He was being destroyed by Grealish yesterday and his crossing as you say was woeful. Agree Toby was worse but it doesn’t excuse another poor display from the RB. I think Lucas drops out once Ndombele is fully fit. Whether we go three in the middle or 4231, Lucas is the one I think that goes so it’s a case of him being on borrowed time from a first XI perspective.
You realise we played Sunday then got another game Wednesday? The squad is limited People championed Poch’s rotation for half a decade...you can’t expect perfect line ups in every game from Jose all of a sudden. He picked a line up that got us 3 points.
I think you’re over exaggerating by saying Jose keeps going back to Dier. That was his first league start since December. He shouldn’t be starting regardless I fully agree but barring FA Cups he’s not exactly a mainstay in our side at the moment. Similar was being said about Rose even though he barely kicked a ball under Jose. I think we all want to see three in the middle, problem is we’ve never seemingly had the three ideal candidates all fit enough to start. Tanguy and Gio have only started two or three games together all season I think whilst Gedson is still getting up to speed, leaving Winks as the only one at the moment who likely makes the first choice CM three (for now) being regularly fit enough most weeks. Skipp and Winks in the same XI wouldn’t work, just as Dier and Winks don’t. Where as a three of Gedson, Winks and Skipp wouldn’t have filled me with much confidence yesterday either, zero creativity so it would’ve just invited similar amounts of pressure we saw yesterday with just Winks and Dier. Jose risked it yesterday by leaving both Gio and Tanguy on the bench from the start as I’m presuming he’s looking for them to impact the games against Leipzig and Chelsea, thankfully it paid off for him - JUST! - but nonetheless it did pay off.
Not at all...in any competition. We have alternatives in Skipp and Gedson. No matter that they haven't played much football, they can run and pass and probably understand "protect your centre halves" above anything. Dier has been dragged off within half an hour and at half time in early Mourinho games...and rightly so. He was dreadful and so were we. Mourinho went back to selecting him after those 'performances'. I didn't see any meaningful improvement in him after being 'hooked' and too late, he was rightly consigned to the bench...seemingly, until he was fit or we had nobody else available. Now..he's back again...and again showing no improvement in fitness, positional discipline or form in back-to-back fixtures and we're a rabble again. So, I think... "Jose keeps going back to Dier" isn't wide of the mark given the circumstances. He's being carried by others...and even he must know it.
He picked a line up that very nearly got us 1 point. As I said before the game, I get the need to rotate. But he rotated the wrong players into positions we are well stocked in. Jose complained after the game about how much the likes of Son and Lucas need to play at the moment. It's literally every minute of every game. So why not have Sess on the bench to bring on as a wide attacker? I doubt he'll start against Leipzig or against Chelsea as both of those are far harder games on paper, so we'll be seeing another 2 sets of full 90 mins for Lucas and Son. And if Toby was playing on zero sleep, why wasn't Tanganga in the line-up? He has played and impressed against far stronger opposition than Villa. I struggle to accept you arguing that Gedson or Skipp are worse options than Dier at the moment. The latter offers zilch. Barely got a pass right all game and spends the whole thing ambling around in a vain effort to keep up with play. I'm all for rotating when we have a packed fixture list, but don't do so in a demonstrably illogical way. And I regularly lambasted Poch's far too rigid policy of only ever rotating the same positions whilst leaving others chronically over-worked.
Dier done really well off the bench against Man City and wasn’t too shabby when he came on against Norwich. That probably played a part in Jose thinking he could start, it didn’t pay off of course but Skipp and Winks would be just as bad, I can guarantee that even if Skipp has barely played this season. If Skipp is to start, Gio has to be the other central midfielder otherwise it’s pointless and he’ll just end up getting abuse like Dier has because he won’t be in a partnership that benefits our team even though individually he’d be better than Dier at the moment. Gedson and Winks would be better than Dier and Winks although it still lacks a creative presence, it would be similar to Winks and Sissoko, ok but not spectacular. I just think Jose is easing Gedson in which is why he didn’t get the nod yesterday but another promising performance from the bench shows he’s getting better and more used to our style of play. His time will 100% come.
It's telling that, when Poch started Dier earlier in the season, it was as a CB rather than a DM - and it has to be said that is by far a better use for him this season as he's simply not fit enough to be a DM right now, and his passing was always poor for a midfielder but he's certainly reasonably accurate when sending it long (not Toby accurate, but certainly no aimless hoofer either), and the added body mass due to his muscle tone disappearing would help him in that regard too The obvious issue there is he wouldn't be a starting CB unless we played a back three...
