Scuttlebutt on Twitter is suggesting there was a fight between Lloris and Aurier at half time which is why Aurier was hooked at half time and left the stadium It would add credence to the theory if people could agree if Dier was or wasn't also involved, or that the original tweet didn't since get deleted. Just saying...
I agree an overhaul is definitely needed but Jose hasn't really shown enough intent to overhaul. Overhauling can be done with both signings or promoting youth and after 8 signings only 3 are featuring regularly whilst the youth haven't been given much of a chance. I said I thought Europa would've been perfect for the likes of White and Clarke especially to have gotten significant minutes but they barely played. Tanganga's had injuries but hauling him off at HT against Wycombe ain't gonna help him get in a rhythm, same applies to Vinicius in that sense. There seems little intent to actually change much. He still persists with **** like Dier every single league game, whilst Winks, Lamela etc still find their way onto the pitch way more than they should. Things just aren't making sense to me. I'm not seeing any clear direction, just the same useless stuff that won't get us anywhere.
The fact we're back to playing What Formation Are We Using? is also a serious issue, as is the fact players get switched around at random intervals, so there's never going to be much stability because one week Bergwijn could be playing on the right of a 4231, the next on the left of a 343, to the point that Kane and Lloris are the only players who can accurately predict where they'll be playing every week Our defensive approach is rapidly becoming irritating, too. There's no denying that our backline is ropey, but there's two choices a team can make: either sit back and hope they cut out the brainfarts, or play on the front foot so the opponents are dealing with our players instead of trying to exploit ours. And guess which one we persist with, even though Dier and Aurier are determined to prove that it isn't working? Yes, playing on the front foot would potentially leave our backline exposed, but guess what? Sitting back leaves them exposed, and it leaves them exposed for a much longer period of time given the lack of midfield cover they regularly have to deal with This is basic stuff, basic stuff we were getting wrong with Gerry Francis, and we've somehow rotated back to that while also nullifying our forward play like we did under Santini
I don't think that's what happened, at all. We set up to hit them on the counter and it was working fairly well, until Kane got his second ankle injury. He was completely out of the game after that point and should've been immediately replaced by Vinicius, as I said at the time. We tried to get to half-time with what basically amounted to 10 men and it didn't work. Then Mourinho **** the bed at half-time and completely ****ed up the subs.
Funny how there was no replay of this at the time. Also didn't see much analysis of whether the Liverpool goal was offside - it probably wasn't but it would be nice to have a semblance of balance and equal assessment. As for the positioning of lines to show someone's heel is offside, I'd love to know how much the movement of a heel equates to in real time, and that amount of time is greater than the error built into the the system (which I'm sure they'll have but won't admit or tell anyone). Moreover of course, isn't it subjective where they measure the line from anyway, because someone has to decide that was the instant that the ball was played - and again that must have some kind of error built into it based on human judgment and the fact that the pictures are not continuous (as far as I know) and must presumably be subject to frame rate. Basically I'm saying that the system is presented as scientific and 100% accurate when it's anything but that - so Son could easily have been onside.
when you have wing backs by default you are setup on front foot dynamics not defensive...regardless of the number of ‘defenders’ in the team. I think the players **** the bed and started feeling sorry for themselves when something didn’t go their way. Like I said...repetitive patterns under more than one manager. eradicate individual brain farts and we probably win that game aswell it’s easy for us to say Kane should have been replaced straight away but I guess if you’re the manager with your head on the block you’re going to give your best player all the time possible to see if he can continue.
Three centre-halves is defensive. The players selected also made no sense. Davies should've been left-back, we should've picked another centre-back, probably Alderweireld and Doherty should've started at right-back. Picking Aurier in a back five, then subbing him off and putting Doherty in a back four? Why? They're both proven in the other system. The half-time double substitution was unnecessary and he picked the wrong players, too. We needed a focal point for our attacks to replace Kane, but he nullified Son by pushing him up there, instead. We lost both of our major goal threats, weakened the defence and muddled the midfield.
Ah, but we did answer the question "Who would win in a fight between Hugo Lloris and Serge Aurier?", so there's that...
please log in to view this image Leaving it down to Jonathan Moss is probably a mistake. The complete absence of replays of the Alisson handball and VAR going missing suggests to me that they didn't care. Both the officials and BT were happy to gloss over it.
