And on-pitch leadership. Every season there will be a small number of games that you can often count on one hand. These games will tell you a lot about the state of the mentality of the manager and squad. To date those games have been : 1. Poool/Juventus/Chelsky away. 2. Spanners in the League Cup, Juventus/Citeh home, Brighton away, FA Cup SF. #1 has shown that the manager/squad has been up to the task. #2 has shown where they have not. In #2, three of those have been "winner takes all" , and we lost them all. That is the concern for me.
Spurlock why do you torment yourself so much! as soon as we were drawn against United there was always a good chance we would lose, equally the same applied to United when they drew us. This match could always go either way atm as has been shown in the previous results between these two. Instead you might enjoy the fact that we can expect to beat United at all because only a little while ago, when Harry was manager, for example, we had to play out our skins to stay with them at all. We have progressed and reached a new level under Pochettino but cups are always a lottery. Chill my friend and enjoy the good days and on the bad days share something with a friend.
No, that's realism talk. Winning the League Cup in 2008 may have been a tick in the trophy column, but it didn't keep Keane and Berbatov at the club, and I think we all remember how many points we got from a certain number of games the following season. That's what the "smaller" trophies are worth to so many clubs these days: either some bragging rights down the pub and sod all else, or ate the other end of the spectrum the other half of a double - but we all know which half of a double is far more important. It's obvious to anyone that we don't have a squad that can compete on multiple fronts, as there's several gaps in the squad that become painfully obvious once a single player is either injured, suspended or off form, yet people are demanding we stretch our squad to breaking point to compete on all fronts. Doesn't that strike you as naive? The past two seasons we competed for the title precisely because our squad wasn't stretched due to breaking point, and this season we've competed in the premier League, Champions League and FA Cup and what do we see? Several players looking burned out, others having injury problems they didn't have for the past couple of seasons, and the gaps in our squad becoming the most obvious since that time we went to play Newcastle without a midfield due to Alli and Dembele being suspended.
Still fuming, honestly. Kane's been rushed back and I suspect that it's at his own behest. He's miles off the pace and we looked far more dangerous during his absence than we have since his return. There must be better ways to assess fitness levels than just asking the player. I've questioned Lloris on here recently, but that second goal was an absolute howler by Vorm. It looks like he'll move on at the end of the season and I'm sure that regular starts will do him a lot of good. He's done pretty well for us during his time at the club and has got his head down and done his job without moaning when called upon. It's a sour note for him to leave on. The praise that Mourinho's time management has been given is extremely annoying. Let's call it what it really is: cheating. Feigning injury is a disgusting thing to do and it's far worse than the diving that was on display, in my opinion. Why? Because it delays treatment of genuine injuries, as people think that you're taking the piss, like that bunch of ****ers were. Despite that, I don't really blame them for doing it, as they know that there's no punishment for it and it achieves it's ends. The rules need to change, as the fans watching that at home don't want to see massive chunks of the game eaten up with no action. It's bad for the sport and it's bad for the audience. Allow the physios to come on and just continue playing. If there's nothing drastic and it's not a head injury, then allow the game to restart and let the player get treated. Surely there's no serious downside to this, is there?
Said similar across a few different posts yesterday mate. I’ve just posted my current thoughts in the transfer thread.
Refs to be mic'ed up and call "time off / time on" to off-pitch timekeeper whenever they deem play must stop/start (as is done in rugby) ??
Really, PNP? How was that a ‘howler’ compared the many serious errors we have seen Hugo commit this season? It was close to him, but came fast through Davies. His playing instead of Lloris had no real bearing on the result whatsoever IMHO. It would sit well below the following: - Team running on empty for legs and ideas from minute 46 on - 3 key outfield players not performing for last 65 minutes - Persisting with two of them (Kane and Dembele) for far too long - Individual errors leading to their equaliser - No Plan B - Inconsistent officiating.
He should've easily saved that, in my opinion, SOTM. It's right at him. Lloris has made a number of equally bad errors this season, too. The Stoke goal was probably the worst. It's something that we need to look at, as it suggests an issue with coaching if it's persistent and not limited to one keeper. Inconsistent officiating? I'm sure that I shouted something like that at the ref yesterday!
I was trying for a choice of words that wouldn’t bring a couple of semi-resident twats out from under the stones they seem to have returned to late last night!
If the ball hits the net in the centre, then whatever angle the ball has crossed the line and from whatever distance, question marks have to be asked of the keeper. Vorm was poorly positioned and the gol was a bad one for a keeper to concede.
