With Adam, Gerrard and Bellamy in the first eleven. Surely there should be plenty of ammunition for Carroll, but when ever we got the ball out wide or in to decent positions, the distribution was woeful! Downing came on and again, got in to good positions and 90% of the time cut it back to Johnson. The best delivery of the game gave us our best chance for Suarez. We have a good foundation, if we could be better with our final ball we could see Carroll and Suarez at their best and an opportunity for Sky to shave his beard
Suarez should have had a second yellow today for swearing at the ref. He's a nasty piece of work - though not quite Roy Keane
Downing almost threatened to beat a man when he came on but got out paced by Walker, and I believe there lies part of our problem. We don't have enough pace and quality out wide, apart from Bellamy. Though we can't expect him to create, and score them. I thought Downing might address this problem, but he seems to have lost the confidence to beat a man, whereas we know Kuyt never will. So we need pace and skill and confidence out wide.
When Kuyt put his first touch out of play I thought thatwe were in for a tough match - and so it proved. Tonight it seemed like all of the elements were there but somehow the stitching was missing. We played a lot in front of them but our 'killer balls' were always just too heavy or wrong side of their intended target. it's so frustrting.
I thought our general play was good. But yeah it was the final ball. Problem is both Adam and Downing are ****. Kuyt can put a ball in - he was off form tonight. Bellamy had little support. I think we also need to give a mentioned to Spurs defence who I thought were amazing. Especially Kyle Walker and Dawson. I've never seen him play better. King was quality too.
Our lack of 'killer balls' made their defence look a lot better than it really is. The gaps were there we just did not exploit them properly. Kyle Walker has pace and that covers an inherent weakness in his play - his positioning. He reminded me of Johnson last season.
Downing is at his peak. Gerrard is ageing. Kuyt is beyond his peak. Bellamy is a striker. KK HAS REFUSED TO BUY!!! WHO WILL SUPPLY THE FINAL BALL???
To be fair to Downing, not many people would be able to outpace Walker. But he needs to improve his final ball, in fact our whole team needs to improve in the final thrid. I missed Carroll's performance against Wolves and everyone was raving about him. But I saw him last night and I was extremely impressed. His touch has improved immensely, he's winning headers and bullying defenders and generally linked well. With Bellamy and Suarez either side of him, I think we can do some damage. But I don't like the way we're always lumping the ball up to him as we are capable of playing good football on the deck - but I suppose credit is due to the Spurs defence. I was impressed with Johnson, he defended brilliantly against Walker, and we sorted Bale out with no problems. Overall, I was disappointed with the performance because Spurs were there for the taking and we didn't attack enough.
In my opinion, everyone played well bar Kuyt (bad day at the office) and Adam. The latter is consistently poor and not up to the mark. He will not make it.
He's a decent player but he doesn't really bring much to the team, I don't really understand what his job is. He doesn't break up play and nor does he dominate games, he hardly keeps things "Ticking over" either. He's a good passer of the ball but his passes are misplaced to often for that to be the main reason he starts. He's at his best when he's linking up with the strikers and breaking from midfield, something we haven't seen enough of so far this season
