Sorry to put a damper on these proceedings lads, but this was an average performance., against a tired Everton with nine of their players in the injury ward... And besides, there was only the one goal in it, at the end of the day. Our sub-standard performances of the past few Months (yes Months) has made yesterdays 'slight improvement', look good, in the eyes of most of the faithful. In my opinion, we still has a long way to go before anyone can start waxing lyrical with certainty. Get any-kind of a result on Wednesday and I might start believing too....
Everton are a fairly good team on a good run. We played well, at least in the first half, which was a good advertisement for football. Weâll see if it continues, but one half reminded me of the old VDV Bale Modric team. The simple explanation is that we finally played a 4-4-2 with Lennon on the right, the same formation they played. While we certainly donât have the talent they did, Eriksen is a special player, Soldado and Lamela are very talented (even if both have yet to come good in the PL) and the drive and directness of our three academy products helped make the team very watchable. Iâve always believed we have a good group of players, and a much deeper group than the last time we finished fourth (even if the best three or four are not nearly as good). I would assume fourth is a step or maybe even two too far, but if we keep playing a 4-4-2 with at least one outside footed wide player, if we keep attacking quickly, if we arenât too eager to expose our back line, and if we have a Bentaleb type protecting them, we should do reasonably well and play reasonably good football. Our prospects suddenly look much brighter than when we were playing a system we donât have the players for, I would say.
Kane's attitude has made a difference . He's seems to actually care. It was better but we have been starved of enjoyment so any grain seems a big improvement . Time will tell , let's hope it isn't just another QPR with a return to drivel football for another 2 months . I feel it is hard to feel long term optimistic as we don't have the structure to compete, no matter how many moral winning academy players are thrown in.
Agreed Bajan, I'll really smile if we get a good result tomorrow but I wouldn't degrade the Everton match quite that much because it was still a good effort to come back from behind and the winning momentum is there regardless.
Everton are a good side who we have matched pretty evenly with in terms of table position over the last couple of years, they've got good players in pretty much every position and excellent players - Baines, Howard, Coleman, Lukaku - in many. They've also got a settled manager and playing style, which is where they are ahead of us and probably why many pundits and many of us fans thought they would come away from the Lane with at least a point if not all 3. While we could have improved in areas of our game I think Pochettino will be pleased with the pressing and quick breaks we demonstrated pretty much across the board. That was the game so far this season that has been closest to what I was sold on when we got Pochettino in. Bentaleb and Mason looked a good partnership despite youth and inexperience. While the execution wasn't always perfect and we probably do need to work on retaining possession and using it better, the Everton game demonstrates what heart and effort married with quality in key moments can win you in football. Maybe that can provide a wakeup call to the slackers in the squad that if they put the effort in, they might get somewhere at Spurs. Looking to the Chelsea game I'm almost tempted to write it off a bit. They're on a fantastic run and have better players than us in pretty much every position apart from GK, Costa or no Costa. It would be a great show of confidence for Pochettino to stick Mason and Bentaleb in midfield again and to be honest I'd be totally ok with him doing it, as we'll need their work rate and commitment to stifle Chelsea's excellent midfielders. They also seem to be able to read each others games well, so we were rarely without one of them sitting back to help the defence or as an escape ball against Everton. There could be a case for sacrificing a striker and playing Capoue or Stambouli with Mason more advanced, but with Kane in excellent form and Soldado having finally scored a goal who do you drop? I'd rather see us go and play our own game (which on the basis of last time out was the high pressing, counterattacking game which we'd probably look to play anyway) and try and make a statement. This game has potential for us because its a bit of a freebie in a way - there is no shame in losing to this Chelsea side as long as its not a humiliating defeat, and as long as the players leave everything on the pitch. We can ask little more than that. If we get blown away by 2 or 3 but put a proper shift in then I'll be less bothered than if we lose 1-0 with the players putting in a half-arsed effort. The performance tomorrow is far, far more important than the result.
Sorry but I can't agree with that. Yes some of our performances this season haven't been as good as we'd like, particularly against the "lesser" teams. There has been good perforamnces too against Arsenal, City, Southampton and Everton. I'd personally add in QPR and Sunderland too but they were poor sides so I won't talk them up. Arsenal, City, Southampton and Everton showed the direction we're trying to go in and it looks promising. Apart from Eriksen's against Southampton the goals we scored in those games were all as a result of nicking the ball high up the pitch. Pundits like to blame the defender in that situation but if you look at each again you'll see that the player that nicks the ball is about 10/15 yards away from the opposition player when he takes his first touch and by the time they take a 2nd or 3rd touch our player is already pinching the ball. That we've scored 4 times in those games, against some of the better opposition we've played, shows the usefulness of the tactic. I can't understand how you can call it an average performance, we pressed in waves but everytime we did we either nicked the ball, stopped their attack or made them have to work very hard just to get the ball out of their own half. I thought it was great to see. On top of that the defence looked more organised and the midfield always seemed to get to where they needed to be. Yes we can still improve in areas and maybe this isn't the turning point to better performances for the rest of the season but it was anything but average. Who were there 9 players injured, out of interest? Realistically only McCarthy, Naismith and, perhaps, Stones were missing from their usual 11. We were missing Walker and Chadli(who only made the bench). Add in less important players like Kaboul, Naughton, Rose, Townsend, Dembele, Capoue and Adebayor, we have a similar amount of players out and we both played on a Thursday so tiredness wasn't an excuse.
Sometimes a team can only play as well as their opponents let them and on Sunday, Everton didn't play because we never let them play. We were quick to close them down, quick to make the challenges and quick to impose ourselves on the game at vital stages. We were sharper mentally and physically and IMO, thoroughly deserved the win. There have been some really sterile displays this season, particularly at the Lane and also some mind blowingly tedious play and some downright criminal defending at times. We saw none of this on Sunday and whilst there continues to be room for improvement, this was a huge and significant step forward in my view. I, along with 35000 others, certainly walked down the High Road afterwards, well satisfied with what I had witnessed.
Sounds like i chose a hell of a day to forget we were playing and to sit watching fricking Independence Day on the tellybox instead of flipping the channel
You can watch the video Inda posted of the whole game without the nagging knawing fear it'll go belly up at the end! Pretty rare occurence for us.
Sadly we have about the worst possible game to follow up our improved last performance. It gives those who do nothing but spout negativity the opportunity to say 'told you so', because let's face it, we are very unlikely to be able to get anything from the match regardless of how well we play. With that in mind I shall be looking at the effort and performance and perhaps not the result. I get the impression that others will not be happy until we walk away with the league!
J The days of us "walking away with the league" go back to my childhood, and I remember those days. Even then we didn't walk away with it, we had to fight to the end of the season. And fight is one of the things that I, and many others, feel is a minimum requirement expected by us fans. I would also like to see those little things called hope & progress. They've been missing for a while now.