I've said a number of times that Dier's place is off the bench, if we're ahead. No problem with that. It's within his current capabilities. However, you and me and my cat can see he shouldn't be starting games. Particularly as part of a midfield 2. Mourinho deserves being called out on crap like that...because it's as basic as the fact that we need a midfield three...which I've been banging on about since Mourinho was appointed and West Ham away. That covers the gaps in the games of Winks, Sissoko, Ndombele, Skipp and even, possibly Dier. The only midfielders we have who could play really well in a 2, are Lo Celso and Gedson. I'm not certain whether they can do it together but if we have to play 4-2-3-1 again, I hope to see it soon.
No evidence that it exists really. It ought to a bit because a run of success should give players more confidence but I've seen no compelling data that winning say three matches in a row makes it more likely that you will win the fourth.
My take on form is, that it has proportionally more effect the further down the league pyramid that you travel, which probably makes some sense as the better players that you have the less likely they are to be affected by the type of confidence issues that may relate to 'form'. From my time as a season ticket holder at Gillingham, I would suggest that anytime that we got off to a good start to the season this often continued and we would generally have a good season flirt with play offs are even get promoted, and if we started badly a struggle against relegation would follow, and I have seen plenty of both! I would also say that luck often follows the same pattern, when you are doing well the rub of the green is with you and when you are struggling nothing goes your way.
West Ham Good first 70 mins ... terrible last 20. Won 3-2 Olympiakos Terrible first 30 mins .... good last 60 Won 4-2 Bournemouth Good first 70 mins ... Terrible last 20 Won 4-2 Man Utd Terrible first 20...decent 25 mins...poor first 20 mins of 2nd half...average last 25 mins. Lost 2-1 Burnley Mostly good throughout Won 5-0 Wolves Battled well throughout Good in parts backs to the wall at times Won 2-1 Bayern Mostly poor throughout Lost 3-1 Chelsea Beyond bad for 90 mins Lost 2-0 Brighton Mixed Won 2-1 Norwich Terrible first 25 mins Good Drew 2-2 Southampton Awful Lost 1-0 Boro Poor for first 20...ok for next 40 mins...decent for last 30 Drew 1-1 Liverpool Battled well but out played for first 60 mins ... did ok for last 30 Lost 1-0 Norwich Played ok in first half ... awful in second half Won 2-1 Boro Played well for first 70...poor for last 20 Won 2-1 Southampton Played well for 70 mins...average last 20 Drew 1-1 City Battled well but out played for first 60mins. Won 2-0 Southampton Average for first 70...good last 20 Won 3-2 Villa Beyond awful first 20 decent to good for the next 70 Won 3-2 Leipzig Out played throughout but battled well Lost 1-0 Chelsea Beyond bad for 90 mins 21 matches...one good 90 mins Ramos managed far better with way lesser players. Today's performance was appallingly unacceptable...Maureen is responsible for being out thought (again) and the players are responsible for being out fought (again). Feels like the ending to Nice but dims time in charge.
He clearly isn’t doing as good as we hoped but he’s also been dealt a short hand with the Kane and Son injuries plus players like Ndombele and Lamela being made of glass. I’ll be judging him more brutally in the first half of next season but I’ll say I’m not overly impressed so far.
He is annoying me now - I know (and I think everybody else does too), that Kane and Son both being injured is a blow and is affecting the team. But he is supposedly a world renowned coach who must have managed teams with players missing through injury before - Change the record Jose and set the team up to utilise the players that we do have to their best effect. I do want excuses I want to see the team playing to the strengths of those available.
