It really was comedy football unless your a Spurs fan (you were probably blowing your casket), some of the decisions beggared belief. Your namesake was the worst though, worst "ref" to ever grace a field
The one that really wound me up was the triple balls up. Gallas was pushed over in the box, the ball came out to Walker and his shot was saved by Shawcross' arm, before falling to van der Vaart who put in Adebayor. Two yards onside, but still chalked off. Can't put that one down to Foy, but it was part of a catalogue of errors. please log in to view this image
You could right a book about it to be honest. Much like Ovrebo v Chelsea/Fiorentina it's ineptitude unlikely ever to be repeated on such a scale by officials. The worst decision of the lot that I can remember from that was the Kaboul red card for a nothing tackle of which Walters was coming back from an offside position anyway If it had happened to United or to a lesser extent other members of the "Sky 4" it would have been highlighted a lot more, woeful performance which turned Spurs season on its head. Foy was bad against Chelsea but nowhere near that bad. As Chelsea v United this season proved, poor referees can change seasons.
I was ill the day of THAT match...thought I was hallucinating through the entire second half. Was sooooooo bad it became funny by full time. I don't have a problem with stoke ... I have a problem with refs letting them get away with a lot on occassions (shirt pullin, blocking runs etc) but I think they are entitled to play however they want ... would NEVER pay to watch that kind of football but in fairness they have become a better footballing team in the past year or so. Think we drew this match last year at WHL ... think we'll need 2 goals to have a hope of winning
Hmmm... Don't think I really agree with that. We've conceded quite a few from set pieces, either directly or where we've failed to clear properly and the follow up cross has been finished off. Chelsea (Cahill), Norwich (away, league cup - Jackson), West Brom (Morrison), Wigan (Watson), Arsenal (Mertesacker & Giroud). May have missed a couple too. Regardless of who we have at the back, who the manager is, we just never seem to be comfortable with set pieces, it's a Spurs curse I'm sure of it. Yep, all the way down to Charlton, Orient and every other non-Spurs supporting fan/ team in London. Though, you guys, A*****l & West Ham are the teams I despise
I didn't think any of Arsenal's goals came from set pieces, are you sure about that? You could arguably count Bale's og, I guess, but that was a freak goal and mostly Lennon's fault who you don't really associate with great defending. In general though, we've looked more organised and comfortable defending them, under 'Arry it was a total joke.
Yeah sorry Giroud's wasn't, **** knows why I put his name there. Mertesacker's was from a cross I think, but didn't it result from a cleared set piece? Otherwise what was he doing in our box? This was part of my previous point in terms of not fully clearing for a set piece, we never seem first to the ball once it's cleared therefore allowing the opposition to mount another attack... Creates a sort of vicious cycle. I don't think we've improved since Harry's era on them to be honest, it's not AVB's fault though, our players just seem prone to conceding goals directly or indirectly from a set piece. Maybe it's down to the fact that the likes of Jol, Ramos (well kind of), Harry and AVB are all managers that like/ supposedly like their teams to play neat football andtherefore focus their regimes based on getting us to play the right way, rather than training enough for what certain opposition can do from set pieces etc?
I agree that having everyone back and therefore no one to clear it to is a problem but having the extra man has shored us up. If we'd left players outside of our own box against Arsenal when we were down to 10 men and they'd gone and scored from the freekick AVB/the players would've been crucified, they can't win if you're going to also blame them for having everyone back when we're defending a lead with 10 men. Maybe it was just me but in 'Arry's reign as boss, a setpiece had me crossing my fingers and hoping that their player would head it over. That was pretty much the best outcome I could hope for as our players frequently lost their own men and it turned into chaos. The only part of our setpieces that improved under Redknapp was bringing in Friedel as he didn't take out our defenders like Gomes did. Our delivery in attacking freekicks has probably been the most notable difference under AVB but I still think defensively we're more organised. Our shots from freekicks are still poor apart from the odd Worldy as are a lot of our corners, this seems to be a theme for Spurs sides.
Yeah that's a fair point, to be honest it was obvious to me we were ****ed the moment Ade got that red. I said straight away to my mate when he made the tackle that he'll get sent off and we'll capitulate... I've been crossing my fingers long before Harry's reign! . Set pieces in general, both attacking and defending them, is our huge weak point.
We've always seemed to defend set pieces by piling every outfield player into the box, and nobody outside to mop up. This isn't a current problem, as we were equally bad during the Hoddle, Graham, Gross and Francis years as well. Is there a notice on the changing room wall saying that also counts as part of The Spurs Way or something?!?
