Didn’t get to see all of the game last night, but what I did see looked very tight between both teams. It was either gonna take something special, a mistake, or something slightly controversial. And that’s what we got. City were the better team overall, but I thought we did our best considering who is still missing. If Son was available, it changes the game IMO. The goal was barely a foul, IMO. It’s a shame that that’s what separated the teams in the end, but that’s football. Not gonna blame Vic. For me, him and Porro have been our best players this season, and Vic’s single handedly saved us on countless occasions. City were bound to score a goal at our place at some point. It’s just gutting that it’s happened in a cup game meaning we won’t even have the excitement of a cup run. Really **** drawing them at this stage in the cup in the first place. Anyway, onwards and upwards. Having minimal football between now and the end of the season puts us in the best position we could ask for, whilst others battle with Europe and their own cup runs. COYS
sorted for you. Really concerned that this lad just doesn't have the 'it' factor to make the huge transition from the Championship level. There's still a glimmer of hope, but at the moment he looks completely out of his depth
Need to see a pic a few frames further forward as Ake kicks the ball, but it's difficult to see how he wasn't offside - or impeding Vicario.
I share the concerns. And I was really of the opinion he’d be a bit of a demon for us, sort of Lennon-esque, currently more Sessegnon-esque. Both he and Werner will be out the side soon though thankfully once Son’s back and Kulu moves back to RW. Come the summer we might be able to say the same about Richarlison too if we bring in a top CF. Half a season left, boys and girls, stay strong!
Noticed on the replay of their goal we had no one on the near or far posts. Anyone know if that’s a regular thing we do or was it a lapse from the players? Can’t help but feel that if someone was on that near post, they’re almost certainly clearing that before Ake gets to it.
Same thing seemed to be the case for the game when Vic went off on Sessegnon ...when he should have been having a go at Scarlett for ballwatching or Udogie for playing on the entire Bournemouth front line
Not an unexpected result but I was quite disappointed that we weren’t much of a threat to them. I doubt Son would have made much of a difference if he was available. Bentancur had a rare poor game. There was a reluctance to pass to Werner. Johnson was so out of his depth. Kulu tried but with no support around him, he was not effective. Man C players would swarm around our players so that they had nowhere to go but our players didn’t put themselves into position to receive the ball in such situation. They simply stayed where they were hoping that the surrounded player with the ball would somehow get a decent pass to them. We simply weren’t fluid and mobile. I don’t think their goal was a foul and Vicario should have been stronger and dominant on claiming the cross but it was awkward as he was also surrounded by their players. Pep did his homework and worked on nullifying the threats which they did very well. They were the better team and deserve the win. I thought their offside goal should have stood despite those ridiculous VAR lines. Ultimately, none of us expected to win a cup this season so I’m not too despondent.
The days of people on the post are long gone, rarely see premier league teams use them anymore. It’s like teams not keeping a man up the pitch anymore. So many times you see whole teams back in the box defending.
I thought it would be more difficult to get a result against City with Ange ball and so it proved. Conte and Mourinho would, of course, have played the game more cagily and might have got a more positive result, although the deciding factor was no Kane and Son. Taking City on at their own game showed the difference in quality between the two sides. I am not complaining, I would much prefer to see Ange and the team stick to their methods because I watch football to be entertained and they certainly do that. There is only one team like City in the league so we are well equipped to get a good result over the season. Winning cups is always a bonus but more important is the worth of each game throughout the season, so far Ange has delivered with bells on and soon we will be at full strength for the first time this season. There is much to look forward to.
A few more thoughts on the game now the dust has settled a bit. Don’t want to dwell on the goal but the more I see it the more I maybe revise my opinion. We probably have a case that Vic gets obstructed. Dias had been on him at corners all game and it was clearly a play - mess with the keeper, get the ball into the near post and try and cause some chaos. I’m more disappointed that we didn’t notice this and stick a man on Dias between him and the keeper to disrupt the City player though, than I am disappointed at the decision. Still think it could have gone either way. But we had to wise up there a little. I thought the balance of the midfield was off. Bentancur didn’t look entirely comfortable as the 8, in terms of the movement and the space he was trying to occupy. The gold standard for playing that role is obviously Sarr but Skipp gets it too. There was a run he made in the right hand channel when he came on that completely opened up the game. Bentancur covers ground but running behind like that is something he’s going to have to learn if he’s going to play anywhere other than 6 against top, top opposition. Elsewhere Hojbjerg had a good game and I think he shines more in the games where we have less possession than he does when we dominate the ball. Noticeably tired at the end though and started getting sloppy. Midweek I hope to see Bentancur, Skipp and Madders starting. The front 3 have been discussed enough. I think Werner isn’t as bad as some have made out, trouble is that when he isn’t being found (and is up against one of the best and fastest RBs out there) you need the rest to step up. Richy ploughed a lonely furrow up there and while his hold up play was sometimes good, it wasn’t reliable. And Johnson had a largely poor game apart from one instance where he cleverly rolled Gvardiol in what was an impressive show of strength against such a big man. I also wasn’t happy with Johnson’s off ball work, Kulu really sets the bar there high in terms of his intelligence and work rate. Richy and Werner are also good at this aspect of the game. I think Sonny needs a spell down the middle when he’s back with Kulu on the right and our best midfield and things will feel better up front. But clearly some areas to improve there and I think in terms of starting XI quality that’s the main target area for the summer.
