Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United

This was feckin’ funny - all those bubbles and no celebration

 

my mate was there...sitting with the hammer fans cos he was given a ticket...said this was great to see

 

I remember about 20 years back or maybe more when I was a taxi driver I picked up Warren from the beck theatre in hayes middlesex late at night after his show and was taking him back to hampstead we started talking about spurs and things in general he had me in stitches such a funny bloke who could talk about our club for ages and had some fantastic stories to tell ,seemed really weird that he was such a massive spurs fan when all I knew when I was a kid was him being a spammer on tv .

 

Proof that while the D1ldo bros can produce products
that cause immense pleasure, there is still nothing on the
market to cure 'premature celebration' .

 

Warning :

The following image depicts extreme 'premature
celebration' (among consenting adults) ...

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Probably an ex Orient fan crying "what have I done?"

 

So to summarise this thread, we’ve been dire all season with a thin squad who are all knackered, a manager who picks the wrong team and is clueless on tactics and substitutions and are being ****ed over by refs.

In the real world we’ve had our best ever start in the PL despite playing 6 matches out of nine away and the others at a temporary home.

 

There is little wrong with Kane, of course he will be a little jaded from his England exertions but he is a young man who will soon recover. Even if you gave him a couple of weeks off he would still work as hard as ever in his return game and probably be a little jaded for a following game if only 3 days later. There are simply too many games too close together as we are about to see in the next couple of weeks. As MP says, all the time, we have a squad of 25 players who need to be involved to cope with the game numbers.
I think Kane's lack of chances is down to not having our two most creative players Eriksen and Dele out at the same time. This is just bad luck and can happen to any team and it's no good harping on about the transfer window (boring) you cannot find players like this everyday even with unlimited resources. Winks And Sissoko worked hard in midfield and in the end we won the game so well done to them.
The other point I'd make is that often comments seem to be one eyed. Spurs were poor, our selection was wrong, our tactics were crap and so on, all as if there is not another team on the pitch. West Ham fought and fought and fought and never allowed us to relax and for the whole of the second half kept us on the back foot. That's down to a terrific performance from them not a poor performance from us. In the PL any team can beat any team, there are precious few easy rides, everything has to be perfect to dominate in any game and to do that for 90 minutes at this level happens only rarely.
We won and gained another 3 points. Well done MP and Spurs.

 

People who are wanting new signings are not wanting them because they want something shiny and new...they want new signings because the last few seasons suggest when it comes to the crunch...we have just been lacking and it's true we have...almost there in the cups...almost there in the league. On reflection a bit more quality and we might have got over the line by now in something.

It's a shame when you can tell what the team needs. For all our midfield options...we still don't have someone who is going to take the game by the scruff of the neck most weekends. We are either wanting to mix it with the best or we are not.

I wish Spurs fans would stop thinking our squad can't be improved...our shortcomings throughout the course of a whole season for the last few years and the manner of them suggests we can be improved on.

Teams better than us improve their first team so it's not ridiculous for a Spurs fan to suggest we could have done with some strengthening. All this does not mean that winning 7 out of 9 is overlooked though but Spurs fans need to stop being frightened of realising that we could be better.

Levy hasnt got the money, he said the stadium wont interfere with transfers...it has...fine.

Rumour has it Poch won't buy until he can get who he wants...that's fine too.

I disagree with Levy's statement during the THST meeting that transfers were not paramount this summer because I think they were...if that's Levy sugar coating his own actions in the transfer market then fine again. However don't tell me this squad is above improvements.

Having said all that...yesterday was a good win...grafted for it....but it was also lacking in sparkle in the 2nd half...we did enough to see it through. Next up City...let's see how much of a gap we have closed on them in a 90 minute match...at the end of the day it's them who are at the top and who we have to try and chase down if we are going to win things.

The season is a Marathon not a sprint and the last few seasons has shown that a bit more quality and it could be better.

Maybe the players, Poch and Levy have a master plan but all I can go by is the past few seasons and what I see.

Us winning 7 out of 9 is not because of Levy and his philosophies...having a new stadium is though, so credit where it's due.

