Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Burnley

Most exciting part of the game was when Spurlock convinced you they'd equalised.

As you say, unwatchable.

 

Teach me to have a steam powered stream

 

Does anyone else think Gollini looks worryingly overweight?

 

I think people are being overly negative about yesterday's performance because of the scoreline.
We're still not creating enough, obviously, but if Kane and Lo Celso put away their chances it would've been comfortable.
Pope had another good game, saving well from the Argentine and Moura, keeping them in it.

It wasn't an amazing match, but a cold, rainy, midweek match in Burnley is the new Stoke.
City and Liverpool only beat them 2-0 and all of their results have been tight.
They're languishing in the relegation zone, but they're still tough to beat and they hang in there.

 

You had me at 'worryingly'....

 

Pass map time

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Obviously this isn't going to be accurate as it doesn't acknowledge Lucas being on the pitch at all, but here's the annoying thing: all our pass maps seem to get one area of the team right, but the other two aren't. Against West Scam our defence was exactly like it should have looked, while against Burnley our midfield looks as right as can be with a lack of data as you can see Lo Celso bringing Kane, Davies and Emerson into the game further up the pitch while Skipp and Hojbjerg are moving the ball both to Lo Celso and their respective FBs, plus you can see SKipp, Hojbjerg and Lo Celso are all open for passes from teammates - although the lack of traffic from Lo Celso to Bergwijn is obviously something that shouldn't be there as it makes our left flank look not unlike the Bermuda Triangle we regularly saw last season

On the other hand, here's Burnley's

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Apart from being tactics gore, because looking at that it takes a while to work out what their formation was, what that makes plain is that Pope was playing it long all game yet our defenders were snuffing it out all game long, yet at no point did it occur to Burnley to maybe have Pope play it short to Mee or Collins, while also making it fairly obvious that we kept losing the ball in midfield due to a combination of Kane strolling and the trio of Lo Celso, Lucas and Bergwijn all playing so narrow in the middle that it's surely a tactical choice to squeeze them into a space less wide than the 18 yard box, which meant there were plentiful chances for Brownhill and Cork to pass the ball backwards

 

Ooooh! Get you, all happy-clappy!

 

It wasn't great, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't as bad as is being made out.
West Ham was similar. They won via an accidental goal despite creating nothing.
We're looking rather blunt up top. One striker who can't be arsed. It's not ideal.

 

There's certainly an issue with how narrow our front three seem to play, which on the face of it looks tactical - but sometimes you have to wonder if Sonny or Lucas are trying to compensate for Kane strolling around

 

Not really to be honest. Though if you switched his name for Bergwijn or Ndombele I’d say yes.

 

I pointed this out during the game and it's what worried me when they subbed the strikers.
Hoofing it to Rodriguez and Vydra was just relying on the defenders making mistakes.
Neither of them has the physicality of Wood to make it more competitive.

They switched things up late on with Lennon and Cornet and we contributed to their success.
Bringing on Ndombele for Skipp basically gave away the midfield and let them have the ball.
We can't rely on the youngster for 90 minutes of every game, but we also don't have backup for him.

 

Not for me.
If we had looked energised and dynamic creating a lot of chances and won 1 nil I would have been positive.
To have our first shot on target in the 60th minute ... only our 5th attempt pretty much summed up how dour we were for most of the game

 

PNP was just on a good trip last night after the mushrooms he had.

He's still on the come down.

 

I wouldn't be quite so worried if you could call the performance a blip. Unfortunately, it is very much the norm and has been for 2 years now. These days, the blips are periods like the firs half v Chelsea and response v Newcastle. Football you can cheer is a rare commodity.

 

That's the thing. People are judging it based on other performances.
I thought that it definitely had some plus points as an individual match.
The defence played well and we should've taken an early lead, for example.

 

Nobody has played well in this tournament but with City out it's as good a chance as anyone else will get of winning a trophy. Even West Ham and Brentford will seriously like their chances.

 

On the assumption that Spurs form does not improve by the
time of the QF and correspondingly theirs does not drop
(Chelsky and the Poool excluded) .

 

El Sacked-ico.

 

Agreed but can't lie...I don't see our form improving with Nuno as our manager.
Decent guy but can't see this working unfortunately