Even what once seemed like small positives can suddenly become earth shattering negatives after a result like the one Tottenham Hotspur just suffered at the hands of Nottingham Forest in the Premier League relegation battle, losing 3-0 in a match they were never really close to winning.
Spurs were horrendous from start to finish, and where they really lost the game was in the midfield battle. The defensive errors were a back breaker and the inability of the attack to generate a goal certainly hurt, but despite Archie Gray turning in another decent display, the Spurs midfield was completley overran.
A lot of responsibility was placed on young Pape Matar Sarr, who had fully earned a starting job over transfer flop Conor Gallagher. Sarr has brought more intensity, progression, and ball winning than Gallagher. But the thing is, that is comparing him to Gallagher, who has quite literally been the worst center midfielder in the entire Premier League since joining Spurs from Atletico Madrid for a bloated 40 million euros.
Pape Matar Sarr got exposed by Nottingham Forest
On his own stand alone value, Sarr himself is not good enough to be starting games for Tottenham Hotspur, and in a relegation fight against the Nottingham Forest midfield trio of Ibrahim Sangare, Elliot Anderson, and Morgan Gibbs-White, he was clearly made to be second rate.
Now, the Forest trio of midfielders is very, very good. But at the same time, Forest are also at risk of relegation. So it is still a fair bar to compare the Tottenham midfielders to, and out of all the mids who took the pitch for Spurs on Sunday against Forest, Sarr was the worst.
Harping on him as THE problem for Tottenham would be entirely unfair. He's had a better season than Rodrigo Bentancur, Joao Palhinha, and obviously Gallagher. And some of Spurs best performances of the season have come with Sarr in the starting lineup, including early in the season.
The thing is, when you ask yourself what does Sarr do particularly well, most of the answers, as with Gallagher, have to do with words like effort and heart. That's basically code for saying the guy is mediocre. And if Tottenham want to be a good team in the Premier League again, a mediocre midfielder who is a rotational player at best should not be a crucial starter and a major upgrade over the other options like Gallagher. Watching Sarr struggle against Forest was a reminder of how deep the problem is, because even a player who is not remotely one of Spurs worst performers is still a liability who can be picked apart.