Manager Ange Postecoglou

[Perryman]

Ange will need to show improvement over last seasons dip AND the same problems evident all pre-season. Otherwise it's his fault and no one elses.
I like to blame Levy for everything as much as the next next (real) fan, but if a team is getting worse by every metric, there's no point sticking.

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Must agree for once that these same problems just keep re occurring. Different coach on corners now, Montgomery apparently. The big holes in midfield keep appearing. Whether that is Bissouma wandering or just no organisation .
One of Gray or Bergvall should start on Monday .
Hoping that a proper centre forward will make a big difference .

 

[Perryman]

The only teams to do the double over us last season were Chelsea and Wolves so clearly we were not some rabble that the top teams feasted on.

It’s nothing like Ossie’s football, where five players did what they like and the defence sat deep. The idea is to squeeze the other team deep into their territory so they can’t get out. Again, Arteta, Klopp, Pep, they all had similar problems early on where they looked wide open to counters.

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They weren’t getting hammered like we did in second half of the season.
Our record with first choice back 4 is decent but we can’t guarantee playing them in every game.
Everyone says we have 4 top individual defenders. Time to prove it.

 

[Kane's left]

Must agree for once that these same problems just keep re occurring. Different coach on corners now, Montgomery apparently. The big holes in midfield keep appearing. Whether that is Bissouma wandering or just no organisation .
One of Gray or Bergvall should start on Monday .
Hoping that a proper centre forward will make a big difference .

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Whether it's Bissouma wandering too much game by game or lack of organisation in general, these are both problems on Ange's head to rectify asap. If you can't trust certain players to fulfil their role, they need to get binned to the subs bench until they can learn otherwise, innit?

 

[Matt1882]

They weren’t getting hammered like we did in second half of the season.
Our record with first choice back 4 is decent but we can’t guarantee playing them in every game.
Everyone says we have 4 top individual defenders. Time to prove it.

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The first 10 games just skewed those stats though.

I'd be interested in the record when all 4 played after the first 10 games.

 

[SeeSpotRun]

Oh no doubt, we were defensively dogshit last season. Everyone found it easy to score against us.

We have a huge amount of work to do if we are going to get any closer to the top 3.

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In terms of number of goals conceded that's a bit harsh I think. We were no worse than the teams around us in 4th-7th.

But if you look at number of goals conceded per minute out of possession, then it does look dogshit; we were second worst in the league, conceding once every 21.5 minutes that the opponents had the ball. To put that in context, if we had had 50% possession that would have been 80 goals conceded over the season.

Luckily there's three components to stopping the opp's from scoring:

1. don't give them the ball
2. win the ball back quickly if you do give it to them
3. make it hard for them to score during the times between (1) and (2)

So obviously we were dogshit at (3). But we were best in the league at (2), and decent at (1) (ie 7th best). (I put some stuff in the Tactical Autopsy thread related to this a while back).

Those three components are obviously related; the higher you press, the better you do on (2), but if the press fails then you're more exposed. Also if your first priority during defensive transition is to win the ball quickly, rather than dropping back into defensive shape, then you're vulnerable if it doesn't work (and also increase the risk of conceding set pieces, but that's another can of worms...).

Playing such a fluid structure as we do when in possession, we can also be in a pretty compromising shape at the moment of turnover. This is one of the areas I expect to see improvement this year: keeping that fluidity but being more mindful of what our defensive transition will look if we do lose the ball. It my be my imagination but our attacking shape has stayed more balanced to my eye during preseason when the youngsters have been on the field, Bergvall in particular.

In Ange's team talk before the QPR game he put a big emphasis on thinking ahead, "the most important thing is the next action, next action always in your mind. When you have the ball what's the next action; what do we do next, what do I do next? If we lose the ball, next action? What do I do next, what do we do next, that's always our Focus."

As others have pointed out elsewhere, a couple of transfers in to improve our ball retention while still threatening the opponent's defence (ie not just tiki-taka) should help reduce the number of turnovers we concede in vulnerable positions. Gray and Bergvall look both press-resistant and able to penetrate the lines; the obvious caveat their age and experience. Solanke hopefully an upgrade too. An experienced DM and a dribbly RW still on a lot of TFC wish-lists too, with a couple of weeks left in the TW.

I'm eagerly anticipating watching how Spurs rise to the challenge of tweaking a system, that gave reasonable results in season 1, into something that can do significantly better in season 2. It won't be easy.

 

[Matt1882]

In terms of number of goals conceded that's a bit harsh I think. We were no worse than the teams around us in 4th-7th.

