Son with another offside. Dodgy VAR. Far, far too quick for a proper check. 2-1 FT. Much better second half, but very, very wasteful. The injury time was a joke, as was a lot of Villa's diving, but the first half killed it. Need to be a lot more pro-active in the first 45.
I'd love to know the situation with Kulusevski and his fitness. He's dropped off a cliff. If there's any doubts about him long-term, then we should probably pull the plug on the move. I'm hoping that he comes good next season and he's been carrying something, but he's been awful.
Better side in the 2nd half, Draw would have been about right, but why do we only play in the 2nd half of matches, I think that today confirms that Mason will not be in charge next season
According to the PL site we managed to get 9 offsides. Couldn't quite make it to double figures. Shame.
I agree Mason was completely bamboozled by Henry and his disciplined back row. To some extent he improved our methods at half time but he should have intervened in the first half IMO and changed our midfield. But what do I know!
P13 W2 D3 L8 F16 F27 Pts 9 GD-11 Our 13 away games in the prem since boxing day. In the cups we won away to Preston, lost away to Milan and to Sheffield United. That is a huge job for the next coach/manager to sort out.
I don't really think that Mason could be held accountable for the offsides. We had acres to work in and the players kept trying to take every last inch. Son should've been on for the last-ditch chance, at the very least. Kane hitting it straight at Martinez when clear through was uncharacteristically poor, too.
Could we be relegation contenders next season? Levy looks like he wants to lock himself in a pub for a week (or a season!).
If we sell Kane, we will be well down there, IMO. Possibly a season as bad, maybe worse than Chelsea.
I think if certain evil stars align, we could be. Currently the only really strong positives at the club are: 1) Harry Kane 2) Rodrigo Bentancur 3) A crop of very promising youngsters All three are precarious. Kane could well be off, and who would begrudge him? Bentancur looks extremely injury prone and sadly players often just aren't the same after doing their ACL as badly as he did, while the youngsters will require a new manager who is an excellent mentor and coach if they are to develop. That also isn't guaranteed. If those three dominoes fall, it pains me to say it but I do think we'll become a bottom half side essentially overnight. Sadly many fans are totally blind to just how paper thin the wall is between us currently and what we were before Levy took over.
I didn’t see the game as I’ve been in Budapest. I’m hanging out my arse waiting for a cab to the airport but I’d rather have this feeling than watch another Spurs game for a while.
We could certainly do worse than Chelsea this season but that isn't very likely. But given the shape of the curve of money v performance, it is more likely to be relegated than win a trophy if you are £100m a year behind the top 4 spenders, which we still are.
So this is what our entire strategy looked like yesterday, at least until Bissouma came on And that's the issue: with no Bentancur and Bissouma only coming back, we can't move the ball through the middle so we either go back to Poch's air raid tactics from 2018-19 to get it up to Kane and Son PDQ, or we go back to the ubermensch's tactics where our right wing back plays in a free role to try and make something happen - or in this case, both Seriously, Conte, thanks a bunch for believing midfields are only there to move the ball out wide... please log in to view this image
