For a start, in 94-5 our goalkeeper and defence were bloody useless (the only way Ian Walker, Justin Edinburgh and Dean Austin would feature in the Premier League these days is if they played for a team promoted from the Championship that was widely tipped to be headed for League One that season) - and the fact is we did struggle after his departure. In 95-6 we just about got away with it because Teddy Sheringham was carrying the side, but in 96-7 we were down in the doldrums because Sheringham was injured for a large chunk of the season. As for the Keane/Berbatov era, apart from the fact three straight seasons in Europe isn't "mediocre" (so who knows nothing about football now?), who in midfield was contributing? Jenas never passed forwards in his life, Zokora was a possession-losing machine because he thought he was Patrick Vieira, and Huddlestone was still developing. Keane had to drop back into midfield to get the ball because, Lennon aside, our first-choice midfield never got forward in support. That's why we failed with Keane and Berbatov gone, because Darren Bent is too lazy to look for the ball, whilst our midfield wasn't designed to get forward. As I said, they might get 31 between them in a season (although that is pretty unlikely) - but in order for that to happen you'd need to change your system to play both up front. By doing that, you'd have to drop one of your current first team in order to play 4-4-2. Neither did I - it's just without Van Persie in your squad, he and Chamakh are your senior strikers, and I;m not going to play the "Let's pretend Striker X plays for Arsenal" game.
at the end of the day wether it is a one man team or not...it was enough to dispatch us..i wont allow that to console me with regards to our own downfalls...this is a 'my dad is bigger than your dad argument'
totsfan Same as United without Young?...are you joking? Don't start putting your silly little club on par with what just took you to the cleaners bar one man's performance. As soon as United got out of 1st gear you were picked off at will, outclassed, call it what you like.
I'll call it poor defending, poor tactics and clinical finishing by Utd. You were clearly outplayed for most of the game though, barely mustering an attempt on goal until you scored. Referring to Spurs as a 'silly little club' makes you look like a total bellend, by the way.
so Ferguson admitted that they were lucky..that it was a miracle that they were 1 ahead at half time..that White Hart Lane is the toughest ground they have played at..yet some prized tw.at...namely you..thinks you know better with regards your analysis? stupid idiot....
you know more about football than SAF then Terry,you should be a goon,their Manager is as Blind as you are
By saying I was "plain wrong", you implied that you did. Whenever an All Time Worst Spurs Players thread pops up, you will see Edinburgh and Dozzell feature prominently. Likewise, if Jenas was any good, we would've been able to sell him by now. We weren't even in Europe when we signed Klinsmann, Rebrov or Davids. As for the bloody awful start to 2008-9, it can't all be blamed on Ramos - our team had been reliant on the Keane/Berbatov partnership to bail them out since the Jol era, with the 6-4 win over Reading being the ultimate demonstration of this fact. Zokora improved at Sevilla as they play with two defensive midfielders, of which he is only one. Remember how both Paul Robinson and Huerellho Gomes conceded a lot of long-range strikes a few seasons back? That was because Zokora wasn't doing his job as a defensive midfielder, and frequently losing possession (as well as exposing us to set pieces on the edge of the box at frequent intervals) The amount of money wasted in that time continues to haunt us - £15m for Bentley?!? We're never getting that back. Keane and Berbatov were joint top scorer in 2007-8. Bent may have been our top scorer in 2008-9, but the majority of his goals were in the first three months of the season - the reason we brought back Keane and Defoe was because of this, as well as the fact Bent didn't fit into our system or style of play (which goes back to the money wasted at the time - but at least we made a profit on Bent thanks to the signing-on clause in the deal we did with Sunderland) Defoe, Keane and Palacios arrived in January, and that stabilised the team - we had a second stutter from mid December to mid January, which is why they were brought in.
