At times this season, the hurt has been excruciating. Destroyed 6-0 by City in what was billed as a clash of title contenders, only three and bit months ago. Shipping more goals at home to the same opponents, kept it to five this time. Liverpool felt like having your spleen removed without anesthetic with only the precision of their surgical incisions to dull the pain.

The saddest and worst for me, though, occurred on Thursday evening. For an extended period at the end of the first half, Benfica corralled Spurs deep inside our own half, trapped in the fattening pen awaiting slaughter. We had no idea how to escape. We tried to go forward but found no way through the tight, eager and superbly organised midfield, We played it from side to side at the back. All that brought were a series of dangerous passes created by the pressure and the sight and sound of Vertonghen ferociously berating Kaboul and Naughton.

In the end we resorted to the long ball game. Even then we couldn’t do that properly. Adebayor flailing did his best but aside from a couple of headers from Kane, we got no one anywhere near him in case we got a knock-down. In the second half, Paulinho was pushed further forward, presumably to link with Manu and Kane. All this meant was that he saw even less of the ball than he did in the first half, thus approaching a number close to absolute zero.

Spurs were out-classed. The game proved, if any proof were needed, how far away from Champions League quality we are. Benfica have a group of talented players but the gulf in class was shown in teamwork. They were a team, we were 11 individuals. They hunted in packs, moving up, down and across the pitch in unison when they lost the ball and supporting each other they had it. We had a couple of failed one-twos, two players working together, not even three let alone a team.

The Bloke Behind Me ripped Sandro for a weak tackle. The referee gave a free-kick for an over-vigorous challenge. That’s the difference between the PL and Europe, right there. The team may or may not be trying – I think the players were committed on Thursday but there’s an alternative view, I grant you. But fist-pumping get-stuck-in rhetoric, whether it comes from row 15 on the Shelf or Tim Sherwood, is nowhere near enough. Problem is, the TBBM left early, Sherwood’s our manager but that is all he’s got.

Tim reverted to a familiar 4-4-2 ish formation with Vertonghen back in the centre of the defence, Walker and Naughton at full-back and Sandro and Paulinho in centre midfield. Paulinho was encouraged to take up more advanced positions, to be joined by Eriksen coming in off the left and Lennon wide right. Kane came in to play off Adebayor but does not have the talent either to support Manu in the box or link midfield and the striker.

You could see what Sherwood was thinking. Spurs were at home and had to try to take the game to our opponents. However, the inherent vulnerabilities were soon exposed. After a brisk start Benfica dominated midfield because we were outnumbered. To combat this, we needed width. Indeed, Lennon was our best attacking option with a couple of classic twinkling winger-type runs on the outside. Then he stopped. Came inside all the time. Didn’t link with Walker just when we needed to spread the play and have a go at them. This was compounded on the other side where we had no width at all because Eriksen was coming inside and anyway he’s not a wide player. Eriksen provided some flickers of creativity and should have been moved there in the second as Paulinho did nothing, but that was another missed opportunity.

Once Benfica got our measure, they controlled the game. Their first was a fine goal, lots of room between Vertonghen and Naughton, torn between dropping back but tempted forward by his opposite number drifting deep, but ruthlessly exploited by a delightful pass from deep and an equally fine finish.

We had a couple of opportunities right at the beginning of the second period. Adebayor missed – was he offside, I couldn’t see? And that was that. No 2014 Spurs performance is complete without some self-inflicted agony. Ironic given their superiority but the second and third both came from set-pieces. Both were unnecessary – Kane caught with the ball deep in his own half then Naughton conceding a free-kick. Both were as a result of poor marking. Their centre half rose free like a bird to head in number two, then banged in a loose ball for the third. Adebayor was deputed to mark their most dangerous header of the ball. bad mistake – he was nowhere on both.

This Spurs week has been conducted to a backdrop of Sherwood moaning. I see no reason to alter what I said over the weekend. Managers do not openly and consistently criticise their players in the media. There’s a reason for that. It doesn’t work. he may be right, he may be wrong but that’s not the question. The conundrum he has to solve is how to get the players to play better.

He clearly has a keen tactical mind. However, the constant changing of tactics has prevented the players from forming any cohesion or consistency. They need time to bed down. Sherwood is making substantial changes each and every game. The managers that do that, and there are very few, do so only after they have been with their team for a long time, they understand the players and the players can cope with the changes because they are confident. In the other words the total opposite of the situation at Spurs.

