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Tactics TFC's Tactical Autopsy Thread

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just for fun - why not compare the pair?

they're not the world's biggest. get your facts right

Who's bigger? Real Madrid? That's about it.

In terms of club stature, we don't even compare to Man Utd. Those are your facts.

The fact Ange has had to come in, rip apart the whole squad, change a system on top of losing it's best ever player and STILL finished above United means no, they shouldn't really be compared.

We just went in their own back yard and took a piss on ten Hag's grave and you're in a tactical thread comparing our coach with Man Utds?

Get out of here.
 
Who's bigger? Real Madrid? That's about it.

In terms of club stature, we don't even compare to Man Utd. Those are your facts.

The fact Ange has had to come in, rip apart the whole squad, change a system on top of losing it's best ever player and STILL finished above United means no, they shouldn't really be compared.

We just went in their own back yard and took a piss on ten Hag's grave and you're in a tactical thread comparing our coach with Man Utds?

Get out of here.
..and then we proceed to lose to a team 1/6 of our size and budget - their fan base worldwide is about 1/10 1/20 our size
 
How did the way we set up cause Udogie and Cuti to make several basic and catastrophic defensive errors?

Or are you suggesting we should have played a double defensive pivot after a 0-2 first half in anticipation of (and thus inviting) pressure - because we've seen how that worked out for our defenders the last 4 years.

Genuinely confused. It wasn't the high line or inverted fullbacks that caused those goals was it?
It's not the mystery you seem to think, only you are obsessed with the micro of tactics like many modern football fans. Its why you lapse so readily in to jargon like double pivot... News flash players make errors because they are human. Our 'tactics' how the side is being coached to approach the game, how we set the side up, the philosophy of the way we play the game heedless of game management of near any kind IS MAKING THESE kinds of errors catastrophic. Think macro.

It's not even confusing mate, the way Ange is asking his team to play tactically encourages the hugely open "entertaining" game we saw against Brighton. It's baked in and Ange PUBLICALY seems fine with this ( I admire him I also think it's foolhardy) a double pivot wouldn't change this.

We can argue semantics if you like philosophy verses tactics or ethos. But the substantive issue is how we want to play makes the inevitable Romero Udogie error MORE costly. Look at it this way oponents like Brighton didn't get dispirited against us because if I'm their coach I tell them it's fine they WILL give up chances hang in there. I saw it at United they actually had chances to unpick us like Brighton and they are terrible.

I get the formation board and tatico chat is fun, and makes us feel clever, I can mix in a little halfspace talk with the best of them but trust me none of that fixes us. Your focusing on the wrong end of the telescope.
 
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ARE YOU ENTERTAINED...well are you??

Since winning 26 from his first 30 points in the Premier League, Ange has won 50 from 105 pts since.
By comparison, Ten Hag has won 53 points from 105 - AND Ten-Hag is about to lose his job whilst Ange is safe as Houses.
:ange-pray:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDtc5_EDSVI

not sure that he is safe as houses. i think he was minutes away from being sacked against coventry, but well never know for sure. his odds went from 20/1 to 4/1 despite winning that game, so if he did lose he would probably of been evens or odds on.

the squads had 350m worth of new players put into it in the last 3 windows, they will be expecting CL football. drop points at west ham and hes under it again.
 
Remarkably, since Ange Postecoglou became manager at the beginning of last summer, no Premier League team has a higher net spend than Tottenham is Chelsea. As you can see below, they are -€273.45m in the red, despite selling star striker Harry Kane to Bayern Munich last July for €95m. They also rank second in total transfer expenditure in that same period, with only Chelsea spending more (€653.1m) than Spurs' total of €420.95m


This conveniently ignores the money that ETH has actually spent though, ie prior to Postacoglu, as well as the money spent just prior on players still there.

Since ETH arrived spurs net is 324m, ManU 402m, Chelsea 665.8.

And Nearly all of our and Utd’s net comes from spend, Chelsea have actually brought in a few quid too, so have spent way more.
 

