I agree I was wrong in suggesting Lamela’s misplaced passes were ambitious ones, now that you mention it. He does ambitious passes relatively well. It is the short, routine ones he has a real knack for misplacing. But as to his overall performance: I’d say ugly but effective. Put another way, I think we need somebody, whether it’s Mason or Lamela, to drive us forward. I would rather that player be Eriksen, actually, because I think he has the skill to do so better than anyone else. But it’s not a role he takes on all that often, I think because his value as the next player after the playmaker, the scorer or assister, in other words, is so great.
Crosses might win corners...but what's the point of winning a corner when we've been shambolic at taking corners for years now? It doesn't matter whether it was Modric, Bale, Huddlestone, Kranjcar, Huddlestone, Eriksen or whoever else taking them, Spurs winning a corner means one thing: the nearest defender to the corner flag is the most likely recipient of the ball. Also, aimlessly throwing crosses into the area may raise the crowd...once. If a player spends 90 minutes sending in crosses that are more likely to trouble the advertising hoardings on the opposite side of the pitch than the goalkeeper, it will have the exact opposite effect as the crowd will be getting pissed off with it by half time. There's countless other ways to raise a crowd's spirits during a game which won't be counterproductive - for example, last night the crowd's spirits got raised by Carroll challenging for the ball and winning it in about the 23rd minute.
Well I'm happy to agree that the optimal number of crosses is somewhere between zero and "only ever crossing all the time every time". You say our corners are poor and I'd agree. That's why I mentioned all the other benefits but even with our appalling quality of corners we've scored how many? 2 goals from corners so far? And had a few near misses to. As RWAEB said - 2/3 of our goals last night came from crosses and corners. Also the main point I was making was to be wary of thinking that stats about how often crosses lead to goals or chances tell anything like half the story.
Have you got a song for goalscorer Son yet? You could adapt this http://fanchants.co.uk/football-songs/manchester_united-chants/park-park-2/
Stats in this case miss the essence of strategy, which is to make your opponent uncomfortable by forcing them to guess. If I know which side my opponent will serve to, I return much more effectively than if I don’t. Stroke preparation on every service return runs a race with the ball. Knowing which side the ball will come to makes it far likelier I can prepare the stroke in time, because I can do half the preparation before the serve is hit. The same principle works to some extent on crossing versus passing through the middle. The worst thing is to become predictable, and to free your opponent from the need to be ready for either possibility. Also, on the fun with numbers front, if one cross out of thirty scores, and teams have 65 possessions per game, they should do nothing but cross, since they would average over two goals a game even if they lose the ball on every cross they don’t score on, which they won’t. Of course, for why that isn’t true, see above.
The trouble with wing play and crossing is that it can be made very easy for defensive sides. Southampton last year didn't concede many last season by defending deep and narrow which allowed them to easily deal with crosses coming in and Sunderland did that to us last week. We did it to Arsenal at the Emirates too, we were in total comfort when they were crossing into the box, with the exception of one freekick that Mertesacker was up for. QPR did it to us some years ago too when we lost 1-0. Obviously the same can be said for cutting inside, there are times when it just doesn't work. We should be set up to be able to do a bit of everything to keep it varied. At the moment we're very good at out running the opponents but little else. We've seen moments of the kind of quick passing play Pochettino wants but not enough, our crosses and setpieces have been largely ineffectual but still produced a couple of goals and cutting inside has given us no goals that I can think of.
Was at the match with my daughter on thursday so here's my 2 p's worth 1) Son looked a real handful...he harassed the defence and keeper the whole time 2)Tippier settled well after a terrible start. We were sitting in the front row of the shelf side and could hear him organising players around him...my problem with him is he does that stupid arms behind his back thing when opponents cross the ball. 3) Alli was brilliant 4) Wimmer looked good 5) was good to see Njie play 6) Rose was very poor at times and against better forwards would have given away at leadt 2 goals 7) lamela works hard but was appalling...simple pass after simple pass after simple pass all misplaced. His finish was sublime but everything else was shocking imo Thought they were a good team and thought we played ok (well in parts) and feel more optimistic about the season since the Leicester match
Agree with pretty much all of this Qarabag are certainly no make-weights, so a win, however hard-fought, is a decent result. Just would add that thought Dier had another decent game at DM A defence playing its first competitive game together is always going to be a challenge, so at least we hung in there despite Roses best efforts to sabotage the evening. His defensive failings seem to get glossed over, but as you say, against a half decent attack (and Palace will certainly provide that today on current form) he is a disaster waiting to happen. Lamela is a real enigma: shows flashes of brilliance but seems to run around with his head up his arse and little awareness of what's around him. And yes, his routine short passing is dreadful. He might prove to be the most expensive 'impact-sub' in history!!!
Based on the rate of inflation, there's far worse... Denilson - Betis paid the equivalent of £35m Carroll - Liverpool paid the equivalent of £40m Shevchenko - Chelsea paid the equivalent of £41m
