Either way, BJ is NOT "the last defender" as so many weird people seem to insist.
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Match Tottenham Hotspur VS Ipswich. Sunday the 10th of November @2pm.
- Thread starter FOK
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Either way, BJ is NOT "the last defender" as so many weird people seem to insist.
Just saying dude, you're blaming attackers playing for a team that's scored more than anyone else in the league for subpar results.
It's this weird agenda that you and others seized on before the season even began, that we should spend more on wingers and strikers, and decided to blame all failings on that gripe. Despite all the evidence being that the attackers aren't the problem - it's the system.
We have issues defensively but I don't think it's due to a gung ho approach of over committing in attack.
The defensive issues seem to occur when the ball is in our final third, the players just seem to be confused. It looks like a lack of communication between the defenders. And ultimately defenders need to know how to defend and talk to each other.
But even then it isn't like we're awful defensively. We've conceded the same amount of goals as City this season and one more goal than Woolwich.
Your deeply flawed analogy wasn't the easiest thing to work with, I'll grant you that.
You're right and it'd be an own goal to attempt to remove that element. Ultimately, football is bread and circuses to exhaust our innate masculine drive for competition and tribalism. Unfortunately, those pseudo-tribes are now billion-pound companies who couldn't care less if you live or die. Today, it feels like rooting for Pepsi over Coke and getting depressed when PepsiCo's share price tanks. (Except without the spoiler warning that they're both majority owned by the exact same giga-funds, who also own a ton of stock in each other, giving you the illusion of choice and making the whole brand loyalty thing moot. But that's a very different issue.)
To get me back into club football, it'd require a hard reset back to localism: local clubs full of local players run by local businessmen for the mutual benefit of local people. Of course, at a certain level you can still get something approximating that, but my nearby Conference League South team is charging £35 or something on the gate, which is ludicrous. It's greed all the way down.
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Yeah, if I was looking at the table for some random Eastern European league, I'd read the raw GF/GA stats as "wow, that team is mercurial and incredibly inconsistent and probably unlucky to be mid-table". Maybe I'd even believe, knowing nothing else about them, they would come good pretty quickly and start rising in the table. However, actually watching the matches, it doesn't feel like that.
Sure, one could make the argument that if the goals were distributed just a little more favourably, this team would be on top, but football doesn't work that way. The example I always use is that of England's famously bad PK record: our summed PK record over all major tournaments is only about three goals worse than Germany's -- yet it feels like they win every shootout and we... well, everyone knows how that goes. You could swap a few individual penalties, not even changing the outcome of the shots, and we'd have won multiple shootouts before 2018, but obviously we don't get to do that.
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Apart from all the obvious stuff, there are two points that are present all the time and are inexcusable:
Many of the players seem disinterested and/or giving less than a full effort
Players aren't being held accountable for the above, or for poor play and costly errors.
You can't just say "Sack him and play the kids" because you have to put the best team you've got out there every week and win matches for the club, but I think we all know this shitty soup is never going to congeal.
Some will shamble on thinking Ange is going to figure this out or Levy will make a few moves that turn water into wine, but you've got to have a head full of rocks to really believe that.
The mentality that has infected the club is one of a lack of belief, a lack of accountability, and lastly what seems like a lack of passion/desire to win.
Many of the players seem disinterested and/or giving less than a full effort
Players aren't being held accountable for the above, or for poor play and costly errors.
You can't just say "Sack him and play the kids" because you have to put the best team you've got out there every week and win matches for the club, but I think we all know this shitty soup is never going to congeal.
Some will shamble on thinking Ange is going to figure this out or Levy will make a few moves that turn water into wine, but you've got to have a head full of rocks to really believe that.
The mentality that has infected the club is one of a lack of belief, a lack of accountability, and lastly what seems like a lack of passion/desire to win.
It’s not one or the other, it’s both. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying we both have a point. We score lots of goals, but we have to actually score more to be good at this style of,play. If we had bale instead of Werner, we’d be winning these games. Obviously, right?
But,again, you’re right. And again, we can’t ignore Werner. He’s shite. We need him but with composure,or whatever the fuck hes missing.
BTW, I didn’t seize on anything before the season began. I watched Werner and bj fuck a lot of shit up last season and hoped this season would be better, but it’s not. Maybe a little, but not enough.
Appreciate the reply.
Look, McKenna is the real deal. He’s far far better than the market/league realise. If you haven’t hired him by at least season 25/26 then you’ll have missed out to Man U.
He completely outfought Ange today with a far inferior set of players.
Plus he is Spurs born. He’d dick any team in Europe if he was given the rich squad you have.
Having said all that please don’t take him. He’s our next Sir Alf Ramsey or Sir Bobby.
