Being dropped should have been the worst part of the day for Xavi Simons. Then Spurs were forced to play the £51m signing who does not fit whatsoever.
There is far more stock in throwing mud at Jadon Sancho than in the general direction of Xavi Simons, but it will be interesting to see whether the floundering Spursman is given the ‘ultimate humiliation’ treatment.
Having been dropped from the starting line-up to face Chelsea, Simons was granted an unexpected opportunity to prove Thomas Frank wrong by an early head injury to Lucas Bergvall.
In a cameo lasting just over an hour, Simons offered only a painful justification of his manager’s decision.
Frank believes criticism of his £51m playmaker has been “harsh”, that his acclimatisation will take “time” and that “it cannot be on one player to get the team ticking”.
And he’s right. Even the most gifted players often need patience and periods of adaptation, while more of Simons’ teammates must shoulder some of the creative burden too.
But a game he was not trusted to start ultimately prompted yet more questions as to why Spurs even signed a player who seems entirely incongruous with whatever they are trying to do.
There remains mystery on that front too. This was an absolute black hole of a performance from Spurs, whose absurd struggles at home helped deliver the lowest xG (0.05) of any team in a Premier League game this season.
Simons was taken off in the 73rd minute but was still on the pitch for the final shot Spurs mustered in a home match they lost to their bitter rivals. This is a team-wide problem and the Dutchman is a victim of that as much as he is part of the cause.
Yet he was signed to provide at least part of the solution, even if injuries to James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski have complicated that particular equation.
There were bursts of promise against the side who tried to sign Simons in the summer. Chelsea agreed personal terms with the 22-year-old; a cute second-half chip into Mohammed Kudus and body feint to evade the brilliant Moises Caicedo underlined why.
But that was the same move which elicited a lecture on the “intensity” of the Premier League from Jamie Carragher. No sooner had Simons galloped past Caicedo than Reece James sent him sprawling to the floor on the halfway line with a show of effortless strength.
It was where Simons spent most of the game. Few players seem to enjoy wandering down blind alleys quite as much. He lost the ball seven times, a tally beaten only by goalscorer and game-winner Joao Pedro.
Spurs as a whole were awful. There was no invention to their play, no free thought. Most every player looked petrified by the idea of having the ball.
Towards the end of the first half Rodrigo Bentancur had to muster the will of 427 men not to pass the ball all the way back to Guglielmo Vicario, forcing himself to turn into the sea of Chelsea bodies instead because the fans were already booing to the collapse of another venture forward.
Caicedo is a phenomenal player but it doesn’t half help when the team he is facing is a massive collective pressing trigger.
The Chelsea midfielder won the ball twice in the build-up to the goal before laying it off to Pedro for the finish. Spurs recovered after Djed Spence was robbed, but Simons couldn’t have played more of a hospital ball back to Micky van de Ven had he delivered it on a stretcher and told it there were no available beds.
Spurs were eager to ‘let it all work out’ when they announced the capture of Simons in a play on how Arsenal unveiled Eberechi Eze. The Gunners got the better of that deal and Frank seems no closer to solving this equation.
And it turns out that things are bad enough for Simons to get the ‘ultimate humiliation’ treatment too.
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