He has signed 5 players since joining, he also has players who barely played under Poch like Lo Celso and Sessegnon. The debut boys yesterday looked as confused, unfit and as lacklustre as everyone else. For the first time even Kane looked half arsed. We'd gone under Poch but a new manager is meant to improve and influence, Redknapp did after Ramos, Poch did after AVB/Sherwood. I cant see any player that has improved in the 10 months under him. Some players need to be moved on no question but this is his team, his tactics, his iffy selections. I would add that the board need to shoulder a massive slice of the blame for this current mess.
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Wouldn't it be right to say that Mourinho's hope that season was to win the Europa League to get CL football?
ie. There's a trophy going, but it's second rate and I want to play in the big boy's competition.
3 JM things I don't like:
- Wonky/Stay-press RB system... Or any wonky system for that matter..... Makes you too predictable for the other team.
- His willingness to play Lucas & Bergwijn in a CAM role. Take away their ability to run and attack space and they're a fraction of the player.
- The skillset blend of CMs.... Be that 2 or 3 of them... It was a major flaw of the last 18months of Poch's reign and Jose thinking PEH (regardless of how good he is) is the solution suggests he is insistent on continuing that particular legacy.
That we will favour counter attacking over possession is not of particular concern.
Say what you want about some of the less talented members of our squad; there's still a lot of ability not being maximised.
- Wonky/Stay-press RB system... Or any wonky system for that matter..... Makes you too predictable for the other team.
- His willingness to play Lucas & Bergwijn in a CAM role. Take away their ability to run and attack space and they're a fraction of the player.
- The skillset blend of CMs.... Be that 2 or 3 of them... It was a major flaw of the last 18months of Poch's reign and Jose thinking PEH (regardless of how good he is) is the solution suggests he is insistent on continuing that particular legacy.
That we will favour counter attacking over possession is not of particular concern.
Say what you want about some of the less talented members of our squad; there's still a lot of ability not being maximised.
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Of course we all do, but the EL trophy is not beneath us... Far from it.
Most Utd fans despise him to this day. Very few of them would have him back and they're happier with an incompetent novice like OGS than they ever were under Jose.
We're in need of a trophy, that's true, but to say that the biggest club side in the World winning a second rate trophy, that none of the Continent's big teams were in or wanted to be in, is success, that's just wrong. The EL cup is starting to gain a bit more lustre and credibility after being a bit of a M'eh trophy for a few years.
But to win these two trophies, Mourino took the FA Cup winners, added £420million of talent and managed 2nd in the league. Sounds like something Paddy Power would rip the piss out of...
That’s the hidden bits .... the apotheosis of mourinhos tactical acumen
I thought you were alluding to us at that point....
What happens with us in the here and now is way more important to me considering the flipside is that he'd won the league with every other club he's managed bar Utd. Whilst I don't think an EPL title here is realistic, the idea that he could bounce back here and win us some silverware was not inconceivable at the point of hiring him.
Hunt for a striker shouldn't mask the fact that Spurs need a plan of attack
Here is the meat of the article. This has been discussed by several people on this forum but I think it particularly relevant after yesterday.
Jose Mourinho has always been characterised as a stickler for detail and someone who plays in a regimented way, but that is not true of the way he coaches attacking players. Yes, he does a lot of defensive shape work but generally at his previous clubs he has allowed his attacking players to operate in a more off-the-cuff way. At Real Madrid, when Mourinho took credit for his team’s free-scoring start to the 2011-12 season by pointing to his work coaching “attacking movement and occupying space” on their pre-season tour of China, his players couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Feeling that their attacking movements had been self-developed, the players — according to Diego Torres’ book The Special One — mocked their manager and started talking about Mourinho’s “Peking Manual”, an imagined dossier of attacking plans.
Mourinho’s perceived approach of allowing players to take their initiative, like at Real, is in stark contrast to most of his rivals. Take the surgical precision that Pep Guardiola’s teams attack with and that Mikel Arteta is trying to imitate at Woolwich. Teams coached by the likes of Jurgen Klopp and Marcelo Bielsa can give the impression of playing off the cuff, but Saturday’s thrilling 4-3 at Anfield was, in reality, the product of hours of painstaking work on attacking patterns. There’s a reason an attack featuring Patrick Bamford currently looks more coherent than one with Dele and Son.
