Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Bournemouth

It seems that Mauricio Pochettino knows it too.

"If we want to be contenders, we need to win games like these, we were much better than them in the second half but you have to score if you want to win the game.

"Maybe we need more depth in the squad to avoid a situation like the first 15 minutes."

Maybe starting some of our summer purchases other than Wanyama? It's disappointing that Eriksen and Lamela keep starting when their form is poor and Janssen, Sissoko and GKN are not starting games very often at all. Alternatively, it's Onomah and Winks. However, we can't expect the same players to play every game and remain fresh and sharp when we're in the middle of the CL Group stage.

 

Exactly. What's squad depth got to do with it, when he chooses to put 3 defenders on the bench because of his ****ing right foot left foot policy ?

 

You make a good point Brian but I think you can understand that Pochettino has the team in his mind and he likes to introduce 'new players' to the established framework. To change too much risks loosing the 'team' he has been building. Taking out Lamela and Eriksen out of a team already missing Kane and Toby that includes a , feeling his way back, Dembele, would be too radical and means the introduced players having to create their own team rather than joining the one everybody has been working towards.

 

Yes, that is what he has done but now he's asking players to play in the CL rather than the EL. That's a learning curve for everyone. What was okay last season may not be so this time around. To dare is to do.

I'd rather we went all-in against teams below us and played fresh legs, than keep wringing too much out of his tried and trusted players, especially when their form is poor Eriksen? Lamela?. Janssen isn't going to gain confidence on the bench and coming on for 20-odd minutes when we're tiring isn't great for him either. Bringing him on today and taking off Son and Dele, who would have been his main support up front seems a little counter-productive. If he's going to come on, then do it earlier and give him a real chance with players around him who play to his strengths. I would expect him to play at Anfield and be on the bench against Leicester, as Huth and Morgan would love playing against him. Today would have suited him much more and I was hoping we'd see him start or come on at half time.

Finally, our bench is a little too negative for my liking. Vorm, Wimmer, Davies and Trippier gives us 4 defensive changes. There's Winks as a deep-lying midfielder and Sissoko as an attacking midfielder. The only attacking player who's likely to score a goal is Janssen. Surely, we can muster more than that? Kane is injured but we must have something else, somewhere?

 

Yeah, interesting point.

 

Been away for a few days. Watched the match at the airport.

Same old problem..we need to find a magician.

2 things for me today.

Alli needs to look up and Lamela was annoying me with his senseless football.

Of course we weren't going to win...we had chance to go top!

 

I'm grasping at straws here but this disappointing run of results is in a way the perfect springboard for Kane's return. I felt very strongly that his poor early season form was down to physical and mental exhaustion - both factors stemming from England's car crash of a tournament in France. A break through injury solves the first issue, but had we gone on a winning spree drowning in goals in his absence, I don't think the mental scars of Hodgson's circus would've had the necessary respite to heal. Kane is no doubt watching from the sidelines seeing a team that is quite honestly crying out for his spark and threat in front of goal. There is no greater confidence-booster than feeling needed.

Much has been made of Lamela and Eriksen's utterly underwhelming start to the season, and I am in full agreement. But on the other hand, a careful analysis of our best performances last season all point to one thing:

With an on form Kane in the side, our front 4 shifts from a '3' behind a '1' to a complete unit of '4'. What I have loved about Harry from the moment he burst onto the scene is his sheer footballing intelligence, the way he focuses his natural ability to graft to basically never playing as a typical 'centre forward' in the classic sense of the position. He drops deep, he drifts wide, he runs the channels, he is everywhere in that final third of the pitch. And it is his contribution more than anything that allows Lamela, Alli and Eriksen to play with the fluidity and interchangeability that made us nigh-impossible to defend against last season.

I'm a massive fan of Janssen, don't get me wrong. But having seen a fair bit of him over the past few weeks, I would say that there is clearly a world of difference between holding the ball up and bringing others into the fray, and making the entire last third your playground. Harry's overall contribution to our attack is about so much more than the goals, and it is the former that I feel we are missing more than the latter. Without his presence and ability to dictate the tempo across that whole area of the pitch, we look static, overcrowded and short of ideas.

A lot of posters on here are pointing to Eriksen and Lamela and rightfully demanding the 'spark' that we are missing, but the more I think about it, the more the last 3 games have shown me that Harry is that spark.

 

I think you might very well be right CK interesting post.

 

The problem is though that if Spurs rely too heavily on Kane they'll be back to square one if he gets injured again. Who will step up NOW?

 

No-one, which I think is essentially what Poch was alluding to quite clearly when he used his post match comments to focus on a need for even greater depth to the squad. Janssen was a good and long-overdue addition, but he is a long way off of Kane's level, it's a simple as that and I think that reality has slowly dawned on Poch over the past week. Most teams suffer with their best player out. City without Aguero are limp, Arsenal without Ozil or Sanchez struggle to trouble teams, Leicester without Mahrez are sterile. Only the biggest clubs in the world can cope with losing their key men.

