There's a very realistic possibility that I'll have to watch Mourinho lift a trophy with Spurs, while I'm watching my own team battle it out with West Brom and Fulham to stay in the division. Already has the makings of a horrific season. It's not quite 'Lucas Moura last-minute winner at Ajax' level of vomit-inducing, but not too far off...
Imagine what I felt like at 15 years old when Arsenal who had been mid table while Spurs won six trophies suddenly won the double.
I can't imagine that because I'm 25, so any success Spurs have had in my lifetime has been minimal Jokes aside, I'm not that bothered about the prospect of you winning the League Cup per se, it's more the man that could drive you to it. Mourinho is an odious, obnoxious person and I've hated him since he essentially stopped us being the top dogs in London. However, you just know that if he does win it, he will hold it over you forever and, any time he is 'under pressure' or being castigated, he will remind everyone that he was the first manager to win a trophy for Spurs in 12 years. I find him thoroughly dislikable and, well, I'm not exactly fond of Spurs, either. So putting those things together, and potentially seeing a smidge of success as the output, is horrid to contemplate.
Jose Mourinho accused Dele Alli of "creating problems for his own team" in Tottenham's 3-1 Carabao Cup quarter-final win over Stoke City. Alli, making his first start since 26 November, gave the ball away from which Stoke went on to score. "A player in that position is a player that has to link and create and not to create problems for his own team," said Mourinho. Alli was substituted soon after Stoke equalised. Speaking about Stoke's equaliser, Mourinho said: "In that situation, an objective counter-attack would probably end with a goal, and it ended with a counter-attack behind our defenders. "We were unbalanced because when you are in possession you have full-backs out wide and another midfielder in a different line and they caught us in a counter-attack and they transformed the result of the game that was totally in our hands, so yes I am upset."
That's total nonsense. Players he likes do similar things all the time and still get picked. It's pure prejudice.
To me it felt like Dele was the one man Jose had hopes for when he joined us...we all saw it, he gave him the opportunity to shine and weirdly enough he did for the first 3 games...after that we all saw his decline too. He has to play like Jose expects not like he wants...we aren’t going to turn on the manager because of Dele...we are not United
Reality is Dele showed why he isn't getting picked. Is he solely to blame for the goal? No, he, Dier, Doherty and Lloris can all share that but that performance is similar to what he'd been putting in for the 18+ months prior to Jose's arrival and barring the first bunch of games when Jose arrived, it's what he's been doing in the games during Jose's arrival too. There's just nothing too him these days, he doesn't bring anything special or unique to the table any more and is often a passenger. We don't need nor want passengers. Must be so frustrating for Vinicius too, three goals and three assists in five Europa games and generally looked decent, yet he's left watching guys like Dele, Lucas etc getting more chances whilst he's left twiddling his thumbs on the bench.
That's the final nail in the coffin as far as Dele is concerned. He had a couple of good seasons when he joined but it has been downhill the past few years.
I agree it must be frustrating for him but that felt like a tight game and I'm not sure Vinigoal would have buried the chance Kane did to kill the match. Ultimately its fine margins, like hitting the post or not vs Liverpool, or any other example from recent games. Matches swing on momentum from individual moments and you need players of quality in those moments. I think Vinicius will be a success with us and I'm glad he's here but there's only one man I want taking the chance for the 3rd goal to kill the game and that's Kane.
I don’t really look at it like that tbh. He wouldn’t take up the exact same positions as Kane so he may have had 3 or 4 different chances or none at all - but we’ll never know if he doesn’t get the chances. There’s also no reason he can’t play with Kane too. He could’ve easily replaced Dele and either played up top with Kane or Kane could’ve dropped into the ten. I don’t know if he’ll be a success or not. He’s been a success on the basis of what he’s done but for one reason or another Jose isn’t playing him - and to be honest, I really don’t understand why.
Well I mean he's been a success at what we've asked of him so far, which is to play in games when Kane hasn't - I just wish that we'd seen some more of him. Like you say, 3 goals and 3 assists in 5 EL games is no bad return. TBF you're right and there's a bit of 'what if?' here, I think he's broadly a similar player to Kane in so far as he can score but also bring others into play which is why I'm reasonably happy to equate their styles. They can definitely play together though and I'd like to see that sometimes. I think Jose places a lot of importance on the League Cup as a first trophy to win at a club, so with that in mind I can see why he went strong with Kane starting and Sonny coming on, especially with some games coming up where you might expect to see more fringe players getting time.
