- Mass rotation.
- Fresh back 4 combo.
- Midfield lacking strength/steel.
- Dropping all form players in an attempt to get others to play their way into form/fitness.
- Mass changes at half time.
???
-
The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
- Mass rotation.
- Fresh back 4 combo.
- Midfield lacking strength/steel.
- Dropping all form players in an attempt to get others to play their way into form/fitness.
- Mass changes at half time.
???
First, this is an atypical season.
It started late, there was little/no pre season and UEFA insisted that the EL and CL followed the same format as in previous years. This has caused the stupid fixture congestion which saw us playing every 2/3 days. However other than Lo Celso, Son and Dier, I'm not aware of any injury pile up. Indeed for Sunday and Thursday Mourinho could choose from a full squad bar Tanganaga (who sees to be nursing a long term injury that has nothing to do with playing time). The overplaying of Kane is down to the fact that he and Son are our only goal threat. Hopefully Vicinius will start getting game time and goals to give Kane a rest.
In a normal season congestion only occurs at Christmas and Easter. For the CL and EL teams this causes problems with fixture congestion especially if there are Cup replays. For most of the year, most players will play twice a week. For the ones not in the CL and EL this will be once a week. As I said earlier, most players will prefer to play twice a week as it keeps match fitness and reduces the training load.
In response to your side note: Davies has had a couple of good games as a CB for us, but is a LB not a CB. My view is that you play people in their preferred position (especially in defence). Davies had a good game for us at CB last year, forced on us by injury. He was OK yesterday cutting out a couple of dangerous crosses and a few good penetrating forward passes. If he hadn't given the goal away, I'd rate his performance as OK. However if it was a choice between him and Dier as CB, I'd go for Dier every time.
However I won't change my opinion that rotation for the sake of it (and mass rotation as we saw yesterday) is counterproductive.
We were playing Antwerp FFS. Aurier and Reguilon are our best two FB's, Sanchez and Davies are regular starters under Mou, Lo Celso and Winks might be less "unit" but are an upgrade on technical ability over Hojbjerg and the other useless cunt who trundled about Monday night doing fuck all. 30m Bergwijn, Bale, Alli and.....drum roll.....our all important "back up striker" CL experienced summer signing should not be a "risk" against a team like this surely.
I think the mass HT changes were stupid and unnecessary, especially the Vinicius and Lo Celso ones, but I never really looked at that side and thought, personnel wise, against this calibre of opponent, there was any more risk than playing the likes of Doherty, Davies (LB), Sissoko, Moura, Dier in the PL.
You're in denial... This season IS unprecedented (and we literally had the worst fixture pile up of any team in the country!) and injury figures acrross the UK are already justifying such concerns.
We didn't rotate "for the sake of it" either, so there's that.
You don't like facts... I can't be fucked.
Maybe you can give us some insight as to why 9 changes were required?
On another exchange you said in response to the question: "What was so risky about that line up last night?"
- Mass rotation.
- Fresh back 4 combo.
- Midfield lacking strength/steel.
- Dropping all form players in an attempt to get others to play their way into form/fitness.
- Mass changes at half time.
I'm truly mystified!
...And?
Does that mean we played it any 'safer' in terms of line-up/personel?
Sanchez and Davies are not a regular CB combo.....
Suffice to say we've never played with that back 4 before either.
Our left side was clearly targeted too.... Not sure what that says about Reguilon yet, but it didn't play out too well did it?
Can't be fuck with "wah Sissoko" ism, Blakey.... Point stands Winks/GLC/Dele IS lightweight. Conversely where did that technical superiority get us? .....Our CM was as over-run as the rest of back half throughout the first 45!
3 severely out of form players played together is anything but playing it safe.
I too went into the game thinking we had more than enough quality on the field (I've also said I thought the the HT subs were was too drastic*)..... Everything I listed still conspired towards a tragically poor first half though.
(*I suspect GLC was for rehab reasons though.)
Risky is a certain sense, but none-the-less easy enough to rationalise due to:
- Who'd been playing when and for how long in recent games.
- Who we needed to get into form.
- Dier/Tanganga injured.
.....This wasn't us just rolling out half the academy kids so there's not need to act like it.
As I said, baring in mind the calibre of opposition, there was no more risk with most of those selections than the risk of playing the likes of Doherty in a back 4, Davies as a LB, Sissoko in midfield and the likes of Moura, Lamela in attack.
None of those players are "in form" (all are varying degrees of not that good).
Winks/GLC/might be lighter in weight, but football isn't won in poundage. Where did the poundage superiority get us on Monday (in terms of the performance) or last week against West Ham (shit performance and shit result).
If we were playing 7 academy players and 4 clear reserves that hardly play first team football I'd accept there was some major risk. That's not what we did.
Ah, so you're agreeing that mass rotation and a revolving door back four might be risky. At last we might getting on the same page.
How about Toby, PEH, Kane, Sonny, Ndombele.... You're being selective.
Lucas & Lamela have both performed notably better than Bergwijn & Bale so far this season too.... Let's not pretend otherwise.
We lost on Thursday and won on Monday.
If you think Winks/Dele'sBrother/RehabingGio trumps PEH/Ndombele/Sissoko then good for you..... I hope you felt the loss on Thursday was aesthetically gratifying.
......I also wonder how your lads would have fared against Burnley's lot.
(Btw, I wasn't alluding to "poundage", more so players that can actually put a foot in and actually come away with the ball.)
So the goalposts are moving then... Now you want "major" risk?????
Fact is we were bold enough to change 9 players for the sake of form/fitness develpment, when we could have played it significantly safer... I appreciate that on the level of progressive thinking for the longer-term good.
