Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v AS Monaco

It's nearly 24 hours after last nights debacle and Pochettino is still our manager.

Daniel must be getting soft in his old age.

 

Honest question OS: Was there a conscious decision made to throw the towel in, or was last night the by-product of a very inexperienced manager not quite 'getting' the trickiness of juggling PL and CL commitments?

 

Being a United supporter it's understandable that you would forget the dominance of Liverpool in Europe with a British team and the domination of the European Cups by British teams with British players Notts' Forest, Aston Villa, Leeds, Spurs, Chelsea , all did well in Europe with British players. In fact far better than we do now with all our wonder foreign players. English foorball was dominant before the hooligans ****ed things up.
In other words Luke that's complete bollocks.

 

I thought that with the work going on at the Lane, it would not meet EUFA requirements so we would have had to play at a different ground anyway. At least at Wembley 80,000 of us got to see us play in the CL.

 

That is the clubs' official story and is one they are sticking with. This has never been confirmed by UEFA........

 

Back in the day when only the champions qualified and finances didn't play such an important. Utd were the first English team to be successful in the European Cup.

The earlier reference on this thread was to the formative days of the Champions League in the early/mid 1990s, which was introduced shortly after English teams returned after a 5 year ban. There is no doubt that English teams were not at the level required to win the competition for a number of years. I'm sure you remember how English teams were way off the pace - tactically naive and lacking in skills. SAF had to learn how to compete in the competition. It wasn't until the late 2000s that any English team other than Utd made any real headway against the best teams in Europe.

 

I am sure it's the latter.

Not quite sure why I am cutting him some slack here because I can't stand the guy, but no manager should be blamed for players "switching off" for the first few minutes immediately after his team have scored as we did last night.

 

And as you well know I was talking about the period before the ban. that was the point. United have never been dominant in Europe the way Liverpool were.

 

They could have been but for the tragedy of Munich. That United team really was the best in Europe.

 

is there a reason why you can't stand him...think I read you saying this before and am just being a nosy git!

 

Utd have never been dominant in Europe, but were England's best hope of success throughout the fallow period of 1992 to 2005. The earlier comments related to how English teams had to learn how to play in Europe again and that experience of the competition was important (in the context of Spurs being knocked out) - learning different tactics, juggling commitments etc.

Liverpool were dominant at a time when the boot was on the other foot and continental teams struggled to cope with the English style of play. But there's no comparison to be made with the modern day game. No team will ever copy Forest's achievement of promotion, title and champions of Europe twice in consecutive seasons. The riches of the CL have ensured that the big clubs are dominant - barring one or two notable exceptions.

The Utd team of the '50s were trailblazers. European competition was shunned here initially. Had the Busby Babes survived and perhaps broken Real Madrid's stranglehold, then it would have paved the way for other English teams to succeed sooner (including Spurs at that time, obviously).

 

We have found agreement

 

Still numb after last night. What has happened to this team? Where has the young squad so full of potential and optimism at the start of the season gone? Where has our fast attacking football gone? Where has the midfield pressing gone? Just wtf is going on?

Bar Hugo, and maybe Winks and Kane, everybody else last night including the manager was awful. And Son was even worse than that. I really miss Lamella. At least you know he'll put a shift in even if he's playing crap.

Not looking forward to the Chelsea game at all now. If we play anything like that we will get absolutely battered. Then again, if by some miracle we were to win, I guess it will all look different again.

What we're used to is coasting through easy EL group stages and then throwing in the towel as soon as we meet a good team in the knockout stage. Because obviously the EL is beneath us and we need to focus on the Premier League instead so that we can qualify for Europe so that we can ignore it again so that we can qualify again...

If we throw the remaining home game against CSKA to avoid the EL I'm going to be even more pissed off. How about, just for a change, we take the competition seriously and try to learn how to win in Europe. Then maybe we won't see such abject performances next time we face must-win games against supposedly inferior European opposition.

 

A similar thing could be said for 2010-11: first we nearly cocked the whole thing up in the play-off against Young Boys, then in the first match we blew a 2-0 lead to draw with Werder Bremen, while our first half against Inter at the San Siro was an utter horror show from all involved.

 

All worth it for that second half though

 

Also the Europa League game at Inter in 2012-13. Having won 3-0 at home, we go and get our arses kicked 1-4 in the return leg and it could have been much worse.

Shocking away performances are a standard part of our European campaigns in recent years. It doesn't seem to matter who the manager is or the playing staff, we can't get a decent run together in Europe [2010/11 as the exception] or win an FA Cup Semi-Final. Time was when we were excellent at both. Let's hope we can return to those days soon.

 

In fairness, the first leg against Young Boys was the first time any of our players had played a competitive match on an artificial surface - most looked completely thrown by it but we still managed to rally in the second half and grab some away goals. Blew them away in the return leg.

The first 135 minutes of our last CL adventure yes, we did look a bundle of nerves. But that second half in Milan was when we collectively said '**** this, we have nothing to be afraid of. We aren't going to win the thing so how about that echo of glory the fans are always on about?'

Funnily enough, that rallying call was issued by one of the youngest players on the pitch, a much-maligned Welshman who had seen himself on the brink of being sold to Birmingham and had lost his natural position to a guy who hated football. In his youthful naivety, that lad had nothing to fear - and Inter couldn't deal with it. It was the same 'chutzpah' that we played with last season and is the beauty of having young players just eager to showcase their talents. It has been sorely missing this season.

 

Maybe. Although we at least had some fight in those games. 3-0 down in 30 mins at Young Boys wasn't it, then we fought back to 3-2. And we scored as many goals in the Inter game as we have in 5 attempts this time.

We also tonked all three of those teams in the reverse fixtures.

 

Something is not right then, they are all still young. A few things niggle me and I think they show a poor attitude. Alli seems to fanny about a bit too much for me this season. Eriksen needs a kick up the arse...proper hard one too, not a side foot tap, proper steel toe cap up his arse.

Why did we replace one pacey French kid for another just to warm the bench? Makes me pull my hair out this kind of stuff.

Is it me or does Poch carry a look of hope more than determination every time the cam goes on him during a game?

Sissoko is not a winger.

Son is not a 90 minute player.

This team has achieved nothing yet.....I see too many cigars.

It worries me that we are going to waste our, to want for a better phrase 'golden generation'.

Win on Saturday...all is forgiven.

 

It looks like we'll not be playing at Wembley in the EL, if we come third. Part of me thinks we could do with the practice ahead of next season. The other part hopes we come fourth, as we'll ditch it in March anyway.