Not taken the wrong way in the slightest. Alli has looked disinterested since season's start and Toby sustained refusal to sign a new contract surely warrants a raised eyebrow? I've put Eriksen as a 'maybe' but those 2 plus the 2 you agree with isn't entirely out of the question? Poch alluded to it himself in his pre-match comments when he said, and I quote: "It's human nature the players always want to improve and have different challenges and ideas," "Maybe some players are not agreed in this plan and this strategy and of course they are right to complain, to talk and in the end to want to move or have another challenge for different reasons." Your recent habit of singing your way through games has beaten the cynic out of you RCL, but it isn't so far-fetched to say that this season may well end trophyless. Even if we make top 4, will that be enough to keep this team together for another year? Particularly when some of those players could command fees that would wipe off 25% of the stadium costs? I'm not so sure.
Dele looks mentally shot rather than disinterested to me. His family issues are well documented and he clearly has people bending his ear and attempting to use him for their own ends and as Gazza showed...it takes it's toll. Toby and the contract stand off is well documented but to be honest, I can see the club deciding to keep him, along with Dele and Eriksen as they want to have a strong team for the first season in the new ground. If you said they'd be gone in 28 months that would not surprise me if we have not won a trophy and kept getting CL football.
Given our injuries and Davinson Sanchez' suspension, there wasn't a great deal of options. I wouldn't have gone with Rose who has been terrible since his return. Having said that, our right side that was wide open every bit as much as the left, if not more. Recent performances have been worse than last season and even the fit players, like Dele, Christian Eriksen and Mousa are a ways off those levels. Put Toby Alderweireld, Davinson Sanchez, Ben Davies and Victor Wanyama into that team and we might have had half a chance. As it was, we got our asses handed to us. It's how we respond that matters. If we have a group of players with less injuries, we can still beat them at Wembley and finish top 4.
As Spurs fans we’ve seen Rose’s media comments and poor performances, and we all know that’s he’s below par, and continues to be in every game. Many of us are fed up with the player we are now seeing. But yesterday there appeared to be a mutual respect from Walker and Sterling who clearly know quality the player can produce. Just the fact that “Danny Rose” was on the team sheet negated any real threat down that side for much of the game. We were never going to take the game to City, but IMO it was tactically a clever way of trying to stop them. Although Rose did **** all for us going forward, It was his attributes that sterling and Walker are well familiar with that kept that side generally unthreatened. City didn’t even waste their time. They just targeted Trippier all game, and Walker probably played a role in telling his team mates exactly how to do it.
Yep, exactly. Sane skinned Trippier alive, he just couldn’t handle him. Trippier should have been replaced. The majority of City’s threats and goals originated down our right hand side.
Well... That was ****. City played like a side who'd spent half a billion on their squad. We just couldn't handle them. Trippier was left way too exposed, he played poor, no doubting that but the space that City had down his side was embarrassing and he had no help whatsoever. Sane and co have skinned every full back alive this season and what did we do? Give them acres of space. Barring one good bit of defensive play, Rose made Poch's decision to drop Davies a terrible one, I still can't fathom why on earth we'd drop a player who's easily been one of our top five performers this season for a guy who's been less than a shadow of himself since his return from injury. Winks and Dembele were atrocious, I hate being critical of Winks because he's a real Tottenham lad but he's just not cutting it at the moment. Dembele is so off the pace it's painful to watch and - as I've said already - a new CM HAS to be priority in January, we need to write a blank cheque and just go to Nice and say "write what you want on there and we'll take Seri, thanks". The attacking players were all ****e. Even on the rare occasions we did have the ball in their third, they done **** all with the exception of Eriksen's late consolation goal which was well taken. EDIT: To add, I've come to the conclusion that Kevin deBruyne is the best player in world football right now, he's simply phenomenal and as upsetting as it was to see what he done to us, it was also somewhat a privilege to watch, sometimes you just have to sit back and admire when an incredible footballer is on show.
