work was done in the opening 34 minutes as Arsenal found themselves three goals up courtesy of Emile Smith-Rowe, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Bukayo Saka.
Spurs were slow from the off and rarely looked like threatening with only Harry Kane, Heung-min Son and Lucas Moura emerging with some small credit from former Tottenham striker Bent.
‘It’s been a shambles of a first half,’ Bent told talkSPORT.
‘Arsenal have been at it, high energy… Spurs at the minute, you look at the team selection, they just haven’t been there.
‘I like Kane, Son and Moura, but other than that nobody has stepped up!’
Spurs fans had already had to endure back-to-back 3-0 defeats to Crystal Palace and Chelsea in the lead up to today’s match and pressure will now be growing on Santo’s shoulders.
The Portuguese boss looked shell-shocked watching on from the touchline as his team capitulated in the opening half an hour with Gary Neville describing their approach as ‘appalling’.
‘They’ve got a right to be dejected [the fans] you can get beat 3-0, you can be losing a game 3-0 but the approach from minute one has been appalling, it really has,’ Neville said on Sky Sports during the match.
‘They have not had the courage to play them out of possession they are just ambling across the pitch horizontally, none of them are trying to get near the ball.
‘[It has] been a really poor 30 minutes and I thought they played well in the first half against Chelsea last week, I thought they were really good.’
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