The evidence that Wembley was the problem is that our away form has been very consistent over the last few seasons. It's at home we seem to have got worse. Not enough games at the new stadium yet to come to a conclusion as to whether it will help. If fans keep abusing certain players then it won't help.
You could say the Salah goal was an example of stretching the play but that would be argumentative. However we constantly changed from playing through the middle to playing to our full backs, condensing and stretching the play throughout the game and this was the reason for our dominance. We'd have beaten Newcastle quite easily.
The new stadium should’ve seen the team raise raise spirit levels and form, instead we’ve seen the same dour football as we have throughout the last 18 months. The players and manager spoke about how much they didn’t like Wembley and yet they’ve done nothing really to show it was a real deterring factor as the form at the new ground has hardly been any better. As for abusing players, I’ve seen no evidence of that at games? Not sure where you sit but everyone around me is always cheering the team on.
Away games lost: 2015/16 = 2 2016/17 = 4 2017/18 = 5 2018/19 = 8 ...so we're actually getting progressively worse away from home.
We are getting progressively worse at everything. I've got some juicy stats lined up for the stattos amongst us but they all point towards Poch's own frailties. I look at our squad...it's not perfect but it's better than the **** we have been churning out in 2019. Poch is going all Jose/Conte...it's what they do when they want out.
As I held my hands up and said after the game, whilst Winks was one of the few players actually working hard and trying to make things happen, it exposed his inability to do anything of note against a packed defense. But in every job description there are a handful of basic tasks without which thye job simply cannot be performed. Without them, the candidate cannot ever fill the role. For a CM, you're looking at: excellent engine, hard working, comfortable and confident on the ball, good at winning back possession. If you find a player who ticks those boxes, you have yourself an entry-level CM. For a RB, you're looking at: pacy, good crossing ability, good positioning, good at tackling. Winks ticks his boxes. KWP currently doesn't. Final ball is appalling, makes no attempt to use his pace to beat his man, too soft going in to tackles and positioning is all over the place. And, unlike Winks, his confidence looks totally shot. Such a shame.
Winks does what he does well, It’s just that what he does is very limited. He has no real vision, and as has been said, his only answer to the kind of defence that Newcastle put up is yet another sideways pass He’s what Cantona would call a Water Carrier. KWP is not of the calibre needed by any serious title challenging team.
Problem is I don't want basic in our team. Basic is for your Villa's and Southampton's of the world with all respect to them but that's the level Winks is at, he's never in a million years a top six calibre central midfielder and it's why I get so worked up at seeing him in the XI so often. He and Grealish really should swap places I personally want star quality (or as close to that as possible) throughout the pitch and Winks will never be that. He doesn't fit the mould of any specialised style of central midfielder. He's not a defensive midfielder, he's not a creative midfielder and he's not a box-to-box midfielder. His sole strength is retaining possession, which is all well and good if you're 2-0 up and looking to take the sting out of the game with 15 minutes or so remaining but at 0-0/ 0-1 it's completely and utterly useless, especially for a team like Spurs where we know around 75% of the opposition we face will play with the aim of setting up shop from the off. The guy should never be starting a game for this football club unless it's against League One/ Two opposition in a cup tie. As for KWP, I think we're seeing why he still didn't get a look-in last season despite Tripps/ Aurier being so poor. I did want a new RB this summer but I did also say I thought KWP would be ready to step up if required so will happily take an "L" on that as thus far he's looked a bit too much out of his depth. In hindsight, why we didn't loan him out last season I'll never know. We've been pretty foolish as a club to expect a 22 year old RB with about 7 league games to his name prior to this season to step up and replace an England international (albeit underperforming one).
If Rodri was a penalty, then it evened out one of the two that we should've had against Villa. That leaves us down three for the season after three games. That's ludicrous. Dean ****ed it up. We should've hammered him for it and done what other clubs do, by harping on about his **** ups across the board. We don't do it and we end up getting ****ed over by the same twats every year, who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near our games. Would he be back reffing a Ferguson side so soon after the Burnley debacle and the fallout from it? No chance. Our form's been appalling and I voiced concerns about the dressing room ages ago, which most people thought was baffling at the time. That doesn't mean that we should airbrush out consistently appalling officialdom. We can multitask our criticism!
