A draw was a fair result on the balance of it. First half dive aside, Coutinho truly is a world class player - head and shoulders above the rest of his team. If Southampton can do us a massive favour tomorrow, this will definitely look like a point gained on reflection. What worries me is that this is the second away game in recent weeks (West Ham being the first) that we've looked really nervous. Pochettino's entire philosophy is based on focus and composure in all areas of the pitch. We had that in abundance against B'mouth but lacked abundantly today. If you look at our away record, the big picture looks superb. But in this run-in, we need more than superb - we need impeccable. Hopefully Newcastle will be down by the last game of the season, but we can't count on it. Let's see how tomorrow goes. If they win and increase the gap to 7, I agree with others who have essentially said that we need to readjust our focus to securing a final spot above Arsenal and City - both of whom looked in the mood for a last hurrah today. Anyways...I'm holding the bad mood in check until we see what Liverpool's feeder club do tomorrow.
Still don't get the nervous thing. Thought we played confidently, fairly fluently, and with ambition.
A draw looked fair to me. Liverpool looked threatening through Coutinho, but unlike Spurs they lacked an in form striker who could take advantage of the openings he created. I don't think there was any nervousness, but both teams have full backs whose strength is going forward so both defences looked anxious with skilful players finding space in the channels and in and around the penalty area. Even though Spurs have conceded the least number of goals, there is definitely still some defensive vulnerability in the full back areas, especially against teams who have runners from midfield who find space between centre backs and full backs.
They've got 3 really tough away games coming up (West Ham, Sunderland and City - who looked a different team with De Bruyne back) so I'm not overly worried. Cautious because this is traditionally the stage of the season that they decide to go on a run, but not panicking.
We need to beat United. If we do that, then we have Stoke (a) and WBA (h). Beat United and all will be well.
I’d do the same for third ahead of Arsenal. We got six points from our last six games in the reverse fixtures. Things look a lot better if we beat United, I agree. But if not, not. And we have three wins in 11 games against the current top six, three in 14 if you throw in Everton and Chelsea, who are normally among them. Two of those wins were against City, who play football and are a little soft, which suits us perfectly. The other was against a team missing by far its best player.
If Spurs do fall short (and I'm not saying that you will as there is still a long way to go), then a win percentage of 53% is the main factor. Chelsea won the league with 68% last season. Even 4th placed Utd managed 53% (52.6% to be accurate). Spurs have been very hard to beat, but 11 draws is a killer. Win 5 and lose 6 of those drawn games and you'd be level with Leicester on points. I'm not saying Pochettino has decided to settle for a point in some games, but his preferred set up is with two in front of the back four with Kane doing a lot of work on his own up front and he's not really had the option to play two strikers in tandem when circumstances have dictated that he should. When pushing for a winner would another out and out striker to come on from the bench have made a difference? I know you're top scorers but spanking Bournemouth, Norwich, Villa, Sunderland, Palace, City (surprisingly) & West Ham account for 36 goals in 11 games. 21 in the other 21 is more telling.
Yes. We lack at least one and probably 2 strikers. Also, there haven't been enough goals from Eriksen, Son, Lamela, etc. Hopefully, we can add a few quality players in the summer and rectify that. That said, if we'd scored at home against Leicester when we were all over them and won that game, we'd be 2 points ahead now with our far healthier GD. It may come down to that game alone.
You make a fair point Luke. For what it's worth, I still maintain that selling Defoe was a huge mistake. The guy wore his heart on his sleeve, loved the club and fans, and was the best 'super-sub' this club has seen in the PL era. I also think he would've complemented Kane immensely - the latter being particularly good at holding up the ball and turning his defender to create space (as he did today for another superb goal). I think Leicester have shown that it is crucial to have at least 2 players sharing the burden of goalscoring, with Vardy and Mahrez netting a similarly large amount. Kane has had a magnificent season and is rapidly shaping up to be one of the best strikers in Europe, but it is telling that after his 22 league goals, the next down in the charts are Alli (7) and Eriksen (6). The only criticism I have of Pochettino is that he does tend to be a bit dogmatic. He is a firm believer in the 4-2-3-1 system and rarely deviates from it, even when all evidence on the pitch points to change as a necessity. I personally think that he'll use the summer to further upgrade the '3'. Alli has been a revelation and Eriksen is having a very solid season after going a bit AWOL during the Winter months. There is no question that Lamela, Chadli and Son can all be improved upon - especially in terms of goals scored. Another factor to bear in mind is that 3 of our 11 draws were immediately after narrowly losing to you at the beginning of the season. 3 points from 12 was and still is a horrendously slow start to the season, and can probably be attributed to our traditional last-minute dallying and faffing in the transfer window.
Defoe always gets goals. Always seems to be in the right place and has such quick feet to snap up those chances when the ball is pinging around the six yard box. He would have been very useful.
To be fair to Pochetino, I have heard him say in an interview that he is interested in using different formations in future especially to change games, but wanted to establish the way of playing with one system first, that suits the squad. I imagine we'll see at least one striker added as well as wingers and updates on the '3'. I'm not sure what happened to Son. He looked pretty promising when he arrived, now he seems out of his depth the whole time. Chadli also had a killer season on the left, scoring plenty, and hasn't looked as effective since.
