Our French midfielder seems to have got a promotion within the Mafia, as he's now Etienne Capo, according to the commentators.
2-0. Lennon. One-two in our own half with Soldado which puts him through on goal, the last man is all over the place and the keeper lunges in way too early. Open goal and that should be that.
Crap and confused for large parts but a comfortable enough win, if that counts for anything. Lennon took his goal very well though, I thought.
Just a basic workmanlike performance. Soldado worrying that even against this opposition he was very ordinary, straying offside too often. At least he helped the defence.
2-0 FT. Pretty crap and incoherent, really. Looked fairly tired and disinterested, for the most part. Hopefully it's just the pre-season crap and we won't play like that during the actual campaign, as we'll be punished for it. Another game under the belts, though and no obvious injuries, so that's the main thing, I guess.
Yeah, pretty crap game. I don't think the players followed Poch's script very well. Too many hopeful long balls, too few crisp passes, movement and players going at the goal. But part of this was that Chicago, to their credit, worked hard at closing down (very much unlike Toronto in the first half) and not to their credit, did a decent imitation of vintage Stoke. I can't blame them as they didn't want to get mullered in front of their own fans. They succeeded in dragging us down to their own level, with considerable help from the ref. Still, some players looked good: Lamela, Lennon, Capoue, Veljkovic, Holtby at first. Our players looked tired at first, and looked more and more frustrated at the negative tactics and bruising play as the night went on. Decent level of effort though, better than losing or drawing, and Lamela continues to look like the player we paid a lot of money for last year, are the bright points. Oh, and the big one, we got through the North American tour without any embarrassing results, unlike our hideously clad rivals.
No unrealistic expectations or fans claiming we are going to be blown away by the attacking football under Pochettino! Thats why these pre season performances that are underwhelming are best all round, as we can go into the first match expecting a crap performance away to west ham and Soldado missing a sitter but obviously hoping the opposite! Although I'm sure YV has put a tenner on Lamela to score a double.
I'm glad we've put in a **** performance at this point, because Poch has time to put things right. Bear in mind that he'll be testing things, continuously reviewing the data from the previous games. Various questions will have been answered. At least he'll be able to tell Levy, with some degree of conviction, that this squad simply isn't good enough for top 4, and that we definitely need a proven striker. But, then again, Levy knew all of that when he sacked AVB and Sherwood, and used them as scapegoats for his own incompetence and to save his own neck.
Then Pochettino will be sacked! as he will have failed where Avb (failed) in getting the best out of a proven striker (Adebayor) while Sherwood can say he got the best out of Adebayor (and Kane) and also completed the league double over Pochetinno. I just hope we don't regret sacking Sherwood, just to add to the other big mistake, overlooking Tony Pulis but at least when Pochettino fails then we have someone to come in and rescue us.
oh god Darren Bent, still have nightmares about that bloke [video=youtube;-bOrWMc_Es0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bOrWMc_Es0[/video]
Is it a concern that Lloris has not featured in pre-season yet or has he been on holiday all this time after the WC? Also - on Soldado, he needs to demand the ball more I think - too often he appears happy to let his team-mates do the running and passing. He also needs to demand more crosses - that was his bread and butter from his time at Valencia. In the games I've watched so far this season, I think I can count the number of crosses sent into the box in any 1 game on 1 hand - and the number of decent crosses even less than that.
Itll be a season like the last two...and ending the same way We will get around 65-70 points...do ok ish in the cups...1/4 finals and end the season stronger than we start it The 1st and 2nd places are between city and chelsea....3rd and 4th between goons, pool and united with us and everton and newcastle sniffing around 6-8th place Toon have strengthened well, everton have done nothing of note yet, the goons are much stonger and still havent finished, chelsea and city are light years ahead of us and united and pool are looking stronger...we have bought well but some of our players are wrong such as chiriches, dawson (good as a squad player but being found out too often ... sad cos I admire his loyalty in this day of greed), rose, naughton, dembele, paulinio, sandro (looks injury prone unfortunately), kaboul (ditto), lennon (has looked out of sorts for the past 18 months or so), chadli, soldado (needs to go home as he dont look happy here), adebayor (good on his day but his days are few and far apart) Thats 11 players...all of who are in the 1st team squad...replacing them all will leave an a team that needs time to gel (sounds familiar) and keeping them means a weak squad unable to win trophies or get top 4. The new manager needs 3 seasons to sort it out but that aint ever going to happen...so I am expecting a thread about who our new ex manager should be come late november