Tim says he’s trying to motivate, weed out the deadwood. but everyone knows he won’t be around in the summer. The players have no incentive to respond therefore. Sherwodd wants to get at the players, to make them harder. But people are people, they are individuals, they respond to different ways of being managed. He showed Adebayor he cared, and Manu responded magnificently. Not the others, then?

This piece from the Guardian shows Tim has form. It’s a series of examples from his own career about how he has not learned man-management lessons. Tim has a career ahead of him as a manager. What he’s doing at Spurs smacks of a job application. Tough, hard-man manager, licks players into shape, understands tactics, brings on the youngsters. A good CV for the lower leagues, then he can work his way up. he’s good mates with the Swindon chairman, look out for a west country move.

And he will do well, but it is not right for our club. That’s what I care about. This has all gone horribly wrong. It’s like Sherwood has compressed the first five years of management into a few months. Start by taking over and  settling the team down – familiar, straightforward tactics, get the best from the players, keep them happy. Try something different, new tactics. Some of it comes off. Then things go wrong. More changes, doesn’t work, more changes. Start blaming the players. This isn’t about Tim, it’s about the club and our club is a laughing stock.

Grab a bagel on the way home, see the TV. Jermaine Jenas is the pundit pontificating on our club. Can we get any lower? We may find out tomorrow.

I have seen Spurs lose many, many matches in the fifty years I have supported them but even after all that time they can still come up with something new. 12 hours on, my jaw is still brushing the floor. Truly remarkable.

In a gloriously messy, drab first fifty minutes, Tottenham held the Blues and did some good stuff of our own.  Then we imploded, and when we go, we go. It’s not quite what I had in mind when I wrote Tottenham On My Mind’s tagline but boy did we cock up in style on this one.

Tactics, formations, players’ abilities? Nah. How about falling over? First goal: Vertonghen, no pressure, nil nil, near halfway, falls over. But that’s not enough. Oh no. In recovering he passes the ball 25 yards straight to their striker at the edge of the box.

Third goal: Sandro, in the box, nobody beside him, falls over. Fourth: Walker, no pressure, the most thoughtless, mindless back header you could ever wish never to see in your life. In between, the penalty that never was. 4-0.

Time was when we contrived to find inventively different ways of losing to Ars***l. Not enough it seems. Now the indignity has stretched out to Che***a and WHam too. Only our biggest London rivals. There must be some reward for such creativity. This performance is a shoe-in for the British Comedy Awards. Best Slapstick. I didn’t watch it but for sure the MOTD closing goal montage was to the Benny Hill theme.

Sherwood’s post-match warm-down was no doubt to kick in the dressing-room door, smash everything in the physio room then head-butting a new window in the dressing-room, pausing only to toss a Molotov cocktail of abuse into the team then quickly shutting the door to emerge, both stirred and shaken, to meet the media. The worst performance of the season provoked the interview of the season. “Lack of characters…too many of them too nice to each other….need to show a bit more guts…not be someone’s mate all the time” and most tellingly “some you can rely on, some you can’t.”

Such an open and scathing indictment of his players is rare in the modern game but rather than a refreshing blast of honesty, it comes over merely as symbolic of the disarray and disharmony that characterises Tottenham Hotspur from top to bottom at the moment.

Those comments should have been kept in the dressing room. I have no doubt that some deserve a 3 stage Saturn V with extra boosters up their pampered posteriors. Doing so in public and in this manner makes things worse – if that is conceivable. He may well be right – it chimes with the lacklustre, moody recent efforts of Vertonghen and Paulinho to name but two – but he’s a manager not a pundit. His job is to get Tottenham Hotspur FC playing to the very best of their ability. His comments were more than having a go about lousy football, they were personal. The question is not whether he is right or wrong, it’s whether the players will play for him between now and the end of the season. All he’s done is tell them he doesn’t trust them, so why bother?

One answer to that is professional pride, another is you play for the shirt. Both are true. However, the reality is, most of us respond best to people not concepts. Think of your own work. No doubt you do a decent job and take pride in your work but what makes you pull out that extra bit of effort and up the quality, to go the extra mile, is the personal touch. You’re doing it for the person, not the job description, the company memo, the name on the office door or the mission statement in reception. That’s how people are motivated. If I behaved that way towards my staff, I would not expect them to respond positively.

