Son and Kane have been extremely lethal in front of goal this season, so I'd expect the stats to reflect that, but those figures aren't correct.
We've scored 30 goals and we had 6 shots on target against Fulham. That's nearly 38 already.
Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Fulham
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We've scored 30 goals and we had 6 shots on target against Fulham. That's nearly 38 already.
It suggests that we have two of the best attackers in the PL and reinforces the view that we should play to our strengths.
OR we need to improve our shot taking, either way we have dropped points we should have taken and we do it playing negative football. We don't have the best defenders in the PL so why play to a defensive game. Let's play Fulham who are struggling in the relegation zone and play Sissoko in attack, let's not allow Aurier to play to his strength and keep him in his own half, let's leave the attacking potential of Bale and Dele to rot on the bench. Slowly our potential in the league is eroded and all this with football that is boring and frustrating, on this route we might as well save money and employ AVB to play the same way.
That’s what I read
The point is we must be attacking to be creating.
park the bus teams...which is usually teams at the bottom don’t have that many goal scoring chances. They hope for a smash and grab...that’s not the feeling I get when I watch Spurs. I see a clear strategy but I see too many individuals on the pitch with limits and before long the limits catch up. That’s why we start well then so many fall into that same mental slumber they had under Poch as the game wears on with different pressures presenting themselves.
It’s the players mentality for me more than the tactics. You might not like the tactic but it’s a working tactic in which Spurs create lots and lots of chances...right up there with free flowing City for creating chances
Here are the Premier League stats:
Shots on target: https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/ontarget_scoring_att
Shots in total: https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_scoring_att
We're 7th in shots on target and 12th on total shots, which sounds about right.
We're counter-attacking in most games and a lot of the chances that we create are when we break and there's not a lot of defenders.
Son's scored a lot when he's one-on-one with the keeper.
We also lead the league on hitting the woodwork with 10, which suggests we've been a little unfortunate in that regard.
I still rate Toby far higher than I do Dier. Yes, he is just as slow and has a big mistake per match in him, but for his experience and passing ability alone I'd have him in there ahead of potato head. Toby mentoring Rodon for a string of games isn't a bad shout. Will never happen though.
His passing is the only thing that acts as a small saving grace for him. Defensively he’s no better than the other two. All three of our senior CBs are horrendously bad from a defensive standpoint... which is pretty worrying considering defending is kind of what they're meant to be good at.
To be fair, under Santini, I think we were on course for 38 shots on target over a season...
Both Bale and Dele are showing the same form they have shown in the last 2 years, that is not much...if we can see it then so can the manager.
We’re playing the same way we played against City, Arsenal,United just not taking our chances and we all enjoyed them games.
im not saying this is the ‘best football’ to play but we need to humble ourselves a bit instead of always talking about some Tottenham way of playing that has delivered us 1 league in 60 years, 1 Fa cup in 30 years and 1 European trophy in forever...whatever this Tottenham way is, it’s failed in the long run.
I wanted to try something different at Spurs and that different is one of the most successful managers in world football bringing his philosophy to our club. I’m not bothered about watching 90 minutes of glorious passing it about. In a game there are enough great moments to enjoy anyway. I can name a load in our last game where glory beckoned but the players failed.
plus I know a lot of Spurs fans don’t like Jose...that has been demonstrated throughout and that seriously blinkers opinion with our current regime. The same people who wanted to give Poch a 6/7th year to try to fix the weak mentalities and to get us glory want Jose out midway through his first full season. Some extreme bias there I’m avoiding when evaluating what’s happening.
one common denominator amongst two great coaches our club has had recently is the players...it’s not to be under estimated. You know since we hit top spot what our results have been like? Weak mentalities and that includes our best players...regardless of individual output on the pitch, the collective doesn’t have the right spirit. Only Jose has plus a few players but a few aren’t enough in a big squad and changing that is paramount for us if we are to hit it big and I see no man other than Jose to change that...any other manager with that capability is out of our reach.
so win all that in mind...I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Levy will have to carry on doing his job and backing him.
We sat back against City and Arsenal and it worked, but those are the right tactics against some of the better teams, so City makes sense.
We conceded almost immediately against Utd and then went after them almost 100% for the rest of the first half.
We absolutely blew them to bits. They couldn't handle it and fell to pieces. Why would ****ter teams be any different?
Horses for courses. The right tactics against the right opposition.
Playing on the counter suits us sometimes and doesn't at others. We need to make the selection more sensibly.
How can Bale and Dele show any kind of form when they are never on the pitch? In the limited time they have had on the pitch, both have contributed positively. They don`t get picked because they are not as good as others at tracking back and defending, anything else they might do is immaterial when defending is the number one priority. Both Dele and Bale should be used more, Mourinho has gone ultra defensive and it is not working, he needs to find a better balance between defense and attack.
I definitely agree there’s been a bias against Jose and that’s why people have wanted him gone the moment he joined but it has to be said he’s not doing himself any favours of late either.
