I think/hope we'll see Soldado on his own tonight with a 5 man midfield as we're away, with Kane as super-sub if required, and then we'll see Ade/Kane partnership against Stoke. I'd rather see Ade in Europe though, although his size may mean he is more of a threat against Stoke, as long as he chooses to put himself about.
Surely if the defence is composed of immobile large thugs you want mobile/skilful/speedy players to be your main threat. There is a case for going with Lennon, Eriksen and Townsend behind Lamela as striker.
But without some sort of counter-thug those guys would just get kicked to **** for 90mins. The Stoke players would have nothing to have a 2nd thought about
Ade/Kane is likeliest, I think. Not starting Kane will get the fans up in arms. Not starting Ade may amount to giving up on him. I think most of the posters would favor that, but I'm not convinced it's the best move. I wonder what Bentaleb's status is. I'm convinced he and Mason should be our deep lying players. I've never seen him fail to put in a shift, and he's an excellent tackler. I don't know why Capoue's level has dropped, but it really has. Some combination of Kane, Ade, Lamela, Chadli and Eriksen gives us enough of a goal threat. If we can get our shambolic defending sorted we might win a few for reasons other than dumb luck.
Load the kids up! I'd like to see Bents and Mason at the base of midfield. I'm guessing they must have played a few times together in the past? Or have they mostly missed each other as they are a few years different in age and due to Mason's loans?
I get the feeling we might see Fazio and Ade start for their aerial presence. I hope we don't but I can definitely see it happening
I'd go with: Lloris; Naughton, Fazio, Vertonghen, Rose; Chadli, Capoue, Mason, Townsend; Kane, Soldado. Plenty of height and power in that side, though none of the players have been picked for it. If Charlie Adam does Kane, then I'm going to hunt the ****er down myself.
We've got absolutely no width at the moment and everything's slow, predictable and congested in the middle. It's not just ineffective, it's also bloody boring. Nobody's covering our fullbacks and everything's bogged down around the box, then the whole side gets caught out when the opposition break. All of this is especially true at WHL, where there's no emphasis on our opponents to attack.
The main thing we need to fix is central midfield, which is a big ask looking at the options... Capoue is imposing in some games but anonymous in others Stambouli and Dembele go from imposing to anonymous in the same game Bentaleb and Mason have the workrate but lack the passing ability to control games Eriksen can do the dirty work but is far less effective in a deeper role There's an effective pairing in those options somewhere, but we have yet to find it, and while we try to find it we find ourselves unable to effectively control games and kill off the opposition - which has cost us against Newcastle and Sunderland, and damn near cost us against Villa and Asteras.
Letting Holtby go was a mistake IMO, i think he could have adapted very well to a deep lying passer-cum-terrier given a bit of time
There's nothing wrong with preferring to pass the ball through the middle, just like there's nothing wrong with preferring to get it wide and cross. What's wrong is using either of these strategies so regularly that you make defender's lives easy by not having to worry about stopping more than one strategy. We've been guilty of that, though perhaps we're getting a little better. We did get it wide a bit, just a bit, against Asteras, and, as usual, got a goal from it. Both goals, actually, and both time from the same thing: Townsend going wide on his footed side. If I was feeling optimistic, I would hope that we've now started to get teams to pack the middle by milling around aimlessly in the middle ourselves, then catching them by surprise by going wide. We started two strikers and got the two goals we need (for the most part) last game. I can hope we'll start two strikers again, and get it wide often enough, this game. And that somebody bothers to track back.
I've been saying since the start of the season that we should be scoring more than we do. Before the match I say what I think the score should be as I think I know my Spurs and when we fall short of what I think we should get then I know that we are still off form. I wanted a clear two goal win at Villa but it was only one goal. Four should have been six against Rangers and I wanted a second half goal last night but no. Now, I want a two goal win against Stoke. I've posted before that I'm worried about form if when we are cruising in the first half and no goals go in in the second half then things are not right.
My mother's been comparing the way we play to the Welsh rugby team - we prefer to give our fans tens minutes worth of heart attacks at the end of the game when we should be comfortably seeing out the game. Even when we've got a commanding score, like when we were 5-0 up at Asteras, we never looked like we were putting the game to bed - until Lloris was sent off, then we suddenly got very interested in shutting up shop like we should have been for the previous half hour.
Ten minutes? I'm dying pretty much from the beginning to the end of every game, bowing down to my false idols and sacrificing goats. The only exception is when we're losing, when I'm miserably depressed, but much calmer. The best strategic approach I ever understood in a team game was the Washington NFL team in the eighties. All the focus was on their big line and their big running back, who would run it straight at the other team for most of the game. Finally, when they'd got the whole defense cheating up and the game was at a crucial point, they'd throw a long pass for a touchdown. What made it brilliant was that they never threw the long pass more than a couple of times a game. I remember some crazy stat that they completed 3/4 of their very long passes, and most of those went for touchdowns. (20-25% is a normal number.) That took tactical discipline.
Verts has stated that the win was far from positive on Thursday and we'll lose tomorrow unless the team improves. At bloody last somebody in the team has noticed that the wins are not convincing. I wish he'd spoken to me after the QPR match. Ok so tomorrow I'd want a 2-0 to show me we're ok, a 1-0 against Stoke won't be that convincing and a draw would be pants. So what score would you want to convince you that we're starting to gel as a team?
Having a clean sheet at half time and continuing to have a clean sheet in the 48th minute would be a start. Didn't we have the same problem for a spell when Martin Jol was in charge? It's incredibly frustrating.