We need a massive pick-me-up. That’s a cold shower plus a bucket of rubbish over the head. In theory it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Sherwood’s comments show his lack of leadership experience under this sort of pressure. There’s a reason why you never hear the top managers talking like that in public. Goodness knows I detest the bland platitudes we get post-match but there’s a reason for that.

This said more about Sherwood’s feelings than anything else. I’m sure he was intensely frustrated. That was nothing compared with the fury of fans. No doubt we would all have liked to give them a piece of our mind after that flailing capitulation. White shirts? White flags more like. But Sherwood is the manager, not a fan. Very different.

These comments show his frustration went from simmering to boiling point, and not just about this defeat. In yesterday’s Guardian he said he had not got the credit he deserved for Spurs’ good record since he took over. Again, it’s not about him, it’s about how well the team does. Regarding the tough month ahead, Sherwood remarked that, “We’re not frightened by it, we’re looking forward to it…we’ve got players who want to play in big games..” So yesterday morning they were ready and up for it, by yesterday evening their characters had dramatically changed apparently. Which is it?

When Sherwood signed for Spurs as a player, I was delighted because a midfield organiser was precisely what we need at the time. And that’s what he did, organise. The actual playing and influencing the game that way, not so much. His defining image for me is of a figure pointing but not doing. He was in the right, others weren’t dancing to the same tune and it’s an image that comes to mind in the aftermath of this sorry effort.

Also, there’s an argument to say that his players did play for him until Vertonghen’s catastrophic error. Players were out of position playing in yet another formation, yet they responded willingly, keeping Chelsea bogged down in a turgid slow-motion swamp of a first half. It was dull but valuable, especially after two errors by Dawson, presumably one of the men Sherwood can trust, in the first four minutes, one an intercepted long ball, another being stranded out of position, let the Blues in. Luckily they missed, Hazard turning the ball high and wide with the goal open.

The formation felt like it was the product of the tactics board. Walker at right midfield in front of Naughton, Lennon in the middle (where under Jol he surprised Chelsea once upon a time. We went 3-1 up, he scored, we drew 3-3. Inevitably). and the link with Adebayor. However ill at ease they sometimes appeared, it largely worked and credit to Sherwood for that. Predictably Walker, whose positional sense is all over the place at the best of times, was, well, all over the place but he and Naughton made our right-hand side secure. The plan was to stop Chelsea’s through balls at source and we pressed hard and tangled them up.

We managed some decent possession too and pushed men into the box in good numbers as the half went on without creating many clear-cut chances. Bentaleb made then wasted the best of them, shooting wide when three begged for the cross. Kaboul headed over and Sandro’s well-taken first time shot momentarily conjured memories of his piledriver a couple of years ago, but Cech saved well.

The neutrals could either bemoan the quality of the PL or have a pre-dinner snooze but so far so good as far as I was concerned. The second half began in the same vein. Then oh calamity. Vertonghen had space and time, hesitated, turned and fell over. Eto was alert and scored efficiently as Lloris came out. Not an excuse but it seemed as if there was no forward ball on for Verts as he looked up when he first got possession therefore he turned back in on himself.

Almost straight away, Eto spun to the floor in the box with Kaboul just behind him at an awkward angle. Kaboul was saying ‘I didn’t touch him’ as the ref raised red and for once a player may have had a point. Harsh and hard to take but the cross would not have come in if Naughton had not, for once, missed the run of the attacker who got in behind him. Suddenly it had all turned spursy.

Again to our credit, we pulled ourselves together to some extent, helped by the Blues’ plan to keep the game quiet and win that way. No doubt still anxious about the threat of men coming off wide positions, Sherwood kept the full-backs the same rather than dropping Walker back right and switching Naughton left. Sandro became the makeshift centre-half. Chelsea were strolling but it looked like we could limit the damage.

Instead, we took our capacity for self-inflicted punishment to new heights. A ball into the box, Sandro running towards his own goal as he has done successfully so many times as a DM, with no one on him, just fell over. Ba tucked in the gift. Straight away, Walker headed towards his own goal from miles out. Demba Ba looked almost embarrassed to touch it in. Not even top of the table in the pub league. Thus the comedy of errors denied us even the self-righteous comfort of being hard-done by in defeat. Little comfort in being a laughing stock.

