Tottenham Hotspur edged into the Europa League knockout stages following a thrilling 3-3 draw with LASK Linz on Thursday night.
Jose Mourinho’s side twice took the lead before they were pegged back in injury time as substitute Mamoudou Karamoko fired past Joe Hart.
Before being withdrawn ahead of this weekend’s north London derby, both Gareth Bale and Heung-min Son got on the scoresheet while Dele Alli’s 86th-minute penalty had looked to be enough for the victory.
We perhaps witnessed the Spurs defence of old as they conceded a trio of strikes having just gone on a run of four straight clean sheets in all competitions.
And surprisingly, there were players worse than Davinson Sanchez in that backline – we’re looking at you, Ben Davies.
The Welshman endured such a nightmare of an evening, that Mourinho will surely be absolutely furious with his usually-dependable left-back.
After the game, the Special One said: “Some players individually had very good performances but some players individually had very poor performances.”
No doubt in reference to the likes of Davies…
He was wasteful in possession, losing the ball a whopping 25 times from his 58 touches, which was the second-highest amount from any visiting player, as per SofaScore.
Davies was also rather lightweight, winning just 42% of his seven battles while the 27-year-old could only make 59% of his passes too, so it was certainly a shocking night for the defender valued at €20m (£18m).
It’s made even worse by the fact that he was trusted by Mourinho with the captaincy and that display is certainly going to make the Spurs boss think twice before doing that again – should both Hugo Lloris and Harry Kane be absent together in the future.
Dan Kilpatrick at the Evening Standard was particularly scathing in his review of Davies’ performance, grading him a 5/10 before claiming: “The captain for the night was poor in possession and failed to offer any real thrust from left-back. Beaten too easily in the build-up to the third goal.”
The £65k-per-week star also failed to register a single tackle, interception or block and was dribbled past once.
Even with Sergio Reguilon missing tonight, it would be a surprise to see Davies in the starting XI to face Arsenal on Sunday. At least he certainly doesn’t deserve too after this disasterclass.
AND in other news, Levy could Spurs land their own Vardy in “crazy” 6 foot 6 workhorse…