In a competitive league, we don't have the luxury of just considering ourselves. Unfortunately. The way this season has gone, it's going to be the club that manages to string together a burst of late form that will manage to finish top 4. Hence my (rather reasonable) comment that I hope it's us who manage to come good, first.
The second half gave me some hope that this team can improve and become a unit that lives up to it's billing. Confidence is probably the key missing element atm so this win will be important. Once again Lennon shows why he is such an important element in our team, as he pretty much always had been since his arrival. I hope Poch sees this.
Did you notice we started out the game well in their end, getting it forward very quickly and creating two good chances? But we were wide open at the back, and lost the plot when Livermore scored. Confidence is so central. A win is always good, and level on points with Arsenal is a bit stunning considering that our mounting awfulness peaked today in the first half. It will be papering over the cracks if we go right back to the no-width style we’ve been using. If we continue to spread the field and play two strikers, on the other hand, these could be important points in a still-salvageable season. Certainly not any of us. We’ve all been saying just keep it narrow, keep slamming heads against the brick wall teams know to set up in the middle against us. One more time: when we vary the system, we do better and get points. I will ask nicely, Mauricio. Can we please make sure we have some width with (select at least 2), Lennon on the right, Townsend on the left and Chiriches, Naughton, Rose or Davies getting forward? Also, can we continue to play with two strikers, one of whom is called Harry Kane? Of course, sitting back a bit would be better, but if we do those two things, we spread the field and let our talented players, maybe Eriksen especially have the space they need to create goals. I agree we miss Bentaleb and also can’t understand why we don’t start Stambouli. Thanks, Spurm!
rwaeb, I went and did my ironing but I said early on that the match wasn't over so let's not be defeatist. I too was downhearted but I retain a spark of hope.
It's telling that when we got some width, with Lennon on the wing and Chiriches marauding from full back, the system started to click into gear. This says that, when Walker is back and Yedlin arrives, things might start to improve somewhat as the team might actually take the initiative in games rather than spending long periods of the game tripping over each other in the central areas.
Evening gents. For me, the officials ruined the game today. I thought we played some great football in the first half and you played some decent possesion football in patches, it was a decent first half overall. The Ramirez sending off was soft, in fact it was softer than soft, it was pathetic. If Livermore had been sent off half an hour later we could have had few complaints, but Ramirez should have got a yellow and I agree with Bruce's comments about it being a deliberate attempt to get a player sent off. Most disappointing. It was a very frustrating game from a Hull City point of view, it was a very even game at 11v11 and it was an enjoyable first half, it's just a pity we were deprived of more of the same in the second. The ref was appalling, it was obviously the lino who was responsible for the sending off, but the ref was utterly useless all game. Still, it was a decent performance from our lads(after a shocker away at Burnley), so there were some positives to take from the game, even if we do feel slightly robbed of a point. Lennon definitely improved you and Eriksen was excellent all game. See you at WHL.
I have a lot of time for Steve Bruce and I love Dawson, Huddlestone and Jake, so I sincerely hope you do well this season . I do think the red was he correct decision, although I will concede Vertonghen does not behave as well as I would expect from a Spurs player. A game of two halves, I couldn't see us getting anything at half time and then we dominated the second. Funny old game.
,,, I also think that the red card was a very soft one. But, like Beckham in the WC back in '98 the law is the law, and if e Ref apllies it strictly, he has to go.
I think it was softer than Beckham's, as it was more of a tangle, but it's one of those that wasn't really enough to warrant a red, but equally there was enough in it for it not be overturned.
got to be honest...i thought vertongen went down as his legs were tangled so he tripped...he did not pretend to be hurt and seemed to be saying "WTF" to Gaston...soft red yes...would be pissed off if it happened to us but why is vertongen the guilty party?
I'm not a fan of Vertonghen's attitude, but I'm not sure what he did wrong. Ramirez makes contact with the back of his knee. It doesn't take much to make someone go over from that. Hardly comparable with Tomkins in the Everton game.
Phil neville slagging off vertongen for going down easily...he was called out for diving by his own brother on sky for diving 18 month ago
I would say we seem to do well insofar as we ditch Pochettino’s system and use the Harry-ish, Sherwood-ish counterattacking 4-4-2 with non-inverted wide players. Eriksen, in particular, is a very talented, very slight player, who clearly benefits from players on both sides being broadly distributed in space, and suffers when defenders can pack themselves together and block his excellent shots. I admire your positive spirit, TMT! Mine disappeared recently due to my frustration with Pochettino failing to learn what seemed like the very straightforward lesson I mentioned above. I still think we have good players, though. I will mention that I disagreed with my wife when she said we looked hopeless in the first half. There’s no doubt in my mind we’ve got to shelve the inverted winger 4-2-3-1 for the foreseeable, I said (or words to that effect), but individual games are decided as much by luck and confidence as quality and tactics. One break and everything changes. Completely tangentially, I also correctly guessed both our two goal scorers when I heard we’d won 2-1. With Chadli out, who else but Kane and Eriksen were going to score?, was my reasoning. You’re more civil than I would be, though I have yet to see the incident. Just when you’re finally playing well and winning, a debatable red comes along and turns the tide. From my own POV, red cards follow our games around like lost puppies, most of them against us. I’d rather refs not step in and turn so many of our games (though we did win one with ten men.) I’ll have to watch this one to have an opinion about it. 5:00 to 6:00 your time Sunday (noon to one mine) is about the one hour I can’t watch Spurs, explaining why so many of our games start on Sunday at 4:00 pm. I was inclined to view this as a blessing today, though. But for the second time out of three games we got a win in a game we were losing in the one hour I couldn’t see it. I wish you and your three ex-Spurs well. You were outplaying us by a mile in the first half. Keep playing like that and you’ll be fine.
Eriksen has said that the win is a huge confidence boost but Hull are down there with a bad recent record and were down to 10 men so why the confidence boost against this team? For me the confidence boost will come if we win one of the next two matches and especially at home, then there will be real reason for confidence so let's not get carried away by yesterday. We must score first against Everton and Chelsea because we're back to the habit of going behind again as last season, we broke the trend and things happened. Let's break the losing run at home and then see what happens.
It was a harsh result for you guys based on the first half, you lot really put us under pressure and I think Jake scoring was just something written by "the football gods". You should have been more than 1 up going into the dressing room at half time so we got lucky there. The red for me was a red though, a soft one but letter of the law is you can't kick out, regardless of how reckless it is. It was reminiscent of Beckham and Simeone, ultimately it's bollocks but that's the rules for you. The second half was one of the best halves of football I've seen from us, don't get me wrong the red card helped but Lennon and Eriksen were fantastic and I must admit I saw us nicking a winner once Harry got the equaliser. Really wish you guys the best, think I speak on behalf of most Spurs fans when I say that providing it doesn't affect Spurs negatively, we wish you guys the very best out of any other side in the League. You've helped rejuvenate Hudd and Jake whereas Daws looked brilliant (as expected when not playing in a highline) yesterday and all of those are crowd favourites here at Spurs so a genuine thank you from us. All the best for the season (bar your WHL journey )
Verts done nothing wrong IMO,looked like he was tripped up when Ramirez kicked out,and Vlad is a better R/B then C/B
