I feel pretty much like Blue and White (post 151) this is a transition season and yes we have had too many such seasons, but we have seen many advances this season. The incorporation of the young players Bentileb, Kane, Mason, and Townsend. The growing stature of Eriksen, the emergence of Chadli, the potential of Dier, Rose growing, and of course Pochettino. We were well outplayed today but experience was gained. I remain more optimistic than I have been since Harry.
Yes as I have said before I think we do need an experienced head in Midfield a top top pro near the end of his career would fit the bill.
Yes. Bitterly disappointing game today. It's impossible to ignore that the big occasion is the bane of recent Spurs teams. I remain a fan of both Bentaleb and Mason. But you need something like positional genius to be a deep lying player in a high pressing team, and both are far from that. They might do well to study film of Schneiderlin and Winyama (sp), who have helped Southampton to one of the leagues stingiest defences. But: I wouldn't have guessed we'd do this well this year overall. What I really wanted this season was good football, an identity and a way forward. We've done better than I hoped we would on all three points. The emergence of our academy and its players was unforeseen by me and seems the best thing of all.
Sorry but I don't give a toss about next season. We'll be havin the same moans next season. Crap defence Can't play Thursday sunday Never perform against top 4 away from home We thought we'd won the league when we beat arsenal and they were in a right mess. How many points are we behind them now
please log in to view this image I noticed this at the time and the prick didn't have any effect on the result today, but he's such an unprofessional twat. It's insulting to have him selected for this fixture, frankly.
Really disappointing result and performance, I thought we were getting past crap like that. Still, we've got a decent run of games to turn it around and prove it was just a bad day at the office, hopefully our players will have learnt a lot from this.
Kane is now a marked man so that makes it harder and means the team has to adjust to the new circumstances.
What i would like to know is when are we going to keep a clean sheet?.it's the same mistakes week after week in defencesive situations,it needs to be sorted out if we want a top 4 position each season,agree with Spurf about Kane,prehaps a decent strike partner would help,as the opposition,would have to watch him instead of concertrating on Harry
Worst defensive record in the top 16 except Newcastle and conceded twice as many as Southampton. Put like that it doesn't sound good.
It's not good Luke,something needs to be done,like bringing in a defence coach,or if we have one,get rid of him and bring a better one in!!
We've got the youngest team in the league and sometimes the inexperience shows. I still think a plan of getting this squad to improve by playing together a lot is the best long-term way of getting an improvement. We simply can't afford to buy our way into the top four so what other choice do we have? The defence looks bad because 1) it is inexperienced and so makes too many individual errors and 2) it is not getting enough protection from the midfield (for the same reason essentially). I think if we persevere with the current squad it will get better with time. Getting to a cup final and finishing 6th would be a perfectly acceptable season with this squad.
We might get marginally better results in the next few weeks but we would lose the opportunity to get real experience into Mason and Bentaleb. So we would be worse in two seasons time
Yes but who do you drop in that situation? In my view, Eriksen is too lightweight at times and is starting to get on my nerves. He constantly pulls out of any 50/50 ball, never goes for headers and simply doesn't use his body at all. He's too concerned with messing his hair up. I'm starting to think he might have to be moved out to the left more often to bring in a better partner behind Kane who has more of a tendency to be aggressive, combative, good at movement and passing but then that leaves Rose exposed. Grrr.... Eriksen for all his touches and free-kicks just lacks any fight which in this game against United was exposed big time and it's about time he added more to his game than just cute flicks and runs behind and starts to protect the players behind him more. Jogging around and watching the ball until it gets passed to you just ain't good enough! Chadli was another disappointment yesterday so I was surprised that Townsend was hauled off when he was the only one who had the pace to get behind United which frankly, we never did all game once he'd gone. Dembele helped us become a little more solid but he's not the long term solution. I don't want to rip chunks out of the players over one match because we have to remember, this is a very young team and they're still learning so we have to persevere. I could see a lot of fear on the players faces in the tunnel before kick off, especially Kane surprisingly, so had a sinking feeling when they walked out. This match sadly exposed our inexperience but I was surprised by how much we capitulated so early on because we'd won our two most recent visits to Old Trafford so should have been up for it. Poch has got a lot of work to do this week to pick them back up and get them in the right frame of mind to work their socks off the final 9 games otherwise this season will just fizzle out and we'll end up thinking, where have we gone this past season. Forwards, backwards or nowhere at all.
Experience is not just time on the pitch it is having an example to learn from. Bentaleb and Mason can not just pick it from the air. To suggest that having the experience of playing with a player like Davids or VDV will make them worse is just nonsense.
I'd agree with Spurf. Young players, like Mason & Bentaleb would learn more, and come on faster, playing alongside an experienced player who knows how to handle pressure etc. A signing like Cambiasso would give them the opportunity to play with somebody who has been there and done that at the very highest level. I would love to have somebody like Pirlo, even at his age. I know it'll never happen, but I can just imagine what he would bring to a young side, like ours.
I agree but only one of Mason and Bentaleb can benefit because the other one would have to make way for the experienced player. Alex Ferguson was happy to play Scholes, Giggs, Beckham, the Nevilles and sometimes Butt, Brown and O'Shea. Look what happened to them.....
Apparently the result was entirely down to an inspirational speech Wayne Rooney gave the team on Saturday night. Apart from the fact that Rooney can't string together three words, which makes the chances of him giving an inspirational speech so long that mathematicians are having to create a formula in order to calculate it, are we supposed to believe that Walker having the worst game of his Spurs career, with Mason and Dier also spending the whole game looking for new ways to be a liability anytime the ball came near them, didn't have more to do with it?
United had their best game of the season but we played right into their hands and allowed them to have it by playing so badly that a League 2 side would have done us over yesterday. If we'd played even half as well as we did against Arsenal and Chelsea then we'd have made it 3 straight wins at OT, as it was our own inability to play our game and deal with United's simple tactics for far too long made an average performance from United look world class. Lets not forget that they only really fashioned one of their goals for themselves, the second came from an abysmal clearance mixup from Chadli and the third from a sloppy pass from Bentaleb. We sure did help them out. That 3-0 scoreline is making United look a lot better than they deserved to yesterday, even against a very poor Spurs performance.
Credit to Man U. If one team looks really awful, somewhere around half of it should be the other team playing really well. As it happened, I missed the first half. In the second we looked toothless, if pleasant enough. Also, while it surely had zero effect on the outcome, the foul calls leaned towards Man U pretty outrageously. I also don’t enjoy slamming our players. I didn’t see anyone quit or hide yesterday, to give them credit (not that they deserve much praise for it). I would try the exact same lineup and tactics at least once more, to see if this was a one-off. Everyone looked pretty bad yesterday. Even Kane was trying to do too much and passed too reluctantly. Sometimes a bit of a rest is what reminds you of how tired you are. It’s the next time out when you’re fresh. I’m hoping that’s the case here.