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But that's why we finished where we did and not higher.
So it is bad. You can't really expect to get any higher when you pretty much allow teams to score a truck load of goals against you.
Good defences are what all good teams are built on. Nail that aspect and generally speaking, the rest falls into place.
We currently seem to be working arse about face and spending all our time trying to nail the attack and just disregarding the defence.

 

[SeeSpotRun]

But that's why we finished where we did and not higher.
So it is bad. You can't really expect to get any higher when you pretty much allow teams to score a truck load of goals against you.
Good defences are what all good teams are built on. Nail that aspect and generally speaking, the rest falls into place.
We currently seem to be working arse about face and spending all our time trying to nail the attack and just disregarding the defence.

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So we're basically in agreement then that the defence needs to improve. But I think language like "defensively dogshit" is an over-reaction and doesn't help promote constructive discussion. Unless all of the bottom 17 teams were defensively dogshit too, because they conceded similar or worse (ok not Everton, but do you really want to go there?).

So what tweaks (short of wholesale sackings) would you make to improve our defence?

 

[Starks]

So we're basically in agreement then that the defence needs to improve. But I think language like "defensively dogshit" is an over-reaction and doesn't help promote constructive discussion. Unless all of the bottom 17 teams were defensively dogshit too, because they conceded similar or worse (ok not Everton, but do you really want to go there?).

So what tweaks (short of wholesale sackings) would you make to improve our defence?

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Keeping fit would be enough and improving the depth that steps in

That back five do an pretty great job defensively in relation to the rest of the league when fit.

But the drop off to Emerson, Davies and even Skipp is massive in relation to what the starters are good at.

 

[Murphy]

But that's why we finished where we did and not higher.
So it is bad. You can't really expect to get any higher when you pretty much allow teams to score a truck load of goals against you.
Good defences are what all good teams are built on. Nail that aspect and generally speaking, the rest falls into place.
We currently seem to be working arse about face and spending all our time trying to nail the attack and just disregarding the defence.

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We have good defenders, we just gave up way too many shots and conceded too many goals from set pieces. 25% or so of our goals let in were from that.

We also lost Micky for a quarter of the season, and he was still our highest rated player. If he has a better season in terms of injury we should naturally fare a bit better.

 

[SpursRomania]

Possibly, if we see progress. Building a club with solid foundations does take time particularly if the budget is not limitless.

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Ok but let’s look at the variables:

1. Arteta was at his first ever job as a manager. Maybe being Pep’s assistant gave him some unique possibilities of watching how a world class manager handles tactics, players and so on, but I think it’s common sense that being a manager is a whole different story. Take Stellini for an example here.

Postecoglou’s been a manager for over 20 years and he repeatedly said he’s overseen lots of rebuildings at his previous clubs, so he has more experience in it and dealt with a lot of different situations.

2. This is probably up for debate, but I think Assna’s team was weaker than our team when Postecoglou took charge. Of course we lost our best striker in generations (ironically, some people say we’re better off without Kane, I don’t think so), but we had a decent squad per overall that was overseeing a rebuild for a couple of years (Paratici) and we added a couple of good first team players to it.

3. Despite the shit 8th - 8th combo finishes (Arteta took charge mid-season when they finished 8th for the first time, right?), Legoman delivered an FA Cup which might not be "much" to Assna, but it’s probably one of the reasons he wasn’t sacked. Also they went on to reach the EL semi-finals in the next season so if we’re comparing the two managers head-to-head, this would be the least acceptable performance in EL for us this season, don’t you agree?

So in short, Arteta took longer to get Arse competitive for several reasons and yeah, rebuilds don’t happen overnight, we had one started before Postecoglou arrived, but if you seriously think that Arteta is the threshold, you need to stop dickriding Postecoglou and tell us how a great manager he is.

 

[SeeSpotRun]

Ok but let’s look at the variables:

1. Arteta was at his first ever job as a manager. Maybe being Pep’s assistant gave him the possibility of watching how a world class manager handles tactics, players and so on, but I think it’s common sense that being a manager is a whole different story. Stellini for example.

Postecoglou’s been a manager for over 20 years and he repeatedly said he’s overseen lots of rebuildings at his previous clubs.

2. This is probably up for debate, but Woolwich’s team was weaker than what we had when Postecoglou took charge. Of course we lost our best striker in generations (ironically, some people say we’re better off without Kane, I don’t think so), but we had a decent squad per overall and we added a couple of good first team players to it.

3. Despite the shit 8th - 8th combo finishes (Arteta took charge mid-season when they finished 8th for the first time, right?), Legoman delivered an FA Cup which might not be "much" to Assna, but it’s probably one of the reasons he wasn’t sacked. Also they went on to reach the EL semi-finals in the next season so if we’re comparing the two managers head-to-head, this would be the least acceptable performance in EL for us this season.

