On Tottenham Hotspur: Evaluating their 3-2 defeat in the Champions League against Young Boys.

First, some background: Tottenham Hotspur have never made it to the Champions League in their club's history. Harry Redknapp accomplished this for the first time for the club this season. But, there's a catch, they had to play one qualifier to get into the group stage. Shouldn't be a problem, right? They just have to get by Swiss club Young Boys. Wrong.

Today: In the 28th minute, Spurs find themselves down 3 goals in Bern. Let's look at why this happened:

1. No Ledley King. Ledley King is the usual captain of Spurs and the central defender who starts alongside countryman Michael Dawson. However, King has a bad knee, and the Young Boys' stadium is Astroturf. So manager Harry Redknapp decided to play it safe and not play him. A great move, I think. But, King is usually the one on the team after they get scored on to calm everyone down and get back to business as usual. With him not there, Dawson was the captain. And he took it upon himself to yell at Benoit Assou-Ekoto and King fill-in Sebastien Bassong. Which they may have deserved, but the effect was spooked defenders and more goals for Young Boys.

But let's talk about the defenders for a moment. Benoit Assou-Ekoto, I guess, used all of his "good" in the match against Manchester City. He got straight up beat in one breakaway that led to a Young Boys' goal, and really couldn't even complete a pass. Bassong saved himself with that goal, because the other two goals were completely his fault. Sub-par marking and a complete ineptness with the ball at his feet were his big fallouts. Dawson looked just as bad in the first half, but he really pulled it together in the second half and looked like his old self. Vedran Corluka actually got forward pretty well in attack and didn't have a half bad game. Other than though, a poor defensive effort from Spurs.

All this to say, Spurs will be happy to get King back on the field at White Heart Lane next week.

2. No Huddlestone in starting line-up. I'm convinced that Spurs are frozen stiff without Tom Huddlestone. The 6'3'' hulk dominates play when he's on the field, and they clearly struggled without him in the starting line-up. I know why he wasn't there though, he plays so damn hard that asking him to come back after playing on Saturday is just too much. However, he did come in for Assou-Ekoto in the 35th minute, and things went better for Spurs from there.

3. Poor performance from Modric. I don't know what Croatian Luka Modric is doing before games these days, but he looks less like the "maestro" he's reported to be and more like a stoner. He really doesn't do anything and gave the ball away multiple times. The testiment to how bad he was was that Redknapp replaced him for Niko Kranjar at the break, who had a great game. I think that Modric at his best is a definite need for this team, but when he's off, he's really off.

Also in midfield, Wilson Palacios didn't look like he had a clue all game. He was giving the ball away left and right, and just didn't seem to know where to position himself on the field. Maybe Redknapp will consider using Jermaine Jenas next match.

4. Astroturf. English boys like grass better. Nuff said.

5. Strikers. Jermain Defoe and Roman Pavyluchenko (before his 83' goal) were struggling, big time. Defoe couldn't get on the end of anything and looked like he had bricks attached to his cleets his touch was so poor. Pavy just kept diving for fouls and was basically worthless. It wasn't until Robbie Keane came on that things really started clicking. He's so good at linking play between the midfield and attack and he did that so effectively late on in this match. It was his pass that put Roman on his way to his thunderous goal. Crouch needed to be rested in this match, and probably wouldn't have done well in this match anyway because of the Astro and the lack of Aaron Lennon. Which brings me to my next point.

6. No Lennon. Aaron Lennon is a speedy little bastard, and he's got pretty great service too. Any side would miss his pace, and this was a team that was constantly struggling to find a final ball. When they found one, such as Gareth Bale's service from the left, things seemd to be going well. But on the other side, Corluka and Dos Santos just couldn't quite get it right. Lennon will be a welcomed return next week at White Heart Lane.

This is what I think went wrong in Berne today, hopefully things will go better next week for Spurs. The good news is, they got two away goals. So really all they have to do is win by at least one next week at White Heart Lane to win in the aggregate score and advance to their club's first Champions League tournament.