No way can we compare Spurs to United, come on NSIS that's just not realistic. One a settled club with a manager who has been in place for ever and the most successful English club of modern times. Compare that to Spurs where a settled manager means two seasons, for a club who only in the last 7 seasons have been close to the top in modern times. We have neither the depth or experience to draw on. Plus I don't think we folded like a pack of cards we were under severe pressure for a large part of the game yet managed to look dangerous whenever we were anywhere near their goal. As Luke says but for the 80 seconds, we would be looking at quite a different picture. I try not to let the ups and downs of each game pull my thoughts with it. Football is like that even in the best of seasons there will be setbacks but losing to a very good Everton side away is not such a surprise is it?
I'm not comparing Spurs to Utd as such, Spurf. What I am comparing is that resolve that Utd have, that we have lacked for so long. That refusal to be beaten. For me, that has nothing to do with squad depth - Utd have had Carrick playing CB, for example. Maybe, as Luke says, and you alluded to, it's about continuity. Losing to Everton is no great surprise. What also is no great surprise is the way we lost! As has been said elsewhere, if games ended at 80 mins, we would be top of the league. I don't think you need a pipe & deerstalker to see the problem.
How many times do we have to sit here and say that trying to defend a ONE goal lead (be it at home or away) is tantamont to suicide for Spurs. Consider this,. our forwards are forward thinking players., our midfield bunch are attack minded players (generally), yet they sit back and expect to defend one goal leads. Why ?. I can still here my Father saying..... "To make a mistake once or even twice is naivety and can be excused but, to continue to make the same mistake time and time again is utter foolishness".... He is ofcourse right and In this instance, I don't know who I should be more angry with., the players or the manager or myself for entertaining the idea that we were going hold on. Taking off Lennon was wrong, because...... no outlet from defence and reduces the service to the strikers. Taking off Dembele was wrong, because.....further restricts service to the goal scorers and our general hold-up play in their half is deminished. To substitute Lennon for Huddlestone then, Dembele for Sigurdsson within a 7 mins period was asking for trouble. To do this in front of a defence thats had already been giving out stress signals., was poor judgement. Given the type and caliber of players/squad Spurs have., it should be obvious that our best form of defence is to keep our oppoments under. We have the ability to it. Trying to defend a 'single goal' lead even for 15mins is folly. I need a Rum.
I am really struggling here tonight. Struggling to come to terms with how and why we lost today. Struggling to understand why we so frequently show a lack of balls when needed and struggling to find the positives from today. I don't understand AVB's tactics and I find them to be contradictory during games. Having just read through this thread, I find it easy to disagree with a lot of the posts which seem eager to offer 'excuses' for what happened today. In my view, there are no excuses. Yet again, we showed no real creativity, no real logic behind at least one substitution, no tactical logic in sitting back and inviting Everton onto us, and no communication again between the defenders. I also struggle to see how the traditional last 10 minutes goals conceded have happened again. 16 points dropped from winning positions this season, yet we can't ask questions why of the manager ?? For me, the signs were there last weekend at Fulham, when everyone ignored how absolutely crap we were in the 1st half and allowed an ordinary Fulham side to look comfortable dictating the pace of the game. Good teams tend to dictate the pace of the game and we don't do that anywhere near often enough.
For me it's simple, we were outplayed for much of the game. If 'tactics' always worked we would never lose. Much of the game was played at speed which should suit us but slowly slowly it suited Everton more (for 80 seconds) and overall I have to say (much as I don't like it) the result was fair. You can go through the team and point out individual performances and there were many good ones on our side but in this case these two teams were evenly matched and but for the injury time goals the result would have been the opposite. The difference between these two team IMO were that Everton never gave up whereas Spurs thought they had won, and don't forget we very close to a 2 goal lead. Sorry! I can't throw my hands up in despair over such marginal events and I don't care who you are you cannot legislate for them. THAT is football.
If it only happened occasionally, yes. However, that is not the case. As the stats have shown, we just simply do not know how to close a game out. Whether we deserved to win or not is irrelevant. We must show the resolve needed to finish teams off.
