Yes but would we have been second best in every area of the match if the referee had done his job properly and the rules were not so farcical. It is a different game at 1-1 and playing the remaining 60 mins or so against 10 men.
Rival watch
- Thread starter Spurlock
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Results going against us today and I think we’re in real danger of missing out on Europe altogether.
Utd’s win basically makes top five impossible.
Arsenal winning away to Wolves is a huge result for them and boosts their chances of a Europa spot. Wolves are still 7 ahead of us anyway, we can make that 4 with a win against Everton. Sheff Utd play tomorrow but are two points ahead of at the moment.
I’d say best case scenario for Spurs is 7th but we’ll need results to go in our favour because currently it’s out of our hands.
Absolute nightmare of a season.
Utd’s win basically makes top five impossible.
Arsenal winning away to Wolves is a huge result for them and boosts their chances of a Europa spot. Wolves are still 7 ahead of us anyway, we can make that 4 with a win against Everton. Sheff Utd play tomorrow but are two points ahead of at the moment.
I’d say best case scenario for Spurs is 7th but we’ll need results to go in our favour because currently it’s out of our hands.
Absolute nightmare of a season.
It's been coming. I read that in the last 14 games, we've picked up 1 more point than we did in the first 14, which rightly earned Pochettino the sack. He persists with tactics and personnel that aren't doing the business and results have been disappointing since the 'dead cat bounce' of his first few games.
Is anyone happy with what Mourinho's been up to...?
If so, why?
Both managers have struggled with these players so I don't think it's about tactics. Somehow, since the turn of 2019 this team has just gone so far off the boil it's almost unexplainable.
There's a couple of quotes doing the rounds on social media from van der Vaart and Nigel de Jong both tearing into the players. Rafa mentions their attitude with regards to players thinking they're better than they are, de Jong mentions that Spurs don't have one single leader. I'd make both of them right.
KWP, Rose, Foyth, Davies, Aurier, Toby, Jan, Dier, Sissoko, Winks, Lamela, Dele and Lucas are all either not good enough or no longer good enough to be in the first XI, some aren't even good enough to be in the squad. I think when you look at that, it's no wonder Jose and Poch have done terrible.
The only small ray of light to missing out on Europe will hopefully be that the board realise how far we've fallen and it acts as a kick up the arse to do some serious investment.
There are problems with squad depth and balance but tactically we're a ****ing mess...huge holes at right back and in central midfield.
If ever there was a team that needs 3 in midfield, it's us...so, Mourinho never plays it. We play a 2 and no right back.
Until Mourinho picks a line up that attempts to make the best of what we've actually got, I've zero respect or sympathy for him.
It's become that poor, that I actually think he'd prefer the sack because he's never turning this around in this life.
I wouldn't say he's persisting with tactics, considering our formation changes constantly
At the outset I said that what Steptonho really ought to be - and I hope for Levy's sake that's what he is - is a bridge between Poch and his eventual long-time replacement
That's the thing with having Pleat and Sherwood cover for half a season each, they were replacing managers nobody was sad to see go: nobody was aggrieved to see LAdPCeV-B go so that gave Levy time to plan for the next manager and the stars aligned even better than he hoped when Poch essentially fell into our laps, while in Hoddle's case there was the cushion of the fanbase being wary of his managerial nous going back to his time as England manager coupled with our form bottoming out the previous season and continuing to be poor into the following one so, in spite of Hoddle's status as a player for us, nobody was reaching for the torches or pitchforks when he was sacked
In comparison Poch was a popular manager who had us challenging for the Premier League title on two occasions and had us reach the Champions League final, so if he was sacked and replaced with Wayne Burnett there would have likely been a wicker Bill Nick erected on the pitch within a few hours of Poch's sacking so Levy had to bring in somebody who would ease the pressure on himself and the team (and, yes, I do think that order is accurate) and that made Steptonho the perfect guy to bring in as he was a Big Name™ and had the CV that would buy the club time to look for the real long-term replacement for Poch...in theory, but in reality it took Steptonho six months to reach the point he usually reached in eighteen where the football is pragmatic yet doesn't yield results and he's blaming everyone buy the bloke who picked the team and tactics for a poor result and/or performance
If the bleed was stemmed and a restructuring of the squad took place we likely wouldn't be having this conversation, or for that matter if there was an outbreak of common sense and the season was scrubbed instead of persisting with making Uncle Rupert happy which leads to dozens of games where half fit players showing a fraction of the commitment they were in February while some of those teams appear to have given up when in lockdown and are grimly marching towards the Championship, but the fact is that the bleed wasn't stemmed and we had some truly grim performances that injuries alone cannot excuse while the squad's getting thrown under the bus in alphabetical order which may be good news for Harry Winks or Harvey White but terrible for everyone else and the state of our post-return performances make us look like a squad of players only capable of playing for 45 minutes before giving up, and while I am willing to place much of the blame for that last one on the TV companies who wanted a return on their investment more than anything else in spite the fact they look like the one character in every disaster movie talking about their finances or progress while the edifice burns/sinks/blow up around them, being thrown under the bus afterwards falls right back on the Ubermensch in the dugout
