Bale hasn’t had a pre season...he just needs to get up to speed. Dele needs a brain transplant anyway not going to be downbeat...I expect Jose to learn a lot from this. The defeat doesn’t harm us too much in the grand scheme of things
Inverted wingers has never, ever worked whenever and whoever tries to implement it Villas Boas insisted on it, to the point where rotating the team meant different wingers on the wrong flank every time, and the extra touch every single winger needed to take slowed our attacking play down The Honest & Humble Saint Harris of Redknapp tried it, and he nullified Gareth Bale better than most opposition defences did as a result And now the ubermensch is doing it, both tonight and against Burnley, and there's no reason for it
Yeah I know and I’m not overly bothered but it’s just typical Spurs when you really think this could be building to something special they like to give us a reminder who we support and why we should never get carried away!
Disagree...they should have had 3 tonight. Burnley’s only good chance was the header cleared by Kane. Today we were sloppy all over the pitch. Davies made the killer mistake but **** happens...but there is little to no excuse for the constant stream of poor passes and most players losing their individual one on one battles. Dele looks finished to me...that was as poor a performance he has had in a spurs shirt, and there have been a fair few to chose from. Bale looked very very short of match fitness as did Lo Celso. Bergwijn looked desperate to impress but failed miserably...likewise with Moura. You could go through the whole team in a similar manner tbh but it would be pointless. Jose needs to correct today's mistakes as do the players but it's too early to panic
Bergwijn's drop in form this season has been perplexing Last season he looked made for the team as soon as he arrived (right down to being in the treatment room within a few weeks...) but this season he looks a shadow of the player he was little more than six months ago
I am amazed at the level of sheer pigheadedness that is on display at Spurs these days. Arguably the best creative player, at present, at the club, seemingly not worthy of a game here tonight. And of course we loose. I seem to remember a similar pattern of events happening at Man Utd., where another naturally talented and supremely gifted young player was isolated to the point of no return. Come on Jose, you really don't have anything to proof these days., so why not let these guys play football.
Burnley were still creating chances, with a better striker of the ball they could’ve properly tested Lloris with those long range efforts. Burnley have only scored three league goals this season and people were saying we were good defensively, we weren’t, we were par for the course against a dogshit attack but because we won the game through Kane’s brilliance some tried finding some false positives to paper over the cracks of a turd performance. In both games we’ve done little with possession and struggled to break down defences. With the riches we have in attack - and midfield - that’s not good enough. Leaving Ndombele at home was dumb. One of Lo Celso and Ndombele need to be on the pitch at all times (ideally both) so if you’re planning to take Lo Celso off at HT Ndombele needed to have been there to replace him, otherwise Lo Celso should’ve stayed on. The subs again didn’t make much sense. Against Burnley we needed more creativity and firepower. Just as we did today. Yet at HT we took off a striker for a winger and a creative player for a DM. We approached this game with a “turn up and win” attitude and got what we deserved. Manager and players need to fix themselves. It’s not even really about panicking, it’s just being annoyed that we’re failing to rectify mistakes along with the fact of losing a game against a team we should be able to beat.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a confidence issue. He came in on fire and was looking great, scored in his first three home games IIRC then got an injury right before covid but was fine by the restart. Scored in the first game back from Covid against Utd but then dropped for no real apparent reason for Lucas and his situation hasn’t really changed. This love-in Jose has with Lucas confuses me, treats him as if he’s the third component in the Son and Kane show when he’s just a backing dancer at best.
This goes back to what I said after Burnley: because our midfielders are good for one thing and one thing only, and that's been the case for far too long, if we have a scenario like tonight where Lo Celso is lacking fitness while Ndombele was rested our creativity drops to 0 The obvious question is who would actually remedy this issue? While I can see an argument that Hojbjerg combines breaking up play and retaining the ball, we need a player capable of breaking up play and then splitting the defence with a single pass, but who fits that criteria who we have a realistic chance of signing?
LASK beat Ludogorets 4-3 in the other game in the group, if anyone was wondering. Went 4-1 up, then got pegged back to 4-2, had a man sent off and gave away a penalty for 4-3, but they hung on for the last 20 minutes. Sounds a lot more exciting than our match, to be fair.
Trying to find some Halloween snacks on the 29th October when supermarkets are going all-in on Christmas already is more exciting than our match And about as grating to experience
Tottenham boss Jose Mourinho, speaking to the club's in-house media: "We can only blame ourselves and we can only praise the opponents. I prefer to praise the opponents because they played a magnificent game and not to blame ourselves because we played an awful game. "But I have to do both at the same time. Praise them because they were playing at the maximum of their level and we have to blame ourselves because we were poor. "The performance was poor and the result is poor. Somebody to blame? Blame me because I am the boss and it is my responsibility who plays and I am the one to blame. "But I have to admit that the game confirmed to me a few things, opened other question marks and will help me in the future with my decisions. I'm also learning every day." On Sunday's home game with Brighton: "Brighton is much better than Antwerp. There is no comparison. "I hope my players feel hurt by this defeat and that they analyse themselves and get the points against Brighton which is a much more difficult match than this one."
