What the hell was their right-back doing? Lazy twat. Played everyone on. Alli in the book for handbags. Silly.
Well that was very much a mixed (Qara)bag. Not the best performance, especially by one or two, but a second win and a few goals. Alli was very good, Carroll showed some nice bits and pieces and Son put his chances away nicely.
Just maybe your season will kick off! Onwards and upwards! Good luck in this competition but it will be a hard one to win. Get as high a place as possible in the PL, don't worry about the League Cup, its only a date at Wembley on a Sunday afternoon at a crap time of year. So go for it and win the Europa League.
Anderlecht/Monaco finishes 1-1. Decent first set of results all 'round then. Now to go back and check that bloke who is raging against Tom Carroll...
Well we got the job done. Hopefully Dier is ok. Decent performance all told. Trippier was reasonably solid and provided a good outlet after his initial mishap. Wimmer looked solid. Rose looked a bit leggy but will get better. Carroll was good, kept the ball moving well and always looked to create. Used his body defensively well too on a number of occasions, great to see him trying in that regard even though he's not the biggest. Lamela was immensely frustrating and his well taken goal shouldn't hide the pretty abject performance on the night. Alli was exceptional for a man of his age and experience, he looks a bit lanky sometimes but he is really quite strong and great technically too. Really exciting player, sure we'll see more of him soon with our injuries. Son looked to get involved a lot, showed good industry and took the goals well. Clint was on the periphery really, hard to read anything into his performance. Winks had a reasonable cameo, even if he did give the ball away a few times. Overall, I'm quite happy with the game. EL games are always a gear down for us I feel, so we did well to raise the tempo when we needed to.
Alright - it wasn't a hat trick but I still want to take some credit for that goal. Oh, Lamela. I just...I've slagged him off more than most on here but I still sort of can't help but try to convince myself that there's something there. I mean - he's basically been **** for over two years now and I've been pretty vociferous about this and still even I want him to play the full 90 mins in Europa games like this (at home to an Azerbaijani team) because...just...maybe. Thing is that even when you accept the transfer as having not worked I can actually see so much sense to his signing. The sort of player we needed after Bale, young, just scoredaload of goals in a top league, Argentine international and, importantly, seems like the sort of nice young man who will get on with his teammates, work hard, follow instructions. It's just that he's never looked terribly good at football. There might be some sort of game or sport involving feet and balls that he's good at but football just doesn't seem to be it. I can't help but think that the year in Roma where he scored a load of goals was a one-off. But still...maybe...he seems like such a nice young man... Anyway. Dele Alli. He's a ****ing good player. And it's always fairly obvious fairly early on, isn't it? (Danny Rose was the only example of a young player we've signed who's looked crap for a few years then properly came good that came to mind earlier. But then he has a game like that). Has just looked assured and imaginative and skillful and committed from day 1. Despite all the criticism that I've (rightly) given our tranfer policy in the last two and a bit years it must be said that in Dier, Eriksen and Alli we have,picked up, fairly inexpensively, three very, very good young players. With some other OK ones here and there too and some more we're not yet able to judge. In years gone by that would look pretty good. Since the transfer policy overall must only get better as Mitchel and co bed in that's a real cause of optimism.
I think, given time and space, Lamela looks comfortable and you start to see something of what he can do. Trouble is, he ain't going to get that time and space in the Prem!