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So you're saying that Ange should be able to get us to the top slightly quicker than Arteta did for Woolwich, and that it's disappointing that we didn't win a cup last season? I don't think you'll get too many disagreements on that.

 

[Rebrov_Likes]

Ok but let’s look at the variables:

1. Arteta was at his first ever job as a manager. Maybe being Pep’s assistant gave him some unique possibilities of watching how a world class manager handles tactics, players and so on, but I think it’s common sense that being a manager is a whole different story. Take Stellini for an example here.

Postecoglou’s been a manager for over 20 years and he repeatedly said he’s overseen lots of rebuildings at his previous clubs, so he has more experience in it and dealt with a lot of different situations.

2. This is probably up for debate, but I think Assna’s team was weaker than our team when Postecoglou took charge. Of course we lost our best striker in generations (ironically, some people say we’re better off without Kane, I don’t think so), but we had a decent squad per overall that was overseeing a rebuild for a couple of years (Paratici) and we added a couple of good first team players to it.

3. Despite the shit 8th - 8th combo finishes (Arteta took charge mid-season when they finished 8th for the first time, right?), Legoman delivered an FA Cup which might not be "much" to Assna, but it’s probably one of the reasons he wasn’t sacked. Also they went on to reach the EL semi-finals in the next season so if we’re comparing the two managers head-to-head, this would be the least acceptable performance in EL for us this season, don’t you agree?

So in short, Arteta took longer to get Arse competitive for several reasons and yeah, rebuilds don’t happen overnight, we had one started before Postecoglou arrived, but if you seriously think that Arteta is the threshold, you need to stop dickriding Postecoglou and tell us how a great manager he is.

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I think we’re comparable clubs who had both been drifting aimlessly for a few years prior to both coaches arriving.

Yeah, our squad was probably better, but as you say losing Kane was a gut punch to the morale and belief of the club.

Sure the FA Cup bought him time, but it’s not specifically about Arteta’s talent, although he’s clearly not devoid of it, just more if you are attempting to implement a tough to play style of football on a budget it will take and some ups and downs.

 

[Matt1882]

So we're basically in agreement then that the defence needs to improve. But I think language like "defensively dogshit" is an over-reaction and doesn't help promote constructive discussion. Unless all of the bottom 17 teams were defensively dogshit too, because they conceded similar or worse (ok not Everton, but do you really want to go there?).

So what tweaks (short of wholesale sackings) would you make to improve our defence?

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For me, all aspects of defence and attack should really flow through the team with a plan. It's not just how good at tackling or how many headers your defender can win. Not giving the ball away in certain situations, what to do if you do etc are all more important.
sadly for me, no one ever looked like they knew what to do in those scenarios last season.

We have good defenders, we just gave up way too many shots and conceded too many goals from set pieces. 25% or so of our goals let in were from that.

We also lost Micky for a quarter of the season, and he was still our highest rated player. If he has a better season in terms of injury we should naturally fare a bit better.

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Let's not kid ourselves that set plays were the only problem. They were huge, yes, but why did we give so many away? Because we were so often caught out and made fouls or cleared for corners. And then there's all the goals we conceded on the break because we play too high too often. It's 100% a tactical problem and it needs to be fixed asap. You can get away with overloading the attack in weak leagues when you have the best attackers in the league.
But in the PL we don't have the best attackers and the opposition is generally more astute and less likely to keel over and hide all match.

 

[SeeSpotRun]

The first 10 games just skewed those stats though.

I'd be interested in the record when all 4 played after the first 10 games.

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Whole season, 1303 minutes with those 4 on the pitch, 14 goals conceded, 0.97 goals per 90.
After first 10 games, 660 minutes with those 4 on the pitch, 10 goals conceded, 1.36 goals per 90.

 

[SpursRomania]

So you're saying that Ange should be able to get us to the top slightly quicker than Arteta did for Woolwich, and that it's disappointing that we didn't win a cup last season? I don't think you'll get too many disagreements on that.

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Yes he should, this season things should look A LOT more promising. Poch has done it early in his second season so I hold the same expectations to Postecoglou. Of course I don’t expect a title challenge like we did that freak season with Leicester winning it, but if we look the same at the end of this season like we did at the end of last season, then I’m sorry but he’s not that man you all think he is.

And I’m not disappointed that we didn’t win a cup, I mean obviously I’d want us to win as many as possible, but it’s not something that the previous managers have had better success.