I don’t actually think we are playing the same way as Arsenal/ City etc. I think we’ve become too defensive to the point where our counter attacks are more rare and they also seem to lack the potency. We’re chasing far too much of the game now and that’s evidently taking its toll on the players because once the opposition inevitably gets their goal, when we then decide to attack again our players don’t have the legs to make things happen. We also shouldn’t really be looking to actually play a counter attacking style against sides like Fulham, Palace etc too . These are massively inferior teams to us and we should be on the front foot for 90% of the match and only counter/ be defensive once a strong lead is secured and we can comfortably see the game out. Our selection against Fulham was one of the poorest we could’ve chosen in a league home game against a side favoured for relegation and that is 100% on Jose. If we’re talking about having a strong and elite mentality then picking a ridiculous defensive selection with a lack of creativity is an awful mentality to have.
I also don’t think we can look at Levy and expect him to do much more or better. Jose’s had 8 of his own players already in just over 14 or so months, that’s a pretty hefty turnover. A couple have been major successes (Hojbjerg and Reggie), others have so far been flops (Gedson, Bale, Doherty and Hart) and others have either been so-so or massively under utilised (Vini and Bergwijn). Unless we ship a bunch out to then replace, Jose will likely have to make do with what we’ve got and whilst there’s some obvious flaws and dross in personnel, we’ve also got enough quality in the team to be burying sides like Fulham, Palace and co and not dropping silly points.
So why have we only conceded 4 goals from open play in the PL? That's astonishingly good defending.
Do you really not know why? If you play with ten men behind the ball for most of the game you massively reduce the risk of conceding. The fact we're still conceding despite doing this shows why our defenders are so bad.
It's why bottom half teams do just that against the top sides in the hope of snatching a 0-0 draw or a goal against the run of play - often from a set piece!
Imagine a very slightly different world.....the ref doesn't give the free kick when the Newcastle player runs into Hojbjerg so we hang on for 1-0. Bale scores the 4th against West Ham or Lanzini smashes his shot high and wide. The ref gives a foul for the challenge on Dier before Liverpool's goal. Son scores when through against Fulham. To make up for that lot, Son misses one against Southampton and Man U, Kane misses against Arsenal, and Leeds get an unwarranted penalty.
That gives us 7 more points and we are top of the table, 6 points ahead of Liverpool who are now 6th.
Would people still be on here complaining that half our team is crap and the manager's tactics are ridiculous?
That gives us 7 more points and we are top of the table, 6 points ahead of Liverpool who are now 6th.
Would people still be on here complaining that half our team is crap and the manager's tactics are ridiculous?
But we've scored 30 goals as well. Teams with bad defenders can't score twice as many goals as they concede. It really isn't possible.
Individual errors and moments of brilliance can mask or obscure trends and patterns that are clear to the eye in games though. Sometimes a player scores a world class goal or a keeper makes a stunning save that wins a game that a team hasn’t played well in.
Part of being a successful football team is having top players who can do that. We have three such match winners in Lloris, Kane and Son, all of whom are reasonably regularly capable of moments of individual brilliance that can bail a team out of trouble.
Case in point would be Bale’s last season with us before his move. We largely played sub par football but Bale was so good that we picked up points from his sheer class. That isn’t sustainable though.
The most successful teams are coached to attack and defend coherently and know when to place the emphasis on each. We currently lean far too much towards defence and caution when we shouldn’t and our attacking structure is non-existent outside of counter attacking in broken play, when you’d expect players to work off the cuff anyway. That’s currently my big issue with Jose’s management.
A successful footballing system is one that minimises exposure to errors from your own team and minimises the fallout from spectacular moments from the opposition. The trouble is that we have so many dodgy defenders and no balance in midfield, so we can’t properly compensate for individual errors at the back using team selection and setup, and going forwards if we’re dominating possession we don’t seem to have a plan.
OK - so I'm difficult to please. In a nutshell, the current defensive mindset of the management team is acceptable - short-term - only if it brings victories and therefore trophies. Of course, I don't anticipate that we shall win every game. That would be an extremely rare occurrence. But if we start to develop a pattern as now where we lose games and regard draws as acceptable, then I want to get off this bus, please. I'm not calling for JM to be sacked. But I am expressing a heartfelt wish that he would see what most of us see: that his approach isn't working. And when that defensive mindset doesn't bring 90% victories - its only potential justiification -, the result is truly awful to watch! What is more, it's clear why it's not working: the squad we have gathered together is not best suited to playing a game of scoring early and then defending a one-goal lead for anything between 55 and 85 minutes. Nor is the defence capable of carrying out that strategy on a regular basis. I shan't stop supporting Spurs if this goes on. But I shall do so with a lot less enthusiasm and joy. The second half against Fulham was awful. I could not detect any plan that was supposed to lead to our scoring. And, in particular, playing Sissoko as a right-sided attacker was akin to playing Son as a full-back in a cup semi-final. Simply daft.