Manchester City's Spurs hoodoo continued this afternoon, as Pep Guardiola's side fell to a frustrating 1-0 loss in North London.
City have now lost all four games they've played at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which opened in 2019, and haven't scored in any of those contests.
While City fans shouldn't overreact to an opening day defeat after a disrupted pre-season, City were their own worst enemies. It's a habit that Pep Guardiola needs to iron out.
If football games were decided by the opening 15 minutes, City would have walked it. They started at an electrifying pace that Spurs struggled to cope with.
Jack Grealish showed early on just why City decided to pay £100m for his services, his link up play with Raheem Sterling and Benjamin Mendy on the left-hand side crisp, and one of his trademark jinking runs earning a free-kick in a dangerous position.
And then City fizzled out. Players started walking with the ball instead of zipping passes, the ball went backwards not forwards, few risks were taken and urgency became scarce.
To be fair to City, Guardiola did warn last week that this could happen.
Lamenting the lack of a full pre-season for his squad, he said: "I would love to control many parts of the game but I don't know if we would be able to do it."
Referencing the opening day win against Wolves last season, in which City dipped in the second half, Pep said: "We didn't have legs or mentality to stay in the game, suffering for 90 minutes. Now we are not ready for that."
Over the 90 minutes City created more chances (12 vs 11), had more shots on target (4 vs 2) and had a higher xG (1.84 vs 0.98), but wastefulness again proved a problem in front of goal.
Riyad Mahrez and Joao Cancelo both should've done better when the ball dropped to them in the box, and Sterling and Grealish both spurned promising shooting opportunities.
As happened last season, City looked incredibly vulnerable to the counter-attack. Son Heung-min's winning goal came from a City set-piece, with Steven Bergwijn bypassing Fernandinho and driving at the heart of City's defence.
In the panic of the moment City's defenders got their wires crossed; Nathan Ake went to the left wing to close down Son instead of Cancelo, and was easily beaten, and Ruben Dias dropped off too deep as Son prepared to shoot, interfering with Ederson's line of vision. The whole situation could have been dealt with much better.
With City chasing the game, they resorted to swinging crosses into the box from poor crossing positions. Spurs were likely glad to face that rather than tricky Grealish runs, again another example of City hindering their own chances of scoring.
As I said, let's not panic yet. There are still 37 games to go and we were expecting a slow start anyway. It's just frustrating when a slow start is self-inflicted.