To put it another way: Kane is probably worth in excess of £60m in today's market, which means that the only way we could afford a replacement is either by selling him or by getting extremely lucky in the market. The former ain't happening and the latter is a long shot from Holland who has done lots of things right but is miles away from the level we have become accustomed to over the past few seasons.

 

Going back to what CK said a few posts back, and judging by our matches since Kane's injury, it does look as if our attacking trio lose something when they don't have a centre forward to work off of - which sounds like something obvious, but it's been a pattern for the past few weeks. As a result we have Alli and Lamela having to do more, and in Lamela's case he does too much when a more simple option is available, and it's self-defeating.

It doesn't explain Eriksen's poor start to the season, mind.

 

They've had Janssen who is admittedly excellent at making the ball 'stick' up top and holding off defenders to bring others into the game, but it still isn't enough. I'll hold my hands up and and admit that I was far too critical of Harry earlier on in the season. But as they say, absence only makes the heart grow fonder (of course there are exceptions to this rule: If Donald Trump, Justin Bieber, the Kardashians and Kim Jong Un all up n vanished tomorrow, I don't think they'd be sorely missed), and in his absence, I've come to the conclusion that Kane does far, far more than merely allow others to 'play off him'. I've watched back a fair few of our highlights from last season, and his contribution when on form is simply staggering. In a way, he plays for the supporting cast, like a top drawer lead singer raises the game of the entire band. Eriksen and Lamela only boss games against vastly weaker opposition or when they have Kane in front of them wreaking havoc across the entirety of the final third (Janssen isn't mobile or clever enough - yet - to do this), creating the time and space that they thrive off. Without him, they look short of ideas and focus, as if permanently uncertain what the best move is. Erkisen reacts to this by drifting aimlessly around the pitch in search of inspiration, while Lamela falls back on his circa 2014 model by trying far too hard and picking up plentiful cards in the process. Kane allows them to play naturally, calmly and with a real focus.

Maybe it's just late and I've been watching too much football recently, but earlier on this season we were jumping to Kane's defense based on the correct argument that the '3' weren't supplying him with the service he needs. But now, I'm seeing things differently. The '3' actually need Kane's service, not the other way round. The only spanner in my theory is the City match, which is a real conundrum.

 

Oh and on a completely different point, I hate it when managers publicly come out in support of a player during the week, only to drop that same player at the weekend. Dick move.

 

For me N'Koudou should play to feed Janssen. I've wondered over the past couple of years whether Kane has led a bit of a charmed life and the past few games before he was injured began to make me wonder.

 

Is the City defence in reality one of the worst we have come up against this season.

 

Not really. Both Stoke and Sunderland were noticeably worse. I think we're just well suited to playing City and caught them at the perfect time. Our FB's are a nightmare for their ageing ones, whilst Otamendi has the positional awareness of a bat with no ears and Stones is still very inexperienced - our pacy and mobile front 4 that day was perfectly balanced for them. They lacked their number one out ball in De Bruyne and so we were able to take full advantage. But even then, most on herr pointed to the fact that we probably needed to go through all 5 gears to beat them, and that it was a level of performance that is essentially impossible to maintain when you're playing 2-3 hard games a week and rotating heavily as a consequence.

Last year, we picked up a truck load of points from games that we didn't play well at all in. Lots of late winners and freakishly good shots:goals ratios in numerous games; I think for much of the season we even had the best shot conversion rate in the country. The rub of the green had to abandon us at some point, and it has this year. We are as clinical as any other team out there and are therefore struggling to beat teams that park the bus and play smash n grab...which is now most teams as we are a 'high profile' fixture. That's what impressed me about Bmouth; last year they played us with fear. This year they played us with respect. The difference is astonishing.

 

Not seen the game, but it seems there was little attacking creativity.

Pochettino again appears to have slumped into the not losing but not winning either
rut of nearly 12 months ago. It also appears that he may be slipping into "favourites" mode
too (Lamela is not playing well enough to justify starts etc) . One point of a squad is to
instil the fear of not playing : play bad too often and there is another raring to go who
will keep you out of the team for weeks.

Things feel like they are on a knife-edge.
Spurs are thereabouts, but not playing close to their best of last season.
Yet you cannot presume the other rivals will play meh when you do.

 

All we have to do is emerge from this sequence of draws with a win and we will be ok.

 

I thought Eriksen was poor again, he always seems to start seasons slowly.

 

That's a big part of why I was so for us signing Ante Coric in the summer: there's no greater motivator than a direct replacement on the bench hungry for some playing time, as we've seen with Davies and Trippier motivating Walker and Rose to maintain their performances.