I was stupidly thinking he was going to spring a complete surprise and start Parrott, to completely outflank Lampard. I should have known better
I get that there are mitigating circumstances such as Kane, Son and Sissoko all being out long term. But there has been no defensive improvement (we have conceded 2 or more goals in 10 of his 21 matches) including Norwich, Villa, West Ham & Bournemouth. Tactically we have looked poor at the start of the games against Olympiakos, Liverpool, Southampton (league and fa cup replay), Brighton, Man Utd, City, Chelsea (x2), Bayern, Leipzig, Villa, Norwich, Boro away...that's 14 out of 21 matches. I have to help children learn. If I simply pointed to extenuating circumstances as a reason as to why they haven't learnt stuff in the previous 3 and a half months those responsible for the service would demand to know what I had done to overcome the obstacles...me throwing up my hands and saying it aint my fault would result in me losing my job. Yet footballers and managers get away with that ****e all the time. Jose is responsible for us being badly prepared for games (14 **** starts to games strongly suggests this is the case). Either he out of date so his winning style of football is obsolete (conceding 2 or more goals in 10 of 21 games duggests his ability to coach sound defensive team football is on the wane) or the players are ignoring him. Either way the manager and the players need to look at themselves and accept that they are not giving it their all and change that fact immediately. The results are not my issue but the performances are
I agree with this totally. I'm not suggesting that we sack him now. Mostly because it's not going to happen and so, is pointless. He might transform us in the summer.... Personally, I can't see it based upon what I've seen of us since he arrived. We've got no discernible shape. Most players don't seem to have the slightest idea what they're supposed to be doing or are just ignoring his instructions. I'm not sure which of those two options is worse. I've been very disappointed in his recent press conferences. He seems more concerned with covering his own arse than trying to drag something positive out of what is an unenviable and difficult current situation. He needs to stop bleating about the problems and start shouting "No surrender" and saying that the players will give everything between now and May, no matter who is injured and who is selected...whether he believes it or not. If he doesn't believe that, then he's really got problems because at least half of them (it's almost certainly a lot more) are still going to be there next season. This season isn't going to end well but if he's going to change that next season, he's got to draw a line in the sand and start to build positively in adversity.
I used to compare his appointment to AVBs but the more I think about it, I think it is more like the appointment of Bloke in a Coat. He seems out of touch with modern football. If we were organised and looked like we had a plan going into every match most of us would accept that we were not playing fast, free flowing football. But week in week out we start or end matches looking completely clueless. Like I said previously...the result is not the issue but the lack of cohesion all over the pitch and a seeming lack of effort week in week out (with the exception of 3 or 4 matches) is making us painful to watch.
What sticks out for me isn't the results, but what's behind them In the case of the Wolves and Villa games we were set up badly, but we played so well in that bad setup that it took us over the line - and that's been the real issue, we aren't just set up badly in some games but are utterly rotten too, notably the Southampton, Chelsea and Man Utd matches in January Say what you will about Poch, but there were numerous games where we played badly yet still ground out a result...****'s sake you could say that about LAdPCeV-B - yet in the past three months we're alternating between the Sherwood approach of winning by accident or the Ramos approach of apparently thinking that we didn't need to prepare for our opponents, and there comes a point where you have to say that simply is not acceptable
This isn't accurate, and represents what worried me more than anything when he joined. More so than the 'dinosaur' labels thrown at him. He has only ever managed teams with vast resources at his disposal. Of course, there will have been injury crises along the way but he has only ever known life managing squads able to cope with them. So what concerned me more than anything was how he would cope walking into a club run by owners who have always ever been reactive rather than proactive when it comes to on-field success. Our failure to sign a Llorente replacement is just the latest in a long, long line of examples of this. And I think Maureen's post match comments about Chelsea having Giroud, Abraham and Batshuayi to call upon was the first remark that smelled of genuine frustration. I don't know what yarn Levy spun to get him to join. It seems clear that Maureen sees this job as an opportunity to 'clear his name' after the United gig and genuinely write his name in the history books. But I think he sorely underestimated how this club is run and may well be nervous that he has walked into a career-ending trap. This is certainly reflected in his 'please feel sorry for me' demeanour in front of the press - Harry adopted exactly the same tone in his final season, even before batting his eyelids at the England job. I gave our January window a 6/10 as there were generally more steps forwards than back. But it has left us needing to move heaven and earth in what is already a curtailed summer to get this squad up to track. Without exaggeration we need a minimum of 6 out, 5 in. And my gut instinct is that ENIC just aren't the right owners to make that happen. So i guess in a roundabout way I'm saying that the title of this thread should be 'ENIC...how long will they be given?' Because if we fall short in the summer yet again, it doesn't make one iota of difference who sits in the dug out.
Last week Paul Mitchell said in an interview that every squad should change 20% of its personnel each season Of course, for a section of Spurs fans, this leads to the usual harrumphing about money Here's where they're wrong, though: changing 20% of a squad's personnel doesn't mean signing four or five players every season, it means changing four or five of its personnel - for example, if we gave regular minutes to Tanganga, Skipp and Parrott this season that would be a change in personnel and quite a significant chunk of the percentage that Mitchell is talking about This highlights an important issue from the last two or three seasons though, namely how we could have had one or two youngsters every season on the fringes of the team, but with the exception of Poch beginning to drip feed Skipp into the team during last season we didn't really have that, as evidenced by a couple of season's worth of Not606ers (among others) wondering what the hell KWP needed to do to get some minutes coupled with seeing so many prospects such as Edwards, Oakley-Boothe, Shashoua and Bennetts leaving with little to no chance of breaking into the team coming their way
