Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v West Bromwich Albion

That McLean will be the new Charlie Adam if refs don't effing man up.
I'm not waiting for another Pulis-anointed thug to put a key Spurs player out
for the season.

 

It’s never good, under any circumstances, to lose your best three players to injury early in the season.

But if ever it could be good for anyone at any time, it’s us now. We are being forced to demonstrate that we are not a team of a few stars. So far, the loss has demonstrated exactly that, and made a couple of players into stars who would have otherwise been languishing on the bench. Aside from all the benefits regarding players turning from potential busts into actual stars, it inspires everyone who isn’t getting a chance with the hope and belief that they’ll be the next Son or Wanyama. This particular injury is a way back into the first team for Eric Dier, who surely deserves one, as he always makes us better.

 

But that is the problem.
They literally do not want to get in front with more than 20 mins to go because they
know they will reap the whirlwind.

 

Out of today's starting line-up:- Harry Kane, Son and Mousa Dembele. We're going to be better when they're back in the team. Chuck in a fully fit N'Koudou and let Janssen and Sissoko settle down and things will improve. Eric Lamela's form is pretty ropey at the moment. Hopefully, he'll pick up as we'll need more from him in the next couple of months.

 

We drew with Everton (after going behind), beat Palace with a late goal, drew with Liverpool (after going behind), stuffed Stoke, beat Sunderland, beat Boro, beat city and drew at West Brom (after fierce going behind) so am not so sure that we can not break teams down when they are "anti football". West Broms keeper did well today and we conceded while reshuffling our defence after Toby went off.
I know glass half full ain't something you lot think when I drone on but 2 yrs ago and even last year we would have lost that match.
We have pulled 3 points back from losing positions and lost no points from winning positions. We have the best defensive record in the premier are the only unbeaten team in it.
My only concern tbh is goals...Janssen does not look like scoring and that worries me as he will effectively become a passenger like Soldado was. I like his work rate and he is very good at holding the ball up but in a spurs shirt his finishing is awful so far.

 

What Janssen has in his favour IMHO is he is vaguely doing the business for his national side,
so they have confidence in him (unless they have an injury plague) and he is getting game time.
Gullit had it right the other week : the hold-up play is great but you don't have to do it
100% per game (you are allowed to get into goal-scoring positions) .

 

Lamela does my nut in

 

He has reverted to pre 2015-16 season form.
Why I know not, made worse by the fact he even seemed to step up further
during the pre-season games. Anyway, if Pochettino is the manager we need,
as I have said he needs to make it clear either the boy returns to that form, or he
is not in a PL/CL starting XI.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/37594220

<quote>
Foster admitted after the final whistle his team never had any intention of vying with their opponents for possession.

"It's classic Tony Pulis team," said the goalkeeper. "When you come up against teams like Tottenham, you know you won't be able to outplay them."
</quote>

CONFESSION !!!

 

I'm not too disappointed with this result. WBA are no clowns, and they will upset at least one of our rivals before this season is done.

Hope Alderweireld isn't too crocked.

 

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great to see that

 

It could well be due to the fact that he’s started to play on the left. I always thought he looked better on the left, but not this year. Even so, if you look at our goals this year, you’ll find he played an important part in many/most. Not today, though. But against City, for example, it was his pass that set us off for Alli’s goal.

 

Janssen didn’t score for his first 10 games for Ajax. So he’s ahead of schedule for us

 

I hope people just leave Janssen to adapt. He's going to be fine, if we support him. He's a young lad in a new country and a league a step or 2 up from where he was playing. It's not like when we signed Soldado, who was playing in a strong league and was 28 years old.

Alternatively, we could undermine him by criticizing and complaining and calling him a failure and destroy his confidence. The choice is up to us.

 

Frustrating game, but what else do you expect from a Pulis side? On a better day we'd have won, it was yet another MotM performance by an opposing goalkeeper. And of course Chadli was always going to score.

I am getting a little bit worried about Jansenn now. His holdup play is very good, but the getting on the end of chances and sticking the ball in the net part isn't. He just doesn't look like he's going to score. He doesn't seem to make the right runs, or time them right, and often gets caught offside when he shouldn't. Hopefully that will come, he is still young, and is in a new league with new teammates, but he could really do with a goal soon just for his own confidence.

Hope the injury to Toby isn't as bad as it looked.

 

He didn't score in any of his first 1000 games for them either, being as he didn't play for them

Frustrating result but as many have already said, a little context is needed. After a few seasons of almost miraculous injury-avoidance, we seem to have reverted to the very Spursy injury merry-go-round which states that as soon as one key player returns from an injury, another one picks one up - thus ensuring that we go the entire season without ever seeing our strongest team.

Really pleased to see Dembele back - he will be crucial in the games to come - especially the away games at Bayer and Liverpool, both of which are massive occasions that he seems to thrive off. If England have injured Rose AGAIN the player should simply switch his nationality to Jamaican and be done with it. Should've done it back in 2015 but Pochettino ironically was the man who talked him out of it. PhysioRoom has him listed as 'fatigue' though, so hopefully this was just Poch resting him with Bayer in mind.

Even though Alli isn't quite hitting the heights of last season, having him in goalscoring form is essential, especially with Kane absent and Lamela deciding to reinstall Windows Vista. His goals secured us 3 points last season in draws against Leicester, WBA (f***ing again ) and Everton, whilst his goals against Palace, Norwich and United can all be considered as 'crucial' insofar as we took the lead through them.

I think we'll cope without Toby but only once we are strong enough to out-score the opposition. We have been immense defensively once again this year with the best record in the league, but it does concern me that we have scored the least of any of the other top 5 teams. We need Kane back and as fired up as he was over the past 2 seasons for this to happen. Janssen's hold up play is excellent - probably slightly better than Nobby Sol's was due to his incredible strength - but he simply doesn't 'panic' defenders in the same way that Kane does. Teams will feel comfortable to commit that extra man or two forward as long as Janssen is playing. Kane was literally pulling rabbits out of hats last seasons - multiple defenders wouldn't let him out of their sight for entire games.

Game 1 of 7 in 23 days out of the way, we go again

 

At one time the commentator remarked that Spurs had completed 200 passes to West Brom's 60.Well I think most of those 200 passes were around the halfway line.Pulis must have beenrubbing his hands watching it.Giving their defence bags of time to build the "Pulis Brick-Wall".
Mind you,Foster did play out of his skin.He'll probably screw up in their next game!
By the way.Why were our defence passing back to Loris's right foot?Theydo know he's left footed I suppose.........

 

Their goalie played a blinder. It's not something you can rely on. On most days at least one of those chances wouldn't have been saved. We played pretty well considering we were up against anti-football FC. Nothing to worry about except injuries. Couple of flashes from Dembele reminding us what a great player he is.

Still, several reports say WBA "deserved" a draw, so I'm obviously biased. To me a team that doesn't even try to compete and steal a win, with the keeper having to make seven saves does not "deserve" anything.

Incidentally, don't know how to explain it, but some players seem to get far fewer reds than they should. Mr Asshole at WBA and Costa for example. How do they continually get away with it? It's not like it's one incident or one ref, it's quite consistent.

 

From what I saw of it, Foster saved their sorry arses. Without him, we would have won comfortably.

Probably, at least 3-1...