I wonder if our players felt guilty as they cashed their wage check after that game.Should have returned it!
Why Poch? It was the players that completely let us down, there was no fight or desire barring Lamela, didn't help that Alli and Dembele picked up suspensions prior to the game either, two of our best players last season.
Sometimes actions have undesirable effects as well as desirable ones. Pochettino's strategy of playing a high pressure game with a group of very young players got us into a position where we could have been champions with a few games to go for the first time in many years. Its not actually very surprising that the players couldn't cope with keeping up the intensity once that prize was out of reach. From his public statements he is already learning from that which is exactly what should be happening. Having coaches and players who don't make mistakes is impossible. Mistakes are always good in the long run if you learn from them.
well said. However I will say that he's taking a while to learn from it. It happened the season before and the one before that with Saints. Indeed many Saints fans took great joy in predicting it would happen. The problem was not having the resources he trusted to contain it. Mason, Son and Bentaleb looked unexpectedly awful and no one could replace Kane in the team. N'Jie was injured - he might have helped otherwise.
I would like to clarify that the players getting progressively more tired as the season passes may well lead to performance drop off at the end but that isn't necessarily a mistake. As a simple thought experiment if we played in a way that increased our average points per game from 1.8 to 2.1 but at the cost of great fatigue meaning no points at all from the last four games we would still be three points better off over the whole season despite what would like like a dreadful fall off at the end. I'm not saying this happened of course. But we should be pushing the boundaries on this sort of thing so I would expect some sort of decline at season end.
Having large holes in our squad clearly didn't help, in my opinion. Some of our players were clearly knackered, but we lacked any cover in their positions, so they had to keep playing. Kane is the most obvious example.
Pushing to the point of failure is very much in the Spurs tradition and should be applauded. MP was not blasted for the end of season collapse because we could all see quite clearly the effort that had been put in and the success achieved. You could argue that if the team finished the season fresh than they obviously had not put in enough effort in the previous games. All teams without exception have a 'first eleven' whether named as such or not. It is not possible for players to just slip seamlessly into a side without some hiccups. Whether you are Real Madrid, Manchester City or Queen of the South a preferred eleven will emerge. In earlier times when less games were played the top sides usually made very few changes to their starting eleven. If I remember when Wolves were the top side in the top division they played all season with the same eleven, or was it Leeds United. It is only in modern times with the huge increase in TV pressure for more and more games that 'squads' have become the norm but they will never produce the sheer quality and excitement generated by a an eleven that know each other inside out and can anticipate what each other will do in any given situation. It would be churlish indeed to criticize MP for producing one of our best seasons for many years. In past times with less games I have no doubt he could have won us the league with something to spare.
The gaping hole where Alli and Dembele should have been was the main problem that caused the domino effect: Son had looked the shadow of the player he was in the early season for months but he started each of our last three games in the attacking trio because of Alli's suspension and, while he scored against the Chavs and Southampton, when we don't have the ball he is noticeably less effective at pressing than any of Eriksen, Lamela or Alli - while Mason proved for the majority of the 2014-15 season he can't operate in the pivot due to his poor positioning and reckless tackling, yet with Dembele suspended the options we had available were him, Carroll, or taking a gamble with Winks. For the entirety of last season plenty of people on here were worrying about what would happen if Kane got injured, given the only other options up front were either sticking Son and Chadli up top and hoping for the best or taking a gamble with Harrison, but nobody really looked at how thin the reserve options were in midfield - and that was exposed in the worst way at the end of the season.
I think that it's fair to criticise the things that he appeared to get wrong, while still appreciating how well he did overall. We had a good campaign and I don't think that anyone would deny that, but I'm sure that he'd agree that mistakes were made. Our pre-season schedule was poor and we don't seem to have learned from it, which is worrying. We had gaps in the squad and didn't do anything to address them and our team selection for the cups was often strange. The league campaign was good as a whole, but the start and finish weren't up to scratch.
Bentaleb and Mason were pretty much nailed on in central midfield for most of the previous season and got us to fifth. They should have been good enough as back-ups last year but regressed for some reason.
Both had disrupted seasons, largely due to injury, I believe. There were a lot of rumours about off-field issues with Bentaleb though, which is probably why he's still being linked with a move.
Of course we can criticise him but equally we can defend him from such criticism if, as I happen to believe in this case, the criticism is wrong. Football is not an exact science hence why sites like not606 exisit and criticism of the criticism is it's life blood.
IMHO that level of intensity was not necessary ove the final two games to finish 2nd. This, and the evident holiday / Euro 2016 mentality in the last game, is what angered me.
Mason was one of if not our best player for the first few games of last season. In Eriksen's absence he was the creative driving force behind most of our good moves. He picked up that nasty injury scoring a delicious goal and since his return hasn't looked the same player. Even in the cup games his confidence looked completely shot and he only committed 75% to the tackle as if afraid of getting injured again (understandable to an extent). Bentaleb's frustration is an issue that I have a lot more sympathy for, irrespective of rumoured attitude problems. He had an outstanding breakthrough season and signed a new 5-year senior contract at the end of it. He probably started last season with such high hopes to press on and basically earn all the accolades that Alli ended up earning. But terribly times injuries took their toll and by the time he returned he had fallen far down the pecking order - more so than Mason who can and did play in the '3' when needed. For me, the most confusing aspect of Bentaleb's return was how Poch seemed fixated on using him. There were a few EL appearances and those cup games against Leicester where he was given the Dier role. I think this near enough broke his confidence as it isn't a position that he is naturally suited to at all. He visibly struggled to cope with dropping into a '3' a the back as Dier does, and looked panicked and nervous whenever he was on the ball. His skill set is a box-to-box midfielder in the Dembele mold. Despite Wanyama's arrival, that is still a role that we are worryingly understaffed in, and I had really hoped Poch would take him under his wing and train him to play that role effectively.
Although only a friendly, Leicester's new signing Musa looks like a player. 2 cracking goals. Really quick as well. Him and Vardy together up front is going to cause defences problems this coming season
Analysis showed that you played some great stuff and had a number of games where you scored freely with Kane the main contributor. But in over half the games, there were difficulties in scoring goals. Kane had a slow start and a tired end to the season. Like most strikers, he had purple patches in between, but games when he couldn't score. The lack of an alternative was a weakness. The key factor for SAF in the treble season was having four strikers and the ability to rest/rotate as and when needed. For all the strengths in other areas, the ability to maintain a goal threat was the deciding factor - best illustrated by two subs scoring in the CL final. No PL is that well blessed at present, but having one top class alternative who can score freely when called upon is a must.
That was when teams usually played with two up top though, Lidls. We only use one, but we literally only had one. Pretty ludicrous situation and it's good that we've addressed it, but I'd like to see someone who offers something different, too. Perhaps Son or one of our youngsters can do that, playing off Kane or Janssen? We'll see, I guess.
That really was a one-off squad. Even in the age of the Sugga Daddy FCs, no club has had that depth of forward power. Perhaps Citeh in 2011-12 were close (Aguero, Dzeko, Bib boy) .
just when you thought the most attackingest attacking team in the world couldn't get anymore attackingy they buy another quick striker to run onto a long punt from the goalkeeper...sorry long pass!
