Whoever decided to sign Dier when he was a squad player at Porto clearly deserves a lot of credit. Dumb luck played a part, as a red card last year forced Pochettino to throw him in to the opening game. He responded with an excellent performance capped by the winning goal against a rival. Pochettino deserves some credit for keeping him in the lineup for the most part, though as un-keen an observer as me was able to see he belonged somewhere in the first 11. But he has been brilliant as a DM after a very shaky start I would have benched him for, so again it’s the coach who looks bright for sticking with him there.
It goes without saying that we only see the evidence about any player from the games we watch. A coach, however, sees them every day in training sessions and in practice matches. In the case of Dier, M.P. obviously saw something in him that made him think that it would be worth trying him at D.M.
Poch has to get the credit for Dier as a DM. I don't think it was just luck. He played him there in pre-season then started him with Bentaleb in the first game (with Mason on the bench) then with Mason (with Bentaleb on the bench) in the next two - that looks like a plan to me
http://www.skysports.com/football/n...r-tottenham-change-under-mauricio-pochettino? This means one thing: don't make a complete bollocks of it against Swansea!
Yeah, that sounds about right. Neville hits the nail on the head, for me. It was one of the tenets of Guardiola's Barca to work even harder off the ball than on it, and regain possession asap.
Clearly you need to back it up with talent though as a 100% record for Burnley didn't do them much good.
Burnley obviously didn't have the talent in their side that we do. However, their work ethic got them as far as the Prem - even if they weren't quite good enough to survive in it.
And what are the win percentages when a team at the top of the workrate league comes up against a team near the bottom
In terms of distance covered, Norwich, Villa and Stoke: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...rther-than-Manchester-United-this-season.html
I'd also observe that we've already played 5 of the current top 7 clubs excluding Spurs. Hopefully we will pick up a few extra points when we play more of the mid table sides..... like Liverpool and Chelsea.
He's right about the work ethic without the ball - and with it too v City - but Spurs have been lethargic looking with the ball in many games this season. There has a lack of pace and width in the play. Perhaps things have changed with the change of personnel in those key midfield positions. Son seems energetic, Alli likes to get forward quickly and Dier seems a very dynamic, all action central midfielder in the short time he's played there. But I still can't help wondering whether Pochettino has strayed across selections which have worked (like LvG did at Utd last season) or whether it was his plan to pair Dier and Alli together, even though they didn't appear to be anywhere near to being first choices earlier on.
Gary Neville is the best pundit on TV at the moment. Everything he says there is true and I think most on here would agree that we're starting to see some positives of what's been a troubled 18 months or so.
Dier's played every game for us this season and most of the pre-season in his midfield role. I think that the initial idea was to pair him with Bentaleb or Mason, but both got injured. Dembele might have been another option there, but he got crocked, too.
He is a good commentator, and his points are well made. I especially like the "hunt in packs" video segment. I’ll quibble to say everything would be truer if he upped it towards the glass half full side a bit. A mess of a club? Nah. Our finances were always in good order. We’ve punched above our weight 5/6 years. Liverpool have a lot more to answer for. Not enough quality? We’ll see, but I think there’s a lot of quality in Kane, Eriksen, Son, Alli, Lamela, Dier, Alderweireld, Lloris. So rather than from "a mess" to "decent." I’d say it’s from "decent" to "good"--so far. Consider that in two games against the league leaders, we’ve knocked in 5 goals to the Mancs’ 1--and three nil in legal goals. It’s surprising that against a team so lacking in quality, the world’s most expensive squad would have packed themselves in front of their keeper, and the third or fourth richest would have lost by three. The oddity of this year’s scheduling is that we’ve faced the fixtures we dropped points in last year to a remarkable degree. The only wins I can think of that we had last year were Everton at home and Sunderland away. We may have had 7 or 8 points from these seven fixtures.
Dier and Alli started against Palace last week and we had the same problems you've mentioned. We didn't need Dier and Alli in midfield to thrash Chelsea last season and we didn't need them when we beat Arsenal either. Who knows whether Mason and Bentaleb would have done just as well against City. I don't think Alli, in particular, has added something we're missing so much as he's just been a talented player having a very good game. Mason is every bit as good and made a real difference when he started against Stoke after we'd missed him in the opener. The important bit for me is that we look at our fluent best when we play well(obviously) and against an attacking side. If you look at the goals we scored against City they all involve traits that you don't see often from more defensive sides. Dier intercepted the ball as City tried to pass it out, rather than hoofing clear. Defensive sides are usually more organised at set-pieces so the second might not have happened( a bit of a stretch, I admit). Lamela exploited a big gap between defence and midfield to win the freekick for the third. The fourth saw Kolorov getting very tight to N'Jie high up the pitch, more defensive sides don't have their fullbacks do that to quick players, their main job is to stand off them and stop them getting into the box. People say Pochettino doesn't have a plan b but maybe the plan b has actually been rolled into plan a along. When you look at our wins this season and last, the majority come by a single goal and some of our fans have the same complaints as you, such as slow build up and lacking width. There's a common pattern emerging, however. We tend to start quickly and on ocassion that's enough to catch the opposition off guard, afterwards we spend a lot of time in control of the ball with the opposition countering and then at somepoint in the last half hour the opposition seem to tire, which is where we see a lot of our goals. That's what I'd call the plan B, out pass and out run the opponent until they lose a yard of pace and we start to find space opening up. It's not ideal, poor defensive lapses have cost us in the past but it's a useful weapon to have and could perhaps become more effective if our defence stops conceding stupid goals. As Neville said, we now have more players that fit into what Pochettino wants and that can only help us as there were only about 12/13 of those last season and that's nowhere near enough for a full season. Hopefully this will help us too.
I'd say there were a few potential Plan Bs this season: the obvious one is introducing a pacy player to stretch the opposition defence (Townsend vs Sunderland, N'Jie vs City), but what's more noticeable is our attacking players seem more comfortable switching positions compared to last season, where they were far more rigid in their positioning. For example, against Qarabag we saw Son move out wide so Lamela cut inside while Alli pushed up - while last season we didn't really see that sort of thing too often.