I was looking for my stopwatch to see how long it would take for your insight OS. You beat me to it. I still stand by my general position that playing Vorm was nowhere near the top of reasons we lost yesterday, as some are suggesting.
In terms of 'big matches' I make it that we've had 17 this season if that means playing teams that are above us in ranking or wealth. We've won 7 lost 8 and drawn 3. Not exactly a disaster. We've get more points in the league under Poch than ever before mostly because we are very efficient at beating teams who are worse than us. But we are beginning to perform against the top teams too. There is no recipe for winning a semi-final and no recipe for picking the matches when we play well or badly. But if either Eriksen had scored in the first half or Valencia had been sent off then we would probably have gone on to win. Then everyone would have been saying that we'd turned a corner.
I'm trying not to be disappointed (again!) but it's impossible. How does that song go? "You lead me on and then you run away....." So our reputation as "Cup Kings" once upon a time may have gone for ever. We open the season with a "home" loss by giving Chelsea 3 points and a few days later lose 2 more with a late goal for Burnley.Awful start! We lose a 2 goal cushion to West Ham in the FL (I mean,West Ham!) at "home". We lose to a late goal to Juventus in the CL when we were practically through.... We lose at "home" to a very ordinary Man U team whose plan is rely on defence and take a couple of chances (it worked!) which makes us very,very ordinary. ....and,if we don't remove certain fingers,even the CL spot may be up for grabs after being almost certain of a place next season! Do we have players that are brilliant,skilful,yet short of heart? Somethings amiss! We need to look for a team leader with skill and heart......where are you,mate? Our achievements these past seasons may make many other clubs happy if they were in the same boat,but not Tottenham Hotspur. We can't go on missing the boat every season!
Completely agree. If any area of our team has been exposed as week yesterday, it was the midfield. Dembelé decided to faff around on the ball whilst wearing ice-skates and Dier had no influence over our momentum or the play at all. It's this area precisely that we need experience and a leader. Something many of us have been banging on about for longer than I can remember now.
Dembele needs replacing. Dier has been rubbish for most of this season. What is he actually good at? I seem to miss his influence in the team
I've seen a couple of competing Narratives on the various blogs to explain the last three results: one says the whole Kane or Eriksen goal furore has directly impacted our results (which completely ignores the fact we also played like ****e against Stoke but happened to win that game, but that's not important right now...) while the other is saying that the announcement of Levy giving himself a whacking great bonus has caused collective heads to drop due to something something "Oh but this club pays their players that amount.". Somehow none of them are considering more obvious suggestions such as Kane being rushed back from injury when he's clearly not fit while the likes of Dier, Davies and Dembele are all showing various signs of burnout, because apparently having 40% of your outfield players at suboptimal levels won't affect performances and results...
Made me think of Jan. How many games has he played so far for club and country and rarely let's you down?
This season he’s been good at not being worse than Wanyama or Sissoko. Not his best season at all, but he’s a good utility player and we’d soon miss him if we didn’t have him. He’s definitely one that we won’t actively look to get rid of, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he throws a bit an unexpected spanner in the works and asks to leave this summer.
Still pissed at that shambles of a display. Dembele's done. This isn't kneejerk, I've been saying for most of the season he's been nowhere near his best and yesterday showed just how far he is from the CM we really need now, even taking away the fact he got bullied by Pogba for their equalisor, he was just ****ing terrible right up until his substitution. Stats don't always give a fair representation of a player, we all know when Modric played for us he didn't rack up too much on goals/ assists but in Dembele's case he has 0 goals and 0 assists this season and he's no Modric either. Let Mousa go Italy or China, we've seen the best of him at Spurs. Poch also needs to learn how to switch things up, both pre and during a game. His plan A is often good but when it's not he doesn't have an answer and that needs to change. In general though we just lack a killer mentality in crunch games, we do well in general in big games with pride at stake but when there's more on the line, such as qualification to something or being able to win something, we just agonisingly always come up short and too many players don't show. For me, more often than not, only Alli and Eriksen turn up for the really big games from an attacking stand point, Kane on occassions too but outside of that, no one else does themselves justice when it really matters. EDIT: And speaking of Kane, he needs to be man enough to realise he's not 100% and needs to give up the selfish aspect of going for that golden boot and focus more towards the team. Right now, he shouldn't be starting games, I'd hoped he'd be fit enough for yesterday but he's still clearly some way off the level we need.
