We weren't fit to share the same pitch with Tottenham Hotspur today. It was heartbreaking so watch us get so badly dominated. Spurs had 70% possession and they weren't even trying to keep it - they were always looking for the first available forward pass. I'm sure there may be some Spurs fans reading this, please don't take offence when I say I was embarrassed with the match today because even though Spurs were out of this world today we were still terrible. The fact that Spurs were so good, and I mean really good, their final ball wasn't always there but I hardly recall a misplaced pass or a player staying on the ball too long and being tackled (not that they were even under pressure) made us look worse because all our mistakes meant we had to wait until Spurs gave us the ball back which was usually a while - their moves never broke down! Every time we got the ball either in open play or a goal kick from one of many wayward efforts from the evidently confident Spurs midfield we lost it nearly immediatley. Even if van Wolfswinkel or Elmander won the initial ball there was never a yellow shirt anywhere near to contest the second ball so Spurs just recycled possession and began another attack. The referee also made it even harder for us. I don't want to distract the conversation from what rightly should be plaudits for Spurs and heavy criticism of ourselves but how many times was a free kick not awarded for a clear foul on a Norwich player? We also had corners not given, Pilkington wrongly flagged offside and then Lloris was booked for a handball outside the area when I recall we had Mark Bunn sent off for the same offence last season. I do not expect these would of had any influence on the result but I just didn't want to leave them un-discussed. What is hard to take, even away from home to one of England's top team is that they had well in excess of 20 efforts and we had only a couple of half-chances all game. Ricky van Wolfswinkel SHOULD have scored a goal, but he took two or three touches too many and the chance was gone. We certainly never looked like getting a point even from the first whistle. So the players... not much good to say about them really, our passing today was nowhere near what one would expect from a premier league team. This meant Elmander and Wolfswinkel were never in the game at all. Redmond and Snodgrass rarely left their half either. In fact I can't really recall either of our central midfielders touching the ball at all either! AVB got his tactics spot on today against a Norwich side who just didn't have a plan B when the inevitable Spurs goal came. He played a mass of central midfielders with his only width coming from full backs who were camped in the Norwich half. I guess he must have expected to be at least nearly as poor as we were to try this tactic, but it really worked. Despite no natural wingers until Lamela came on late in the game, Spurs crosses carried real threat and even though there wasn't any protection for the Spurs wide defenders we never got in behind them. I just don't get how we looked so different from Southampton with the same team, but changes HAVE to be made. Olsson MUST be brought in for Garrido, he was really impressive vs Bury and Garrido is just too much of a long ball merchant. Ryan Bennett would at least keep the ball on the floor if he came in for Bassong or Turner. Get it sorted against Villa Hughton because it is Stoke away after that and I am not sure I can bear to watch anything like this again!
DM, I think it reasonable to presume that our away games are not going to be much better than that of last season, mainly due to the policy of trying to be hard to beat as a priority (more so away from CR). While it is a great sound-bite, the reality is that it is incredibly hard to do, week in/week out. The way I am thinking is, that it is against the nature of competitive sportsmen to do anything other than try to win, and this has to make a "not losing" policy that much harder to achieve. I have to confess, I am close to not bothering with trying to watch away games, and not because the streams are not so good. It does almost seem pointless as there is a feeling of inevitability about what the tactics are, and what the probable outcome is going to be (forget having faith - that's bollocks, as is religion ). Call me a fair-weather fan if you like, that doesn't bother me, but what does bother me is that we don;t look like trying to take the game to the opponents in away games and I am getting fed up with a rear-guard action every other week
I wasn't expecting us to beat Spurs today but being hard to beat is not mutually exclusive with passing the ball well or even to an ok standard. I can understand why fans won't pay to watch away games and tbh it isn't much better on a stream. I will still watch our away games, but I found it heartbreaking to watch as I am sure you did too.
I had us down for a defeat today also but I did hope for a fight, after all, we have given Spurs 3 very good games since our return, to the extent that the Spurs fans on Not606 were being very respectful of our beloved team before the game (i.e. none of the usual - we should beat them easy type comments ). I am so disappointed in our performance today, taking nowt away from Spurs, but we did make it a little too easy for them today.
