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Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal

Discussion in 'Tottenham Hotspur' started by PleaseNotPoll, Sep 24, 2021.

  1. Billy The Spur

    Billy The Spur Well-Known Member

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    Hojberg was awful again, I have been saying since he arrived he is bang average, all he seems to do these days is cost us goals due to not doing the basics. Some people like to over rate him and give him a free pass because he was relatively cheap. Same with Reguilon, he can`t defend and is not contributing enough going forward, but seems to get a free pass because he came from Real Madrid, Royal similarly, does not look any kind of attacking threat, but the truth is, if those two were any good they would still be in Spain. I would love to know if there are any Levyista`s or ENIC fanboys left out there, Jesus Christ this club desperately needs new owners.
     
    #201
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  2. Dier Hard

    Dier Hard G'day mate!

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    When I saw on Twitter that Gil got brought on I actually turned the game on my phone (god knows why), whilst my signal was a bit flakey on the beach, from what I could see he done more than Dele and Ndombele combined and was involved in Son’s goal.

    It’s a ****ing travesty Dele and Ndombele got picked ahead of him today. I’d be delighted if I never saw the latter two kick a ball for us again, they can **** off and join Winks in the wilderness.
     
    #202
  3. littleDinosaurLuke

    littleDinosaurLuke Well-Known Member

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    The last four categories are all effectively “effort”. Utd were pretty much bottom of these too under Mourinho. The modern game dictates that however good your players are you need to press, harry and do a lot of running on and off the ball to be successful.I don’t think Mourinho woke up to this reality - Nuno needs to and pass it on to your players quickly.
    Utd are still suffering from having failed to replace or re-educate Mourinho’s midfielders.
    You didn’t have these problems under Pochettino, especially with Dembele around. ,
     
    #203
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  4. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
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    I actually feel quite sorry for both of them, honestly. They played badly, but I think it's on the manager.
    Alli was on the left for the first three games, put serious shifts in and seemed to be adapting to the system.
    What does he do? Shifts him onto the right and takes out the cover in the middle, replacing it with another attacking midfielder.

    Skipp and Gil were about the only ones to come out of that game with any credit, but even then we had to change the system to do it.
    The 4-3-3 with a bunch of players out of position just hurts the whole team and makes some individuals look appalling.
    It makes no sense and it's getting worse by the game, somehow.
     
    #204
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  5. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
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    Just in case anyone was wondering:
    please log in to view this image

    https://streamwo.com/W6EZ3QS
    I don't think it's possible to get that wrong on VAR, really. I'd love to hear what they actually thought happened.
     
    #205
  6. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    As I said for the Wolves match midweek, we can't play both Dele and Ndombele in midfield because that leaves us exposed when we don't have the ball

    More than anything else, Ndombele simply does not fit in with our system: Nuno's system is about getting the ball out into wide areas to attack, yet Ndombele's game is about getting the direct ball through the middle - which can be useful to have something in reserve to change a game, but in the starting lineup? It's contrary to the entire system, and that's without taking into account how he tracks back about as well as a Messerschmitt bubble car

    And this is where the comparison with Villas-Boas comes in: he dropped his system to play attractive football because people moaned and our shape disappeared overnight and, with it, our goal difference. Fast forward eight years and what do we have? People moaning our football isn't attractive enough, the system gets tweaked and our goal difference vanished overnight

    But of course, blame ENIC for that, much easier than taking responsibility...
     
    #206
  7. The Huddlefro

    The Huddlefro Well-Known Member

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    Exactly. I’m at a loss as to why he’s gone away from the midfield combination from the first 3 games which was at least solid, if not the most creative.

    I don’t think 433 is for us anymore, having been quite pro it in preseason and the early games. But no matter what we do Skipp has to be involved.

    Our CM is problematic. Skipp is a must, Højbjerg is an issue because he’s good enough compared to the other options to make him a starter but fitting players in around him is tricky. We don’t press high as a team which means his natural instinct to press often gets him out of position, and he’s not showing enough on the ball to justify the box to box role. We need him to learn some positional discipline, but I doubt playing in such a mess of a team is helping him do that. **** knows what Nuno is actually telling him to do.

    I’d be leaning towards a 4231 with fluid 3 behind Kane, personally. Something like

    Lloris
    Emerson Romero Dier Regulion
    Højbjerg Skipp
    Lucas Gill Son
    Kane
     
    #207
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  8. Billy The Spur

    Billy The Spur Well-Known Member

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    Apparenty the official line from VAR is that Kane is already on his way down lol. So the Kane is a diver narrative is still firmly entrenched in the official`s minds. Of course, had this been Fernandes or Salah, we all know the outcome would have been quite different.
     
    #208
  9. Dier Hard

    Dier Hard G'day mate!

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    I don't have sympathy for either.

    Dele's had countless chances over the years under different managers to actually look a good player again and he's been nothing short of abysmal. I don't know why we still persist with him and I have no clue as to why Levy chose to block his departure in January. I know you've mentioned he's been played out of position in the past but personally I don't buy it. His form was dipping even before Dembele and Eriksen's decline/ departure and it's never picked back up, regardless where he's played or who he's played under. He was a player that excelled in a certain system with the perfect personnel to support him, he very much likely won't have that again and it's why he's been shocking for many years and generally always poor for England.

    As for Ndombele, he does pretty much nothing in a game other than one or two nice turns and a very occasional nice through ball. He has a lot of talent but he's never able to utilise it to control a game and he doesn't have the desire to do so either I don't think. He's lazy and mentally breaks the moment anything gets tough. By far, pound for pound, the worst signing in our history.

