I agree with you, for the most part, but he's still making some silly mistakes. Overplaying some players, barely giving others a sniff and getting the balance wrong a lot. His failure to respond quickly to Pardew's changes was just bizarre and staggered, when pretty much everyone could see what was going on.
Probably the worst. Losing to a massively off-form team with an injury crisis, despite being in complete control and ahead in the first half. Conceding in the first six seconds of the second period and then failing to deal with a simple tactical switch. Really, really poor.
He was probably waiting for it to work. Think about it: you have possession about 100 separate occasions in a football match and about 2 of them turn into goals (that would be quite a good result actually). So out of 98% of possessions you don't score. This is quite normal. If you were the best manager in the world and put that up to 3 goals per game by brilliant tactics you'd still not score 97 times out of a hundred. That means in some matches you wouldn't score at all and it would appear that the tactics were not working. But changing the tactics would still make the chance of scoring lower! On the basis of the matches we have played so far it is impossible to tell whether Poch is a good manager or not. He needs three seasons at least.
All well and good saying a manager needs time but that will only work if he's the right manager in the first place. Not sure if Pochettino is.
Maybe AVB needed three and so Sherwood but they had no chance of getting three and neither does Poch.
What? We weren't creating anything, weren't testing their keeper and looked ropey at the back. If that doesn't lead to changes, then I don't know what does.
The only three players who can come out of that with any credibility at all are Rose, who looked our best outfield player for most of the match, Mason who looked to be our best midfielder, and Lloris purely because I don't see what he could have done to stop us from dropping points, although he does have a couple of moments of his own to look at sorting out. We were made to look half decent in the first half but we never took advantage of this, and as soon as they showed some desire and urgency in the second half we were done. The worst thing is that I can't see what will be done to change things for the better in the short term. Dropping Ade for Kane will only do so much, I believe it would be a positive change but Ade is not the root of the problem. We talk about having depth in the squad, but who can really play in one of those wide positions behind the striker apart from Chadli and Lamela, because IMO Lennon and Townsend are not that sort of player. They are wingers, whereas Pochettino needs an players who are an odd blend of wingers and attacking midfielders. There is no serious competition for those two players - I genuinely believe that next week barring injury we will see Chadli and Lamela line up again, and unless we change to a formation that uses proper wingers I don't see what alternative we have. Without a change in system we will get nowhere with the players currently available to us. Dier looked today like what he is - a fatigued young CB who has played a lot of games out of position. He has been trying to provide width on that side this season but today it all fell apart for him. I guess that there are manageable problems and some that you can't do much about. Having 3 (plus Kaboul even) players capable of playing RB in the senior setup is usually enough. We can't help (to an extent anyway, we could have done more in some regards in the summer) that we currently don't have all the players to play Pochettino's system but it also doesn't help that he seems unwilling to change the system to compensate for the deficiencies. Perhaps this is easier to say in hindsight, in fact in my case I certainly am using a healthy dollop of it, but: Dier is a fatigued CB playing at RB who is going to have to provide nearly all of the width down the right flank - surely play Lennon there who will provide the width and allow Dier to sit a bit deeper and concentrate on his defensive duties. Hell, even play Townsend who might take it down the byline a few times, even though his tendency to cut in can be frustrating. I'm not saying we need to get rid of Pochettino. I'm not even close to saying it. I think that given time, and if he gets his players fit and trained to the system ('his players' means any more he might want to buy too) we will do well. But in the interim I really can't see what is going to get changed. He is too stubborn to change his way of playing - and we can't say we weren't warned about it. He needs to get the players motivated to play with tempo both in and out of possession, but he can't drop some of the players who aren't doing it because he lacks alternatives to fit his way of playing, and he won't adapt that to use what he has.
I think Levy will be a little more patience than usual but yeah I agree that Poch won't get that sort of time.
It's the defence that concerns me the most - we're not just flaky at the back, we're almost non-existent. In several games now, Lloris has kept us in it - he must be wondering wtf is going on. We must bring wing-play back into our game and I'd prefer it if we played Dembele more - I haven't been watching today and I understand Mason was decent, but I don't see how he's suddenly un-droppable. We supposedly play 4-2-3-1 - the 2 wide men in that 3 need to stop cutting inside - INVERTED WINGERS DO NOT WORK (unless those wingers are players like Ribery and Robben).
Inverted wingers certainly don't work when both of them are constantly cutting in and one of the fullbacks doesn't overlap. Absolutely no width.
You lot need to wise up. Your club have the manager you wanted so stick with him and give him a chance. Its not like you are a nailed on top 4 club.
Rose was ok 2nd half but considering he had no defending to do all afternoon - other than failing to pick up their striker for the winner - he still did not contribute much convertible product going forward, although he improved a bit 2nd half. We have too many players who think they are better than they actually are: Rose, Lamela, Vertonghen, Townsend and even Eriksen, who but for the occasional free-kick consistently looks slow and lightweight for the PL. Mason and Lloris certainly carry no blame for today's travesty of a performance, but the rest should hold their collective heads in shame.
Trouble is - if we rest Dier (which does need to happen) who do we play RB? Kaboul? And can we recall Fredricks? (He was 21 on Jan 1st so wouldn't take a squad place?). He and Lamela were very poor today and there was one time during the second half where they conspired to give away possession and who's there behind them? Kaboul, who is just trying to get caught in possession several times a game nowadays. It really did inspire terror. The whole problem with the three of them, and others beside, could have been addressed with Lennon on for Lamela earlier. Last season the obvious weakness one team exploited was long balls towards our left back area that would beat Verts, due to his poor positioning and heading, and then Rose was beaten in the air every time. Well this season Rose has been one of our best players and Verts looks no worse than any of the others. I'm pretty sure that's more to do with a drop in standard overall than anything else. Lamela - talented yes. A great prospect but at no point in his Spurs career so far has he justified his place in the Premier League. Not his fault he cost 30m. Doesn't look better than Townsend so far and that's not saying a great deal. I'd love to know what his pass completion rate would look like if you didn't include some 70-80% of his passes which are successful only cos the poor sod receiving it has to do something special to keep possession. It happened so many times today. Eriksen's our best player and again he's young, he's getting a lot of games, has a lot of responsibility but understandably he's inconsistent. He's very, very good but as our absolutely clear best attacker how does he (and by implication the rest of the team) measure up to previous best attackers? Bale, Berbatov? I think you'd have to go back to the days of Simon Davies being our best attacker (IMO) in the pre-Jol days to get to a team which did not have one, two or three players who over-shadow him. And before then, even when we were really crap, we had Ginola. I don't mean to have a dig at Eriksen cos, like I say, he's our best outfield player. It's just when your defence is looking dodgy as hell, your strikers aren't scoring much, your other "creative" players can't cross, pass or keep possession and at best look like works in progress, there's a hell of a lot of pressure on our one decent player. We've been one Gareth Bale away from being bang average for two and a bit seasons now. And on top of the overall drop in talent in the squad it's only fair to acknowledge that Poch really didn't play his hand well today either.
I sort of agree but if we already have our best players on the pitch playing the best system Poch can devise why should he think that changing anything will make things better. The only change that really stood out was to take Dier off as he was clearly tired. I would have brought Lennon on at right back.
