Umm....you weren't watching this seasons game then LFF. Sorry, but how can you say that? He broke up nearly everything of Spurs moving forward. That's a spectacularly strange statement, it really is. I mean there's opinions....and then there's this!
So I'm not the only one! Spurs deserved it, it pains me to say. We were second best for the most part.
Blimey you 'Wanyama tinted glasses' boys are worse than me with Cork! Vic has been dominant this season. Today he was chasing shadows.
Forster was quite worrying. Some really bizarre mistakes. But like some said the goal itself was not his fault. Clyne aswell was a little off , so I guess all future England call ups is some sort of curse. I'd say everybody had a rough day other than Schneiderlin and Fonte. Those two were the only really consistent players everyone else made at least a few individual errors. In hindsight though this could have been predicted. Spurs really needed a win at home and Saints didn't really care about the whole ex manager so approached it as a run of the mill game.
A decent game played largely in the right spirit and with both sides working hard and trying to go forward as much as possible. Ran out of steam a bit towards the end, but I think that's pretty understandable. Not much in it and Mane's open goal miss could and probably should have leveled things up. I think that we just about shaded it, but there wasn't too much in it. Forster was your only player that didn't really do himself justice.
On a positive note, we've taken the pressure off Poxytosspot, thus increasing the likelihood that he'll still be in charge when spurs come to SMS next April. So there's that.
Can only speak for the second half, but I didn't see any midfield dominance by either side. I know that both Morgan and Victor were generally pretty good though. Steven Davis was a little anonymous this week, I thought.
I think everyone's suspected you of a bit of Wanyama blindness in the past LFF, but with the greatest of respect this really confirms it. You've been more receptive of him recently, but this is the LFF of last season.
Well, I disagree spectacularly. And I guess so did our manager! I say it because I was actually watching the game. You must have been making tea or something.
Wanyama played fine. He did his defensive duties well and broke up a few dangerous attacks. I would have taken him off because we weren't doing much offensively and we needed a goal more than we needed to prevent goals. It was a bit of a gamble though, and was not a reflection on Wanyama's play.
For me, if you want to pick out players who struggled, it was the guys who are not used to this kind of full-on football. The players who have come to us from the Netherlands and from Austria have looked great up to now, but it takes a lot of adjusting to this kind of match. They all looked a bit light-weight today and didn't hold up the ball when we were attacking as they needed to. Pellé I feel sorry for as the service to him was poor, but the others should learn from this and do better in the home tie!
So, if he was so good. Tell me why we were swamped in midfield. He wasn't he only one who was poor today by the way. I'd hate you to think I'm singling him out! No-one really came out of it with much credit.
Actually, although Long made positive impact, we didn't get hold of the ball at all in the last bit of the game, when Victor went off.
The midfield was somewhat less effective today because Vic was doing all of Morgan's defensive work. That's the difference. Morgan wasn't really on song today (a little like Forster). Nothing major, but just a bit off.
Because he was doing all of Schneiderlin's defensive work. I'd love to see the tackle stats on this one. He wasn't brilliant in an offensive sense, but that's not his job. Defensively he broke them down time after time. Perhaps you were only looking at the right hand side of the screen whilst I was making the tea?
Funny that. And predictable. The manager wasn't disagreeing with my perspective by taking Vic off, he was taking a major risk as we were losing by sacrificing any defensive control of midfield for a more potent attacking threat. Nearly came off too, but we lost complete control in midfield straight away.
Also, after seeing Mane's miss, he should have probably scored, but it wasn't quite the sitter it first seemed. The ball came across two Spurs players, and as Mane arrived he would have seen it very late, and only just mistimed it. 1-1 would have probably been a fair result in the end.
