Really poor second half, just like the first leg. Failed to put the ball away when on top in both legs and we've paid for it.
Was interesting, but not surprising in his case, to hear Jenas talk about how upcoming finals definitely affected his performances in the games leading up to it. Let's hope our players are, consciously or not, saving themselves for a Chelsea or Arsenal league-game type performance. They're surely gonna look a lot better on Sunday than we've seen over these last few games.
English teams looking particularly s**** in Europe this week. 4/4 defeats so far. Liverpool gone to extra time after Arslan levelled the tie.
Really didn't understand what the point in bringing over all of our best players and leaving a lot of them out was. Either go out there 100% or let the reserves give it a go. We've had the worst of both worlds, in my opinion. Really tough to see us winning on Sunday now and it was a very hard game to start with. Pochettino said that he was either going to look great or look stupid at the end of the week and that's not been a good start. Need to massively raise our game against Chelsea to have a chance and the mistakes really have to be cut out.
This competition is frustrating, lots of good teams in it now, and we choke every year at these stages. The EPL is not what it was, and we most certainly aren't!
I am positive that we're gonna look a different team on Sunday. Messed this tie up last week. Being piss-poor in every department tonight didn't help. Oh my God. I've just seen the Soldado pass again. And groaned in pain again.
Really, really bad stuff. We'd done well enough in the first 135 minutes but hit the self destruct button and sent ourselves out in the last 45. Rubbish, utter rubbish. No wins in 4 now, not the kind of form you want to be heading to a cup final in. Lamela, Soldado, Fazio and Vertonghen were all rubbish tonight. 2nd in the group and out in the first knockout round. That's a really poor Europa League performance and going out early in the FA Cup was very poor too. Lets the hope we turn up for the League Cup on Sunday, I think we need that now or we'll be facing another very average season.
The best I can say is that we are a young team and the lack of experience showed. We made so many mistakes and gave the ball away so often it was embarrassing. It's a shame we are so much better than that and I really don't think Fiorentina are that great.
Disappointing as we have been, the dilemma that we have had could have been avoided if the idiots who schedule matches did not have a final in a European week. I'm sure that this problem would not have arisen in Spain, Italy. or Germany.
More disturbingly Franco is in the Besiktas team. He'll probably shoot the others if they lose. No pressure then.
Oh well, onto Sunday then. Let's hope Poch can lift the team and put in a performance. So much riding on that game now. COYS!
Jesus wept, that was awful watching. Some dire play there. Lloris - not sure he even had all that much to do apart from pick the ball out of his net a couple of times. Badly let down by those in front of him. Chiriches - looked like what he was - a CB playing at RB - for much of the game. Fazio - the Gomes of the centre back world. Looks good sometimes but often hopeless, and always, always has a mistake waiting to happen. Vertonghen - reasonable apart from his part in their second goal, where only he knows why he didn't just knock the ball away instead of playing a lovely layoff to Salah. Davies - Salah had the running of him, he's looked a little off the pace in his last few games IMO. Bentaleb - nothing special, probably pulled early ahead of Sunday. Stambouli - only so much protection you can offer to a back 4 so determined to shoot itself as ours tonight. Reasonable performance but again, nothing special. Lamela - can't remember a good moment he had. If he starts on Sunday I will likely explode in rage. Could be the beginning of the end of him in a Spurs shirt. I'd love to persist with him and see him become world class but we can't afford to now. Eriksen - below par but at least came close to scoring a few times. Chadli - not awful, but not great either. Soldado - ****ed it with the awful square ball attempt to Chadli and never recovered from there. Kane - tried to inject energy and intent and succeeded a bit. Will definitely start on Sunday. Townsend - huffed and puffed and I'd have him hands down over Lamela vs. Chelsea. Walker - will obviously start against Sunday. Team shape would have looked better if he'd played the whole game but I understand why he didn't. Yedlin must still be injured?
We took all the players because we are staying overnight and training as a first team squad tomorrow tomorrow
I dunno about that. I can't see why there isn't any option between those two extremes. If your second team isn't really good enough why isn't it an option to add some of the first team to make it better? Why must it be the entire first team? Play a strong enough team to win the game and even, if possible, be able to take some of them off towards the end. It didn't work tonight but the individual errors and basic inability to control and pass a football did for us. Just bad individual performances.
Have to admit that I am worried that our performances since the liverpool game have been poor. We have lost form at a very bad time. Defensively we have been inept in the past 3 matches, without kane we look unlikely to score and we have only played well for 2 halves. Chelsea couls rip us apart
I get the impression that Yedlin was never intended for this season and only here to acclimatise. Read many things about his dodgy performances for club and country just before he came to us too. Seems he's still quite raw.
A lot of our back-up players don't seem to suit the system that the first team plays though, so mixing it up tends to result in losses and poor performances. We'd have been better off resting everyone and changing the formation or way that we normally play, in my opinion. The fullbacks are supposed to provide our width, for instance, but neither Davies nor Chiriches are suited to that. They don't have the engines or pace to get up and down the wing all game. Soldado thrives on service from out wide, so we played two inverted wingers and didn't provide any. Picking our best 2nd XI and then working out how we could get the best out of them would've been a better idea, in my opinion. Either that or picking our best team, that we know works and going for it completely.