Sherwood is learning fast. He has some good ideas and I’m sure he will be a successful manager in the future. This ghastly dark comedy in fact tells us only what we already know. A manager with absolutely no experience in the role is not able to handle the pressure of being near the top of the Premier League. Daniel Levy should not have given him the job. Once offered, who could blame him for accepting but that’s irrelevant.

Also, everyone knows his is a caretaker role only. The players therefore lack the long-term desire to play for him because regardless of what Tim does and does not do, someone else will along in the summer. Not Sherwood’s fault either. The most gaping self-inflicted wound of all is allowing ourselves to be in this mess in the first place, and that is the fault of the chairman, not the manager.

My sincere condolences to the family and friends of Darren Alexander, the joint chair of the Supporters Trust, who died suddenly on Friday. I met Darren a few times and chatted via e-mail and social media for several years. Writing the blog I have met a fair few Spurs fans, and that description I’ve given seems to apply to most of them. So many people knew him and everyone who did has a kind word to say about him.

Along with a couple of other like-minded souls, he resucitated the Trust not to seek attention or personal influence but because he wanted the very best for Spurs fans, who he felt have been treated poorly over the years. The club give the Trust little breathing space over major issues but Darren achieved a lot and never lived to know that the prosecutions of Spurs fans over the Y word were dropped, after he worked tirelessly for justice.

Loyal to the core, Darren was proper Spurs. RIP.

“Theatre of the Absurd: work that expresses the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose, therefore all communication breaks down”

On Sunday we lost 1-0 to Norwich. Spurs were dreadful but if we’re honest, we’ve seen some incomprehensibly abysmal football from Tottenham Hotspur in recent times. Hardly unusual – if only. However, this one has really got to people in a way that the performance itself does not fully explain. All the readers who commented on my piece on the match, I could feel them either shaking their heads sorrowfully as they wrote or else slamming their fingers into the keyboard to get rid of the frustration. On social media, there’s been the usual ranting – get rid of everyone and everything, everything’s bad, abandon hope all ye who enter here etc. From the more considered respondents, though, long-time supporters, there’s been anger and despondency too. We are fifth, still in Europe, Sherwood’s record on paper stands up, the ground is full but people know in the marrow of their bones that the good ship Tottenham Hotspur is heading for an iceberg. Norwich brought it all to a head.

There’s a surreal quality to watching the club right now as supporters struggle to pick up the fast-fading echoes of our hopes and plans, once so strident, now a barely discernable background murmur. I alternate between periods of despair and moments where all I can see is the absurdity of it all. You have to laugh or else you’d cry. Nah, just crying for me, if you don’t mind.

What’s happened at Spurs is a bizarre and distorted version of reality, a footballing hall of mirrors from which there’s no escape. Consider:

Spurs sack a manager who has taken us the Champions League.

We choose a young manager even though the job must have attracted many potential candidates.

We take a risk but then the chairman does not back his decision and decides to limit the transfer budget available to the new man.

The new man does better than expected.

We invest the cash from the sale of our best player in new talent.

The new manager can’t deal with this.

We pay over £25m for a striker but the manager has no idea what to do with him.

We pay a club record fee for a player not ready for the Premier League.

We play a much criticised formation.

The manager is sacked even though we are reasonably well-placed in the league.

The new guy takes over. He has no experience whatsoever as a manager. Anywhere.

He plays a different formation. We do well.

New manager now plays exactly the same formation that was vehemently criticised when the old manager was in charge and led to his dismissal.

It’s this last one that has done for me. Sherwood has gone from Harry to AVB in a few short weeks. He started by playing the right players in the right positions, attacking football, letting them play. Now, he’s playing a high defensive line, hence the centrebacks being stranded on the halfway line, inverted wingers with Dembele a left footed played on the right and Lennon a right footed player on the left, and an isolated centre forward. Sherwood’s implied criticism of Villas-Boas was apparent in his tactics. Now he’s doing exactly the same, with identical results.

This is has got nothing to do with the relative merits of any of the names I have mentioned. I’m not using it as evidence to support any agenda. It’s so bad, it’s gone beyond picking over the bones of the rights and wrongs of each individual decision – there’s enough of that on Tottenham On My Mind over the past five years. Neither am I demanding silverware and a place in the CL. I didn’t expect either at the start of the season so this is not about unrealistic expectations. I am just saying that it’s crazy. Totally stupid. Absurd. That it’s no way to run a football club.