Giving attackers more freedom to play off the cuff can only really be successful in modern football if a manager is working with players of the calibre of Cristiano Ronaldo and Eden Hazard, as Mourinho was previously. For the remaining 99.9 per cent of forwards, even some world-class ones, they rely on benefiting from a detailed, rigorously planned structure. Think Raheem Sterling, and his transformation at City once Guardiola took over.
Perhaps Spurs are attempting to come up with something similar, but the evidence on Sunday suggests too many of the team are not on the same wavelength. It doesn’t help when the team’s formation and personnel are constantly shifting. Against Everton, Spurs switched to a 4-4-2 at half-time when Alli was replaced by Moussa Sissoko, then reverted to a 4-2-3-1 when Harry Winks was replaced by Bergwijn 15 minutes later. By the time Sissoko dropped to right-back when Tanguy Ndombele replaced Matt Doherty for the final stages, it was all a bit of a mess.
“I don’t understand what formation he’s ended up with here,” Jamie Redknapp said on Sky Sports of Mourinho’s tinkering midway through the second half. “He’s just thrown players on the pitch to make something happen. There has to be a bit more of a structure.”
It’s worth remembering that we’re only one game into the new season, so any conclusions following Sunday’s defeat should not be drawn from that match alone. That’s why it’s useful to look at those longer-term numbers for Spurs’ attackers, which show that this is a problem that’s been rumbling on for months.
Here is the meat of the article. This has been discussed by several people on this forum but I think it particularly relevant after yesterday.
Jose Mourinho has always been characterised as a stickler for detail and someone who plays in a regimented way, but that is not true of the way he coaches attacking players. Yes, he does a lot of defensive shape work but generally at his previous clubs he has allowed his attacking players to operate in a more off-the-cuff way. At Real Madrid, when Mourinho took credit for his team’s free-scoring start to the 2011-12 season by pointing to his work coaching “attacking movement and occupying space” on their pre-season tour of China, his players couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Feeling that their attacking movements had been self-developed, the players — according to Diego Torres’ book The Special One — mocked their manager and started talking about Mourinho’s “Peking Manual”, an imagined dossier of attacking plans.
Mourinho’s perceived approach of allowing players to take their initiative, like at Real, is in stark contrast to most of his rivals. Take the surgical precision that Pep Guardiola’s teams attack with and that Mikel Arteta is trying to imitate at Woolwich. Teams coached by the likes of Jurgen Klopp and Marcelo Bielsa can give the impression of playing off the cuff, but Saturday’s thrilling 4-3 at Anfield was, in reality, the product of hours of painstaking work on attacking patterns. There’s a reason an attack featuring Patrick Bamford currently looks more coherent than one with Dele and Son.
Giving attackers more freedom to play off the cuff can only really be successful in modern football if a manager is working with players of the calibre of Cristiano Ronaldo and Eden Hazard, as Mourinho was previously. For the remaining 99.9 per cent of forwards, even some world-class ones, they rely on benefiting from a detailed, rigorously planned structure. Think Raheem Sterling, and his transformation at City once Guardiola took over.
Perhaps Spurs are attempting to come up with something similar, but the evidence on Sunday suggests too many of the team are not on the same wavelength. It doesn’t help when the team’s formation and personnel are constantly shifting. Against Everton, Spurs switched to a 4-4-2 at half-time when Alli was replaced by Moussa Sissoko, then reverted to a 4-2-3-1 when Harry Winks was replaced by Bergwijn 15 minutes later. By the time Sissoko dropped to right-back when Tanguy Ndombele replaced Matt Doherty for the final stages, it was all a bit of a mess.
“I don’t understand what formation he’s ended up with here,” Jamie Redknapp said on Sky Sports of Mourinho’s tinkering midway through the second half. “He’s just thrown players on the pitch to make something happen. There has to be a bit more of a structure.”
It’s worth remembering that we’re only one game into the new season, so any conclusions following Sunday’s defeat should not be drawn from that match alone. That’s why it’s useful to look at those longer-term numbers for Spurs’ attackers, which show that this is a problem that’s been rumbling on for months.