    Gil's played in about three different positions for us since joining and he's only played about five or six games, in most he's looked lively and comfortable of adapting to a role if given a prolonged stint there. I want us investing time in him, not the same players who constantly let us down. Skippy also has to be a starter, he gets more out of Hojbjerg and helps protect the defence - and my god they need protecting.
     
    #209
  10. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
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    White literally kicks one leg into the other! <laugh> Kane's completely vertical when the contact's made.
    please log in to view this image


    If that's the official line, then they need to be removed from their jobs.
    They shouldn't be allowed to drive, either. Clearly visually challenged, to say the least.
     
    #210

  11. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    I know exactly why he's moved away from it: people moaning that we're not smashing teams 3-0 or 4-0

    This is exactly why things went to **** so fast in Villas-Boas' second season as we went from having a team which was at least solid so while we were creating minimal chances at one end of the pitch we were also conceding just as few if not less at the other end to having our goal difference evaporate in the space of a handful of matches

    So what do Spurs fans want? Do they want a team that looks like a blancmange in midfield but at least there's going to be some Ndombele gifs to get out of it, or do they want one that isn't going to get overrun because our midfield is only capable of playing going forwards as if our opponents are going to roll over for us like it's 2017 all over again?
     
    #211
  12. Citizen Kane.

    Citizen Kane. Well-Known Member

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    You've used this argument before and my response to it is unchanged over the years:

    If a manager is genuinely weak minded enough that he caves in to pressure from social media, he has simply no business being at a club as big as ours. Managing a school team where all the parents complain to the headmaster if their son plays out of position is far closer to such a manager's level.
     
    #212
  13. The Huddlefro

    The Huddlefro Well-Known Member

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    I have no idea why he’s changed it but I have to say it’s unlikely that it’s because Nuno is spending a bit too much time reading Twitter and r/COYS
     
    #213
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  14. Citizen Kane.

    Citizen Kane. Well-Known Member

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    AVB's second season went to pot because we lost the talent of Bale and the experience of Gallas, Defoe and Dempsey that summer without replacing any of them.

    This of course compounded the fact that the previous summer, we lost the talent of Modric, VDV and the experience of King without replacing them either.

    Because we at Tottenham never make the same mistake once.
     
    #214
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  15. Citizen Kane.

    Citizen Kane. Well-Known Member

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    Erm....what?
     
    #215
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  16. Citizen Kane.

    Citizen Kane. Well-Known Member

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    Looking forward to Dele's weekly Insta post where he expresses 'disappointment' in his performance and commits to 'working much harder to fix things in the next game'.

    I suspect by now he has the text of the post copied to clipboard.
     
    #216
  17. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    There's a very simple reason why I use this argument: because fans, not just ours but at plenty of other clubs, regularly do a fine job of creating a Narrative that the media can snowball

    For us Villas-Boas is the perfect example because we regularly had pundits parroting what was being said on various forums at the time and that's why he started messing around with his system and weakening it as a result, because once the pundits repeated what people were saying online that meant more people were saying it

    It's similar to what Solskjaer is going through (no, not the existential horror of failing to get a penalty for a couple of games...) because fans moan that he isn't fielding all half dozen attacking midfielders in the squad, which gets picked up on by the pundits who go on about how he isn't cramming half a dozen attacking midfielders into ten outfield places, and then that gets regurgitated by even more fans because they heard some pundits saying it

    Or, for another obvious example, look at the various World Cups or Euros where England managers have taken somebody like Beckham or Rooney in spite their being injured because of that same thing happening: a few fans think the idea of going tow World Cup without Rooney (or whoever) is unthinkable, the hacks and pundits repeat this, so more people say it and before you know it Beckham or Rooney or whoever is in the squad in spite being held together with gaffer tape in the hope they might be able to walk in time for the final group stage game - and it's not just England this happens with, similar happened with France taking a crocked Zidane to the 2002 World Cup, Brazil have had numerous variations on this in the past twenty years, and Argentina seem to always go into a World Cup with one of Messi or Di Maria walking wounded

    And this is what's happening with Nuno: some people on r/coys moan about x or y and post misleading infographics, SpursWeb and/or Lilywhite Rose pick up on it and signal boost it, and wouldn't you know within a few weeks we're trying to kill two birds with one stone by hacking up our system while also playing Ndombele because people online are convinced he's what happens when you put Pirlo and Iniesta into a teleporting pod when in actual fact he's Stephane Dalmat in everything barring punching academy prospects - and I remember way back when people simping for Dalmat saying he should stay because he had some fancy flicks that made up for his dearth of end product

    Also, and here's a weird one, you know how (IIRC) Brian keeps comparing Ndombele to Adel Taarabt? Guess what Jamie O'Hara said a couple of days ago? He compared Ndombele to taarabt, rather than the better example who happened to be the guy who twatted him in the face in training that one time
     
    #217
  18. The Huddlefro

    The Huddlefro Well-Known Member

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    If the players are already turning on Nuno then that really isn’t good news.
     
    #218
  19. Dier Hard

    Dier Hard G'day mate!

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    May need to give him some time, he's gotta get a few games of Fortnite in first.
     
    #219
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  20. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
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    Butchered quote leaving out a couple of sentences in the middle and changing it slightly, too.
    From the BBC:
    "I'm going to be honest. When you have a game plan you have to make the right decisions in terms of who you want to put on the pitch to develop that game plan. I take responsibility because the decisions were not right according to the game plan. I won't name individuals but the game plan was not right according to the players who were on the pitch."

    The tweet makes it sound like he's throwing players under the bus.
    The full thing sounds like he picked the wrong players for the system and it's his **** up.
    I haven't seen the footage, so I don't know who's correct, but I suspect it's the latter.
    Edit: Found the footage and it's a lot closer to the BBC one, minus some Geoffs:
    https://streamja.com/LVG3B
     
    #220
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2021
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