At least Kane was pressing for a change!
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At least Kane was pressing for a change!
I realised she is actually quite a nice womanGosh, was it really that bad?
There you go, a silver lining. Let's hope she realised the same
I quite enjoyed the first half. it was quite even.
It's the inevitability of what is going to happen which gets me.
Sure we beat Newcatle in a game I really thought we would struggle in - tidy performance against a poor side but in the circumstances very creditable.
But on Sunday, like Woolwich and Chelsea in particular it was so obvious.
Antonio would score - he did.
We would lose - we did.
Somebody would be blamed, Kane, Reguillon or Santo this time - they were.
But my point is the sheer inevitability of it all. It's not about being negative but knowing the DNA of your club.
United lost heavily but everyone knew they could have won. The result was a complete shock. Was ours?
We are completely in limbo.
Sure we beat Newcatle in a game I really thought we would struggle in - tidy performance against a poor side but in the circumstances very creditable.
But on Sunday, like Woolwich and Chelsea in particular it was so obvious.
Antonio would score - he did.
We would lose - we did.
Somebody would be blamed, Kane, Reguillon or Santo this time - they were.
But my point is the sheer inevitability of it all. It's not about being negative but knowing the DNA of your club.
United lost heavily but everyone knew they could have won. The result was a complete shock. Was ours?
We are completely in limbo.
Good post mate. I’ve seen you and others receive stick on here before for posts offering a similar sentiment. It makes me laugh when I see all these posts to the contrary - “we’ll smash Woolwich, Chavs, Caravan Dwellers etc etc”. It’s almost as if they are unaware of the history of the club they claim to ‘support’.
To arrive at your - admittedly gloomy and negative - position is evidence of having your hopes and dreams crushed by this club, often in the most bizarre and unforeseeable manner.
‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’.
There is without doubt a vein of weakness running through the identity of the club. It has history way before Levy/ENIC (this doesn’t allow those fuckers off the hook though for pissing away a position of dominance and impending ‘glory’).
It’s as inevitable as United smashing us this coming Saturday as they seek some catharsis…
As well as that it's so obvious what or team and line up will look like.
4-2-3-1 - check
Aggressive South American defender alongside averagely aggressive British defender - check
Meh fullbacks who aren't great either going forward and worse defensively - check
Plodding, dull, safety first midfield that prefers square and back passes. lacks agression - check
Expensive foreign enigma as creator - check
Kane + Son and bit part tricky winger - check
Weak bench lacking impact players - check
Yep all good
Yep, our only saving grace is that United don't have Pogba and that a lot of their players are mentally as frail as ours.
It's why you see some of our fans asking for Martial. Unreal.
I think Saturday sees one manager out of their club if the scoreline is embarrassing but as you rightly say, our mentality issues pre-date ENIC and therefore the unfortunate Santo.
Only under Pochettino for that glorious 3 or 4 years did it nearly change completely but not quite.
We are saying pretty much the same thing here, at no point do I think either team deserved a win but I do and will always side with any team in these situations that at least has the ball at their feet. (the only time I opt to favour a team without the ball is when they are the aggressor and set pressing traps as part of their block and look to break quickly without lumping it up the pitch - an example of this is us vs City).
We defended West Ham so easily (even when Romero lost his only two 1v1's against Antonio) they could have played for a week and from open play I would have felt secure, the only thing they tried was to have Antonio play on the shoulder by either go 1v1 with him usually down their left channel with the ball, or have him decoy with a run to receive and take Romero out with him, then switch pass to the opposite flank to pick out a late supporting run, their only outlet for this was Cresswell. We defended all of these as either their final ball was as crap as ours or we defended it with ease. From open play they were worse than us. My ONLY worry throughout the game was them getting set-pieces (corners and FK's in and around the box).
Our coaching is there BUT it's so much in its infancy it means it's quite easy to identify and defend against as it involves 1) a diagonal ball from either of our CB or PEH out to FB (in Sunday's game that was Reggie), 2) using Ndombele to progress through the middle, 3) have the ball played through the CB/FB channel (mainly our left channel looking for Son).
So West Ham let us have the ball and focused entirely on putting their midfield block around Ndombele, two players behind him two either side or in front of him, it meant they blocked the passing lane to him or if we did get the ball to him he was outnumbered 4 to 1 and the ball was recycled back to CB's or to PEH (dropping between CB's) to start this cycle all over again. Our out ball out to Reggie was shite, almost all balls to him over-hit but they had doubled up on him had he got the ball.
On the occasions we got ball to feet behind their midfield our final ball was shite.
So, the plan was there but poorly executed but the biggest issue was even if the passes weren't coming off (this happens to the best teams) it was still that we rested/trained for an entire week with this game in mind. At no point did we apply pressure on them by being the aggressors, playing quickly, moving fast off the ball. We gave them the game they would have wanted, an easy low tempo game.