And I suppose that's the one positive: those who would blindly defend any and every decisions Steptonho made and would shout down dissent are getting pretty goddamn quiet right now, as best demonstrated the other night by that one bloke who tweeted how Steptonho won the mind games against Wilder before kickoff...and deleted the tweet long before full time
Shame we haven't quite got rid of the reactionaries who seem to be really, really happy with their lot in life...
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There's no point in theorising on what would happen if we had different players...this is totally pointless...and a Mourinho tactic...
"Oh, poor me. I took over mid-season and it's very difficult."
If a manager picks an unbalanced team (as he does, game in and game out), it shouldn't come as any great surprise when the opposition drive a coach and horses through it. The fact that we advertise the perpetual hole in midfield and right back is a ****ing disgrace and we do it in pretty much every game.
Tinkering with other elements of the set up is pointless because the thing's fundamentally ****ed from the off.
We've been a tactical mess since 2019 though barring one or two matches. The football we're playing right now is no worse than it was under Pochettino during his last 10 or so months. When players aren't committed and/ or simply not good enough, tactics won't really matter. There's even a stat showing that around 75% of the goals conceded under Mourinho have been from errors or set pieces.
I don't think Jose wants to be sacked, I just think that like Poch he's severely struggling to get anything out of these players as a collective.
What is it with our players? Too much money or too little? Lack of desire with a couldn't care less attitude? Too old some of them? Skills left them a while ago?
We need a butt kicking manager who is not scared to drop players for crappy performances and fine them for it.But todays players earn so much they wouldn't miss a few months wages and they wouldn't mind having a sleep on the bench!....instead of going to sleep on the field!!!!
We need a butt kicking manager who is not scared to drop players for crappy performances and fine them for it.But todays players earn so much they wouldn't miss a few months wages and they wouldn't mind having a sleep on the bench!....instead of going to sleep on the field!!!!
I'd say it's a mix of things, Smithy.
Some have seen their best days, some aren't good enough, some lack the mentality, we don't have any leaders and haven't done for god knows how long. Add in that we've also lost players too in which some haven't been replaced (or adequately replaced), it's just seen us decline badly - and worryingly.
We're a long, long way off the level we were during 2016, 2017 and 2018 that's for sure and without a good rebuild, doubt we will be any time soon.
As much as we despised THAT BASTARD ****ING DIAMOND there's a reason Poch usedit: he knew the heart of midfield was weak so wanted extra bodies in there to lessen the weakness, although the issue was that it killed our width due to the combination of playing two up top (which would have made sense with Dybala or - at a stretch - Fernandes in the VDV role) coupled with Eriksen not putting in any effort behind the front two yet he couldn't be dropped as Lo Celso and Dele were both injured...although that does beg the question why Poch didn't go all-in with a 433
What was most aggravating against Sheffield United (other than the result, the VAR stitch-up, and the passmap making for grimmer reading than Albert Fish's case file...seriously, don't Google that) is that starting with Lo Celso in the pivot completely neutered us further up the pitch, yet it's hardly the only time Lo Celso's started in central midfield in the past six months, nor is it the only time we've been asking for someone further up the pitch to unlock defences - which is why the people who insist on posting every time Bruno Fernandes so much as scratches his balls are completely missing the point, because if Lo Celso actually played in position we wouldn't be crying out for someone who can unlock defences as we'd have one on the pitch doing that, rather than sitting deep behind a bank of three wingers
The obvious issue is Steptonho has had six months to work out who can work as a DM, even as a stopgap measure, and he hasn't. While we don't have an issue with Dier dropping back to a CB as that's as much Dier's preference, and to be honest it was clear he only really works as a hatchet man and isn't a rounded DM like prime Wanyama was, rather than try and deploy somebody else there be it giving Skipp a run or testing the waters with Jamie Bowden or even a leftfield solution like Toby or Verts (after all, Toby played as a DM at Southampton) instead we have Sissoko serving as an ersatz DM and we were sick of that phrase eighteen months ago when the Winkssoko pivot could best be described as two CMs looking to see if a DM would show up at some point
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Leaving out Toby in favour of Sanchez is a mystery to me, even a past his best Alderweireld is a better player than the car crash defender Davinson Sanchez. Some might say he wants the pace of Sanchez, that is understandable against pacey forwards, but against Sheffield United that was not the case, so Toby would have been a better pick for that particular game imo.
