Tottenham Hotspur are broken. That is the only rational takeaway from Saturday’s 3-0 capitulation against Nottingham Forest at home.

The mood around the club is undeniably grim. Interim manager Igor Tudor was informed of the death of his father, Mario, immediately following the final whistle. As reported by The Guardian, Tudor understandably skipped his media duties to process the devastating news. Personal tragedy puts the sport into perspective immediately.

But on the pitch, the situation remains a tactical catastrophe. Tudor inherited a mess, and his attempts to implement a rigid man-to-man pressing system have only accelerated the decline of a squad completely devoid of confidence.

Look at the Forest match. Spurs held 68 percent possession but managed just two shots on target. Their expected goals (xG) output was a miserable 0.42 for the entire afternoon.

Forest did not even have to play particularly well to win. They just bypassed the midfield press with simple, vertical passes into the channels.

The pressing triggers are fundamentally broken

Tudor wants his team to press high. He demands his wing-backs push aggressively onto the opposition full-backs. The problem lies entirely in the central midfield rotation.

Yves Bissouma and Pape Matar Sarr look completely lost when deciding who to track in transition. Against Forest, Morgan Gibbs-White consistently dropped into the half-spaces. Whenever Bissouma stepped up to engage, a massive gap appeared directly in front of the back three.

This is where Cristian Romero’s aggression becomes a massive liability. The Argentine defender publicly promised fans he would give "200%" in the remaining games.

Effort is not the issue here. Structural discipline is the issue. Giving maximum effort usually just means Romero steps out of the defensive line even faster to try and win the ball on the halfway line.

When he misses the tackle—and he missed four of them against Forest—the entire right side of the defense collapses instantly. Pedro Porro is caught high up the pitch, Romero is taken out of the game entirely, and the opposing winger has a free run at the penalty area.

It is suicidal defending. You cannot play a high-risk, man-oriented system without elite recovery pace or flawless communication across the backline. Spurs currently possess neither.

The buildup phase is a predictable trap

We also need to look at how Tottenham actually try to move the ball out of their defensive third. It is painful to watch live.

Under Tudor, the back three splits wide, with the central center-back dropping almost onto the penalty spot. The two holding midfielders stay flat, positioned just in front of the penalty area.

Opposing teams have completely figured this out. Forest set up a mid-block and simply refused to engage the wide center-backs.

Instead, they man-marked the two central midfielders tightly. When Romero or Radu Dragusin received the ball out wide, their only passing options were a risky vertical ball down the touchline or a negative pass back to Guglielmo Vicario.

This resulted in Spurs aimlessly circulating the ball in a slow U-shape around the back. There is no central progression. There is absolutely no line-breaking passing.

When they finally attempt a risky pass centrally, it gets intercepted immediately. That is exactly how Forest scored their third goal. A forced pass from Dragusin into a heavily marked Sarr led to an immediate turnover and a 3-v-2 counter-attack.

Why Everton will exploit the exact same flaws

This brings us to the upcoming relegation six-pointer at Goodison Park. If you wanted to design a team perfectly built to destroy this iteration of Tottenham, Sean Dyche’s Everton is close to the ideal blueprint.

Everton do not care about possession stats. They care about territory and winning second balls. They will happily let Spurs pass it around the back for twenty minutes at a time.

When Everton win the ball, they will play it immediately into the channels behind Porro and Destiny Udogie. Dwight McNeil and Jack Harrison are elite at winning loose balls in those exact wide areas.

Tudor’s system relies on winning individual duels across the pitch. But Everton are physically overwhelming in the center of the park. Amadou Onana and Abdoulaye Doucoure will absolutely bully a lightweight Spurs midfield pivot.

Everton will execute the exact same gameplan Forest did, but with vastly superior physicality.

Son Heung-min is stranded on an island

The defensive issues are glaring, but the attacking dysfunction is equally concerning. Son Heung-min is currently playing some of the most isolated football of his entire career.

In the 3-4-2-1 system, the two attacking midfielders behind the striker are supposed to operate in the half-spaces. But because the wing-backs are pushed so high, the opposition defense simply drops deeper and compacts the center of the pitch to suffocate the space.

Son received the ball to his feet inside the penalty area exactly zero times against Forest. Not once.

He is being asked to make runs into channels that are already occupied by two or three massive center-backs. The service into him consists entirely of floated crosses from deep areas, which completely neutralizes his elite finishing ability on the floor.

If your tactical plan relies on Son winning back-post headers against Premier League center-backs, your offensive system is broken. Everton’s James Tarkowski will swallow up those desperate crosses without breaking a sweat.

No easy way out of the drop zone

Relegation is a very real threat now. The data completely backs up the eye test.

Over the last six matches, Tottenham have conceded 14.2 expected goals against (xGA). That is the worst defensive underlying number in the entire division by a wide margin. You do not survive in the Premier League with defensive metrics that poor.

Romero can promise maximum effort in press conferences all he wants. The harsh reality is that this squad is devoid of confidence and completely unsuited to the tactical demands being placed upon them right now.

Tudor is in an impossible situation. He is dealing with immense personal grief while trying to fix a squad that has seemingly forgotten the basic fundamentals of defensive shape.

The interim manager does not have the training ground time to drill a completely new system. He has to work with what he has, and what he has is a broken, unbalanced, technically deficient roster.

I expect Everton to sit deep, absorb the meaningless Tottenham possession, and punish them ruthlessly on the counter-attack and from set-pieces. It will not be a pretty game of football.

My prediction is a comfortable Everton win. The downward spiral in North London is far from over.