This is very much a private hell for Spurs fans. Supporters of other clubs think we are doing fine, just a little wobble. One reason is that it is not top of the news agenda, partly because we are actually fifth (excuse me if I repeat that too often but I have to remind myself sometimes) and partly because Manchester United are so bad.

One dimension of this surreal world is the fact that Sherwood is not a real manager at all. Levy is planning to replace Tim the Temp in the summer. He knows that, we know that, no one knows it better that Sherwood himself. So we twiddle our thumbs, mark time, wait for the World Cup to end and see who is available. Another version is of course that the contracts have already been signed. Whatever, we go through the motions until then. Pointless. More plans out the window. Again.

This has all happened before. Talk about the nightmare coming back to haunt. The 2003-4 season when David Pleat took over after Glenn Hoddle was sacked mid-season was the worst in my 45 plus years of watching Spurs for the same reasons that have caused the angst now – the lack of direction, the absence of plan or purpose, the hopelessness of it all. Whether by design or circumstances (Levy may have limited transfer funds), Hoddle decided that a midfield of Anderton, Poyet and Redknapp, a combined age of over 90, could cope with the demands of a full Premier League season. With no money to play with, Pleat had to keep us going and we should be eternally grateful for unsung hero Michael Brown for doing their running for them.

There’s one huge difference between then and now. In 2003, the squad was falling apart through neglect, almost literally in some cases as Anderton and Redknapp dragged their weary muscles from treatment table to pitch and back again, while Gardner, Bunjy, Docherty and Ricketts played frequently.  Fourth from bottom was the only target and there were dark times when that looked over-ambitious, especially in March and early April after a run of one point in six matches.

In contrast we began this season full of expectation, the task being to mould the ambitious, expectant squad into a coherent unit. Goals were expressed in the medium and long term. I was certainly looking for progress this season but with the promise of greater things to come as the players were bought in the knowledge that they had still to fully mature. Their best years were ahead of them.

This caretaker regime could destroy the squad. It’s not Sherwood’s fault. The last thing the club is doing is taking care of these players. The two players of arguably the highest quality in the side, Lloris and Vertonghen, have given us two years and will become impatient that promises have not been kept. They arrived being told that Tottenham was a club going somewhere, with ambition to match its rich heritage. They are in demand, reaching their prime and won’t hang around. Soldado and Paulinho are strangers in a strange land, hollowed-eyed and uncomfortable. The Brazilian could be a World Cup winner, a enviable reputation to banish the memories of an indifferent season. Dembele is another who will be in demand, Walker perhaps in a Premier League that could value his qualities and cover for his defensive deficiencies.

Of the others, Sandro’s injuries make him a less attractive buy. We have no idea of what Lamela is thinking. Eriksen must be fuming.

Now more than ever before, the decisions of the board on and off the pitch are seeping through the redoubtable barricades most football supporters create over time between our escapist enjoyment of the game and the reality of the time, effort and cost of watching Premier League football. Promises made to us have been broken too. We don’t need statements from Levy himself to know that the anticipated success on the field has not transpired, that ticket prices continue to soar, there’s no sign of the new stadium and a bottle of water costs £2. The atmosphere is poor. The police are taking action against fans who use the Y word. Sometimes at the Lane when the crowd starts to sing, it feels like an expression not so much of support but of relief and release, to get the frustration out through our lungs into the air, to remind ourselves that this is what watching football is all about.

Len Shackleton famously included a chapter in his autobiography on the football knowledge of directors. It was blank. Levy’s lack of football acumen leaves him vulnerable because he can’t make up his own mind. This is not just about the rumours of Sherwood influencing the chairman’s decision to dismiss Villas-Boas. In his autobiography Ledley King, the most inoffensive of writers, says that Jol briefed against Santini, Poyet told players to ignore Ramos. This means the club are always vulnerable and everyone who has anything to do with us knows it, including the various Directors of Football. That’s the problem with them. Not their post or them as individuals but we are never clear who takes decisions or what the accountability structure is.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow night’s game against Dnipro. £20 in, 1882 will ensure a good atmosphere, I’ll get behind them and we have to go for it. A proper European tie at last, one down but everything to play for. Sincerely I wish Sherwood all the best with the team but forgive me if it all still feels a bit odd.