Walker had a poor game but this is part of his learning and I think he is intelligent enough to learn from his mistakes. Gallas is at the arse end of his career and unfortunately for him it shows more often than not...BUT he still has some very good games...yesterday weren't one of them. Positives: We dug in during a very difficult first half. AVB made a difference at HT. We were in the match until the last minute without Dembele, Bale, Kaboul, Parker and BAE. Against most other sides we'd have won. Negatives: Mata, Oscar and co. play for chelsea! They were outstanding and were the difference. Gutted we lost but plenty of reasons to be opimistic
Well, at the start of the season if you'd said we'd have gotten 6 points from our last 3 games (Man Utd, Villa and Chelsea) I'd have taken your hand off. If I'd been predicting, I'd have said 4 points was realistic. Plus - Chelsea are favourites for the title imo - we got things wrong yesterday but we came closer than many will to beating them. At this point, they're looking immense. No team can also lose 2 of its first XI (and 1 of those just minutes before kick off) and hope to adjust properly. I'm annoyed at the goals that we conceeded as most of them were down to defence errors but we need to take the positives down to Soton.
The reason that five of the team out yesterday (Friedel, Gallas, Huddlestone, Defoe, Dempsey) are not 'first choice' (in my opinion at least) is that they are prone to mistakes/misjudgements. The reason we lost was nothing to do with tactical ineptitude or the wrong formation (or even the wrong selection, although i would have picked LLoris and he may have stopped two of the goals) - it is simply that we made more mistakes than Chelsea, both in attack and defence. We had twice as many shots on target as them, more of which should have been goals, and if Gallas hadn't made two dodgy clearances we would most likely have won 2-1 as Walker would have booted it off the pitch had we been winning at that point. But we didn't deserve to win because of the errors, which Chelsea were well good enough to punish. The errors were not caused by the tactics or the formation so I don't so how playing a different one could have made any difference. But if we can do so well against Chelsea with seven of our best players missing (Lloris, Kaboul, BAE, Parker, Bale, Dembele, Adebayor) one (Vertonghen) playing out of position and Walker out of form (as were Dempsey and Sig) then we should be fine in the future
I support giving players time off to be with their partner during childbirth. In any case it would be illegal not to, I think. You sound a bit old-fashioned on this one HIAG!
I think you need to watch a replay YV, JV was jogging back from a forward run I think, Hudd was on the cover, he was the nearest man to the crosser as the phase of play developed, end of. All too often he was caught in no-mans land, and the Chelsea trio just 'triangled' there way past at will. I didn't imply either that Hudd was the only one a yard slow, those at least have fitness as an excuse, Hudd will always be a yard slow when we don't have the ball. Hudd is like a revolving door, turns as quick as one and people still flood through! I'm also not getting drawn on what Hudd did with the ball, I have already agreed he did ok, but an overall performance includes the effort put in when we don't, and his wasn't good. We all watch games differently, most 'ball watch' the match, I don't, sometimes I focus on a number of players and what they're doing when not directly involved in the play, do they move and try to get involved, or do they stand and watch.
Huddlestone was covering yes which is why I thought Jan should've been busting a gut to get back, if only for the fact that he's not used to defending against wingers but more for the fact that we were ahead and he should have been looking to settle the game down a bit, especially as a defender. Even if it was Bale where Vertonghen was and Vertonghen where Huddlestone was I'd have been disappointed that he didn't look to trackback properly. Having looked at it again, had anyone properly covered Huddlestone's position he might have been able to pick up Mata. Huddlestone standing off Hazard was the least of the problems with that goal.
I fail to see that YV, cutting out danger at source ie. the cross, what is essentially an assist, (no assist, no goal), is very much the main problem, Sandro not picking up Mata's run would have been an irrelevance.