 

[nasm_f]

In terms of number of goals conceded that's a bit harsh I think. We were no worse than the teams around us in 4th-7th.

But if you look at number of goals conceded per minute out of possession, then it does look dogshit; we were second worst in the league, conceding once every 21.5 minutes that the opponents had the ball. To put that in context, if we had had 50% possession that would have been 80 goals conceded over the season.

Luckily there's three components to stopping the opp's from scoring:

1. don't give them the ball
2. win the ball back quickly if you do give it to them
3. make it hard for them to score during the times between (1) and (2)

So obviously we were dogshit at (3). But we were best in the league at (2), and decent at (1) (ie 7th best). (I put some stuff in the Tactical Autopsy thread related to this a while back).

Those three components are obviously related; the higher you press, the better you do on (2), but if the press fails then you're more exposed. Also if your first priority during defensive transition is to win the ball quickly, rather than dropping back into defensive shape, then you're vulnerable if it doesn't work (and also increase the risk of conceding set pieces, but that's another can of worms...).

Playing such a fluid structure as we do when in possession, we can also be in a pretty compromising shape at the moment of turnover. This is one of the areas I expect to see improvement this year: keeping that fluidity but being more mindful of what our defensive transition will look if we do lose the ball. It my be my imagination but our attacking shape has stayed more balanced to my eye during preseason when the youngsters have been on the field, Bergvall in particular.

In Ange's team talk before the QPR game he put a big emphasis on thinking ahead, "the most important thing is the next action, next action always in your mind. When you have the ball what's the next action; what do we do next, what do I do next? If we lose the ball, next action? What do I do next, what do we do next, that's always our Focus."

As others have pointed out elsewhere, a couple of transfers in to improve our ball retention while still threatening the opponent's defence (ie not just tiki-taka) should help reduce the number of turnovers we concede in vulnerable positions. Gray and Bergvall look both press-resistant and able to penetrate the lines; the obvious caveat their age and experience. Solanke hopefully an upgrade too. An experienced DM and a dribbly RW still on a lot of TFC wish-lists too, with a couple of weeks left in the TW.

I'm eagerly anticipating watching how Spurs rise to the challenge of tweaking a system, that gave reasonable results in season 1, into something that can do significantly better in season 2. It won't be easy.

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Fantastic post mate, appreciate the depth you went into.

 

[Murphy]

For me, all aspects of defence and attack should really flow through the team with a plan. It's not just how good at tackling or how many headers your defender can win. Not giving the ball away in certain situations, what to do if you do etc are all more important.
sadly for me, no one ever looked like they knew what to do in those scenarios last season.

Let's not kid ourselves that set plays were the only problem. They were huge, yes, but why did we give so many away? Because we were so often caught out and made fouls or cleared for corners. And then there's all the goals we conceded on the break because we play too high too often. It's 100% a tactical problem and it needs to be fixed asap. You can get away with overloading the attack in weak leagues when you have the best attackers in the league.
But in the PL we don't have the best attackers and the opposition is generally more astute and less likely to keel over and hide all match.

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We also only played out first choice back four together 17 times last season. I've just sat there and worked it out. I'll give a more detailed breakdown when I'm home, but I suspect that also played into it a bit. Other than the Chelsea game, which was a complete anomaly the only game in the 17 that we got a trouncing when all four played was Newcastle away.

 

[JDefoe]

As others have pointed out elsewhere, a couple of transfers in to improve our ball retention while still threatening the opponent's defence (ie not just tiki-taka) should help reduce the number of turnovers we concede in vulnerable positions.

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I remember after a few pints on a couch somewhere last season, around February after the Wolves match, it finally clicked for me that our crap attacking play is the real trigger for our defensive woes.

 

[Jarritos]

Yes he should, this season things should look A LOT more promising. Poch has done it early in his second season so I hold the same expectations to Postecoglou. Of course I don’t expect a title challenge like we did that freak season with Leicester winning it, but if we look the same at the end of this season like we did at the end of last season, then I’m sorry but he’s not that man you all think he is.

And I’m not disappointed that we didn’t win a cup, I mean obviously I’d want us to win as many as possible, but it’s not something that the previous managers have had better success.

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Hmm, i do recall people going as far as wanting Poch to be sacked at the beginning of his second season. We had a pretty crappy start to that one.

 

[Matt1882]

Whole season, 1303 minutes with those 4 on the pitch, 14 goals conceded, 0.97 goals per 90.
After first 10 games, 660 minutes with those 4 on the pitch, 10 goals conceded, 1.36 goals per 90.

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It's not mega different, but it is worse.
Over a season that's the difference between 37 goals against and 52.
Both better than what we ended up with mind you