Your shooting just as much as me Who is saying nothing is wrong? You make up a fictitious position to disagree with when there are plenty of real positions to take on. I don't stay quiet and neither do you we all have our opinions what I am criticizing are people who suggest their judgement is the right one. You are saying Dier should play without, and this is the point, knowing WHY he is not playing in the first place or WHY he is on the bench. The difference between you and me is that I will critic the game and say for example Son was rubbish and N'Dombele looked short of game time what I don't do is suggest that Pochettino should have known better than picking them and therefore we need to start looking for another manager. Yes I know you didn't say that exactly. DH I come back at you because I respect your knowledge of the game I believe you know a lot more about individual players than I do. I want to hear your opinions on players but I'll challenge the rest.
That Wanyama's legs are gone and Sanchez is not a good RB are not matters of hindsight at all. They are matters of common sense clear as daylight to everyone apart from, apparently, our manager. And yet he has tripped up on both counts twice already this season. The Wanyama substitution yesterday was particularly baffling given how finely the game was balanced and barely 2 weeks ago the manager wanted him out the door. Why not use Dier or Skipp who both do - apparently - have a future at the club? And if neither is fit enough/trusted enough to feature for 25mins against Leicester, why are they taking up spots on the bench? I value your voice of calm and reason Spurf, but bottom line is your spin on things is just as subjective and speculative as the rest of us.
You are asking me to believe that Pochettino is an idiot! I can't believe that because all that I have seen of the man suggests that is not the case. My point is yes the Wanyama substitiution does look odd or is it just the case of needing a strong prescience because we losing control in midfield or because Sissoko was on a yellow card and the game was tense and fast and losing Sissoko for the next three games would put us in a very difficult position if he should get another yellow. Once again the 'management' requires a much more complex decision than just oh looks good we'll play him. Why not use Dier we don't know why do we but whatever the reason I doubt it's because Pochettino can't see the obvious. It is more likely to be consideration of what the opposition are doing for example. There are any number of reasons for decisions but as I said I doubt any are because Pochettino is a fool.
I don't think its far to say that all the criticism of Poch has been in hindsight - it was clear yesterday for example that NDombele was having a game where he was creating little impact and while all of us accept that he needs time to play himself into the team and league, the time to afford him that is not when we're struggling in a seriously competitive away game. Players like Kane and Son have earned the right to be kept on the pitch to an extent when they're not having their best days because we've all seen that they can win us games out of nothing even on a bad day. NDombele hasn't earned that right. I try hard to avoid posting knee-jerk reactions and analysis leaning on the benefit of hindsight, as do the vast majority of posters on this board. Obviously Poch has access to more information on the players than we do and he is vastly more qualified to manage Spurs than any of us. But he has been ****ing up for a while now, in some regards - one or two selections, his game management and substitutions, in particular. I don't think the man is an idiot, far from it, but the signs are not good right now and my saying that is based on long-term observations that have been discussed on this board for a year or more, not just on a slightly iffy start to this season.
No I didn’t, because I expected him to play better than he did. I’m not an oracle, nor do I claim to be one. I was pretty happy with the team at kickoff, and the diamond wasn’t as awful as it has been in the past, at least for a while. But I do think Poch should have made a change earlier than he did and made that point during the game.
Nobody has spotted the hole in my argument so I'll point it out. If you go back before Pochettino I was very critical of Redknapp and his man management, his knowledge of football was never in doubt for me and his picking of players was top quality but I always thought he said too much to the media about individual players and I said so. I am not afraid or against criticising the manager but when it comes to football decisions they are mixed with issues of man management. Recently Pochettino has been uncharacteristic in his media briefings in talking about an unsettled squad it's fairly clear he is going through a difficult period. We have no idea who is doing the unsettling we assume it must be Eriksen but although he should perhaps have kept his or his agents mouth shut about wanting our there could well be other players causing problems. It's unlikely that Eriksen is doing this IMO. So who is it or what is it? This we don't know and we don't know if this is anything to do with poor performance or putting players on the bench. We may have come across Pochettino's achilles heel much as happened to Mourinhio at Chelsea and then at United. The next few weeks will show but let's not forget the game against Palace and a lot of the Play yesterday not too much wrong.