You can’t get a yellow card for a high foot only. Kicking someone in the face is clearly likely to cause injury and should be red. Dele wouldn’t have even touched DeBruyne if DeBruyne hadn’t arrive late and out of control. Ther was no way Dele used excessive force in that challenge.
Correct. Kane's was the worse foul as he was so late he even had time to pull out of the challenge. Dele was always getting to that ball first and was probably caught off guard by the ferocity of De bruyne's arrival. Still didn't stop that Mcmanamanaman twat screaming for a red.
There were some terrible ref decisions in all the games yesterday but back to ours. Pundits and ex ref are just interested in their own agenda. how could they say Dele had intent-can they read his mind? When player A kicks a ball and follows through , their foot is in the air. that foot then has to come down and be grounded. If another player arrives late , attempts to kick the ball that is no longer there, their foot is likely to be in the empty space underneath player A's foot which is now on it's way down. How is that foul play? And , of course the studs will be showing, they are on the underside of the boot that is now coming down. De Bruyne- good as he is , is as dirty and cheating as many other good players. (Ronaldo, Hazard Costa etc.). From early on he was going down , flashing imaginary cards to the ref. Was he hurt in the tackle with Dele? He seemed to shake it off pretty quickly. He also managed to go down easily in the box to win a penalty, something Winksy couldn't do.
Just to be clear, we were massively outplayed throughout the match but even in a game as one sided as that a single refereeing decision can have a huge impact. We will never know what would have happened had the first red card been shown.
I watch a few non Spurs matches and I think abou a quarter of the time the result is effectively decided by a borderline or clearly wrong refereeing decision. The laws are badly written and not applied which is the prime cause of this.
I tend to disagree with this assessment. Walker genuinely looked uneasy playing against us. It was probably a very weird experience for him and it showed in an unusually subdued performance. Sterling scored twice so whatever impression one gets of him having a quiet game is less down to Rose and more down to the fact that he remains a ****e player who is riding on the coat-tails of his superiors. Don't think i've ever seen a player miss 3 open goals in a single game
To put things into perspective a bit, yesterday is only the third time since May 9 2015 that Spurs have conceded three or more goals in a PL game (Stoke 3-0, Toon 5-1, Citeh 4-0) . IMHO it felt bad because tis a long time since we had a similar result.
Already said it. Something unexpected along the lines of what DH was suggesting. Nothing drastic. We were outnumbered at the back and out-fought up front. Would it have been so mad to try Davies in a back 3 with proper wing-backs, Dembele and Alli in midfield and Son and Kane playing off of Llorente? Trippier Dier Jan Davies Rose Dembele Alli Kane Son Llorente Pace, width and more of a midfield presence. We rightly bemoan injuries but at the same time Poch has to take his share of the blame for simple lack of imagination in utilising the squad he has at his disposal. Over-reliant on one formula and underperforming players with very little to suggest we have an ace up our sleeves. Unless that ace is a large man called Sissoko Too often this season we've given our opponents - large and small - little to nothing to really think about. And part of that is down to the fact that our Plan A only works if everyone is fit and Plan B only tends to produce odes to AVB. We saw a Plan C at the Bernabeu and it worked. City are as good as Real if not better, so why did we think that going toe to toe with them would work?
What a diabolical performance that was. Awful, front to back. To add insult to injury we fed into the whole image of indiscipline that the media's been peddling for a long while. Pochettino got the starting lineup a bit wrong and then failed to do anything about it when it was clear that we weren't competing. How he watched that first half and thought that we didn't need to change anything is beyond me. It's clear that our injuries and the suspension of Sanchez has cost us, but our squad still needs strengthening in other areas. If the manager didn't feel confident that we had anything that could change it on the bench, then that's a real problem. City were good, but we simply didn't do anything to trouble them for 90 minutes. Rarely threatened up front and got completely overrun in midfield.
That’s what I thought as well. With Trippier being overrun, it suggests he doesn’t trust the more expensive/experienced Aurier. Equally, with Winks and Dembele clearly not up to the task in MF, he also didn’t believe that he had better options on the bench. Leaving Davies in the bench until the 82nd minute was bizarre. January window could be vital......
