[OMT] Tottenham Hotspur v Stoke City

A dull win. We haven't had one of those in a while. Because this is only Stoke's third loss at home, I'm much more inclined to give the team credit for a tough win than criticize them for not doing it in style.

Paulinho has been erratic and frustrating, but with moments of real quality. Much like our season, really.

What he can do: be a good ball winner, produce goals with well-timed runs and passes, and do flicks and tricks.

What he can't do: bring the ball from back to front and protect the back four--play a deeper lying role, really. What he also can't do is shoot from any distance.

What do we have, 4 wins, a loss and a draw in our last six with this lineup? Dare I say that's not disastrous? As ****e as we may be, the other side's tended to be ****er lately.

Beautiful run and cross from Adebayor, and excellent header from Rose. No doubt because they got so much flak during the week.

 

I've definitely noticed a theme of him breaking forward from midfield but just not receiving the ball even when in acres of space. Trouble is that he does so little when he does get it. The best moments and games he's had have been when he's been further up the pitch but for the most part he just doesn't look like he's meshed with his team mates at all. He looks lost more than crap. But what he's offered Spurs this season has been crap tbh.

 

Sorry,but you are very wrong,Paulinho is class,you don't become a international with Brazil otherwise ffs,prehaps if the Manager knew his players ,hed know where to play them

 

wasn't Gilberto a Brazilian international?

So Paulinho is a midfielder, Sherwood plays him in midfield, he plays crap, its Sherwood's fault for playing him out of position..in midfield

 

He also played Eriksen and Chadli, who are both midfielders, out of position in midfield.
Paulinho's good when he's high up the park and closing down opposition players or playing as a box-to-box player alongside a proper holding midfielder.
Sherwood wants him to be the deepest one of the four alongside someone with no defensive qualities, who's also playing alongside another midfielder with no defensive qualities.
It's faintly ludicrous, but it explains why so many of our games are end-to-end, tacticless mish-mashes.

Bringing on Sigurdsson for Chadli in the second half bordered on the insane. Sherwood was trying to nick the second goal and kill the game off, but that wasn't how to do it.
We'd lost all control of a game against ten men and he allowed himself to be intimidated out of it as much as our players did.

Shoring the midfield up with Sandro and dominating possession would've won it far more comfortably.
We ended up having to rely on crappy finishing and poor discipline.

 

There's more to it than just saying "you're a midfielder so play in midfield", otherwise we'd all be managers. It's not a case of fault or blame though, it's simply pointing out that Sherwood expects the 2 centre mids to do a lot of work and that neither player is particularly suited to that kind of workload. If that's what Sherwood wants, then that's what he wants.

It's a bit like Mourinho and Mata. Mourinho wanted Mata to trackback and get stuck in and that's fine but that's not how you get the best of Mata so you could hardly criticise Mata for not showing his best form when he was at Chelsea earlier in the season. To use another Chelsea analogy, under AVB Terry looked crap but that doesn't mean he was a crap defender, just that he wasn't suited to the highline system. He was still a defender playing out of position.. in defence, as you might put it.

 

Keep the disagreement civil please, people.

 

don't mind him having an opinion,the reply is my opinion of his opinion

 

Evening, people.
Didn't see the game. How did we play today ??
Only 0-1 when twas 11 vs 10 for 40 odd mins doesn't look good.

 

You didn't miss much. We probably edged the first half, in which they didn't have a shot on target and we scored a decent goal, but we were ****e in the second.
The sending off sorted them out and we went to bits, giving away a number of decent chances and not creating much.

No idea why Stoke fans are debating the dismissal, though. Knee high, studs up, rushed foul when he was already on a yellow. Stupid.
Wasn't their only bad one of the game, either. Rose could've gone for pushing Cameron after being fouled for the umpteenth time, booed and called every name under the sun, though.

The goal, with guest commentary from Borat:
https://vine.co/v/MvqpJwIW9de
Is nice!

 

Every team needs to learn to win ugly when they go to places like stoke ... theres a lot to criticse this season but imho there is nothing to criticise today

 

A win, and no Brasil 2014 ending injuries from Adam, is as much as one could ask for.
Will see a bit more on MOTD.

 

He was an unused substitute and still got into a row with Adebayor that the ref had to sort out.

 

Adam didn't even play.

Pussy.

 

The less games that thug plays,the better,he was probably running scared

 

Just to add, if Paulinho still plays badly under a credible manager, then we will have to accept that he doesn't fit at Spurs. I will never believe that he's as bad as he's been made to look though. You simply do NOT get to play for Brazil 20+'times otherwise.

As for Charlie "psycho" Adam, my views are well known. Why is he still being allowed to play at all? Week after week he's allowed to go out there, with always the very real risk that he will end another professional's career.,

 

We won 1-0

 

I agree, but using the excuse that his poor passing, poor touch, poor decision making etc is due to the fact he's having to do too much work in midfield and not playing high enough up the pitch. Those are individual characteristics, nothing a new manager or change in position will improve

 

We were 1-0 up at the time against 10 men. They still ended up with more possession than us and created a number of very good chances.
Sherwood got the right result, but that certainly doesn't mean that he made the right decisions. We've clearly got a much better squad than Stoke.

 

This.

Exactly two other teams in the PL did as well at Stoke as we did today.