 

I see :

- The squad is having its share of injuries

- The Bel/Inger Spurs do look jaded (and Southgate since this
season began is the biggest perpetrator of this)

- Pochettino game management is walking a knife edge
(he got away with it yesterday, at Watford and Milan he did not)


Much better is to come from the squad, and seemingly once
Xmas arrives (based on the past 3 seasons) . I look at the
"season compass" and can be generally happy.

The PSV CL and the Citeh PL games will be the big markers.
The first has a lot at stake for this season, and the latter is
always a statement of intent (the last times Spurs beat Citeh at
home they then went on to get into the fight for the PL title) .

 

Great run by Moura:

Shame the final ball from Lamela wasn't better, as it would've been a fantastic goal.

It'll be interesting to see if anything happens to Arnautovic for this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/9pxlfh/arnautovic_punches_sanchez_in_the_stomach/

 

In the real world we could've - and probably should've - had an even better start in the PL - and CL.

 

Can't stand those idiots. Everything that's wrong with modern football.

 

Which would you prefer? The original headbutt into the stomach? The punch to the stomach? Or grabbing his shirt around the neck (ripping it)?
Can you be sent off 3 times for the same incident - that would be a 9 games ban and probably relegate the Spanners

 

Spurlock the higher up the league we get the harder it is to buy the quality players we want. You are not just talking of what we have you want better than what we have, ok why not, but I think you do not take into account how difficult that is. We want to go head to head with City and Barcalona, PSG and so on yet we don't have their resources atm the fact we are up there fighting is down to Levy and the strategy he has adopted to get us to punch above our weight. It's not that I don't think we can improve, of course we can and if we had a player like say De Bruyne in midfield it would (much as I dislike him) but how do you propose we get such a player ready made? We cant' we have to find them before they are the finished article and act as a finishing school and that's still difficult with the financial giants ready to snap up anything that looks promising.
The complaints about our transfer activity just flies in the face of the reality of the huge success we have had in finding and training players , best in the PL as far as I am concerned. So when people complain about Levy and the transfer window it does sound like a bunch of spoilt brats as far as I am concerned. You just cannot take for granted where Spurs are and who they are competing with and that's without the new stadium we are about to move in to.
Get Real!

 

I had a bit more sympathy with our transfer dealings going back 2 or 3 years ago. We hadn't had 3 years of CL qualification and the money that it's brought in, together with the prestige and attractiveness to potential signings. We couldn't pay anywhere near the wages of clubs finishing below us (although we're progressing on that front). Also, we had a top notch First XI and we were looking at bringing in competition for those players, who knew that they might not go straight into an excellent team, especially in 2016/17.

However, this summer it was obvious that we needed to improve our First XI midfield. Mousa Dembele's not the player that he was a few years ago and is leaving to play in a less physical league. Big Vic's got chronic problems with his knee and Moussa Sissoko is not good enough to play CL or against the top teams. It's been frustrating that Winksy has had recurring ankle problems and hasn't progressed as far as he might and Eric Dier's been overplayed and looks stale. I applaud the ambition of going after the excellent Ndombele but adding him to a list of failed targets isn't helping the team now. The Jack Grealish failure was particularly galling and both failures were foreseeable.

Added to those failures were late bids for Martial and Mata, who United were never likely to sell to us. We need to go after someone we can actually get and get them in now, because on a regular basis, the starting XI is weaker and more tired than we can actually afford it to be. Now, we're looking likely to buy Barios, who is a punt (no spelling mistake) because he's available for sale at a price we can actually meet.

I'm not going to blame individuals. Levy may have made plenty of money available and Lyon and Villa wouldn't sell, even though we bid what they will eventually leave for. It's not likely but it is possible. MP may have refused alternatives to his first choices or we left it too late on all counts? However, collectively, we came up short and as a club, despite the issues raised by the stadium, we could and should have improved that area of the pitch. I can understand the reasons and sympathise to an extent. However, it was a significant failure and it is likely to continue to cost us in big games, as I believe it did in the Barcelona game, unless we can make it through to January and rectify our error then. Hopefully we'll still be in the CL and the Top 4 race. The next couple of months will be the acid test, as we start to play teams in the top half of the table.

 

To be fair to Arnautovic, he didn't rip Sanchez' shirt. It was already like that before the incident. I think he does it himself.
I've still got no idea why he remained on the pitch though, as he did more than enough to get sent off.
He didn't even get a booking, bizarrely.