A good piece on Sonny's performances in the last week and why he's so important to us... https://www.independent.co.uk/sport...t-highlights-pochettino-results-a8760711.html
This is criticism of a team that is in second place and punching well above it's weight. I wonder what they would have been saying in 1977 when we got relegated? I can only assume these are the sort of people that take Adrian Durham seriously.
That's a good article, but it links to a "player ratings" section on the match, in which the Newcastle players seem to have scored higher than ours!
Yeah it's annoying, Lucas' best football has been generally on the right as he's a natural winger or sometimes running through the centre, having him play as an inverted winger like Son doesn't work, it's hurting his chances in the side because it's making him look ineffective despite the fact we all know he's a top player when played on his natural side. Most of us have been saying that as well. We all knew what we were getting when we signed Llorente yet for nearly 18 months he's been expected to (when given a chance) emulate Kane which was silly. Now we're seeing just how handy he can be when we play to his strengths. His goals to starts ratio this season has actually been superb, I think in 6 starts he has 6 goals plus an assist, while he got an assist off the bench yesterday too. I don't want to sound like I'm digging Poch out, especially during a season where he's been dealt a short hand what with injuries and a lack of strengthening but some of his management of certain players and the tactics he's had them play has definitely been questionable.
The words of a man who : 1. knows what is at stake 2. seems to be doing his utmost to try and repay the club for their grace on the South Korea situation
I'm totally with you. Have certain players not been his choice and that's part of the problem?In his book, MP indicates that Moussa Sissoko wasn't his choice and we've taken a long time to get what's best out of him. Maybe, a lot of the players that we signed before last summer were picks of club employees other than MP and this summer we stopped doing that under the terms of MP's new contract? It would make a lot of sense if it were true? Maybe the drying up of signings is because DL's NOT involved any more? There's too many people looking for someone to blame, rather than trying to work out what might be going wrong, why and how to fix it?
Quite possibly, it's not really been much of a secret that over the years we've signed players that the manager(s) hasn't asked for. Your point about Poch's new deal stopping any of those signings is interesting, I'd not really thought of that before and it certainly seems plausible, there seems to be a great amount of trust/ loyalty/ friendship between Levy and Poch, something I don't think any other manager has had with the chairman before and so being given complete control of transfers wouldn't surprise me. It does beg the question though, with regards to recent windows, is who exactly does Poch want? Reports have said he's vetoed moves for Grealish, Barkley, Malcom, Gylfi and Batshuayi, most don't represent an improvement on our players in the XI but all would've added quality to our depth which is where we've been struggling as of late.
Moura’s problem is his end product. I think Poch can work his magic though, he did with Dembele in time and they’re actually quite similar players. Both at their best running at the opposition and taking players out of the game.
I doubt the Geordies loved him much on Saturday, to be honest! Benitez choosing to make us attack the other end was probably a sensible idea at the time, but it ended up with Son celebrating in front of their fans. It's very rare that we end the match shooting at that side of Wembley.
Really? I thought we just won a football match by being better than the opposition in most aspects of the game, they came for a point and nearly got it, we showed great resilience and got our reward in the end. and in something of a first - come on you spammers
We slaughtered them, especially in the second half, just took a while for the goal to come. Not sure that's getting out of gaol, that's just being plain wasteful.
I remember Vidic getting a 94th minute winner against Sunderland after Utd had had nearly 40 attempts at goal. Not luck, just persistence. Every team with ambitions to win the league will get these results. The teams that don't are the ones who give up and end up settling for a 0-0 when it's not their day.
