Realistically he’s been hired to win trophies AND get us back in the top four. As Spurly said last night, Europa is the one most of us would love to win so if he brought that home he’d absolutely deserve to stay and have backing. But excluding that for a second, I’d say there’s various outcomes that would define whether or not fans would want him: Win the league cup and finish top four - very good season. Win the league cup and finish top six - good enough season. Win the league cup finish outside top six - not good enough but would keep providing we stop this negative bollocks against lesser clubs and have the feeling we’re on the up. Don’t win the league cup and finish top four - as above really. Don’t win the league cup and finish outside top six - bye, bye.
Sadly I don't think most of those combinations will be enough to keep Kane and Son at the club. They are our only remaining truly world class players. The rest are much of a muchness. Those two would be near-on impossible to replace given our wage structure and the incompetence of our recruitment team. And if they go before we've completed the rebuild (which I think will need another full year, or 3 more windows), we're done.
I’ve more or less come to terms with Kane’s possible departure to be honest. Said a few times already that he deserves to be winning the very best there is. For as great as a Europa/ League Cup/ FA Cup win will be for us fans, he needs to be winning the Prem and CL and realistically I don’t see us being able to do so. A Europa and a League cup win this season might keep him around but anything less and I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes providing there’s someone that can afford him.
Not if we keep Mourinho as manager and play as we have been. We keep conceding 'the same goal' over and over again because we have a known weakness and teams are exploiting it. Roulette wheels are random. You get the same odds on all single number options, there's no skill acting on the outcome. Go and tell a bookie that football's random and you want the same odds on Spurs winning the FA Cup as Wycombe and see how you get on.
The number of goals we concede or score in a season is very dependent on skill. When they happen is much closer to being random. If you simulate the league table based on matches being random collections of goal scoring opportunities but with probabilities based on the actual totals you get very plausible outcomes.
Then the target is top 4 and that's what we would expect it to be but continuing football like we have seen is not likely to produce support for Jose from supporters. With the squad we have and players we have we should not have to be so defensive against teams from the bottom half of the PL. Yesterday for example Aurier was clearly under instruction not to go much beyond the half way line. Why, are Fulham that dangerous? Are Fulham really as good as City or Liverpool? As one of the most successful managers in history I would expect more. I can tell you now I would rather we had Harry Redknap in charge because at least we could enjoy the football. Perhaps some people in the game need to be reminded that they are in the entertainment business, if they just cater to the fanatics who need their club as a replacement for a life then they miss the bigger picture. Most of South Korea, for example, want's to see Son tearing up the field and scoring, not kicking balls out from his own penalty area.
Still no. It's not random that we're scoring less in the second half of games. We're playing differently in the second half of games and Mourinho's also not making substitutions of players who are clearly knackered. As a tactic, we're attacking less and we're conceding more because we're ceding the ball and territory, giving the opposition more opportunity to cross the ball or shoot...and as these factors increase towards the end of the game and as the opposition are free to attack without response, we concede.
If that were all true then we should be conceding lots of goals from open play when in reality we have the best record in the league on that measure.
And we're conceding a lot from late set-pieces, because we're giving them away, due to aforementioned concession of possession and territory.
We've got 11 me behind the ball and are crowding teams out for half an hour or so...until we tire and give away a corner/free kick or make a mistake, like Sanchez last night. The ball comes into our box and our poor defending does the rest It's not science (rocket or otherwise) or chance. It's just piss poor management in repeating the pattern against teams we could beat comfortably, if we exploited our strengths..
This is true to an extent. One of the best interviews I ever saw with him was when he was angry with his Madrid side for winning 4-1. Why? Because he expected them to have the skill and competence levels needed to successfully win 1-0. His attitude was similar in his first spell at Chelsea. That is a realistic aspiration when you're in charge of a squad assembled at the cost of a small country's GDP, but ours? Hell no. What he's doing with us now is madness. He has taken Sanchez, Dier and Toby and is asking them to play like prime Carvalho, Terry and Ramos. Then he took Hojbjerg, Winks and Sissoko and is asking them to play like prime Makelele, Essien and Xabi Alonso. It's one thing if the skill set matches the job description. It's another thing entirely if you're asking an elephant to climb a tree. Don't be surprised or amazed when it can't do it.
So it will just be the Elephants climbing the trees and we will be spared dogs and the wrong trees. Who is barking here?
Our general defensive record is actually very good. The problem we have is that our goals scored is very uneven per match compared to those conceded. So we've given away too many draws compared to them being distributed more equally.
We're one if the top scorers in the league while having conceded amongst the least. The players are better than you think they are and so are the tactics. If we continue scoring nearly two per game and conceding less than one for the rest of the season we would be in the top four at least and most likely win two cups.
Because we're failing to kill a lot of teams off and we had a terrible ten minutes against West Ham. We battered Utd, took Southampton apart at the start of the second half and Leeds played right into our hands. That's nearly half of our goals scored in three matches. 14 out of 30. We've both scored and conceded a lot more evenly in other games, leading to a lot of tight results. It's clear from watching the matches that we're giving up goals late on due to our tactics and poor defending on set-pieces. I've no idea how that's reflected in the stats, barring the 11 points dropped in the last 15 minutes of games. We can all see it happening, though. We've all commented on here about what's leading up to it while it's going on.
We had 15 shots yesterday and only 9 against Southampton. Return was one goal and five goals. Not sure what the manager can do to even that out
Not have either two or three players babysitting the right back, it advertises that he doesn't feel secure about that area while also diverting players away from the positions they should be in Followed by not sitting back to invite additional pressure onto that position
I don't put a lot of stock into shot counts, honestly. Stats rarely tell the full story. Son should've done better with his chances yesterday, but we didn't create enough for other people or in general. Southampton played a suicidally high line against us and we took full advantage. Fulham weren't that stupid and our poor team selection and substitutions meant that we found it much harder to score. Areola made a couple of good saves, but Kane barely had a sniff other than his goal and one chance that was offside in the build up, I think. We allowed Fulham to dictate the game far too much after the break and paid the price for it. If Kamara wasn't totally ****, then we could easily have lost. He had two fantastic opportunities to play people in and failed to take either, which won't be reflected in any stats.
