Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal

I remember back to the days when the special one arrived at chelski first time around and I recall him making 2 changes several times in a game even after 20 minutes of the first half and his changes made the difference most of the time and they went on to win ,personally I can't stand the bloke but at that time he was a proper manager who reacted to the situation in hand don't know what's happened to him since cos at man u he's lost the plot.I AIN'T knocking poch but I think he does need to adress the situation when it occurs and agree with dier hard 100%

 

Didn't realise you were a fan of Mourinho's management, Rocky.

You know what the solution is then, don't you?

Pochettino to Man United and Mourinho to Spurs

How about it, ey?

 

Football is often a vehicle for these ****ty people to vent their hatred.
I don't think they represent any club.
We should just ignore them. The problem with the modern world is that in condemning these people we give them a higher profile due to the proliferation of social media.
Arsenal are a club which, in recent years, has hardly had a British player in its team. Arsenal's team was multicultural before it became the norm. Not a team for racist bigots to align themselves to if they are real fans.

 

Sounds like a plan.
Although I'm not 100% sold on Pochettino's ability to cope in pressure situations.

 

Er never want him nowhere near white hart lane can't stand the bloke but just pointing out that substitutions when made right and at the RIGHT TIME MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

 

I'd rather take a kick in the bollocks from Roberto Carlos than have that **** anywhere near Spurs.

 

I can't think what you mean

...says the bloke with a folder of screengrabs of tweets from such charming Spurs fans as Harry ****espout and ****ssoko (the latter of which isn't a clever reworking of their screen name)

 

What I am saying DH is that our lack of control in midfield meant our defence was under more pressure than it otherwise might have been. We were outplayed, the fact that Arsenal players were in positions to force errors from our defenders is to do with our forwards and midfielders not having the ball. To just blame our defence is far too simple.

 

No one (except MP) is taking into account the damage it would do to Foyth if he was taken off every time he made a mistake. Pochettino considers all these factors, and he does not ignore the reasons he picked the team in the first place. Just because a player is on the bench does not mean he should be brought on because a mistake has been made. If a player is good enough to play then he is good enough end of. This is not a digital game this is with real people who get tired and make mistakes, you cannot just switch them on and off. Amazing how MP can out perform Chelsea tactically and then know nothing when he arrives at Arsenal.
You just have to accept two things:

1. On the day Arsenal were better than us

2. The effort required to subdue an up for it Arsenal was just too much for a side who had faced two very tough tests already that week.

 

Two of the four goals we conceded were of direct and unforced errors by both CBs. Vertonghen conceded a penalty and Foyth was caught in possession. You can’t blame our midfielders for that. At the worst you can say our midfielders could’ve done more on the other two goals but poor marking from the defence was also at hand.

The defence were terrible yesterday. Midfielders and attackers may not have been as good as usual but the defence was just a joke and Poch should’ve done something to rectify that - or at least try.

 

The points I was trying to make are that
1) Goals don't equal performing well. Sometimes you play brilliantly and don't score and sometimes you play badly and do. Emery should have made tactical changes based on the performance not the score. He does seem brave so he might have changed it anyway. But Arsenal didn't actually play better in the second half and created fewer and less clear cut opportunities. You scored a worldy and a deflection.
2) The manager can make tactical changes that increase the chance of scoring but can't easily affect the ability to actual convert them.
3) If Arsenal's difference in first and second half performances is down to Emery's changes then I have to conclude that he is absolutely **** at working out how to set up a team against an opponent whom he has hours of footage on, and absolutely brilliant at changing things having seen another 45 mins of live football. That would be bizarre. It's much more likely to be a random sequence.
4) I think the risk is in assuming that the small sample of the player's performance in one half means anything. If players who make mistakes know they will be taken off then that will cause them to be risk averse. In all walks of life you succeed by taking calculated risks, not by playing safe. I would say that signs of low confidence should be a reason for being taken off but I don't think that applied yesterday.

 

It depends what you think is worse.

Leaving Foyth on to be raped by the Arsenal attack OR take him off and let him know he was having a tough time and have him ready if need be for Southampton. What does his confidence better? Hard to say on that. But what could’ve potentially done the team better? For that, I believe bringing on Toby would’ve done so. The team is and always will be more important than one player’s feelings.

Arsenal were definitely better than us, no arguments here but Poch could’ve also done a lot more to have prevented them from being so. He’s just as much to blame as Foyth and Vertonghen.

As for the Chelsea game. He got every bit of praise he deserved. He also didn’t need to make many changes as his initial selection were coasting. Against Arsenal, his selection turned out to be wrong yet he took until 79 minutes to make subs, by then it was far too late. Which then reverts back to my point on reactive and proactive managers.

