Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal

But apart from that....,

 

MARK CLATTENBURG: Tottenham were given a soft penalty but Arsenal defender Rob Holding had to go | Daily Mail Online

Sums up Clattenburg - Technically correct decision but he wouldn't have given it - No because you made up your own rules!

 

You started the season with three forward players who cost £200m between them. You are ending it with Nketiah preferred to all three of them. Surely a decent manager could have got at least one of Lacazette, Pepe and Aubamayang to do something good.

 

The picture from the article shows why he's wrong:

please log in to view this image

Soares literally turns away from the ball to barge into Son and makes no attempt to get it at all.
Clattenburg's a ****ing clown.

As for Holding:

People watched these images and question that sending off?!

 

Daily Mail readers are absolute morons anyway so it makes sense

 

Well I can say for a fact that what Keown is paid for his opinions is significantly more than he declares on his tax forms...

 

Exhibit A.

"As for Holding: ... People watched these images and question that sending off?!"

Exhibit B.


I'll leave it to the commentators ...

On exhibit A, Gary Neville said he could see what the defender
was trying to do (and that himself had done similar in his time) ,
but the contact was too early.

On exhibit B, the commentator says it all.
The first yellow card : the ref "ran out of patience" , thus
meaning that elbowing was going to be a second yellow.

 

Son usually plays on that side of the pitch.
Holding was their CB on that side of the pitch.

I suspect that at some point in the game, their paths were going to cross ...

 

Although I agree principally, none of those players were his signings. They might be big names, but it doesn’t mean they’re the right calibre of players for what we need.

The only major question mark I have with Arteta is the way he handled the Aubameyang situation. And even then, reports are indicating that Aubameyang wasn’t taking his role as captain seriously, other players had to fill his role at high-level meetings and he wasn’t training properly, either.

I’m far from an Arteta apologist, but I’m not going to blame him for everything that goes wrong.

 

Will get further than united will

 

Listening to Talksport earlier (I can say that rather than Talkshite as it was Hawksbee and Jacobs and that's one of the good programmes). They had Halsey on discussing the decisions. He said that he could see why the penalty was given, but if it wasn't given VAR probably wouldn't have intervened, which I think we all can see. He most certainly did not say it wasn't a penalty! He thought the second yellow for Holding might have been a straight red. On the Son "elbow" he said there wasn't much in it, and either the ref gives a yellow to both players or to neither of them. He was also quite scathing about Arteta's comments. So quite conclusive there I think!

For those just thinking "referees union" he was less than complimentary about the was Moss reffed the Villa / Pool game.

 

As much as I hate the lot of you right now, particularly the insufferable Spurs fans I know IRL, this did make me chuckle and it was quite funny. Fair play for the creativity and rhythm:



You’re still ****s though.

 

I seem to be in a minority of one on this but coaching is about making people perform better, not making wholesale changes to the team. Nketiah is a very limited and inexperienced player. Lacazette and Pepe ought to be much better choices.

 

Again, you need to contextualise this more.

Lacazette has been at the club for 5 years, signed by Wenger, and has had 1 good season in that time frame. He’s been a bad signing for us. We wanted to get rid of him two seasons ago, but his wages were too high and there wasn’t enough demand. Not much we could do.

Pepe was signed by Raul Sanllehi in a very dodgy deal which, it is believed, got him sacked by the club a couple years ago. He wasn’t fully trusted under Emery and wasn’t fully trusted under Arteta, either. Again, big wages and big transfer fee which we’ll be lucky to get half of that money back (in a best case scenario). We tried to make it work for him and it just hasn’t happened.

At what point do you have to accept the player isn’t suitable for the manager’s needs?

 

Norwich yes but Burnley no. You need good CBs to win aerial duels against Burnley.

 

If they are really no better than Nketiah they need to be sold or loaned out for whatever you can get!

 

Have you seen Burnley’s record against Spurs away? It would take something miraculous for them to get a result.

I fully expect Spurs to get maximum points from their remaining games.

 

When he buys into the project he's one of the most lovable coaches you could ever have, but when it goes sour it's the opposite. As far as the fixtures are concerned both managers have every right to be annoyed. There is no reason whatsover why Arsenal should be made to go up to Newcastle on a Monday night, nor should Burnley have to be arriving at Tottenham for 10am on a Sunday.

 

Burnley will stay overnight on Saturday. I could probably tell you the hotel...

 

Before last night I expected Tottenham to win their last 3 games and I stand by it but it won't be as simple as it looks on paper (it never is). Burnley are going to be fresher and desperate (unlike any other time they've been to Tottenham). THFC fans will be on the coffee instead of booze - it's not going to be the sort of atmosphere like last night.