Kane is the only forward with a brain in our squad.
Son is too greedy. He only passed to Dele because his own chance dimished the longer he held onto it yesterday. It wasn't because he thought Dele was better placed, it was greed.
Lucas has NFI what to do with the ball when he's got it. His only choice at that point is to draw a foul.
He might be better if he got it in the penalty box, but I rarely recall seeing him there since Ajax
Dele has struggled lets face it. He's brilliant in the spur of the moment, but I'm not sure he is at his best when he has time on the ball.
GLC may be quality but plays deeper.
That leaves BenchwarmingBergwijn. Why he's not starting games over Lucus defies belief to me.
Seen Jose with a J say today that he was the only one that looked fit. That worries me as it just means he's gonna get more starts and more chances to run into walls.
This is interesting. We don't really get a glimpse into practice in the documentary, but I would love to hear more ex-players talk about this.
Didn't Hazard also say there is more direction under Conte than Jose who just said to run around?
Get him out of the club ASAP. He's going to start turning up his public criticism of players, mark my words.
TBF, half of them fucking need it.
Our problems are much worse than just Jose. A new manager will still have the same bang average players.
Yeah, I disagree. You keep things private.
I brought this up a lot last year when Jose came in and was playing long ball. Potter at Brighton have them playing progressive football. Their squad is paper thin. Biesla? Same story. These squads are not Tottenham. These are managers that know how to instruct an offensive game plan.
I agree that the problems start in the boardroom and their thrifty cautious approach, a terrible football set up and several poor players. Having said that its patently obvious Mourinho is not part of the solution, the style of football and the players he likes are rooted so far in the past we might as well appoint Howard Wilkinson. Do we want to give him a load more cloggers that the next guy will have to bin? I genuinally have no idea where we go from here but spending serious money on 3 or 4 really good players 25 and under would probably be a start. That way if Mourinho carries on like this at least the next bloke might have something to work with.
Silly article from The Athletic. Whenever someone wants to criticize Jose, they bring in Diego Torres´ book.
As I said, Jose got it wrong yesterday. Some of the players conditions were not the best and I think he should have known that before the game. Our best CB partnership is Toby-Sanchez, yet he insisted with Eric Dier. And of course, I think he got it wrong at half-time - not by replacing Dele Alli, but by bringing in Sissoko instead of a more dangerous player for RW, such as Bergwijn.
By the way, I´m amazed. There are so many Spurs fans that choose not to see how ineffective Dele Alli can be. "Oh, but he almost scored", "We were worst in the second half". I don´t get it, honestly. Dele Alli interrupted our best way to score, which - like it or not - at this moment consists in counter attacking football. He likes to play in between Sonny and Kane, as a second striker on the left, which was also a problem considering the way we were playing after the break. Even more important, he is clearly not aware of what the team wants from him - and he plays in a vital position in terms of coordinating attacks. Yesterday´s team was a entirely different beast than when Lo Celso plays in front of the double pivot.
I saw Alasdair Gold´s article today and, even though I like him very much, it was full of BS as well. At one point he suggested that Ndombele was "too conservative", too restricted in his positioning, as to say Jose was taking out his creativity - again, something silly to say; just an old narrative.
It doesn´t matter what you think of Ndombele, he should not be criticized in relation to yesterday´s game because he came in late, we were not a team at the time, etc. But if he didn´t change the game by his own, it was not because he was being conservative in his positioning or passing - what does that mean anyway? Should he be playing out of position so we could praise Jose for giving him freedom? Nonsense. He tried to create. He made mistakes with his passing. He was bad, just like everyone else. The game was lost as soon as Everton scored - which is not acceptable.
My point is that sometimes, even though Jose does make mistakes - like yesterday -, people just jump into old narratives about him so they can be sure that he is not good for Tottenham - probably because they don´t understand what´s going on with the team in the first place.
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It’s been said consistently for years, Jose sets the team up not to concede and relies upon the qualities of individual players to get goals.
Not a leading question, but if anyone can demonstrate an attacking identity of any Jose side from the start of his reign I’d be interested to hear. I guess you could point to the Lampard role arriving late in the box potentially. But for sure, Chelsea the 2nd time, Utd and now Spurs have no defined attacking system.