The way I look at it, until we can actually defeat United, whether it be in the cup or in the league, we must suffer the slings and arrows of every juvenile, glory-hunting, plastic United wum out there, no matter how well we play against them. It's simply part of the humiliation what we, as Spurs fans, must suffer as a result of the ineptitude of our players and manager in failing, for so long, to beat a team that was over-turned last season at OT by the likes of Blackpool. Our record against them is truly and utterly shameful, and we must expect to suffer at the hands of plastic wums as a result of that. United fans have their own particular cross to bear, knowing that their club is now only the second best club in Manchester (well, Salford, in United's case). But, be that as it may, I am not going to argue with any United wum who comes on here and laughs in my face, because we deserve it.
The day I let some 12 year old, Surrey Yoonited fan gloat at me will be the day Satan wears a scarf and mittens to work. They're not our rivals so they shouldn't be trying to Lord anything over us in the first. HIAG, I know you don't like to blame the luck/ref like I do but... the Adebayor goal, the Gomes freekick, the Mendes Goal, the Carrick penalty, Ronaldo diving for a pen and I'm sure there have been more. I think Ledley King's header is the one arguable bit of luck that you could say we've had but that's perhaps not because he fouled anyone but that the ref usually likes to rule out anything like that for us when we play them, plus he gave them two penalties afterwards anyway.
We struggled to break you down because you stood off and defended deep and with numbers. Your tactics in the first half were no different to Wolves who also took advantage of a defensive lapse at a corner. For the second goal, if Walker wasn't where he was then Rooney(I think) would've had an empty net to tap it into. His clearance was a difficult one as he was facing his own goal under pressure from the United player and it wasn't at a height you could get much power on it. If anyone's to blame it's Ekotto and Modric for getting bypassed from a throw in. For the third Evra was running forward unchallenged whilst Young had moved inside, it was a moment when our centre midfield was to blame as neither went across to deal with Evra and neither were there when Young found space all too easily infront of the defence. Walker was on a lose/lose, Young needed to be marked closely and Evra needed to be closed down. I'm not saying Walker was blameless for any of the goals but there were bigger mistakes by others and United were clinical, which compounded the errors.
I think that Walker's getting too much stick. He should've done better for the first goal, but Friedel should've dealt with Jones' encroaching far better and caught the corner, anyway. He should've cleared the ball across the six-yard box for the second goal, but Modric and Assou-Ekotto should've dealt with the throw-in far better in the first place. It was amateurish. He should've dealt with Young's run better, but so should Kaboul. Walker didn't have a good game, but I don't think that was our major problem. Modric starting out wide, then wandering out centrally, which caused Lennon to keep trying to swap sides to cover both wings, cost us badly. We set up too negatively in the middle of the park, which allowed us to dominate possession, yet create virtually nothing up front. There was no bridge between the midfield and the strikers.
True, as YV says, we never seem to have any luck against Utd. Equally, it's hard to argue with a lot of what luke says. We never really threatened despite all the possession we had. Without Bale & VDV we just seemed to have no cutting edge, and consequently, played at a lower tempo than we normally do. Of course, Modric being stuck out on the left wing didn't really help our cause. Where Harry got that idea from, I don't know. Anyway, yes, a combination of bad luck, going to sleep at crucial moments, injuries, and some sharp finishing by Utd, all seemed to conspire, and condemn us to yet another defeat at Utd's hands.
Modric on the left is an absolute waste - exactly the reason why we need proper cover for bale! We need to be able to lose a winger but keep our system. Once we lose bale or lennon we lose alot of our creative play and play too narrow IMO (Newcastle game aside)
If you were talking about the odd game over two or three seasons, I'd more than likely agree with you, but it's been more than ten years since we beat United. There's only so much, over that period of time, that anyone can lay at the feet of bad refereeing.
Original posit - Worried about Spurs? Yes, I am. We have four points above Arsenal and are greater on goal difference by 2 (I think!). I worry about the notion of us disintegrating over the next few games and finding us struggling to get fourth. I would prefer third but to be honest lads, I'll take ECL qualification.