 

Do they? How do you know. Have you analysed all the situations when subs are made and worked it out? I bet Pochettino has.....

 

The thing with Poch is that when he chooses a proactive lineup it never seems to work. The one that always sticks in the mind for me is in his first season (I believe) where we played The Sheikh Mansour Team and the lineup was clearly geared to handle Dzeko so it's clear Poch believed that, as Aguero had started the previous weekend and midweek, Dzeko would start - but Aguero started that one as well, at which point it was a matter of time before the Fazio horrorshow began. Similarly in the FA Cup semi a couple of seasons back we started Trippier to take advantage of the Chavs' weakness at the near post, but any advantages were undone by their having a twelfth man on the pitch and he appears to have wagered a significant amount of money on the result

 

It's not rocket science if your getting overrun change it.admittedly it doesn’t work out everytime but at least give it a chance.

 

We had an energetic opening 30 minutes and had 1 goal to show for it. Iwobi and Mkhitaryan were not contributing enough offensively, either due to poor decision making or a lack of cutting edge in the final third. Emery made changes and brought on two players who can contribute in the final third. Ramsey got 2 assists. Lacazette got a goal. The decision to make those substitutions were vindicated as Mkhitaryan or Iwobi didn't show anything to suggest they were going to test your defence.

Your view that we didn't play better in the second half is a view I completely disagree with. Apart from the opening 5 minutes of the second half, where we were on the ropes a little, we grew into the game and could have scored several more. Mustafi had a shot cleared off the line, Sokratis headed over, Torreira almost scored a worldie (prior to him scoring the fourth) and Aubameyang almost got a hat-trick. Spurs didn't really create anything apart from the Son chance that Bellerin handed to you on a plate. Eriksen tried to create openings, but our defence marshalled Kane, Alli and Son very well in the second half.

Ok. So what?

No tactical change or substitution guarantees you will score. But if we're going to use the law of averages, if you create more chances, you are more likely to get a goal than not get a goal. Which is why teams that play open, attacking football score a lot of goals.

Random sequence? Are you joking? You think he just picks a name out of the hat and says "You're coming on"? That's preposterous.

This isn't hard to understand, PowerSpurs. He sets up a team that he thinks will win the game. During the game, he will see if players are doing what he wants or if they are not. He will assess whether the starting 11 he fielded are in the ascendancy and are controlling the game or if they are not. He will make changes accordingly if he sees things are not working out.

It's not necessarily to do with confidence. Sometimes players just have off games. That's life. It happens. If a player is having an off game, why risk keeping him on, which causes more damage to his performance and the team's performance?

Wenger would rarely ever make early substitutions no matter how badly anyone was playing. Now, sometimes it didn't matter because we would go on to win the game anyway. But there were plenty of times where his lack of proactiveness cost us because he would take too long to make a change. Emery doesn't take any risks like that. If he sees something not going quite right, he will aim to rectify it instantly.

And given that we've gone 19 games unbeaten, you'd have to say his approach is working far better than Wenger's was.

 

Unforced errors? I just don't agree with that DH, I think the errors were forced by Arsenal pressing pressing pressing, not allowing us to settle. All Spurs players were under extreme pressure and the proof of that is 4 - 2 .

You examine the incident in detail and form a conclusion. I look at the whole game and what was happening and form a conclusion.

I don't think we will agree on this.

 

It's more about what a manager does during a game where I feel they really earn their stripes, such as acknowleding they've perhaps made a mistake in the line up early on/ anticipate a potential problem on the horizon/ simply see a chance to bring on a player who they think could change the outcome and/ or dynamics of a game and thus make the necessary changes early enough to have the desired effect.

Making early changes doesn't neccesarily mean they'll improve the fortunes but it shows a willingness to try and do so. Emery done that on Sunday with the Lacazette and Ramsey at HT for Mkhi and Iwobi and paid huge dividends.

Poch never took that sort of risk, instead kept with a shaky defence who in the end couldn't continue being bailed out by Hugo saves. There's no guarantee Toby would've changed anything but at least it would've shown Poch trying to shore up that shaky display.

 

Vertonghen handballed from a corner resulting in a penalty for their first goal. Then as Foyth received the ball from a throw-in from Aurier, the ball went under his foot and then he air kicked at the second attempt, allowing Ramsey to take the ball and assist for their third goal.

How can you see those as not being unforced?

I'm not sure how we're disagreeing on this, mate, to me it's blatantly obvious that those two goals are from 100% unforced erros.