I think people overestimate the difference in level needed between winning and losing. I think Poch got an above average but not elite squad to massively outperform by instilling a team ethic and sense of belief but this was severely dented by the failure to win a trophy. Our decline started when we lost the League Cup semi-final to Chelsea but the CL matches were an exception somehow. Losing the final completed the job of demotivating the squad and we've been nowhere near that level since. Poch didn't know how to solve it and Mourinho has never had to before. So what we are seeing now is the fifth best squad underperforming. There is no real solution to this except to change out the biggest problems and hope for a run of results to get confidence back.
Simple question. Who thinks the result would have been the same had one or both of those ludicrous decisions gone our way?
Yes it does make a difference. Margins are tight, you can't simply have that go against you as if nothing has happened. Goodness, if certain teams didn't have a 12th (Ref) and 13th (VAR) player, maybe even they would struggle.
So no, the performance was poor, but it cannot exist outside the context of those decisions. We won the game before and had every chance of winning that one given fair refereeing. That would make our whole predicament look very different.
Yes it does make a difference. Margins are tight, you can't simply have that go against you as if nothing has happened. Goodness, if certain teams didn't have a 12th (Ref) and 13th (VAR) player, maybe even they would struggle.
So no, the performance was poor, but it cannot exist outside the context of those decisions. We won the game before and had every chance of winning that one given fair refereeing. That would make our whole predicament look very different.
Up until the point at which we were shafted by the referee and VAR, we had played quite well, we were dominating the possession and looking the most likely. After those ridiculous decisions, heads went down and the rest of the game became gradually worse for us, which is weak mentality on our players part. Refereeing and VAR decisions affect the entire dynamic and flow of a game, it is easy to play well when the majority of debatable (in some cases not) decisions go your way. It also helps develop momentum, confidence and a winning mentality. The reverse happens when you are routinely on the wrong end of decisions.
There is obvious bias around, Man United for example, have been given 12 penalties in the PL so far this season, that is 1 more than Spurs have been given in the last 3 seasons combined. Spurs also went a whole season without being given a single penalty under AVB, and went a whole season under Poch without being given a single home penalty kick, how many other top 6 clubs have gone a whole season with no penalty kick given at home. We have also been shafted with red cards not being given against our opponents this season, I can think of several that were nailed on red cards and not given, Capoue, Robertson, Cantwell, Norwood etc.
Is it any coincidence that all three goals we conceded against SU came from their player going to the byline and pulling the ball back after Pogba run to the byline , fell over/dived, and was awarded a penalty-thus our defenders now have in their mind that they can't tackle in that position? (I posted the penalty stats elsewhere on a separate thread )- Referees have no problem giving a penalty against us.
For Stokenchurch Yid and anyone that can barely remember what goals are after that:
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Wigan Warriors are interested in buying Wigan Athletic , I wonder if this could be the beginning of " sports club " style of set up
The following teams cannot finish above us
Aston Villa
Bournemouth
Norwich
Watford
West Ham
Remember a couple of seasons ago where we could say five teams couldn't finish above us by the end of February?
Aston Villa
Bournemouth
Norwich
Watford
West Ham
Remember a couple of seasons ago where we could say five teams couldn't finish above us by the end of February?