Shame we couldn't call Rose back to give Walker a bit of competition,i was impressed with him against Newcastle yesterday
Maybe I'm missing something, but it strikes me that Sigurdsson is just not up to required standard. Perhaps we should have known better than to chase after a player the Mousers wanted. Their buying record is not exactly the best!.
we were missing 5 first choice players yesterday as Harry pointed out. How many were Chelsea missing? Terry and...? We need BAE back. Verts is great at left back but with BAE we can stop playing Gallas (hopefully) and get a long term understanding between Verts/Caulker/Kaboul going.
A positive is that we went ahead without some of our top players in. Also we came back from behind without them.
There were definitely positives from the game no doubt. The performances of Lennon and Vertonghen were brilliant and they didn't deserve to be on the losing side, special mentions must go to Defoe and Caulker too who by no means played badly. Lennon more so than any of our players from last season has come on leaps and bounds in my opinion, he's been back to his best in terms of running defenders ragged. Verts has just been awesome since signing and Defoe's really impressing at the moment and deserves his place. Though there were some major negatives too... Walker, Gallas and Friedel need to be dropped now in my opinion. Walker has been our worst player this season, there was a massive debate on Twitter Saturday which even led to Walker speaking out then closing his account (though that was due to kn*bheads calling him a c*nt and saying he should die!!! F*cking w*nkers, they're not Spurs fans!) but fact of the matter is, he's been diabolical... And even that's an understatement. The silly mistake near the end just capped off yet again another poor performance. Naughton's now back and I think it's time to give him a go and see what he can do, if I remember rightly, Sheff Utd fans used to say Naughton was their biggest prospect. Some may say dropping Walker may not do him any good but I'm sorry, this is about the team and at the moment he's costing us. Gallas, with his goal aside was woeful. He's been too up and down with his performances and I think Dawson really deserves a chance to prove his worth now, though I think AVB seems to really rate Gallas for some annoying reason. Friedel - I've always been a huge fan but his time has surely come to an end now, we've got a fantastic young keeper who needs minutes on the pitch to get into a rhythm and dropping him after making his league debut has done f*ck all for his confidence. Brad looked way too slow yesterday, whether he could have reached it or not, Mata's first goal could of have atleast seen him make a dive for it. His reluctance to move off the line more so now than ever is getting a tad annoying now. AVB likes to play a high line with quick defenders, surely the logical thing to do is have a keeper who's quick on their toes to come out off his line if needed when the defence is too high up to clear a ball? For our game at Southampton, I'd really like to see: Lloris, Naughton, Dawson, Caulker, Vertonghen Sandro, Dembele (if fit, if not then Hudd) Lennon, Deuce, Bale Defoe (or perhaps drop Dempsey and play Defoe & Ade together? See if we can get a partnership going - they looked good last year when paired on the odd occasion and Ade could do with a good amount of minutes instead of these 15/20 min cameos)
I agree with your team - possibly even Adam Smith at right back. I would like to see Ade and JD play together for a while. Ade drops back and wide very well, so not as if we would miss the presence of Dempsey in there. Siggy and Clint to come on second half. Deuce? Presume that is Dempsey - where does that name come from?
Ade needs to play and I see no reason why we couldnt start the next 2 games at least with him and Defoe. Dempsey and Sigurdsson have both been pretty poor and neither are worth a place on current form. Would rather Townsend get some more game time if Bale is not back for Thursday, although hopefully he and Dembele will both be available. Not sure how it would affect Walkers confidence, but I would be inclined to go with Smith at RB for Thursday.
I too like the team and as I consider we are struggling a bit to score then play Defoe and Ade. Against Southampton they SHOULD be in their element. A penalty and a couple of deflections tells me we are struggling a bit.
Yeah, Smith is a great shout, really highly rated. Such a shame that a promising academy prospect has two other young players ahead of him with promise but just a bit more experience than he does. Deuce is his nickname, his first number assigned when he turned pro in America was the number 2. Deuce is just a slang phrase for the number 2 so he took it on.
I agree with you Spurm but I don't think AVB will which annoys me. He seems to have Gallas down as a guaranteed 1st teamer while Kaboul is out. When BAE's back, he'll probably partner Verts and Gallas together until Kaboul returns and THEN we may see Gallas finally dropped.