Just one comment which might help you feel a little better about not putting too many passes together today. If you check the match threads for all of the other Spurs games this season, you'll find people supporting the opposition who were saying the same thing. Villas-Boas has set the team up to close down quickly and play a high defensive line, which compresses the game and means that players have no time on the ball. Arsenal and Swansea both had to give up possession to this strategy and the inclusion of a playmaker in today's game made things look worse, as we had more of a threat. Good luck with the rest of the season and I hope Hughton can add a little bit more danger to your attacks, as I'd like to see him succeed in management.
It's starting to feel a bit like last season away from home, CH even started two strikers which I wasn't expecting, this was a 4-5-1 game today & by the Possesion stats clearly he made z mistake there. So when we play Villa next week I'm sure he'll revert back to just the wolf up top?!! Come on Ireland CH is your man! Please.
It looked more like a 4-4-1-1 I thought. Elmander was playing more of a midfield role for large chunks of the game, but of course that may be because we were on the back foot for most of it
It's like I said on the match thread, we knew we'd be on the back foot so at least one striker would spend a lot of the game playing very deep, so why not play an extra midfielder more used to playing that way instead?
I can watch away games on a quite decent stream in a local pub, but if CH employs the same tactics against Stoke, then I'll be finding something else to do when we're playing away.
I will be honest, when we play Aston Villa next week I will be half way across the Atlantic and wont have a Scooby of what is happening and im glad of it
there is an expected defeat and there is a walkover and didn't try. I think the latter was the case today which is a surprise from norwich who normally give anyone a game....
Don't think defeat is the issue It was the manner of the defeat, a shocking display.Team selection was wrong based on recent performances. Again Snodgrass was awful, would of had Redmond on the right, Pilkington on the left and started with Olsson at left back. But I am not in the ''know'' like some of you on here!!
"clueless substitutions" clueless fans more like. johnson had a stinker - howson brought on and made us a little better redmond did little and was ineffective - pilks didn't make much difference because we couldn't get enough of the ball to feed him elmander quiet - tettey brought on to balance the team better once the game was out of reach - we also looked better when he came on as i said elsewhere, had hughton changed system during the match everyone would have moaned that he went negative when we were chasing the game. instead he persisted in the hope we could improve our standard and create and score a chance - we nearly did that but for danny rose.then he could have changed it. at the end of the day, if the players picked are incapable of passing the ball three yards to one another, what the hell is the manager supposed to do about it? we know they can do it - they did it two weeks ago
The pundits were saying that Spurs were brilliant rather than us necessarily bad.I could imagine that if we had lost 1-0 at Goodison the same would be said. Whereas Chelsea are still title contenders.
While this is true and impossible to disagree with, it was the type of game where once we gained possession of the ball, we needed to keep / pass / move the ball around to stop Spurs controlling all the play. We didn't. We hoofed it forward or punted it out for a Tottenham throw - often in dangerous positions. We 'donated' possession back to them at every possible opportunity and sooner or later, we were going to be made to pay. How it wasn't 5, 6 or 7 nil only AVB can surmise. Anyone noticed how, after just 4 or 5 matches, the table is already taking a pretty familiar shape?
I was going to mention that, with a couple of exceptions, you could easily see most teams finishing within a position either way of where they are now.
Bad example though. Chelsea had the majority of possession, and had twice as many shots, it's hardly worthy of comparison with us, is it?
We actually hit very few balls long. Spurs hit many more - one of our main problems is that we are actually rubbish at long balls. We rarely win more than 20% whereas Spurs won 70% of their long balls. Having a long ball outlet is, if used efficiently, a very good way of taking pressure off the defence - if we can knock it up and keep possession, the ball then makes its way back to our centre backs and we can start an attack high up the pitch. This is what Spurs did so effectively today - they won 42 out of 67 long balls! This put our whole team under massive pressure.
