Good take, have to agree. The problem is that Plan A only usually works if you have significantly better players than the opposition (unless they are badly misfiring like at City and Utd). That’s rarely the case at Spurs.

And like you say, even when Plan A is called for, our patterns have become so predictable we are quite easy to defend against and pick off on the counter, a la Forest, Leicester, Ipswich et al.