FB used to be our strongest suit. We've allowed both flanks to go to ****. Our hopes are now firmly pinned on Sess and Foyth coming good.
This is the problem with stats PS, if one set doesn't match the narrative you (one) can just switch to another metric and go again. Ultimately, as @Spurf regularly points out - the best and most reliable metric is the one we watch with our own eyes week on week. And that has firmly regressed over the past 2 years and counting.
Fair points on the Villa stuff, had forgotten about that. I've said in the past though that I do try to not look at blaming officials. Not because they're blameless but because they're so ****ing inept that teams by now should realise you shouldn't be relying on them to always make the right calls on big moments. I'm a huge fan of MMA and a common line there is "don't leave it to the judges" and that's my kind of mindset in football. For sure it'd be great if a ref actually managed to call everything right but realistically I think Spurs (and every team) just need to make sure they don't have to rely on a call by a referee to take something out of a game. Yes, we should've definitely had had a penalty and that could've well led to us getting the momentum to go on and win had we scored it but the fact we barely tested a Newcastle side is where most of my anger and disappointment will lie with. With the greatest of respect to Newcastle, we played right into their hands on Sunday. It's unacceptable for a club who supposedly want to be challenging for honours.
Salt in the wound. Thanks for that PNP. Okay here we go: 01.48: Notice how Sanchez has been dragged after his man deep into the Toon half. The player, even if he receives the ball unmarked, is a source of little danger with his back to goal 20 yards inside his own half. What is more of a danger is the fact that Sanchez (i'm not calling him 'Dave' for now as I am furious at him ) has left a vast gap behind him, completely unaware of who is there, where his other defenders are on the map and - most worryingly - the fact that he is playing a team set up to play long balls yet somehow doesn't expect the FB to hit a long ball. 01.50: Surprise surprise, FB hits it long. Sanchez is 40 yards upfield, it is now 2 on 2. Toby has lost his man and KWP is 10 yards behind him playing everyone onside. Joelinton does well and Hugo is forced into a good save. I'm not sure who the Toon player is who shoots to force the corner, but going back to 01.48 he is level with Lamela when the pass is made, 20 yards inside his own half and ironically now closer to our goal than Sanchez is. He runs 50 yards. NO ONE picks his run up. No one. Although Rose deserves special mention for literally watching him jog right past him. Shambolic defending.
It's very important to use the right stats, granted. But last time I looked it was the team with the most points who won the league. Not the one with fewest losses. I wouldn't dream of claiming that our away form was improving because the number of wins was getting bigger. And the evidence of our eyes is clearly the wrong metric as we have so many biases. When @Dier Hard watches Winks play he sees an inadequate player. I see a player who is hungry for the ball, rarely loses it and most often passes it to a player better positioned than him. He is actually quite creative but there were very few occasions on Sunday where he had the opportunity for a defence splitting forward pass. Poch trusts him. That is good enough for me....but I doubt he will make the starting XI when everyone is fit.
Logically that would mean we have to score two extra goals in every match. But your point is correct in principle in that bad decisions tend to even out over time although they can still make a 10 point difference over the course of a season. But you don't apply the same statistical thinking to our performances. If we were to score 90 goals in a season and concede 20, there is still a very high chance that we would lose 1-0 sometimes. Poch can set us up in a way that maximises our scoring and minimises goals against but no-one can control the randomness of when goals happen. If we had scored one fewer goal v Villa and one more at City we would have 6 points not 4. But there is no conceivable plan that would have made that more likely.
He's managed 2 assists in 137 games in all competitions for the club. That's 1 assist every 68.5 games. He's so far from creative it's painful, mate.
The way he plays he won't get many goals or assists. But he should get the pass before the assist quite a lot. I don't think there are stats for that though.
The pass before the assist is/ was what Modric specialised in, yet he still also averaged an assist every 5.9 games for the club (27 in 160). Winks passing the ball 5-10 yards away will rarely ever get a "Modric Pass" to his name. Admittedly there aren't stats to prove that but I think when we compare how Modric and Winks played, it's chalk and cheese in terms of genuine creativity.