I don't think it's hard to get. True, I hold Poch accountable for certain signings being failures either in totality (Sanchez, Janssen etc.) or relative to what was expected of them (Tanguy, Gio, Sess, Trippier etc.). There were also persistent rumours that he became too fussy in the market, turning down players bc they didn't fit his exact criteria. But then there is also no escaping the fact that other signings were almost 100% not his own (Sissoko, Lucas and Aurier), and have gone on to play far too many games for the club simply bc we have no alternatives. It is difficult to blame Poch for that. There is also no escaping the fact that it has taken far too long to shift deadwood. What was remarkable about Poch's first few windows is that in addition to making smart signings, we binned a hell of a lot of dross - often at a loss. It is difficult to blame him for the fact that it took so long to move on the likes of Wanyama, Nkoudou, Janssen etc., especially as it is an issue that seems to have persisted a year into the Jose reign. There is also no escaping how Poch spoke after the 16/17 season of the need to strengthen - a need that wasn't met. There is also no escaping how he knew before we played the CL final that chapter 2 would be a long and painful rebuild. We all knew it too. We gave him one window and 3 months of football to complete it in before sacking him in the dead of night. We then apparently entrusted the rebuild to the hands of a manager pointedly ignored by Real, Barca, Juve, Inter, Bayern, Dortmund and PSG - a manager who had failed in rebuilding to PL clubs with vastly greater pull and resources than our own. Jose was a vanity signing. And we became his vanity project - a chance to prove his many doubters wrong and show that his ancient methods of success could still work with a smaller club even in 2021. Most of the above is on Levy, plain and simple. The vast majority of his footballing decisions have been utterly shocking. 3 successful managers in over 2 decades is pathetic. 1 trophy in the same time is embarrassing. You choose to look at a narrow era of 'Poch's Babies' and blame them for lacking the cajones. I choose to take a broader view and look back at 20 years under ENIC...either every single squad in that time had exactly the same issue, or - as is more logical - you need to look at the one common thread that has been a constant present throughout this Era of Bottling....Daniel Levy.
Don't be daft. I'm not saying it meets aspirations. But it's very hard to make a club more successful and progress will sometimes be slow and we will sometimes regress. That's how the world works.
As I said at the time, the ubermensch was pretty much the only manager we could bring in at zero notice after sacking Poch that would have prevented a full-scale riot in our fanbase, because that meant there would be enough people saying "winner's mentality" and "history of success" to assuage the baying hordes that wouldn't have happened if, say, Eddie Howe was unveiled as our new manager This is why the theory was doing the rounds at the time that the actual plan was to have Joao Sacramento as our long-term manager, but since saying "Here's our new manager, Lille's AssMan" would've gone over like a Trump rally on Martin Luther King Day, we needed a buffer between the pitch and the boardroom in the short term. The problem is the buffer's not as resilient as we thought it would be, to the point where we're now a grab bag of tropes associated with so many of our worst managers (having six players in our half at all times of Santini, inability to understand what a DM is of Francis and Sherwood, apparent removal of these things known as "tactics" of Ramos, resistance to the idea of attacking once we're 1-0 up of AVB), but not all at once, we pick two or three of the list for each game and see how long before the fans notice, which is the equivalent of dropping a box of Quality Street that contains nothing but strawberry cremes into my cat's litter tray
im on a Not606 gaggin order till the summer with regards Levy, that was the deal but we know where all roads lead
Why the hell would we want Sacramento as manager?! I'm asking bc you keep going on about it like its some sort of genius idea.
I get that. But in as much as we are all in agreement that players and managers have their 'ceiling', I think it's pretty clear that ENIC have hit theirs. I am grateful for the way they have grown the club into a world force, but we now have a stadium and facilities that don't come close to being justified by the circus act using it. Nor do we have the wage or transfer structure to fix that circus. That is what worries me most about Kane/Son leaving. True, we'll get a fortune in compensation, but lack the wage ceiling or pull of ambition to make that money count. No trophies, no CL football and the lowest wages in the top 6...we'd be back to the days of Carrick and Berbatov using us as a stepping stone to bigger clubs.
