A win is always welcome, especially at home, especially by three goals. Lennon, Paulinho, Ade and arguably Dembele were all good. But Occam's razor is that we finally found a team crap enough for us to beat at home. Sorry, Stoke fans, but I thought your team was awful. Our buildup continued to be too slow, and we scored thanks to as blatant a handball as I've ever seen, and the fact that if you knock the ball towards a goal often enough, it's liable to go in occasionally. However, 7 points from the last thee games is fine, and while Man U and Arsenal are a frightening prospect, we've looked better on the counter, which should be a possibility against both. It will certainly be interesting to see if Sherwood goes 442 again, or how he sets up if not.
MOTD highlights: [video=dailymotion;x190s0i]http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x190s0i_tottenham-hotspur-v-stoke-city_sport[/video]
Actually, now I've just seen that : what a **** !!! He took a second swipe at Pauli AFTER the ball was long gone.
Studs up on the ankle and nowhere near the ball again. Dirty ****. So despite all of the bitching coming from their camp, the mistakes made by the officials were all failures to send off their players? Blocked a goalbound shot with a handball, took a swing at Adebayor and stamped on Paulinho's ankle. You can take Pulis out of Stoke, but it seems that they're still the same team.
maybe it's me and my poor eyes, but I can't see any contact with the ball in that challenge in the area from Dawson.
I thought I saw ball contact when I was watching the stream, they had an angle there that appeared to show Dawson getting some of the ball. MOTD didn't have that angle if I remember correctly. I could be wrong but I'm sure I remember seeing that particular angle during the game and seeing a touch on the ball.
This is another consequence of the wall-to-wall coverage. pre-Sky there was almost no TV coverage and the only info the manager had on the opposition was a few scouting reports. There was therefore little point in trying to stop the opposition playing as you had no real idea what they would do. Now there are masses of data on everyone and everything so people try to use it. Some of you may be surprised that I think that is the wrong approach. I am all for using data analysis to learn about what tactics work in general but I think Football is too complex a game to do proper analysis on stopping the opposition.
From today's Grauniad... "One minute later Soldado dragged a shot wide from the edge of the area after being brilliantly set up by Paulinho who, until he was forced off by injury in the second half, was outstanding in midfield, bewildering opponents and delighting the home supporters with canny flicks and festive tricks. "He was immense, fantastic. I didn't know he possessed that, to be honest. He's opened my eyes," Sherwood said." First he doesn't know about Capoue, now he doesn't know Paulinho has great skill. please log in to view this image
He was taking the piss. He has no time for the media or the fans. Best get used to it because there'll be plenty more sarky comments from him before the season is finished.
That low-life sack of ****e, Adam, has been doing that for years. He's a nasty little psycho, who seems to go out to deliberately injure fellow professionals. When the officials of the game are going to wake up to his antics, if ever, I despair of!...
Alan Sugar's called for Adam to be banned and the club's reported his behaviour to the FA, apparently. The player's claimed that he has no problem with Spurs and would never set out to injure a fellow professional, via his Twitter feed. Yeah, right.
Absolute bull****. He does something, or certainly attempts something, everytime we play them. please log in to view this image
Well judging by all the games I've seen him play for Spurs I have to say that I had not seen Paulinho play like he did the other day. I'd not even seen him try those sorts of flicks and passes much - maybe that one game when he was pushed up alongside Soldado he showed a few glimpses of that sort of skill-level. By his injury-causing challenge on him I suppose you can tell that Charlie Adam must have been impressed by Paulinho too. What a total arsehole that man is. I swear at some point earlier in this thread someone said "Nothing against Stoke but..." and I remember thinking "How can you possibly have nothing against Stoke?".
Can't blame Stoke for Adam though, Lenny. He did it at Blackpool, then again with Liverpool on two occasions and now he's repeated it with them. Pretty sure he tried it with Scotland on Bale, too.
I'll blame Stoke PNP they have had more time than either Blackpool or Liverpool to see what he is about and THEN they hired him.
As with everything in life, talk is cheap. When you have to pay for your actions, different story for people. So various kinds of possibilities in the game here in the event of malicious play. Such as : Offending player cannot play for the duration that the injured player is out. Club of offending player pay the medical/insurance/wage costs of the player out. When clubs are dealing with the material costs of moronic thugs, then they will think twice about the players they sign. Though in the case of Adam, I'm sure his managers already weigh the cons of him getting a red and leaving you 10 vs 11 for some time, against the pros of his thuggery literally taking key opponent MF players out of the game soon enough.
He won't get a ban from the FA but every player and ref has clocked that he really is a bit dirty now. He'll get his punishment in the next five months.
