Yep. Kane and Fazio also deserve honourable mentions. Townsend did well at times and worked hard, too. Chiriches? Not so much.
Shame that penalty spoilt the evening. Vlad seems to have lots of talent but no brain, shame he's not a striker really.
I'd dearly love to see Kane start in the PL over Ade. He works so much harder than Ade and and he's got a finish on him too. If that wasn't Paulinho's Spurs swansong then I'll be sorely upset, and Chiriches needs to improve drastically after that one too.
The second straight game we stopped presenting a threat, and lost the lead. I'd say we were lucky to get a draw, but a draw doesn't help us, really, at this stage. Chiriches crowns a truly awful night with two horrendous mistakes in two seconds to cost us two points. But we were awful, overall. Besiktas were so much better. Paulinho and Chiriches were particularly bad, but everyone seemed unable to complete the simple pass. Soldado had one great dribble and did nothing else. Davies didn't impress me. He had an awful giveaway, and contributed one good cross, but didn't do enough. On the bright side: Lloris was brillant again. Kane was good throughout, Dier was good overall, though he had a few bad passes, Fazio was reasonable, Dembele looked a cut above when he came in, Lennon did a bit.
Lloris MOTM, Dier, Dembele and Kane decent. The rest were different versions of ****. What is worrying is that anyone could have seen from the first 5 minutes that Chirches and Fazio were a disaster waiting to happen - but Pochettino left them on!!
Chiriches is a clown and it was evident from day one. I'm seriously having trouble trying to think of one of our signings from last summer who have really changed my underwhelmed initial impression of them. Thank God we have Lloris. If you were to pick a best Spurs 11 from the last five years or so I'd say he's the only one in our current squad who'd have a look-in to get into that 11. Maybe Adebayor but on current form I'd take Crouch. Or Kane - funny how players like Kane, Rose, Bentaleb - damn, even Naughton (when played on the right) - are the ones who seem to have improved over the last year and not the Superstar signings. Talking of Ade - was that the worst knock-down header I've ever seen from him onn about 91 mins or so? The one that went out of the penalty area towards no-one? It seriously looks like he's trying to stop Spurs scoring in the last couple of games.
I wonder if it might be an idea to switch Chiriches and Dier for the next Europa League game? He might do less damage out wide. Barring that, stick Veljkovic in the middle alongside Fazio. Dembele and Stambouli in the centre, Lennon and Townsend on the correct wings with Kane and Soldado up top and we might get somewhere.
****ing Chiriches! Awful all game, really needs to buck up if he's going to get any more chances. I'd sooner have Veljkovic playing in the cup games than him, he played like he was drunk. I thought we did okay today, Besiktas gave Arsenal's first choice a run for their money and would've won if the referee had done a good job. This time it was our second string(and Lloris) and the referee was very much on their side. Real shame we couldn't see it out but I was pleased with most of the performances out there. I thought Pochettino got the line up wrong though, a few first choice players out there and I think we win comfortably, and bringing Adebayor on was a bit of a waste, not to mention naive.
Yeah, no complaints about Townsend either. Consistently got the ball into their area and worried them, and no big mistakes either. I didn't think it was Chiriches and Fazio who were awful, but Chirches who was horrendous, Davies poor, Fazio decent and Dier good. I'm angry about our tactics. As all over the place as we were, we were producing good chances for a while. Then we decided to "defend" the lead, when it seemed clear, again, that when we stop making other teams worry, we can't defend well enough to keep a clean sheet.
