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Manager Antonio Conte

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I was responding to Château NoHo Château NoHo comment thought that was clear.

Of course; you were agreeing with a post that made allusions to OTHER posters.


Considering I'm one fo the few voices on this subject over the last few pages.... Which other posts (posters) did you have in mind then?

Who's "hiding behind the system"?
 
I keep seeing this narrative of us getting "outnumbered/overrun in midfield" in a 3-4-3 vs 4-4-2 match.

Even midfield numbers.

Overrun by 2 better CMs (Ward-Prowse + Romeu).

Southampton's 4-4-2 is very narrow. The two midfielders drop deep and the wide players drop in to the midfield, meaning there's next to zero space for the opposition. What is on paper a traditional 4-4-2 still leads to an incredibly packed midfield with no space to operate. Our front 3 do not drop in to midfield the way Southampton's 2 wide players do.

But yes, both JWP and Romeu fundamentally do their jobs better than ours do. But that's part of the issue, going against a side who pack that area out with two not good enough midfielders? Dodgy to say the least..
 
We lost because of our midfield, it seems it was no one there and the difference is clear when we play a guy who actually has some quality, like Skipp there. If you watch the game just focusing on Winks you can see that he's like 90% of the time in a very wrong place, not closing down when we are defending and hiding when we have the ball. Hojbjerg altough isn't that great either have far more awareness than him and shows up for everything most of the time. We can't afford to have Winks in this squad anymore, he's unexistent.

Altough Royal is shite and Davinson had a mare, if we had an ok midfield we wouldn't be as exposed as yesterday.
All fair points I think we’ve got a shocking midfield. No arguments there. And we did concede way to many chances. But we conceded 3 shit goals based on basic defensive mistakes
 
He'll get it sorted out but man what a disappointing performance. I do think it's more about the players than the system but we really need some extra help gaining a hold of the midfield. Unfortunately, we are forward-heavy and light in midfield. You don't have to dominate possession but it is tough to win when you get so thoroughly dominated and your defense is getting peppered. It was my main complaint under Mourinho. You CAN win games playing this way but I think it's difficult to win consistently and you'll let lesser teams build confidence. Tough to say to drop Lucas when he created both our goals. Maybe Betancur and Skipp will be better but this is definitely our biggest area for improvement right now.
 
Only a matter of time before the bottlers start turning on him. Same thing happened with Mourinho around this time last season. These managers haven’t got a history of embarrassing defeats like last night, it’s the bottling nearly men who play for us that do.
Good to know people now see that it's not the managers fault but the players. Even Pep would have a difficult time managing this team! And Levy wouldn't support a rebuilding so it's a no win situation for any Spurs manager!
 
I keep seeing this narrative of us getting "outnumbered/overrun in midfield" in a 3-4-3 vs 4-4-2 match.

Even midfield numbers.

Overrun by 2 better CMs (Ward-Prowse + Romeu).
Numbering the formation means little. Armstrong played predominantly toward the middle of the field, as did Elyounoussi(him not quite so much). They made the middle of the field very congested and Winks/Hojbjerg were completely outnumbered in the first half. Edit: I'm not arguing that either played well, or are blameless.
 
Numbering the formation means little. Armstrong played predominantly toward the middle of the field, as did Elyounoussi(him not quite so much). They made the middle of the field very congested and Winks/Hojbjerg were completely outnumbered in the first half. Edit: I'm not arguing that either played well, or are blameless.
I’ll have to rewatch the match with (less stress) to reconfirm my real-time/initial assessment.

In general, I’m of the opinion that Spurs should be able to match whatever formation the So’ton, Burnleys, Watfords of the league put out against us at our grounds and grind out a result, because man to man, we’re the better team.

This was a devastating result, mostly b/c we were completely played off the park, and the ease with which we capitulated after Broja rolled around for about 5 minutes after our second, and Conte had plenty of time to reconsider his Kulu>>>Lucas sub.
 
Was reading a review of the season on Statsbomb and at contained this analysis comparison of our metrics under Nuno (blue) and Conte (red):

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I can't remember how long I have been looking at our team and thinking "2 quality forwards, the keeper is pretty good and the rest is a bit meh." Until we make changes to the largely "meh" starting XI, it doesn't matter who the manager is, frankly.

We do know that we have a manager who makes title winning sides when given quality players to work with. Nobody is going to win titles with Winks, Hojbjerg, Emerson, Davies, Sanchez and Lucas regularly in the starting XI. You could carry maybe 2 players of that level in a title winning team, but not 6.
 
We seem to be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with our formation and tactics.

3 at the back requires

- Top class full backs, with speed and crossing ability.
- Centre backs comfortable on the ball with a long range of passing.

Reggie and Royal are woeful in the attacking 3rd and none of our centre backs are good passers of the ball.
 
We seem to be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with our formation and tactics.

3 at the back requires

- Top class full backs, with speed and crossing ability.
- Centre backs comfortable on the ball with a long range of passing.

Reggie and Royal are woeful in the attacking 3rd and none of our centre backs are good passers of the ball.
Agree, same with our midfield. It simply isn’t good enough to play 3-4-3 where both midfielders need to be good at basically everything (ie work rate, passing, technique, composure, defensive awareness).

Winks and PEH are pretty much average to poor at all of these things, which is why we should be playing a 3-5-2 imo.
 
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