No....
- You think we should "play 'em til they break, like the good ol' days".... I don't. (This is the silly attitude I originally rejected and I whole-heartedly still do!)
- You don't see the need for us to rotate the players in that we did... I do.
- You think you know more about player aptitudes than Jose, Poch, Giggs & Coleman... I don't think you do.
- You ignore facts.... I don't.
We are picking midfielders against Antwerp based on tackling ? Hojbjerg (3) Sissoko (1) made half the tackles on Monday than Lo Celso (5) and Winks (3) did on Thursday.
Of course I prefer Kane to Vinicius, Ndombele to Alli, Son to Bergwijn, but again, we were playing a Belgian side not a PL one, and there were players out there who I prefer to those that played Monday, and even when we brought on Kane, Son, PEH, Lamela, Moura we were equally inept in most ways.
I'm not saying I love all those that started Thursday more than all those that started Monday, I'm saying that side was not "high risk" in the context of our squad and the opposition. No more high risk than starting some players who have been equally fucking gash in the last couple of PL games.
It sounded more like Mourinho getting his excuses in early.
No, I'm pointing out the 'risk' of a balanced MF vs game-time for the needy; Thursday night being an example of the latter.
...As for your tackle-count; as you keenly point out; Antwerp weren't EPL quality.
......I have MORE than a sneaky suspicion that PEH/Ndombele/Sisssoko starting would have fared better on Thursday.
Like I said in my last post; you're now upping the ante from "risky" to "High/Major risk"...... Naughty Blakey.
What did? (Sounds awfully like you've just shoehorned in a 'doorway' into a different argument here.)
Go to the match-thread on the run up.... Most people here wanted to see that or a similar line-up.
If Jose was playing it safe, he'd have played most of the the first XI. He didn't.
He backed a B team to get a result. It didn't.
He said the buck stops with him. Fair play to the bloke.
I have MORE than a sneaky suspicion that PEH played 45 minutes and we didn't fair better. I have MORE than a sneaky suspicion that Ndombele would have made a positive difference. I have MORE than a sneaky suspicion that Sissoko would have added absolutely fuck all in terms of fairing better because he doesn't do anything better than GLC or Winks offensively or defensively.
Bar Vinicius and Bale that team contained all players who have constantly been playing first team football for us over the last few months.
There was very little risk in that team if it was well coached and tactically sound.
Fair do's for Mourinho for saying it's on him post match, it was. But I have MORE than a sneaky suspicion he was saying it's on him for picking players, not the real reason it's on him and that was we aren't very well coached or tactically great.
Too many "MORE than sneaky suspicions" in there for my liking Holmes, what do you think
Been one day and only now I can bring myself to visit the forum as it was such a frustrating to watch. It seems that whenever we have either Winks, Dele or Sanchez play then we will either lose or draw. What is it with these three players? I know there were other terrible players in that match as well but please do not make the excuse of being rotating or not rotating enough. These 'fringe" players need to grab the match by the neck and kill it. Can someone please tell me what was in Dele's mind when at 11:55 he was presented with a wonderful chested down ball by Vini and on his left he has Bale all by himself but decided to make the pass to Vini knowing full well he has 2 defenders on him? I still can't fucking understand why? Does he not trust Bale finishing or passing difficult passes will give you more brownie points with Mourinho? We all would never know if Bale can score from that but it would be interesting turn of event if he did then we would be 1 up by then.
Again, I am not picking Dele out but he and Berj will need to improve greatly since Mourinho I think is losing patience with them.
Again, I am not picking Dele out but he and Berj will need to improve greatly since Mourinho I think is losing patience with them.
This was the first game in a long time I didn't peek at the score and waited to watch at home. I watched the whole thing with the gf- gee thanks, spursy.
Main problem I can see is that Winks, GLC and Dele is a much worse midfield than PEH, Sissoko and Ndombele. Hint hint it's not GLC's fault.
Other problem was an unfamiliar CB pairing that resulted in an awful OG.
Other other problem was starting three rusty or unfamiliar attackers, and expecting them to click immediately and make goals with a creativity-deficient and out of form midfield.
I've been following Tottenham on this forum for a couple of years (At one time you had 3 Belgian players on the pitch) . What a coincidence my home team (R. Antwerp) finds itself in the same group as Tottenham for the Europa League . Thursday Antwerp won . Next time, chances are we"ll get trashed . But ... in today's local newspaper ... perhaps something of interest : Apparently one fan ( and his wife and 2 kids) were allowed to witness the game . Turns out he's got terminal cancer and this was the last time he could watch his team . Puts things in perspective doesn't it ?
Last edited:
What a pathetic argument.
Take Messi out of Barca and they wouldn’t be the team they are, take Aguero out of City and they wouldn’t have won the league. It’s irrelevant.
Even under peak Poch when we played a full blown B-team (see individual form, fitness and blatant 2nd stringers) we often played like strangers and struggled against lower league oppo in the domestic cups.... Often being forced to numerous thoroughly unwelcome replays, last gasp results and exits to the likes of a shit Palace, losing from 2-0 up vs West Ham or worse (latterly) failing to lay a glove on Colchester (!!!)... Does that mean we were simply badly coached and tactically weak then too(***)?
...These scenario's aren't exclusive to us either! (Strip away the proverbial 'romance of the cups' and you'll find much of the so-called giant killing comes with a personnel caveat.)
[***The above is a rhetorical question really at this point, but I'd rather I wasn't dragged around the houses(*) just to unearth the already well-worn notion that you simply don't like Jose as manager *especially when it entails the thoroughly skewed-by-personal-bias stuff about our midfield.) ]