I kind of spoke about the defence a week or two back, when Eriksen was getting dogs abuse and people saying "he needs to follow Toby's example". Toby's done absolutely **** all to get put on a pedestal over Eriksen. Our defence have been atrocious for a while now but have been getting off scot-free in comparison to the abuse Eriksen's suffered. I'm not saying Eriksen isn't deserving of criticism, but my gripe stands with the double standards for other players. So many are letting this club down, as is the manager with his constant moping around and poor decision making (and lack of!). Only Kane, Son and Sissoko are players who can be going home over these past 12-14 months knowing they've earned their money. Some unfortunately are being alienated (Lucas) whilst others have had injuries disrupt their form (Alli, Dier, Lamela) but the rest are either not up too it or not performing as expected.
You and I both Poch has a lot to prove now. I admire and respect the man hugely for what he has done for us but this is undoubtedly his biggest ever challenge, and is ultimately the one which will define the rest of his career as either a manager who takes teams of underdog players and makes them competitive, or one who can actually build a team with the mentality to win trophies.
And I would like to claim the Mystic Meg award for identifying that Eriksen was off the pace BEFORE he came on the pitch......
Wasted chance after chance before we scored...don’t have it in us to break a teams back The fact that we are so wasteful just can’t be ignored. Poch needs to sort it or he can’t complain if he gets it in his knackers and everyone telling me that we are nothing without Poch can **** off with him when/if he leaves.
The odd thing about that game was that until 10 mins from the end it was quite even and the reason we were losing 4-2 was that they scored half chances and we missed good ones. Because we were 4-2 down we took a lot of risks and gave away the fifth. After that I was past caring.
Too many players half fit or half arsed. We had a decent transfer window but its starting to look a bit like too little too late because the squad remains a unbalanced and right now, it looks a real mess. Relying on a half fit 22 year old NDombele to run our midfield when he's barely feeling his way into the PL, and with no real DM cover to help him out, is starting to look a little naive. Yes you can't always predict fitness issues but this could be being managed better than it is.
Yet no one will pull up Levy for not getting on with it. Instead I hear a heap of reasons why Spurs can’t sign players early. It’s bullshit as other clubs prove...clubs who are focused on winning things get the prep right. Up and down Europe all the big teams do their business early
Sorry PS but this is nonsense. The reason we conceded goals 3 and 4 were two appallingly bad errors from Aurier and Winks respectively. Teams like Bayern can and will score 'half chances' for fun. QED presenting them with as many as we did tonight is committing footballing suicide, as we did tonight.
My mate who took my season ticket tonight said that 10-15 rows above my seat there were Spurs fans fighting one another and some guy's tooth got knocked out. This is what Spurs does to us!
Not doing business early has always been a Levy issue I agree but I do think in this case that the far more significant issue is that we did not business at all, full stop, for too long. The reasons for that have been debated on here ad infinitum but the fact is that it’s the stagnation that we waited too long to avert that is starting to tell. Thing is I'm not even sure its a case of building now for Poch. Too many players who either through lack of commitment or through injury just haven't been contributing to the cause have hung around for too long and it left us with too much to do in one window. To fix that now mid-season is a massive task and to be blunt I don't know if Poch has it in him to sort it out, because this can't just be fixed by throwing money at the problem.
No we didn't. And as a result of it, we will now need to bring in a minimum of 4 players (LB, CM, AM, CB) at a minimum cost of appx £200m, meanwhile taking in a paltry £40-50m in player sales. The task ahead of us is gargantuan.
About 3 years ago so many were banging on about how this group will mature and the trophies will come. Like it was our right...when will we learn because I wasn’t so cock sure...Ive been banging the “got to make today count” drum. No one connected to this club seems to learn from anything.
Daydreaming again CK Under ENIC it will be a 3 window plod...expect us to get our dream CB around about the time Kane is hanging is boots up. I’m done with ENICS mantra...yeah I’m expecting Levy’s henchmen to tell me tonight wasnt about ENIC but tonight is the affects of a thin squad due to no ****s being given by those owning us.
By that I meant that most of were fairly happy with the players bought in but would have liked to have seen more movement in and out. Like I said the squad remains unbalanced and there were players who for one reason or another needed to be moved on and replaced who weren't. Maybe decent was a bit kind, in hindsight. It's a massive task. Whether Levy will get it done, or if Poch can motivate this group, remains to be seen. The former was always a worry and after the start to this season we've had, the second question has to be a massively pressing concern as well. In all fairness, and I was one of these people, I certainly thought the signs were there a couple of years ago. Now it seems we definitely missed the chance to take the step when this group were at their peak. I'm not blind to the difficulty of improving a squad that was at the time very good, especially when the owners won't throw money around like City, for example. But the squad has stagnated and we have regressed since then which is hard to stomach.
