Most definitely, the atmosphere has dropped massively over the years. The whole reason I sit in Park Lane is due to the levels of noise it once generated and it's fair to say it's a shadow of what it was. You're spot on in the way the managers reacted with fans. The "I love Martin Jol" song pretty much sums it up, he done everything he could to please the fans and we showed our appreciation. In fairness to Harry he did applaud fans after games at times and lets not forget when the chants of "We want you to stay" rang around, you could tell Harry found it emotional. With AVB, so far he's shown no real affiliation with us, sure he jumps up and down like a lunatic when we score and that's always nice to see but he doesn't seem to have a connection with us. Admittedly the chants of "AVB's blue and white army" are rarely sung and when they are, it's not from a majority and so it may be hard for AVB to respond. There hasn't once been a "Andre give us a wave" chant yet either and it probably doesn't help at the fact that his assistant gets more love from us than he does. The away support is so much better, with all respects, the away fans are what I class as the die hard Spurs fans. These people show true dedication to the club and so with these set of fans, you know 99% are there to support and cheer on the their team no matter the result. Going away from home, the expectation of a win is always less than what it is of a home match so you won't ever or at least rarely see fans boo or chant negatives. I love away games, I'm fortunate enough to have friends who are season ticket holders so I can pretty much get a ticket to any game I like as they rarely go away. So far this season I've only been Southampton but I'm going City. In the last couple of seasons I've been lucky enough to go to a lot more away games than usual, Stoke, Man City, Fulham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Wolves, Everton, Chelsea, Swansea and I've loved every single minute of it, regardless of sme of the negative results. If we had the atmosphere of these away games at home, WHL would be buzzing beyond belief.
If you think one specialist striker on the pitch is better than 2, I don't think you'll find I'm disagreeing with anything, you are, and if you'd read my posts I said 'regardless of his contribution to that point'. In desperation you throw everything you've got, and I'd say 99% agree with that and I'm not bothered you're in the 1%. So the keeper was to blame was he, ok, but I'd look further back in the passage of play at some outfield errors first. He was way too busy during the game.
Was our 5-2 demolition of you a flattering score line too ? As for booing, I hate it. In my opinion if you boo your own players, you might as well be cheering on the opposition. I think it is symptomatic of too much expectation and too little patience. For clubs who have experienced regularly winning trophies, like Arsenal, we have tended to attract more than our fair share of plastics, who expect success as a given and berate the manager, players, board, physios, tea lady etc when it doesn't come. Spurs had a taste of success - relative to your long barren years - with a league cup win and qualifying for the CL and I think some of your fans have fallen into the same trap of expecting it to be repeated as a given.
I just think if you are making loads of chances but not finishing them - bring on more strikers. If you have not created a chance all game, change the midfield. I'm sorry if you think this is stupid.
Piskie, the expectation of the club is to get top 4/CL. This therefore this rubs off on the fans and our attitudes. The problem IMO, is that it's too higher expectation when you consider those spending fortunes and those catching up with us. (you guys fall into that "us", too). there's bugger all net spend between our clubs. unless the clubs even remotely try to compete with Chels, United and City, there's always going to be a huge battle for 4th. so how we can expect fourth with Everton and Newcastle lurking, I do not know.
It should have been "repeated as a given" this season, except for the stupid rule that the Chavs are entitled to take our place in the CL, despite the fact that they did not earn the right to do so, during the course of our domestic league, last season.
I think we're victims of the same mentality. Some of our fans expect us to be challenging for the title, when the reality is that we are still some way off of City, Chelsea and Utd at the moment. I think we've got it in us to give them a good run for their money, but over the course of the season, I still think we're short. Trouble is that some of our fans who've grown up on a diet of trophies in the Wenger years simply expect success as a given and when it doesn't come, they start throwing their toys out of the pram. For anybody in doubt about how hard it is to get into (and stay there) the top 4, just ask Liverpool. Their fall from grace, despite the huge investment in their squad is an example of difficult it is. This coupled with the obscene amounts that the Chavs and £ity have spent, along with the steady improvement of the teams below has created a league where 2-3 clubs can simply buy success another 3-4 try to earn it on merit and the rest just take points off of us all
It is when that plan you've tried all game HAS NOT worked, we all know that the football at the end of a game isn't always pretty, formations go out of the window, and mixing it up with 'route one' comes into play (midfield not needed!), there isn't time to piss around on the deck anymore, get the damn thing in the danger area, therefore 2 strikers are better than one. Yes I agree you can just as easily concede, but when you're losing anyway, so what? So, no need to apologise for me thinking changing the MF is stupid, at that point in the game, in the circs we found ourselves in, it is nothing other than stupid.
The thing is Notso, he actually thought that he was changing the formation, if you read his post-match comments. He thought that he did so at half-time by telling Dempsey to play further forward, though I can't say that I noticed any difference and he thought that he'd gone two up front with Dempsey and Adebayor. Complete mistake, in my opinion. Not only is Dempsey not a striker, but Defoe's far more dangerous in that role and is on good form, plus he's already played and trained with Adebayor. It's possible to switch things around without making any substitutions, but I saw no evidence of it, other than our wingers becoming less effective by swapping sides.
I remember years ago at WHL when we were one down in a cup match, can't remember who against, and we threw on Gilzean alongside Chivers and Peters I think and did nothing but boot balls into the area from the wings. It was exciting and gave the illusion of giving us a chance, but it didn't work. It rarely does in my experience.
Aside from losing our two most creative players before the year begain (only one of whom was adequately replaced), we've now lost 3/4 of our defensive starters from last year, and all three of our best options in midfield (in the 2 of the 4-2-3-1). Also, the one starter we have left of the back six has been pretty awful. This is the only important fact concerning the team right now. Why anyone thinks playing Adebayor and Defoe together would have made a significant dent in the problem I don't quite understand. We're missing most of our best players. Period. I don't know why anyone blames AVB for for not being able to conjure a good team out of thin air. Ticket buyers have the right to do many things, including boo, but to me this is an excellent time to be as supportive as possible, considering the basic problem isn't players playing badly, or a manager managing badly, but a rash of injuries.
That has to go down as another clanger then doesn't it? Totally agree with our wingers on the wrong side, wtf was going on there! A simple yell from the tech area should have sorted that!
And City have thrown Dzeko or Balo on with Aguero and Tevez, and salvaged situations...hell, they they won the league doing it!
While I agree with your theory and that we should have gone with two out-and-out strikers with that substitution against Wigan, that's £115m worth of forwards. By contrast, our first XI against Wigan cost about half of that amount.
If only we had that sort of 'striker' - three of those are very versatile forwards who might improve any team in any situation. Defoe is very one dimensional by comparison. But Mancini often also makes the 'negative' substitutions you complain of - and won the league doing it! Bringing on Xavi, Iniesta and Fabregas would probably have sorted it too.
PNP & Power Come on guys, its all relative, we were only trying to draw with Wigan! price tags should make no diference here. I wasn't trying to make comparisons, as you say PNP, its the theory drum I've been banging here, at least you agree with that.
