Poor Gareth Bale out injured yet again.......I can't see Real keeping him because he's out injured a lot!
Interesting stats posted on twitter, this season vs. last, first 15 games What can we read into this? Well we've had a lot to deal with injuries, now suspensions, and players not settling down fully yet after signing or coming back from long-term injuries. We've also negotiated a much more difficult CL group than last year and done it far better. As ever, fine margins are in play - hbic and others have highlighted some standout decisions from match officials that have harmed us at key moments recently, and looking back to the start of the season, the late goals we conceded at home to Chelsea and Burnley were uncharacteristic for what we had come to expect under Poch. This all adds up, both problems of our own making and things out of our control. Ultimately we can only play the hand that chance, the fixture list and the whims of the officials deal us. I think the stats linked show we're doing ok in terms of the season so far compared to last year (granted the fixture list is different) and while other teams around us have significantly stepped up, we just need to find a way to negotiate the next 10 days or so and I think we will pick it up ourselves. Today could have been the day that we began to recover but a poor decision from Dave ultimately cost us the chance to do that. We just need something to break for us, whether its an inspirational piece of play from our players or a flukey deflected goal or a questionable penalty, and that could jolt us into gear again.
For me the most telling statistic is the drop in yellows from 30 to 18. I might sound bonkers but lots of yellows = high intensity pressing game. We have very few, if any 'dirty' players in our team. Jan is probably the closest thing and he is more of a wum than a bully. The vast majority of our cards last season were for challenges deemed too full-blooded or robust for the dainty little legs of the modern game. I'm describing a symptom more than the disease, but our high octane pressing game has been almost non-existent this year, and the card count reflects that.
FYI the references to the book and our form came before today’s game. Whatever the reason, you can’t solely blame officiating for our lack of goals and wins otherwise you start to sound like Mad Maurine.
The stand out stat is yellow cards conceded. Clearly we’re less aggressive this season and it shows. We don’t boss games by pressing in favour of slightly more possession which sadly has resulted in no more goals and more chances for our opponents.
In some ways that has been forced on us - you can't really press a team who are already camped out in their own half for a point, as has happened plenty of times to us already this season. But we are definitely lacking an edge far too often this season so far and that does account for the lower yellow count, I agree. We need that back badly. I'm hoping Lamela might be the spark to either add that himself or force his peers to up their games.
Mike Dean gave two offside goals against Arsenal (and waved away a clear penalty against Swansea earlier in the season) Twatkinson ignored a foul in the buildup to Watford's goal and ignored a perfectly valid penalty shout (on top of the numerous other times he's dicked us over in recent reasons) There's a huge difference between Moronho claiming conspiracy because his team(s) dropped points and seeing some utter incompetence from the officials that cost us points - just like there's a huge difference between gobshites like Johnny Giles banging on about a book being solely responsible for everything bad happening to the team and reality.
Just out of interest, if the refs are "utterly incompetent" do they ever make mistakes in your favour?
Back to today's game. I've just remembered what Deeney said after their game against Woolwich-how they roughed them up. Clearly that was their intention today against us. But the officials are not wise to this tactic.
Yes of course they do - in fact he did yesterday when Watford should have had a penalty for handball, but that summed up the refs performance yesterday.
I think we were all expecting Llorente to be that additional option in attack but he’s turning out to be donkey number 3
Oh FFS. I've said it before but he's a total idiot for picking up the injury in the first place, sprinting into Real's box to stretch for a loose ball like he was Harry Kane. My other gripe is why it takes our medical staff so long to assess an injury. Surely a major muscle tear will be clear within days of suffering the injury? We've seen the same thing with Wanyama. First it was '1 week out' then a scan reveals it'll be a month then another scan reveals a deeper problem and so on and so forth.
It's hard for a player like him when he's not playing regularly. Not sure he fits Spurs style so he's a fish out of water when he does get game time. He's an English style centre forward - 6'4" tall, powerful, good header of the ball, holds up/links up play well. He thrives on lots of crosses into the box. This is what he did to great effect at Swansea last season. On me 'ead son.
When we signed Llorente I think most of us assumed he was being brought in to be a presence in the changing room and 'do a job' in the last 10 mins of a game when we were holding on to a lead, not that we would be relying on him to lead the line on his own. Hence the widespread surprise when Janssen was unceremoniously shipped out to Turkey on deadline day with no replacement lined up. He simply isn't mobile enough to play Kane's role and tbh with Eriksen in such awful form the only player we have who can find him with a cross is Trippier. His best performance this season by a country mile was the 1-1 against Real where we played a counter attacking game and he held the ball up for Kane et al. to play off of him. I'd like to see him and kane on the pitch at the same time tbh. The two of them are fantastically intelligent players and Kane's energy and industry could be a perfect foil for Llorente. As other's have said and as @The RDBD just posted in the season compass, Poch's management of the squad has to be questioned this season. I personally don't think he has made full.use of the tools available to him. Maureen is a master of this. And tbh we have to start looking at teams like Pool who are inferior to us on paper yet comfortably ahead of us in the league and start asking: is Klopp more tuned in to playing to his players' strengths? Is Poch too closely wedded to the 'system' even when it clearly isn't working?