Probably his wallet. We'd just taken a quick throw and Udogie was running into space, IIRC. I think that Tierney's more questionable decisions were on general free-kicks. He seemed to be very reluctant to give anything against them, especially cards. He changed his mind very quickly when we had any kind of advantage, though. The one where we had two players free on the edge of their box and he pulled it back was ridiculous.
I don’t really get this moaning about the referee. I don’t think there were any particularly controversial moments in the game. City were just a lot better. I’m more frustrated that we never really laid a finger on them throughout the entire match in our last chance of any silverware this season. It just shows we have a long way to go to close the gap to the very best. And city are the benchmark, particularly at this time of year they seem to click into another gear.
Bizarre signing for the fee. Big money for Spurs and some far I just don’t see anything special about him at all. Said it last night, take Son away and the rest of the forwards aren’t top level at all. Werner doesn’t worry me as he will be gone in the summer but the likes of Brennan Johnson and Richarlison cost £100 million and that’s just poor business.
Disgrace to Sunday League if you ask me. We used to have those exact tactics; man on each post and the fastest guy on the half way line. Worked a treat, we won back to back promotions two years on a trot and then won the top division in our second year. Miss those days when I could run and had hair on my head.
This season was always going to be about setting the foundations for the future. I get the pain at now almost certainly having to watch yet another year tick past without a trophy, but my feeling (and hope) is that Ange with the new team upstairs is focused on building not just a team that wins trophies, but a trophy winning team. The difference is subtle but ultimately enormous, and is the difference between the likes of Arsenal, Portsmouth, Leicester and currently Manchester United and the likes of City, Real and Liverpool. One vision delivers a club that can position itself every now and then for a shot ay a trophy and, if the stars align, it might well win one, but that victory doesn't and cannot serve as a marker for real progress. In fact, and the recent history of all those teams I've mentioned bears this out, there is no correlation between winning that occasional trophy and progress and the former cannot be used as a predictor of the latter - with the teams in question often going on to have appalling seasons directly after having won a trophy, because it was only ever a paper castle. I had this feeling throughout the Poch era with the exception of the period 2016-18. Everything either side of that felt like a side that could win a trophy rather than a trophy winning side. Even the CL run in 2019 underlined this. Thought experiment: let's pretend we beat Liverpool and won the holy grail of all trophies. As Spurs fans, would that have indicated we were progressing as a club on all fronts, or would it have been a rather more painful truth: the final flourish of the dying embers of a once great team? I know which one it was to me, and Poch's rather ill-received (and badly timed) comments both before and after that final clearly show that he was under zero illusions either. I think and hope Ange is also under no illusions. He understands that the club needs a total shift in mentality from 'poor old us, at least we tried' to the ruthlessness and relentlessness that characterises the truly elite teams. City are an example of this. Probably the best in the world. For all their billions and dodgy sister clubs and world class academy, the single most important glue that binds it all together is the fact that Pep absolutely hates losing and even hates winning unconvincingly. He is relentless and ruthless and this more than anything is why he is one of the greatest in the history of the game. I'm rambling but ultimately my point can be summarised as follows: There is a crucial difference between a side that wins trophies and trophy winning side. There is an even more crucial difference between a side that wins the Carabao or FA cup because it sets those as it's season aims, and a side that wins them in the course of aiming for the PL and CL titles. I would encourage everyone to dwell on that latter point. It was the bridge we couldn't cross under Poch. Klopp and Guardiola crossed it.
I will add that the above has clearly been Levy's vision for two decades, to somehow evolve from a club that won the occasional FA cup and League cup, to one that wins the real stuff. Unfortunately for him, several teams arrived on the stage during this time who rigged the system, took a huge short cut and overtook us. His fatal flaw was trying (twice) to also take a huge short cut by appointing Jose and Conte.
The main flaw was trying to get parts of the structure in place but never the complete structure until now We had various DoFs in place since 2004 (earlier if you count David Pleat, even though he mainly worked as a scout for lower division talent) but for a long time there was a lot of left hand/right hand between the DoF and the manager, or the DoF and the board, or the manager and the board with the DoF inbetween, which led to things such as Comolli going rogue or Baldini going berserk, or managers who didn't want to work with a DoF such as Redknapp or Poch, which has often left us dismantling the structure and rebuilding it from the ground up - and not always immediately Similarly we've long wanted a youth movement in the squad, be it in the Arnesen era of looking to sign young English talent low and selling them high, and there was definitely mention of a youth focus when Villas Boas arrived (which went...how, again?) but that requires a clear path between academy and first team which we admittedly had to a point in the Villas Boas/Sherwood/early Poch era with the likes of Kane, Mason, Rose, Townsend and Caulker moving up into the first team at various points, but that dropped off severely somewhere between 2016-18 with only Winks and Skipp breaking through while numerous other players spent years playing academy football and only academy football meaning not only were we not creating players for our first team but also not creating a source of revenue should those players be moved on (barring outliers such as Onomah and Walker-Paters, albeit they were more offsetting the cost of transfers) The last ten years could have gone very differently if we had different parts of the structure in place which just weren't at the time, be it sounding out loans for youngsters so we would have developed the likes of Edwards, Madueke, Onomah, Walker Peters, Shashoua, Georgiou, Eyoma et al to the point they would have been able to step into the team or fetched a decent sum if they didn't make the grade, or if we had an Arnesen or Paratici that would surely have made the summers of 2018 and 2019 look very different to what we got