We actually got ourselves into a better "game state" than them, they thought they could go hard at us in the opening exchanges of the game, rattle us, get the crowd up and behind them. This lasted no more than 10mins, we wrestled this away from them, it wasn't pretty with both teams winning and losing the ball in the following 10mins but we came out of this tussle on top and now in control of the game, crowd gone flat as a pancake with only the Spurs fans heard signing, they had to drop off us. From this point on it should have been us sticking our foot on their throats but we allowed them to sit into a narrow shape that they prepared for and easily nullified our only three main attacking threats (as per above).
If at this point we moved the ball faster, set traps for them to have the ball deep in their half and for us to press them aggressively they were there to be taken. But for the moments we didn't have the ball we did what they did and sat off them, get into our shape, not to press them until they got into midfield. (This is why Nuno is now not for me because given time he will improve us but only to a level of organisation to where Moyes is now, that's not where we should be).
IMO this is where we totally let them off, this game required our front 3 pressing the fuck out of them, our basic 3 point attacking plan would have had a better chance at succeeding as it would have been an uncomfortable, panicked highly pressured day for them.
TDLR: IMO we were the better side (defended better, controlled midfield) but didn't deserve to win because our attacking phases were basic, easily defended against and lacked any aggression, pressing and pressure on them that would have increased the probability of the basic attacking plan to work.
Fair enough, I think this just comes down to a difference in opinion. Personally I won't favour a side in a game just because they have more of the ball, that should just be a means to an end. If having most of the ball isn't leading you to attacking situations then you might as well sacrifice it and try to play on the counter, which is generally easier.
But I do understand. Winning the midfield battle to that extent SHOULD have given us the upper hand, but as you say we were so poor whenever we got in to the attacking phase, so in the end keeping the ball meant very little to us.
Going forward we lack any kind of unpredictability, easily our biggest problem. There's no one touch stuff at all to unsettle defences. Nobody switches play enough. Ndombele tries to drive at defenders but otherwise everyone else plays it safe. It's so fucking stale.
As is the obvious defeat coming up by Man Utd on Saturday. We'll lose 3 nil or 3 1 I suspect.
Which is why I'm not tipping the balance towards West Ham, they chose not to have the ball but they didn't really even attempt to play on the counter, they were extremely poor at attacking us (and as a plus for us I thought we did defend (our back 4) very well. West Ham was prime Pullis, looking for the set-piece. In other games they have been more open in attack, committing more men forward through Fornals and Bowen and even Soucek and Rice both joining attacks, this wasn't their game plan at all against us they were extremely passive and really only committed a couple of players forward.
Which is why I thought they were shite and why we were the better of the two teams BUT not deserving of a win.
That's fair. Maybe my emotional bias because of how annoyed I was at our own performance comes in to play. West Ham certainly didn't play well at all, but the fact they didn't have to and still won the game is concerning to say the least.
I hated the way we played though, it gave me a hideous reminder of AVB ball.
I'm struggling to agree with that because plenty thought it was inevitable we would lose to Villa, then inevitable we would lose to Newcastle, yet we won both games. If you're saying it was inevitable that we'd lose another match eventually, then yes of course that's true, it's true of every team.
I think I understand your point though (?) - that it never really felt like we'd turned a corner, even with 5 wins from 8 games, you still knew the wheels were coming off sooner or later. And I'd probably have to agree with that, on the basis that we were poor even in some of the games we won, so it felt like we were in a false position with 5 wins from 8, and only a matter of time before it would all look gloomy again.
I do wonder though how people would feel if we were to win the next 2... I'm not even sure how I'd feel myself. Would depend on the performances I guess. Don't get me wrong, I never wanted Nuno in the first place, nobody did, and it's hard to see him succeeding here, but if he gave us a string of good performances now, with good results, sitting in 4th place by Christmas, then I'd have to concede that he was doing well.
Sunday was obviously neither result nor performance. They weren't much better though - neither side deserved any points from that tbh. :/
I can’t disagree with anything there. This is the first season ever that when we lose I just nod and move on. Even after the Goon and Spam defeats I didn’t spend the evening pissed off. Not even slightly. I just turned it off as soon as the final whistle went and did something else.
Mate, pretty much the very same.
Why care when nothing changes?
Nobody fears us and any strength of mentality is like Casper - nowhere to be seen.
Brian Fantana wrote we will lose 0-3 or maybe 1-3.
If we do it will be absolutely no surprise but unlike previous years neither will the rest of my weekend be ruined because of it.
At the moment it's not a two way relationship so why bother?
I expect us to lose by several goals on Saturday, probably without any shots on target, but won't lose any sleep over it if we do.
Would I be surprised if we win? Not really as anything can happen with this lot - look at the City and Palace matches for two completely unexpected results. Goons, Chavs and Spam though? Not surprised at all.
At least it's a saturday kick off. On sunday you can reflect before you get eaten alive by mates on monday.
Not sure what the stages are but apathy is clearly in town for a lot of us at present.
The angle is misleading… Reggie isn’t at the right angle to challenge it. He’s man marking as he is assigned to be. Our zone players miss the ball and Kane fails his man mark.