Reading my comment again, I have to say that you are right about us folding like a pack of cards, yes it was just like that and all that defensive work of near on 90 minutes went out the window in seconds. I can offer a number of excuses like lack of continuity for defenders or just tiredness through some epic defending but this was a game stretching abilities to the limits, and when that happens sudden collapses are likely. This could of course have gone either way.
This is going nowhere. As I've said, it's hardly the first time. I very much doubt it will be the last!.
This is not a new problem for Spurs is it! If we new the answer we would be the manager. I always think you should play to your strengths and not spend too much time worrying about the other guys strengths. Hence Harry's philosophy of picking the team for the job and letting them get on with it, but he suffered the problem as well.
Once again, no this is not a new problem. It seems to have become almost part of the Spurs philosophy. We all joke about it - the nail biting finishes, etc. Well, it's getting beyond a joke now. I can't agree entirely with Luke's view that the manager needs to instill ALL the confidence in a side, it obviously helps, yes. But some of that has to come from inside. It used to be called character.
Looking at it logically it can't be the individual players can it? I can't believe we continually manage to buy players without character. We have to consider our teams over recent seasons. For me the only answer is that we are good enough to be up near the top fighting but we are not quite good enough to challenge the top 3, not yet. The reason for the inconsistency is simply that we are good but not yet that good. We have been hovering around this top 5 level for some 7 seasons without being able to break through. Our resources/management have just not been enough. The closer you get to the top the harder it becomes. Football contains that element of luck but over a season the true quality of a team will be exposed. The same could be said of Everton and they I think are slightly worse off resource wise than us but they have consistency of management to make up the difference between us. We are what we are, a top 4/5/6/ side, to move further we either need to spend more or rely on the continuity of management to eke more out of the team. I assume that's why we have AVB to bring on the team and bring on the young potential which is the cheaper option of improvement.
I've been Thinking about it, Spurf - yes, there has to be some underlying reason why this problem has persisted for so long. I can only think that, as Luke has proposed, that it's to do with continuity - continuity of not just management, but playing staff too - that feeling of being a unit, all fighting for the same cause. I think some of that has to be engendered by the club. Give the players some feeling of being needed, of being important. I really have tried for a long time now to understand why we appear so spineless at times. Why we always seem to throw away games in the last few minutes. Why even the ones we do win we seem to have to endure the siege of our defence at the end. I suppose Luke's suggestion seems the most logical at the moment.
Agree with all that spurf Unfortunately we've just not done quite enough to give us the edge over other teams competing for 4th. We're so close, but the only option is to spend that bit extra to get what we need. Otherwise it's those 4th/5th/6th positions continuously and more seasons of "hovering" and not moving forward, potentially even slipping. We've moved forward well in recent seasons, but we're at a crossroads now.
Spurf I totally agree with what you posted there about us being top 4/5/6 so what baffles me is why Levy chose AVB to take us higher. Why him? What had he done over a period of time? I posted at the start that he's not a Spurs type of manager and the football is bearing that out ie dour instead of exciting. He had a good season or two in Portugal and for some reason that made him a wonder kid. I had confidence in him but I've now lost it and it won't come back.
One aspect on the returning injured players, they aren't going to make us play with more style or get us playing "the tottenham way" as we have enough talent that is fit, to play attractive football and not just attractive football for show, but an attractive passing game which creates chances, yet we only seem to play in short spells. Surely that's a concern, as some of the football we have played this season is quite frankly.....CRAP! I'm all for having a spurs team which gets results, but Arry had us playing some great football, its not like AVB has to transform us into a football playing side, so clearly his methods don't have the same impact, in terms of style, that we're used to seeing under Arry. However, if the injured players return and we play our full strength team, i would hope we can be more solid at the back as we have conceded 25 goals, thats only four less then QPR who sit rock bottom.
Here's what avb said Not sure its a good idea to make it such an issue with the players as they will be approaching the end of games expecting something to go wrong, maybe AVB has to look at how he changes the team in the closing minutes.
It's not only that but the players on the pitch should press higher up. Sitting on your 6 yard box just encourages pressure and eventually a decent cross or two will get swung in as happened today. It's a tactics issue along with a mentality switch at the same time - the players get nervous which needed to be dealt with 6 years ago but here we are - same issues.
