Had enough chances to win it Today it was Dier’s turn to have a defensive brain fart that will cost us the points just **** off
If that shove was Sessegnon on TAA the referee gives a penalty as sure as day follows night, we know it and they know it. I called it during the match, the referee gave Spurs no major decisions and every 50/50 was given Pool`s way, there was several times when Pool players went to ground under no (or limited) contact and the ref blew straight away. Then we had Spurs players kicked on the edge of the box, a dangerous high boot etc and nothing was given, I also thought Kane had his legs taken and should of had a penalty, the Pool player was certainly nowhere near the ball. It was one of the most one sided displays of refereeing I have seen, and given that all the pre match talk was about how Pool can`t afford to lose, it was as if the officials decided to play to that narrative. I have lost count of the number of times we have been done over by the officials in games v Varpool, it happens in almost every game we play against them. It is clearly bias from the officials and bent as, but nothing new, it won`t be the last time Pool get a leg up from the officials.
If we had a manager that set this team up to attack I actually think we’d be in a real battle with City and Arsenal right now. That’s what’s most gutting about this season so far. There’s glaring weaknesses in squad personnel, no doubt about that and the two starting WBs today epitomise it but we’ve also got some cracking players too that are showing they’re capable of dragging us out of holes most weeks. With Kane, Son, Kulusevski, Richarlison, Perisic, Bentancur, Hojbjerg, Bissouma, Romero, Lenglet plus Hugo despite a few blips (not forgetting a few promising younger players that aren’t getting a look-in), we’ve got a nucleus of a team - even with injuries - that’s more than capable yet these bullshit tactics and persistence with players that drag us back are halting the progression of the team. Manager needs to buck his ideas up and quickly, he’s being paid a small fortune and is dishing up some utter horseshit and then often moaning about to. The fact today was considered a ‘better’ performance shows how far our expectations of what “good” is this season.
Nah, didn't happen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63536844 No mention of the penalty. Funny that.
We have the makings of a very good team and a very good system. I'm going to sound like a broken record in saying that as we all know we are a minimum 3-4 players away from having a strong enough first team to be taken seriously and to expect to beat better opposition. Dier, Sess, Emerson/Doherty all need upgrading. Perisic isn't enough of an upgrade on Sess, we all know it. And Doherty isn't enough on Royal. The difference in overall impact between those two options just isn't enough to elevate us to a significantly higher level. Conte can hardly be blamed for having 2 injured attackers and another 2 playing through considerable pain while the 5th (Kane) has been overplayed largely due to a combination of poor squad management (that one's on Conte) and Richy's injury being much worse than anticipated. I'd say Hojbjerg and Bentancur have improved massively in recent weeks, while Bissouma on today's showing looks like he is following suit. So we are seeing the effects of Conte as a coach, but sadly there are as mentioned a minimum 3 regular starters who have plainly hit their ceiling and sadly that ceiling isn't very high. Calling for a change of manager isn't going to change that. A solid transfer window will. We urgently need to invest in a RWB and CCB and if we get them right, I think our whole team starts to change. I'm hating the football as much as anyone but what we saw last season and for most second halves recently is that Conte is at least open to the idea of getting on the ball and playing the game. I just don't think he trusts the team as a whole to do it over 90mins and perhaps with the limitations we still have plus our injury crisis, maybe his paranoia is somewhat justified? Either way I'm giving him until at least the end of the season before even opening a conversation about seeking a replacement. Wins against Forest and Leeds are really important to go into the WC on a high, then a big transfer window could be transformative.
Missing in that list is a RWB. Which proves that we are lacking in that position, so you can't put the blame on the player who plays that position or manager who hasn't got someone to play that position.. Emerson comes in for too much stick. He has vastly improved on last season when he wouldn't get down the line and wouldn't even cross. At least this year he is and he is trying. Fact is he is not the one costing us games. We are scoring but making silly mistakes at the back. Dier has made more mistakes as has Hugo. I'm not saying we can't upgrade in that position, but he is not the worst. Previously fans were criticizing Aurier . It seems it is a position that our fans like to criticize whoever is playing there. It doesn't really matter that we only had 3 attempts in the first half. A game is 90 minutes, and in that time we had more shots than Liverpool did.
