Today has not been a good day. - Wrong formation - as soon as I saw a regular 4-4-2 I knew we'd made life hard on ourselves. If Arsenal control the midfield, they generally control the game and that showed again today. Only Harry knows why Lennon didn't start but then to bring on Sandro (who apparently was 'miles off' being fit for the game) was bizarre in itself. - Wrong attitude - THE BIG ONE. I got the sense that Spurs sensed their opponent was on their knees and, instead of applying a finishing blow, we thought we'd have some fun. There seemed to be a cockiness to our approach to the game - a feeling of 'Arsenal are rubbish at the moment - all we need to do is start bright, score early and 3 points are in the bag'. How wrong they were. The fact of the matter is, we were only really competitive for 4 minutes - we scored, Arsenal woke up - we went to sleep and that was it. The penalty was iffy at best and it certainly looked as if Bale went down easily. It could certainly be argued that, having been awarded a penalty, the fact that no Arsenal player was then carded (yellow or red) was odd. Regardless, the penalty was certainly against the run of play. Arsenal thoroughly deserved to be at least level at the break. To sum up - we were poor all over the park today and were rightly walloped. The most important thing is now to respond well and shake ourselves down. Ultimately it could be a blessing in disguise - the Newcastle match was awesome and we were all on here, rightly, singing the praises of some players. A heavy defeat like today, can sometimes be good for a bit of reality - might be useful ahead of the United game in terms of approach to the match and individual desire. ------------------ We have to learn from today - if we get tonked by United next week, it could be curtains in terms of holding onto 3rd / even staying in the top 4 (if our morale drops).
If we play MUPLC with the attitude of trying to stifle them and hitting them on the break, we're in trouble - we tried that in our opening game and were run ragged, we switched off today and got overrun, we even tried it against Stevenage and added a replay to our fixture list. We've never been a team who plays the long game of grinding down opponents and picking them off like Chelsea, Liverpool or Man City inflict on everyone else, and whenever we try to play that game it usually backfires. We win games by taking the initiative and dictating the game, something we didn't do today - we handed the initiative back to them at the end of the first half, the worst possible time to do so (as anyone who remembers our choking when 3-1 up at home against MUPLC will attest) - and we need to do so for the remainder of the season. I did say a few days back it felt like we were being set up for a fall with almost universal columns and articles saying we'd walk it, and that seems to have bled into our approach when 2-0 up. Suffice to say we'll return to being underdogs against MUPLC and the Hammersmith Cuckoos, which will hopefully rouse the players once more.
It's not the only time we've played into opponents' hands with a daft formation or tactics: the 3-5-2 we played at Stevenage beggared belief for so many reasons.
Not much to add to the OP, good post. It reminded me of the NLD's that I thought we were past. They've still been chaotic of late but even with the lead we needed to improve to get a result, which we didn't.
Harry HAS to play lennon and Bale when they are both fit,what the hell was he and the coaches thinking.It's the formation we've had all our success with.
