He's spot on though. When you remove the element of wummery from the whole thing...we are going places. I just hope Levy and Uncle Joe can see that...we just need 1 dose of Financial doping and I think we would shoot right up...I can dream.
A pundit had a go at Spurs fans for booing the boys off the field at half time! He's not worried about fans spending all that money to support their team and their team plays in first gear for,how many matches? I guess the pundit is getting well payed to sit on his duff!!!!!
We finished the game with a really weird "formation" with a lot of players out of position - and were probably better than at the start of the match! Goodness knows who will start in central midfield on Sunday!
Max was total quality on the pitch and now the genuine article off it as well. Great to hear someone that really is ITK making such positive statements about the club and the future. Total realist - something that the rest of us occasional suffer from under-achieving! That’s quite made my day - if I wasn’t already on a high after last night!
He set up the goal, but otherwise did my head in, looking a yard off the pace and as you say, turning into trouble and getting dispossessed in dangerous areas allowing the Toon to break. Hopefully, he will come back next season all guns blazing - but for now he needs a rest!
For starters there is 2m in revenue at stake for the club (or paying a player an extra 40K/week next season if you prefer the numbers presented thus) .
Naturally I wanna win on Sunday to secure 3rd and get that extra £2m or so but think our best XI on paper may not actually be the best XI to play. Now that CL is secured I can see a few going into holiday mode already and add-in that a number look burnt out, it may actually be worth playing a fresher side. Something like: Hugo KWP, Toby, Foyth, Rose Wanyama, TOB Lucas, Eriksen, Alli Griffiths KWP, TOB and Griffiths would all surely be eager to impress. As would Foyth and Lucas. With it likely being Toby's final game he may wanna go out with a strong performance. Eriksen and Alli have maintained good standards for the most part and so I'd keep them in the side but the likes of Jan (may have played through injury yesterday hence below par performance), Davies, Son (both fatigue) and Kane (not 100%) likely won't be at their best.
Would tend to agree with you on all those points although with the pressure off, all those ‘1st teamers’ might want to end the season on a high and pick it up for a final hurrah. If that’s the case then I guess they deserve that at least as they got us to this point?
I certainly think that, with CL qualification secured, we can afford a little bravery in the squad selection. KWP may well start due to Trippier's injury and Aurier being 50/50, but we should consider spots on the bench for a couple of Sterling, Griffiths, TO-B, Shashoua, Duncan, Roles or even Edwards (if we're using the carrot instead of the stick for a change)
With the exception of Kane - who I still think is hellbent on trying to get the golden boot - I actually don't think many would care if they played or not on Sunday, especially the ones set to play in the World Cup, the last thing any of them would want is an injury in a game that doesn't "really" matter to them. It's why I think a few of the squad players/ youngsters would show a bit more hunger as they'd be eager to impress and reassure Poch they can be called upon if required. Either way it'd be nice if Poch afforded some youngsters at least a bit of game time, we've got a few top talents in the ranks and it'd be interesting to see how they handles themselves against a good side.
My 15 yr old teen beast daughter used language strong enough to make a sailor blush when Son got called for that foul after watching their players do exactly the same to our players all night.
Which explains this harmless tweet which sent various people into a meltdown: Looks like we've played twice already today and play another two games tomorrow: http://www.u19-stemwede.de/live/ These tournaments have some vary strange schedules.
A couple of things really bothered me in this game, as I thought that they were pretty glaring and took forever to address. The first was our total lack of width, especially down the left hand side. Son seemed to get moved about a couple of times by the manager, yet nobody filled in there. This left us with everyone trying to play through the middle and no options, which has been far too regular an occurrence. The second was our failure to close down Shelvey anywhere near quickly enough or anticipate his balls over the top. He's clearly their most dangerous passer and was free to exploit our high line all day, often by simply hoisting it long. Hughes and Doucoure found similar space in our last home game and we were exploited then, too.
What was highlighted on TV at least was that Shelvey was making those passes instantaneously, almost without looking - makes closing him down especially difficult. But as every threat they had seemed to come through that route, we should have come up with some sort of solution! Our lack of width was a glaring issue, exacerbated by Ben Davies looking knackered.
I was watching Shelvey and he was looking before he received the ball, while players were anticipating this and making runs. Benitez tried to get them to exploit the space behind by using pace and it caused us plenty of problems. Someone should've been tasked with closing him down and denying him space and it didn't seem to be anyone's job.