He said that he'd like to use Kane as a number 10 behind a striker at times.That could see a tremendous increase in our goal threat. With someone with explosive pace leading the line and Harry behind with Alli and Insigne (I wish!) we could really rip at teams. If we keep Hugo and Toby, our defence should only need an additional centre back, a holding player and more goals. I see a lot of talented players wanting the chance to join us with M. Pochettino and CL.
That's very interesting LockStock I wasn't aware he'd said that. I guess the main problem this season has been that he has lacked the personnel to really change things around. Most glaringly, the desperate lack of another striker. But then again, isn't he to blame for that too? He has had two windows to address the issue but hasn't really done so. Alli and Son were clearly purchased to improve the midfield areas, and one of them has successfully done so (hopefully the other will finish the season with pride intact and come back stronger next year). But there's that dogmatism again - Poch has repeatedly said that he'll only sign a striker who is a perfect fit for the club. This reasoning is firstly unrealistic when your talking about the most precious and expensive commodity in football, and secondly - hypocritical, as we have plenty of squad players who don't quite 'fit' the system perfectly (Mason, Bentaleb, Chadli, Carroll etc). The whole drama with Dembele The Younger was simply farcical and once again got me worried that we just sometimes lack the balls in the market to do what needs to be done. Particularly if you're talking about a back-up striker...how wrong can you possibly go?!
Now you’re talking my language. Winning takes goals. If wins are worth three points and draws one, winning is everything, so goals are everything. Liverpool showed that two years ago, when they should have won the league, really, despite crap defending, because they could score. We lost the title because we drew too often. If this were still an era of wins equalling two points, the race would be very much on still, since we have only one more loss than Leicester does. As it stands, a player like Defoe who was good for nearly 20 goals a year in all comps, and is the best in PL history at scoring off the bench, would--in theory--have put us over the top. A lot wronger than you would think, when you consider Luis Saha. Especially when you consider he scored more than one goal per three games.
I thought he was average, there was a blatant scything down of Rose when nothing was given and a couple of soft free kicks awarded to Pool when their players fell over. He did at least take action against Cheatinho for that shockingly blatant dive.
Son was looking so good before his injury back in October. .. he's looked a shadow of that player since his return. As for us...I would have bit your arm off to be in this position in August...particularly after we lost to United, drew with Stoke, Leicester and Everton in our first 4 matches.
On the formation front we played 3 at the back against Watford this season too let's not forget, and once we add another proper striker (Son, Chadli and Clint can fill in but I think Poch sees them in the 3, especially Son and Chadli) I wouldn't be surprised to see us experiment a bit more. As others have said I think he wants to get really good at plan A first and then develop a plan B, maybe that could be some form of 3 at the back (actually quite close to what we have already, with Dier dropping in) or a midfield diamond, but I imagine whatever plan B is, it will involve 2 strikers so it's actually a major difference to what we already do, rather than a slight tweak. Whether plan B involves pressing to the same extent as we do right now, we'll have to see. On yesterday's game, I think a draw was just about fair. I thought Wimmer had his worst game for us in the league since he's been in the team, he wasn't awful but did let his man go a few times. Jan is back soon and it'll be interesting to see what happens when he returns. First half our front 4 were well off it, usually they're very quick in terms of decision making and they weren't yesterday but particularly in the first 45, and touches were well off across the board as well. That picked up a bit in the second half and our goal was the result of that. Son was a bit infuriating and I was snappy to see Chadli come on. Thought Walker had a great first half and then Coutinho had him tied in knots second half. Dier was a little off it too. We've had matches this year where one or two have been off their games and we've pulled through but it's hard to do that against a tricky Liverpool team when maybe 5 or 6 players are well off it. Luckily, anything can happen in the race for the title, so we can't write it off yet. Just have to keep going.
I'd say we looked anxious and pressured. Some wayward passes... in fact a lot. Some overhit, some misdirected. You could put that down to Liverpool's pressing but we certainly didn't look as assured as in previous games. It was an Anfield though so might just be a one off.
Even though I was gutted not to get the win, I thought it was a really good game of football and one that neutrals would've loved. Both keepers made great saves to keep their sides in it and I think a draw was a more than fair result. Only two things frustrated me yesterday, one mainly being in the first half, was our dillying and dallying with the ball at the back, all season we've often done a passing routine of GK > CB > FB/ DM > Winger/ CAM to get moves going forward but so many times it was going from GK > CB > FB > CB > DM > CB > FB and by that time Pool were pressing players onto us in which a couple of times we lost possession. Not sure if it was down to Pool pressuring us or just a few nerves but it was really frustrating. The other frustration was Son, losing patience with him this season, he's done near enough **** all since his return from injury which has been pretty much 3/4 of the campaign, he started off so brightly with goals in Europa and then the winner against Palace and his general all round play was exciting but now he just looks lost. His first touch is heavy, didn't/ doesn't help Walker out and gave/ gives away the ball countless times. He needs a good pre-season to really understand the demands of Poch but for now, I'd happily not see him feature for the remaining games or at least not start any. Hopefully Lamela will be fine for next week and if not then I'd much rather have Chadli ahead of him (I wanted that anyway but yesterday just reaffirms it). On a plus note, what a finish from Harry, running out of superlatives for him, great work from Eriksen to not give it up. Looks like we need our friends down on the south coast to do us a favour today, I'm sure they'll be desperate to help out Poch
