1 PAOK Salonika 5 3 2 0 9 5 4 11 2 Rubin Kazan 5 3 1 1 10 4 6 10 3 Tottenham 5 2 1 2 5 4 1 7 4 Shamrock Rovers 5 0 0 5 4 15 -11 0 Very poor reading indeed, highlighting a couple of questions. 1.Are we not quite as good as we think we are. 2.Has Harry got his wish (hiding behind a few media fibs!), that we can now concentrate solely on the domestic front. There have been some positives agreed, but not enough to outweigh the negatives imo.
The only downside to going out is the problem of keeping fringe players fit/happy. Hopefully a long FA Cup run will do that. But even if the first team aren't playing, the EL is a distraction to the coaching staff and is not to be mourned. As long as this isn't the start of a slump, I am relaxed about last night.
I believe Harry has got his wish, and while it's not nice to have been knocked out of the competition, I for one, am glad we are. I have never liked this competition, particularly as the 3rd place teams from the CL will soon enter. I think we have done our league aspirations no harm at all in not continuing in the EL. Next feb/mar, while those teams around us in the league will spend midweek traipsing around Europe, picking up injuries and tiring along the way, we can concentrate on the PL and the FA cup, which I believe holds more value than the EL. We have had some positives along the way, we have introduced a new crop of youngsters to competition which they would otherwise have missed out on, allowing us to assess them......some good, some bad. The negative came last night, which again, highlighted our inability to break down teams who come to park the bus! But personally, i don't think being knocked out is a negative.
Looking overall at the whole campaign, I was delighted and impressed with our 5-0 at Hearts, one of the best displays of 'push and run' that I've ever seen us play. I loved the passion shown by Hearts, Shamrock, PAOK and Rubin fans for the competition, alas we can't match that enthusiasm off the pitch and mostly not on it, either. Though it was a pretty good atmosphere last night considering our defeat. Unfortunately once again I had the misfortune, as has sooooooo often happened to me at the Lane, of being sat next to a typical Spurs 'whinger and moaner', I so wish people like that would stay at home and bore their wives with their negativity. Oh that's right, they're either not in a relationship or if they are, their 'other half' practically pushes them out of the door, because you can guarantee such negative people are like that in most/all aspects of their life. Back to the campaign, it gave some useful experience to some of our youngsters, but highlighted that our squad, given our continual injuries and loaning out strategy, isn't up to 'two good teams' standard ATM. Also the sale of Peter Crouch hit us badly in this competition, and may yet do in the league unless we buy in cover for Adebayor, but I understand the perfectly valid reasons for selling Crouch at that price, and removing him from the wage bill. Overall, I'm glad we were in the EL as it meant more Spurs games to watch to brighten up my life, but I want us to play a very weakened team in Ireland as that's it now, forget it, hopefully CL next year. IF we end up in the EL next year again, maybe we should try harder, maybe not, hard to say ATM.
The EL hammered home a central truth about this squad - if Adebayor and VdV don't play, we lack the ability to score goals. As I've said before, I won't be happy to exit the competition. We still have the one more game to play the youngsters, and I am sure that they've learned a lot from these games, not least that there remains a gulf in class between them and the players whose place in the squad they have to snatch. I expect some of them may well be heading out on loans in January.
I'm not that bothered about keeping some of the fringe players happy after last night. Corluka and Pienaar can be unhappy as far as i'm concerned. If the "fringe" players are good enough then they will (should) get game time in the prem. Either coming on as subs or deputising for injured/rested players. I do feel Harry needs to rotate a bit more in the prem. Eg, at home to bolton we could try resting modders and vdv and playing hudd and kranjcar (i know they aren't fit, its an example). We could always have luka and rafa on the bench for the 2nd half if needed.
I feel a bit sorry for the youngsters though. In a way they were let down by a more experienced team last night, we might as well have continued with a v. young team in hindsight. It could have been so different. If Kane had got up and smashed that penalty away in the earlier game i could've seen him bagging a few in the EL. He had some good touches last night but looked short in confidence in front of goal (he could easily have had 2).
I understand what you mean but I do think that the PL is not a competition in which you can tinker with your team...we must play our best 11 available in these games....particularly now that we have no more European travels to make. Last weekend, we were forced to play without VdV and Modders and for the 1st half of the match, we struggled. At this particular moment, apart from the Defoe/VdV swap, I don't know of any "fit" players that can fit in, apart from Sandro probably. Remember, there are no more so-called weak teams in the Prem anymore....these are the teams we must gain maximum points against, teams who historically we drop points to our detriment. Therefore squad rotation in these games would be a very risky business, in my opinion anyway.