As speculated in a previous post, I suspect this goes way beyond Eriksen and is down to the fact that Poch wanted as many as 8 senior players gone by the end of the summer. 5 of them we know this about for a fact (Toby, Eriksen, Wanyama, Rose and Aurier) whilst huge question marks were hanging over the other 3 on Sept 2nd (Jan, Dier, KWP). If my speculation is true, it is absolutely no surprise that Poch is this moody or that the squad is so unsettled. The window closing won't have helped that. It is the equivalent of a CEO walking in to a small firm of 25 employees and everyone knows that he doesn't want 30% of the office to be there. Awkward isn't the word.
No one is calling Poch an idiot or a fool Spurf. He's human and as a human he makes mistakes. We are entitled to point them out, be that through hindsight or foresight. We are also entitled to point out when and where he doesn't appear to be learning from his mistakes. It is at this juncture that hindsight tends to shift to foresight (e.g. I was nervous seeing Sanchez at RB for the Arsenal game and only criticised it in hindsight, but having seen how disastrous it was my criticism ahead of the Olympiakos game became one of foresight. We could all see it coming.) and fans understandably get nervous that Poch - who isn't God - might be too human to fix this. Might. No one is calling for his head.
Digging out Poch after the game for starting the player when I was happy to see him in the XI would be entirely unreasonable. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make observations during a game about something that’s not working and disagree with how Poch handles that in real time. That’s not hindsight, it’s a difference of opinion. There are plenty of times when Poch has acted differently to how us observers would have and we’ve won, and he gets credit for that. I don’t want to get hung up on the performance of one player or the semantics of hindsight though - the issues that caused us to lose yesterday and the wider issues we have as a club are far bigger than that, many of which you and others have highlighted upthread.
I see that as a reasonable call CK it does look strange after his disastrous first effort. BUT remember Sissoko who we all thought was a disaster but Poch insisted had qualities that no else in the squad had and it proved to be the case. I can therefore believe that Sanchez could transform too and this is why he is being played there. If Aurier improved his passing we might not need to look at this.
I think Vertonghen surely has to be another possible factor, seeing he was strangely omitted from the team early season and not injured.
Huddlefro you're right and it's easy to get hung up on detail. The other side to your observation is that we badly need to get N'Dombele and our other new signings up to speed as soon as possible. We can all agree I think that our midfield is the major problem at the moment.
I agree to an extent. But then let's not forget that Sissoko was bought to be a midfielder and now plays as one. His run in the side was more down to lack of alternatives than anything else, as Wanyama, Winks, Dier and Dembele all spent significant time injured in the 17/18 season. Whenever Sanchez has played at RB, other - better options - have been present, either on the bench or on the pitch itself, be that Toby, KWP or Dier. And beyond this, if indeed Poch sees something in him that makes him believe we have the next Dani Alves in our midst, what then becomes of Foyth, Aurier and KWP? Who will take Toby's place in the long run? Are we to have 4 right backs and only 2 centre backs? Sissoko was bought to be a midfielder. Once Poch was forced to stop playing him in his weaker position (AM) and move him further back to CM where he plays for France, he flourished from a lummox into a valuable albeit limited player. Sanchez was bought - at a high cost - to be a CB. Last season demonstrated that he is still many rungs away from the standard set by Jan and Toby. So logically we should be giving him as much game time as possible to develop in his actual position, rather than destroy his already fragile confidence by playing him in the NLD and CL opener in a position he clearly isn't suited to playing in. Poch's plans are so full of contradictions and inexplicable decisions at the moment that it is only natural for fans to start worrying and openly question him. Edit: Just read your comment about Aurier's passing. Imo Sanchez has the worst distribution of any outfield player, including Sissoko. Hence when we play 3 at the back he slots into the middle and Toby, who has good distribution, plays on the right.
It was very odd to see him sitting in the stands with Dele, and there is another one Dele we know he can be volatile. All this is speculation and that's the trouble from our point of view.
I hassled my neighbour who's mates with HK's cousin for some insider info, but even he's tight lipped about it, so no idea what the hell is going on behind the scenes.
Your argument makes sense to me and I can't construct a better one that makes Sanchez a RB but again it may be what we don't know. Dier for example Poch seems to have little interest in bringing him back in, so he goes from a key player to not playing at all.As you say many strange decisions which suggest man management decisions rather than just pure football ones.
I was so ticked when Wayana came on I said "**** it,we've lost!" and turned the tv off. Never done that before (although I've wanted to!).