I don't know where to start on the comments above. We played a club which has been doing better than us for 50 years. It's starting eleven cost about three times ours, partly because it has been more successful and so has more money to spend and partly because three of our most expensive players were out injured. Nevertheless we played slightly better than them and lost because one of our players made a bad mistake and so did the referee. If we played that match 10 times I would think we would win 3 or 4, draw 4 or 5 and lose 2. I didn't think any of our players did badly overall. We were certainly improved when Kulusevski came on but that was mostly because he was better at supporting Kane than Perisic was. Perisic was no better at LWB than Sessegnon and Doherty was no better than Royal. And we have a coach who is getting more points per game than Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool despite having a squad which is clearly worse than each of those.
He’s a terrible player, he’s probably even regressed as well because he wasn’t this bad last season. Getting up the pitch does nothing when he can’t cross or pass a ball. In a system heavily reliant on good WBs we had two of the poorest in the league starting for us. Dier - despite his costly mistake - ended up doing Emerson’s job for him by getting down the right and making crosses, one even nearly resulted in an assist. We’ve regressed year on year at RWB, from Walker to Trippier to Aurier to Doherty (who was far better than Emerson when he came on) and now Emerson. Starting him and Sessegnon immediately puts Spurs at a disadvantage. The fact there are alternatives, especially at RWB, makes it the fault of the manager for persisting with stupid decisions. I haven’t mentioned anything about shots on target, I just know that the first half is a write off under these tactics and selections.
****, you lot need to relax. Never a pen you'd cry like **** if that was the other way. You deserved a point tbf and had the better of the 2nd half but end of the day you were **** in the first half and got done. Suck it up, never seen such crying.
Ban him^^^ anyway as far as I’m concerned we created plenty chances again…I saw them with my own eyes…I also saw us not taking enough…that’s a individual quality issue for me we also have individual brain farts in defensive positions in big games…I see this with my own eyes too…to me this points to nerves in big games during big moments in key positions…which once again suggests an individual quality issue for me Basically my conclusion is Luv is a C*nt
Individual mistakes are a massive, massive issue and have been for a while. It is so important when you've got multiple players out injured that you keep things tight, concentrate and at the very least make yourself hard to beat. We are absymal at this and individual errors by let's be honest the same players every single time is what costs us. Nothing to do with talent or quality by the way. I struggle to recall many glaring Davies errors in his entire career. He had a wobbly few weeks in Conte's early days but I'm saying overall, you don't see Davies and think 'brainfart'. Same for Bentancur, Kulusevski, Hojbjerg, Perisic, Skipp, Romero...it's a mentality thing I've no doubt about it. I'd wager if you were to plot on a graph the most glaring unforced errors committed by a Spurs player per game, Dier and Sanchez would be clear at the top followed by Hugo. It's those three almost every single time.
I thought Doherty's introduction today was significant, as his link up with Deki helped create the space down that flank. If - and I agree it's a bit if - he could produce at that level consistently then we would have at least a decent 2nd RWB option. Problem for him now is that there's only two more games before the WC interruption
it’s been a mentality thing for the last decade or so…my most oft used word is probably ‘minerals’ what’s your solution? mine is to get rid of the dross and to back the manager to me talent or mentality…lacking in either deems one surplus at this standard.
Klopp is like that kid in school who has no friends but everyone is scared of because he's huge and a little bit of a psycho.
It's hard to reconcile these two sentences. Conte has without question made many screw ups but above and beyond anything is the fact that we have a host of players who just aren't good enough and unfortunately it is almost inevitable that our starting line up will include 3-4 of them in the event that we have injuries. There are signs that he is slowly trying solutions. Dropping Sanchez and playing Dier out of position is the most recent one. But the bottom line is until these players are out of the club and replaced not necessarily with vastly superior options but certainly more reliable ones who are the very least don't cost goals through brainfarts and don't go through entire games without contributing anything meaningful, you simply cannot compare us to a City team with class in almost every position and a confident, settled Arsenal side who are 2 years further in to their project than we are. And on the subject of Arsenal, since their win over Liverpool a month ago they've only managed to score more than 1 goal in a game once out of seven attempts. I guarantee you all is not hunkydory there either and given comparable injuries to us they'll also start to struggle. EDIT: And it is worth mentioning that none of the glaring weaknesses in our squad were signed by Conte, so it is impossible to blame him for them.
