I like Lucas, as a player, but he's the one player that under Conte has gone backwards significantly. Everytime Gil has come off the bench he's played well and caused problems. This is one of the reasons I feel like Conte's era bears resemblance to Mourinho, he ovelooks flair players in favour of workhorses, especially if they're good in the air. Pochettino, wasn't one for great changes either but he relied on our system grinding the opposition down and it often worked, particularly early on. I don't expect great performances every week but I do want us to look like we're trying to win games, which hasn't been true in quite a few games this season.
It's so hard to pinpoint that as a problem when the following players are nowhere near the usual standard of a top 4 side: Dier Sess Sanchez Royal Doherty Lucas We've known this for years about all of them yet all were on the pitch today, most started. The summer window went a great way to refreshing the overall squad but did nothing to improve the first XI. If anything, by replacing Reguilon with Perisic and Davies with Lenglet, in all likelihood we actually made it weaker than it was 6 months ago. Need a big January window. Ruthless, ambitious and decisive.
Kulusevski? Yes massively. But Conte has snookered himself to have allowed our entire system to be reliant on a 22 year old who hasn't even been at the club for a year. Tactics and subs have been baffling all season and these back to back defeated have been months in the making. Worrying times as he could be out until after the Human Rights Cup.
Lucas is appalling. Had a brief renaissance under Maureen but that aside has been dining on that hat trick for 4 seasons now. And this is the point I made to Spurlock earlier: until the likes of Lucas, Royal, Sanchez, Sess, Dier and Doherty are nowhere near our starting XI unless absolutely necessary, we have no right expecting good football and certainly no right thinking half our games will be a cake walk. Still lots of work to do, Fabio needs a big Jan window or I fear things will unravel.
Agree but I think the blame on transfers came out after Pochettino went and it's easy to say "oh those flops? all Pochettino's fault". They weren't saying the club were concerned about the transfers at the time, it's just an easy fall guy, the same kind of negative leaks come out after every sacking at top 6 clubs. Clearly there was a big problem with scouting and assessment of players if no one flagged that Ndombele, for example, hated putting any effort in. Pochettino's still a manager, at the end of the day, it's not like he was watching those players each week.
The man who gave us lo celso, Ndombele, Sessegnon and Sanchez for a total of £175m....no thanks. 4 of the worst Spurs signings in my lifetime and I was at Gilberto's debut ffs
Sorry but Sanchez along with Lo Celso, Ndombele and Sessegnon are all on Pochettino... he refused alternatives for the latter 3 so we signed no one in 2018/19 so he could get them the following summer. His transfer choices not the owners...and its the major reason I do not want him back
I think the issue boils down to something like this Last season, Conte's outlook was "This is what we have, and this is what we do" and that worked, as there was consensus between players and manager to push forward together The issue is this season does feel more like Conte saying "This is what we do" while ignoring the part about what we have, and that is certainly where issues come in such as playing Richarlison as a right winger, Perisic getting more prominence than Son down the left flank, and some players starting far too many games in the early season while others who need minutes starve It is interesting that, a few weeks ago, Dan Kilpatrick (IIRC it was Dan KP) said that Conte's outlook is the players have the talent to adjust to his tactics over time, and that does sum up the current issues as it does feel like there's some square pegs for round holes in the expectation that they'll be planed down to round pegs come the post-WC period, and he issue there is if that plan does come good there is still going to be a period where it hasn't come/isn't coming good which we're currently in Am I going to compare Conte to the worst of the ubermensch, or the period where Villas-Boas ran out of talent? No, that's simply not the case...but it can be said that Conte is being more reactive than proactive at the moment, and that does seem to be trickling down onto the pitch
My honest marks out of 10 for today Lloris 1 (cos he was brilliant last time out Dier 1 (cos he showed fight getting their subs off quickly) Lenglet 1 (he ain't Sessegnon) Sanchez 1 (he didn't get our goal disallowed) Sessegnon 0 (it's rude to give minus 1) Royal 2 (1 for a nut meg and 1 for not being Sessegnon) Skipp 6 (good to see him back) Bentancur 4 (not the worst player on the pitch) Bissouma 4 (see Bentancur) Son 5 (meh but tried) Kane 6 (meh but scored) Subs Perisic 4 (for replacing Sessegnon) Davies and Doherty 0 (pointless subs when you are chasing a game with 10 minutes left) Moura 1 (for the Ajax hattrick) Conte 1 (for saying we deserved a draw with a straight face)
Yeah its clearly all down to these players nothing to do with the manager who picks Emerson whenever he can. It always comes back to one thing with some fans even when the manager was well backed in the summer.
Conte is picking Emerson, as he was signed by Paratici to play in Nuno's system (a decision ultimately made by Tanganga's performance against The Sheikh Mansour Team, as we'd have signed Tomiyasu otherwise), so there is no way to blame anybody above the dugout for him playing games Similarly, three and a half years ago Hitchen was telling Poch that Tielemans was available (with the obvious undercurrent of "Seriously, sign this guy, the Winkssoko picot is doing my head in as much as everybody else's") but Poch turned down the opportunity to sign him, because he was set on signing Ndombele since the previous summer so instead we paid three times what we would have for Tielemans to sign Ndombele six months later and that decision is really paying off for us And I haven't even got around to Comolli or Baldini...
**** performance by our team. Even ****tier performance by the referee and VAR. Worst performance of the day must go to Conte,however what was was he thinking with those late substitutions. We needed to win, not hold on
I said it after the Man Utd game and I'll say it again: our midfield is set up exactly like the 3412 that Inter used when winning Serie A a couple of seasons ago, and last season it worked because in spite us playing 3421 we often played like the previous formation - albeit it was more often than not Harry Kane in the hole with Son and Deki pushing forwards And this is where we're going wrong this season: we're set up as if there's a player in the hole where there isn't, as we're playing a more traditional 343 at times, and the issue is that Kane has been instructed to play further up yet neither Son nor Richarlison are filling the creative role - and with Deki out, there's nobody really filling the creative role outside of a Bryan cameo Basically we need Conte to budge just a little and have Harry dropping deeper as he has for the last couple of seasons and we'll both have the link between midfield and attack and our midfield won't be overrun as much, as Son and Richarlison would both thrive on his passes while we'd also be putting less pressure on our WBs to do pretty much everything once we get into the final third
Disagree re VAR and the ref... Would have been livid if we'd scored their first goal and it had been disallowed. Thought we got lucky with our goal tbh.