It makes me laugh, the goal for all teams is to play in europe but once they get there then they want to get knocked out asap... otherwise they wont get into europe next season
I think the squad players aren't as good as we/ I thought they were, although we were missing the likes of Daws, Hudd, Niko and Gio. Of the squad players on the pitch Livermore was solid and the best of a bad bunch. Had great determination and his passing's got a little better I feel. I think the influence of Parker could pay huge dividends for the lad. Kane worked hard but his control was poor. Pienaar showed nice touches at times, a lot better than we've seen of him in other performances though he needs to learn that in order to score/ assist, he needs to go up the pitch, not sidewards! A guy in the row behind me joked that there seems to be an invisible barrier where as soon as he reaches it, he can't go any further. I'd have liked a natural winger like Townsend or Bale on to attack the FB and whip crosses into the box, Pienaar showed that the RB wasn't great yet he didn't exploit that enough. Leaving it 'til the 60th minute to bring Bale on was a bit too late for me, by then PAOK had parked the double decker bus and built a brick wall so to speak, although when it was broken down the horrendous refereeing cost us. Bassong was OK. Gallas was rusty. Rose was OK but his crossing weren't great when he got into decent positions. Corluka was woeful and painful to watch. The clown, sorry Gomes done nothing positive. 1st goal he could have atleast tried to stop the header and his upfield kicking was painstakingly bad. Can't understand this rotation thing with Carlo, Gomes has stated he wants out, Carlo wants a new deal AND has played really well when on the pitch, it's a no brainer for me to play Carlo. I'd have rather subbed him for Bale, move Pienaar behind the strikers and just keep Gallas at the back as PAOK had no intention to attack anymore. Falque looked decent when he came on and was unlucky not to score. I really wanted to progress in the competition, not just for the glory but getting to see our youngsters get the chance to impress is always nice but yet again the more experienced players let us down just like they did in Kazan. Only benefit of going out (well it's not sealed yet but our qualification is doubtful) is we don't have to see some of them wasters play anymore.
The goal for teams like us is the CL, not the EL. It's a sad reflection on modern football that the two domestic cups and the EL aren't that important anymore, but that is money-driven by the vast amounts of cash in the Prem and CL. I remember when teams rested players for Lge games to save them for big Cup games, not it's vice-versa. Thirty/forty years ago, Spurs v Bolton would have been less important than a crucial UEFA cup game, now the roles are reversed.
I thought Livermore was exceptionally poor last night. Has been doing well, but last night looked like he was trying to trap a superball. Constantly gave the ball away and contributed nothing. Rose and Corluka was also v poor and the reason we gave away two awful goals, though Gallas looked very rusty as well.
When Bale came on for Rose, I was thinking we'd be using Pienaar like Everton did - he tucks in whilst Bale marauds from deep, like Leighton Baines did. That lasted for all of three minutes... If we had someone capable of heading the ball- Kaboul, Ade or even Pav - we would've scored from one of the umpteen corners we had in the second half. The only corner we threatened from was the short one to Bale, who blazed it over.
Up until last night I'd say the experiment was going very well. If we'd played more of the usual youngsters I'd have been less disappointed than I am. Out of our senior players I think Modric was the only one not to have embarrassed themself. We had an experienced back 4 and the two most experienced of them looked like they hadn't played on a full sized pitch before, Lennon should have been tearing a part their left back at this level barely ever tried to beat his man in the first half, Pienaar didn't add anything and Defoe showed again that he lacks the footballing brain to crate space for himself and other players, like Adebayor does.
Does anyone else think, like it do to a degree, that the players looked like they didn't know what to expect from the opposition? The 2 goals were so basically crafted by the Greeks. Nothing special was required to completely unlock us, and it wasn't just those 2 times either. After a while it clicked and the threat diminished (even in the brief time before the sending off).
I don't think so. I'm assuming you are intimating that Harry was tactically inept at judging the Greeks?? In my opinion, the fact that both Corluka and Gallas were just back in the team, really showed their rustiness. Gallas gave the ball away with a bad touch in midfield which led to the first goal, and Corluka should have sniffed out the second goal. I don't think that the Greeks were tactically better prepared than us, more like very bad defending by us. When we sorted our selves out, that was it...I believe they only got out of their own half on 4 occasions in the second half!!
Both the Greek goals were due to extremely sloppy defending. I don't think we can blame Harry for that. If he's made his mind up to rest Walker,King and Kaboul, then he had to give Corluka, Gallas and Bassong a chance. The three of them screwed it up. End of story. I do think it is wrong to lay any blame at the feet of either Livermore or Kane. They did about as well as I would have expected any youngsters to do, bearing in mind their restricted chances in the first XI.
Agreed Pirate - it was a cobbled together back 5, and it showed. The Greeks caught us cold, and they have some good players. I had to laugh reading some of the classic, ignorant stereotyping I saw on other boards and sites, didn't notice it here BTW that the Greeks were 'rubbish', '****', 'we should beat them easy'. Guess what, they're professional footballers, with international players, fired up for the competition, backed by fantastic fans, who in their passion are several steps above any English club's fans, certainly in the Prem and NPower. We were lucky to get a draw in Greece, lucky to beat Rubin at home (another team ridiculously derided by some of our fans) and last night our luck ran out.
That sound like a very clever argument, my friend, except that we don't want to be in the Europa League, and no decent side would. Also, I don't just want to finish 4th; I want us to win the league, or certainly finish as high as we can. That is the most important thing in any season, for me, as a Spurs fan. And I no longer believe that that is a deluded expectation to have, given the huge progress we have made at the club, since the days of Martin Jol. Perhaps for other clubs - clubs for whom achieving 5th place is an extremely rare even, and for whom achieving a top 4 slot is simply never going to happen - perhaps for those clubs playing in the Europa League would be the pinnacle of success. But not for the mighty Spurs. We have ambitions far beyond that.