Do watch one of our fan channels - it’s real quality and passion, Guardian journalist guests:
View: https://youtu.be/eHaaP38op7U?si=At6Ih86h5hxOxjMu
He never looks right. Porro is playing h inside right leaving only option of Johnson. Which we all know is not a viable option for citi just like royal wasn’t. Wonder if players realise this? When you played as a kid if you were being ignored for a pass you could easily tell.
It's all in the mind. The club has no winning mentality and it just trickles down to the players. I get Ange wants to instill a winning mentality, but all losses will point to him ultimately and he has to bear the grunt, unfortunately. I so wish to blame entirely on him alone, but these players are spoilt millionaires. They win regardless, and that's what I hate.
Honestly speaking, are there sports psychologists as a full time role in other big clubs? Because we badly need one, or half a dozen, to tune that mindset of the players and coaches before every single game. No matter how motivational Ange or the coaches are, we just don't listen but to a 3rd party most of the time, over time.
Jeez, Assuming Stewards would/could eject someone for swearing, half of the Southstand would have been empty before half time.
Perhaps his 11 year old would be better off sticking to Taylor Swift concerts and alike..
Poch used to talk about the culture change we need. It’s something that takes a long time but will never happen if it doesn’t start with the leaders at the very top.
There were players on the bench who maybe should have got a game yesterday. Start to think why they even at the club playing the odd game in Europe.
Reflecting on it from yesterday and how F'd off I am about it all, got me thinking..
What pisses me off more is that I am not actually that surprised at what happened. There were all the whimsical jokes beforehand about Doctor Tottenham doing "lowly" Ipswich a favour and handing them their first victory, but we all knew it was actually a possibility. We see it all the time, we just can't help it. We hoped that a refresh of players and management a new approach may change things, but here we are again.
The atmosphere walking away from the ground was weird, almost just an acceptance of what it is like being a Spurs supporter.
I won't go down the Levy route, but he is the one constant in all this. Although, he can't be held accountable for the team selection (I assume) and their attitude on the pitch.
Anyway.... COYS..
What pisses me off more is that I am not actually that surprised at what happened. There were all the whimsical jokes beforehand about Doctor Tottenham doing "lowly" Ipswich a favour and handing them their first victory, but we all knew it was actually a possibility. We see it all the time, we just can't help it. We hoped that a refresh of players and management a new approach may change things, but here we are again.
The atmosphere walking away from the ground was weird, almost just an acceptance of what it is like being a Spurs supporter.
I won't go down the Levy route, but he is the one constant in all this. Although, he can't be held accountable for the team selection (I assume) and their attitude on the pitch.
Anyway.... COYS..
There were no flaws if you have the perspicacity to grasp it.
It isn't the manager that's the problem it's the lack of depth and quality of the players.
The fault lies with the cubs owners. Another manager sold short.
It's the owners for sure but the manager is picking and choosing the players and insisting on this tactically flawed set-up. He's also responsible for some frankly odd ball use of substitutions. He needs to be far more pragmatic in where and how he has deployed his players, he needs to be brave about confronting his favourite players when they underperform and not treating them over favourably. Mostly he has to change his ethos, winning teams love clean sheets and do care if the opposition score.
I find that we can defend in the other team’s half… we cannot defend in our own.
Or some other words which were ruder were what I said in the pub a little while ago.
If Ange were a younger, greener manager, I think you could forgive some of our shortcomings in terms of tactical naivete, poor in-game management, and glaring inconsistency in how motivated the team he puts out are to play against what's in front of them. But he's not a young, green manager, he's supposed to have cut his teeth already winning all these leagues and cups in Australia, Japan and Scotland that were supposedly his credentials for being given a job of this magnitude. I like the intent of what he does but I feel the "magic" of playing attacking football has worn off for me now, we spent plenty of money over the summer and if he did a shit job identifying his targets or okayed deals for players that either aren't good enough to make the first XI yet, or don't fit his system, then at least some of the blame has to lie at his door. He has said in his own words that Odobert and Johnson were his targets, he clearly wanted a striker and wasn't in staunch opposition of Solanke, he phoned Maddison himself to swing the deal with us, VDV was our first backup target at CB, then in Jan we went straight out and got him the backup CB he wanted in Dragusin, yeah maybe he hasn't been 100% satisfied with how much he's been able to do so far but he's definitely been backed with players. I don't necessarily think some of these players are as poor as they've been under Ange at points either, neither Porro or Udogie would look so defensively poor if we played with more structure when the game calls for it.
Of course, in a roundabout way you are still right, because ultimately the board selected the manager. But I struggle to think of single manager we've had in the 21st century who wouldn't be getting absolute fucking pelters for getting 1 point from 3 games against sides currently residing in the bottom 5. Do we need to go out and buy Haaland and Vinicius Jr for Ange before we're allowed to get pissed off with him for losing at home to fucking Ipswich?