I don’t think anyone would be doing that just like no one would buy a player off the back of 1 great game. However, for every game these players play, it confirms the red flags anyone who knows anything about football will have picked up about these players attitudes and abilities over a large period of time.
In the case of most on here it is confirmation bias. I suffer from it too...I thought Højbjerg was our worst player yesterday by some distance.
Many of these debates will make more sense at the end of this week, when it will become clear where we are in terms of squad. Ange has made it clear what I thought at the beginning of the game. He want's to see more of the squad playing in a competitive match. It needs to be taken into account that Ange is new to the PL and new to Spurs, his experience as we all know has come in very different leagues. It's all very well saying why change the team when it works, yes it does but if players are injured it would have to be changed anyway. You could argue that if he had played Bissouma and Madison and added one of Hojbjerg or Skipp then our midfield would have been better, yes it would but you would learn little about the added players because they would probably be carried by the the two who have played in the previous 3 games. You can always argue about these things, that's what we do, but when the manager has only just arrived and we are literally days away from the end of the transfer window there are too many factors and unknowns for the forthright opinions being expressed. It doesn't take long for Spurs fans to expect what we have enjoyed in the first 3 games and lose sight of how early in the development of this manager's team this is.
Well said. Ange is and was well within his rights to experiment. I personally feel he went a bit too far (as I said, I wouldn't have changed the FBs as he's seen plenty of Davies in pre-season and Royal played against Brentford), but it's clear that he isn't yet settled on which players he can trust moving forward, and which need to be moved on. Some it seems he does have clarity, like Ndombele and Dier. Others? Far less obvious. GLC is a good example of this. Ange was full of positive comments about him over the summer and how he wanted to utilise him, but then when push came to shove he sees he had a terrible game. That may have given him the clarity he was previously lacking. Hojbjerg similar. Here is a player who could leave before the end of the window, but does the manager want to lose him? Perhaps last night answered that question. The timing of it was nasty and I personally don't think any cup competitions should start until after the window has closed (neither should the PL to be perfectly honest, but that envelope is definitely too big to push), simply because it opens the very real risk of players being cup-tied having featured in just one or two rounds! But the defeat will only be the disaster many are painting it as, if the lessons aren't learned and clarity isn't gained. I'm as hungry for a trophy as any Spurs fan but right now this is a very long marathon, not a sprint. We have 4 years of insanity to unravel.
These early rounds always bring out the same situation on whether to rotate. For a start we were unfortunate that there were only a handful of southern prem clubs in the draw and we managed to get drawn away to one of them! On Ange’s hand, yes he needs to look at other players but on a spurs supporters hands we get burnt by this most seasons so seeing our new hope after such a positive start make the same mistakes as the last few managers then it of course brings out the negativity. Ange has given his reasons though and I’m sure he did actually learn quite a bit. With the optimism around him at the moment, this will be forgotten about pretty quickly and fingers crossed he’ll get plenty of chances to win trophies with us for a long time to come yet.
Our pre-season schedule was poor and the actual events were even worse. We needed more games against decent opponents and less travel. This is where Postecoglou could've learned more about our squad. He should not be doing it in a cup game, away against a Premier League side.
I hate being out of the cup but you just have to hope that lessons are learned by Ange about the players he can rely on and the changes he can make at any one time. We now have nothing but PL games until January and we have to maximise the advantage we will have over the teams around us who will have distractions. Ange will have plenty of time on the training ground and hopefully a couple more signings to bed in, along with Bentancur coming back to add more quality and depth to the midfield. Injuries permitting we will be able to play a reasonably settled team for the foreseeable that should improve on the promising early showing we’ve seen. I want to go all out for the FA Cup though. That would mean a huge amount.
Indeed, some frustrations being exhibited already but this has been building up for some years. No point getting on the manager’s back yet as others have alluded to, he needs to see what works and what doesn’t. And to be frank, I would rather he does this in games such as last night rather than the PL.
These pre-seasons are basically commercial ventures which the manager has to try to use to his advantage. If this was with a manager who had been at Spurs for some seasons then it would not matter so much. I don't know if this was arranged because Ange was Australian who had worked in the J league or whether that was just a happy coincidence. Remember when we went to South Korea clearly to capitalise on Son. In amongst all this glad handing the manager has to try to get to know his players. These matters are always not just black and white.
It would have been somewhat better if Leicester wasn't rained off and Roma didn't nope out of our fixture
Well said to both you and Spurf, and I do agree. I just wonder whether we really needed to make as many changes as we did. It’s so upsetting to the momentum and playing style. Could we not have done it over a couple of games, whilst still keeping the spine of the team strong? That way we would also have got to see some of the fringe players interacting on the pitch with some of the favourites. Perhaps their performances would have been better, and maybe that could be seen as a true reflection of how they can fit in, rather than just dumping all the misfits together whilst it’s definitely a marathon, and I certainly have no expectations for the season, I’m just disappointed that we crashed out to Fulham without putting up much of a fight, and we’re out of a cup already. If we’d made it a few more rounds… fair enough. But it’s August ffs.
Bad decision making across the board by the manager on this one. The minimum cost is up to 4 competitive games gone in this half of the season for the squad.
If we can’t go full strength or near it 3 games into the season then we got no chance when it comes to the FA cup 3rd round in January our only hope is we get a mega **** team about 5 divisions below us, at home or these ****wits will flop guaranteed its our only hope of silverware….you know…the actual aim of the game so we should be going all out instead of busting our balls to qualify for a tournament we don’t have a cats chance in hell of winning. I’m still a bit old skool and I’m struggling to count shiny stadiums and bank balances as trophies and success
Definitely agree, I still can’t even understand the logic of changing almost a whole XI. What is it actually going to show or prove? What is he hoping to find out or understand? Unless the club gets a horrific amount of injuries in a short spell, we’ll never actually need to rely on making such changes and playing an XI like that on a regular basis. There’s zero logic or reasoning behind it for me, just a huge mistake on the manager’s part and it’s a shame after the massively bright start he’d made. He basically threw that game, less than 24 hours after saying “I wanna win”. Still so massively disappointed at what we saw and now in a season with no European football either, there really isn’t too much to potentially look forward to. We obviously won’t win the league and the FA Cup is far harder to win. Not being in Europe gave us a great chance of really going all out for a cup yet we’ve fallen at the first hurdle on one of them by playing a B team away against a Premier League side.
We have got 36 games left to play guaranteed that’s **** all we should be dealing with this seasons fixtures in a better manner than displayed as soon as we had 1 midweek game the club and its culture is all consuming it seems
Actually the League Cup involves 7 games for us to win it and the FA Cup only 6. The other points are true in theory but in practice the League Cup seems to be won by better teams.
I probably should’ve worded it better in that there’s more FA Cup games in general, not necessarily for us. That’s because everyone wants to win the FA Cup, to the point you’ll likely see more giant killings and a good run to the final for a lesser favoured Prem team. It’s why it’s harder to win, teams want it more. The League Cup would’ve been a potentially great chance for us to add some silverware if we took it seriously… we didn’t… and got our just rewards for it.
