For the first time in a while I've woken up fed up. Normally I forget the loss straight away but this time after Soldado's howler I'm still miffed and not hopeful for Sunday. lenny, there are two of us so what are you talking about?
IT seems that last night has forced us to accept some home truths - we're a long way away from being able to compete effectively in the Europa league, let alone the C.L. Lloris must feel like Davy Crockett with our back four in front of him. They always look like a disaster one moment away from happening. The middle of the field is looking a bit more promising, but in terms of creativity, no Eriksen and we struggle to break sides down. The striking dept is as woeful as the defensive one, with the exception of Kane. Both Soldado and Ade must be replaced ASAP. Kane is a very promising young striker, but he cant do it all. I suppose to sum up, if we want regular European football regularly that we can last more than 5 minutes in, our squad needs a radical overhaul and improvement.
Kane came on and was expected to work miracles as a sub. Let's face it Soldado just isn't destined to succeed for us. Even if he comes on and scores the winner on Sunday it's too late now.
As someone else said earlier in the week (spurcat?) the reason everyone travelled was because our cup final training starts today, in Italy.
Gutted we went out...wanted us to be in with a chance of winning and cos it would have added confidence to the whole squad. What this does confirm, again, is that we need to strengthen in defence and we need a proven goal scorer as kane can not play every game. this season has been a mixed bag but I still see some signs of progress so I am optimistic about the longer term future.
Clearly Soldado lacks confidence which is why he chose to pass and yes, we do need to strengthen in defence. Two strikers are needed maybe three soon to replace Kane who'll probably be off somewhere. Poch cannot be blamed because we had a golden opportunity to go ahead so we are good enough but just lack confidence. I wonder if Sol will dare show his face on the pitch again, I'm sure he doesn't want to.
Seems our defenders need to learn when to play the ball out of defence and when to put their boot through it,Dembele v spammers and Verts last night,chose the wrong option and ended up giving goals away ffs
I'd say it was Fazio moreso than Vertonghen, Jan's howler was more a poor touch followed by a panicked attempt to get it back to the 'keeper, which he got all wrong. Our problem in attack is that we didn't take enough risks. We only really created the one chance and the offside goal, there was a lot of good runs that weren't picked out and we allowed Fiorentina to get back behind the ball too easily. I think Mason was very much missed last night, he so often sets the tempo for us even if he does give the ball away quite a lot.
The decisive leg of a tie three days before your cup final amounts to a special circumstance. I might not generalize too much from it. We played a heavily roatated squad who may have had an eye on Sunday. I noticed we went through a progression I’ve seen before. We began trying to play it through a bunch of defenders in the middle of the the edge of the box--unsuccessfully. Then after this failed for a certain period, we got it wide and crossed. This didn’t actually lead to anything, but there were a number of near misses, not to mention a lot of mugging of our players by Fiorentina. Then we went back to playing it through the middle, with considerably more success. I think we might do better if we went straight to getting it wide and crossing to start games. I agree Mason would have helped. We certainly were too slow too often, kindly allowing their defenders to settle before attacking more often than not. The growing problem I see is that teams are learning how to exploit what we do. In a nutshell, it’s 1. Sit back. Stay compact. 2. Let us get comfortable knocking it around. Watch the patterns, watch the eyes and watch the passes. 3. Pick the right time to anticipate, intercept and break. A faster buildup would help us here. It’s the sideways and backwards passes that tend to lead to goals. If we passed it forward more quickly, trying to step in and intercept wouldn’t be so easy. As I’ve mentioned, I’d like to see us do something different periodically to avoid being so predictable. Knowing when to put a foot through the ball would also help, agreed. We had two thirds of the ball and the same number of shots. If we would have shot more quickly, we would have had more shots and less possession, which would have been an improvement. Poor Soldado. Poor Fazio. When he and Gomez were heading towards Lloris, it was the old story of the tortoise and the even slower tortoise.
All Spurs fans have complained for years that we have a poor defence and then they complain even more if we play two defensive midfielders to protect the defence. If we play the Spurs way we are going to concede more than if we play the Chelsea way.
Quite simply, if we had a defence that was fit for purpose, there would be no need for two D.M's Also, quite simply, in the modern game, if you can't defend you'll win nothing.
We certainly don't have as many good defenders as City and Chelsea but why would we when they have so much more resources. But our main issue is too many mistakes: I think that is the main difference between a really good defender and an average one.
True. I still think it's more down to poor player selection and possibly coaching - whatever the reason(s), we concede far too many goals, of all sorts. You have only to look at our goals conceded column to see that there's a big problem there.
I think a team that plays a high line by its nature doesn’t really have any DMs. When the other team has the ball, our DMs’ priority is not to defend the back four, but to take part in pressing the other team. The idea is to defend from the front. The downside is that if the effort to press is bypassed, our DMs, not to mention any of our defenders, may be in no position to get back in time to hinder a goal scoring opportunity. Of course, the number of times this happens depends on the skill, judgment, speed and cooperation of our players. There should be a tendency to improve with time. But DMs who don’t defend the back four on a team sitting back are simply inept. Those that get caught up the pitch while playng a high line are to some degree the cost of holding a high line. Certainly, some players also are a poor fit for our system. I don’t understand why we would have acquired Fazio, for example. Dier, on the other hand, is a very good fit.
Arsenal had the best back four in the Premier League and stuck two defensive midfielders in front of them, namely Petit and Vieira, and that didn't seem to do any harm.
True, to an extent. Howver, I'd classify both, and Vieira especially as a few cuts above just ordinary D.M's
Yes and yes, in my opinion. Out of contract in the summer and he's been very good for West Ham for a couple of years.