View: https://x.com/NathanAClark/status/1843661791672549382?t=ozbFWmFpc1BOp0mqqRYzhw&s=19

3rd game in a week, Brighton game tells me from data (and by eyes) that we fatigued big time.

I'm not sure I see a distinct pattern between those 3. Although I admit I don't really know what I'm looking at. I do think though that the errors made by Udogie against Brighton would be at least partially fatigue based. You can't run up and down a football field for 45 minutes or more and expect to be in good physical shape when called upon to do your defensive duties.
 
I'm not sure I see a distinct pattern between those 3. Although I admit I don't really know what I'm looking at. I do think though that the errors made by Udogie against Brighton would be at least partially fatigue based. You can't run up and down a football field for 45 minutes or more and expect to be in good physical shape when called upon to do your defensive duties.

The pattern is that we seem to drop off at a similar time every single game. Very very intense first half for the most part but then we sort of slow down.

We probably play the most intense football in world football. We HAVE to use our squad more.

I also wonder if the intensity drops because of us leading. 2-1 up against Brentford. 2-0 up against Man Utd. 1-0 against Brighton and I wonder if it would be different if we weren't winning at the time.
 
It makes perfect sense. It's also why an attempt at more game management and pre planned subs seems like it would be more beneficial than any one formation change.
But will Ange eat his words about substitutions not interesting him? Will he be big enough to admit by actions that he was speaking emotionally in the moment despair. I hope so, because if he doubles down I think it's a definite show of disrespect to all stakeholders. In particular the bench warmers and the fans.
 
It's kind of irrelevant because we know ange would do exactly the same thing vs West ham if it went the same way as Brighton but anyway. After playing like that the first half we could comfortably come out 2nd half not commit the full backs and still play attacking football whilst still attacking when we have the ball. Or have 2 midfielders to hang around in the middle for 10 minutes and try to maintain what we have. I'm not asking for conte ball or Jose ball but just a bit of balance and game management would probably go some way to halting the amount of defeats we are suffering under this way of playing.
 
The narrative was our inability to convert good situations (xthreat) into good chances, and yesterday we saw that ie Werner/Johnson and Kulusevski/Solanke.

We did also saw Johnson blaze over when 1v1. and last week Werner wasted 2 1v1’s
This would be valid if our xThreat was consistently much greater than goals scored this season. How many times has that been the case?

From memory, against Brighton, xThreat was roughly 1.3 and goals scored was 2. So our goals exceeded our "good situations".

You mention the Werner and Kulusevski crosses, that's fine, but it feels like cherrypicking - every team is going to have situations they didn't convert over the course of a game. Even including those two missed opportunities we still significantly outperformed our xThreat and xG.

Ultimately we didn't lose the game yesterday because we "didn't score more than 2" at Brighton, and it's unrealistic to expect us to ever consistently score more. We lost is because we conceded three.
 
This would be valid if our xThreat was consistently much greater than goals scored this season. How many times has that been the case?

From memory, against Brighton, xThreat was roughly 1.3 and goals scored was 2. So our goals exceeded our "good situations".

Stop you there. We scored 2 goals from less than 1 XG. That's the point. Not always converting Threat to XG

It improved against Brentford and ManU - Manu particularly accumulated about a third of our seasons total XG - but in 5 other games the reverse was often true. Lots of possession, lots of touches in opponents area, but not converted to big XG's.
 
Stop you there. We scored 2 goals from less than 1 XG. That's the point. Not always converting Threat to XG

It improved against Brentford and ManU - Manu particularly accumulated about a third of our seasons total XG - but in 5 other games the reverse was often true. Lots of possession, lots of touches in opponents area, but not converted to big XG's.
Simply wrong.

(1)
Spurs 3 : 1 Brentford

xThreat: 1.63 - 0.87
xG: 3.49 - 0.74

So, xG much higher than xThreat in that one.

(2)
Spurs 3 : 0 Qarabag FK

xG: 1.5 - 2.01
xThreat: 0.92 - 1.69

xG much higher than xThreat in that one.

(3)
Newcastle 2 : 1 Spurs

xG: 1.55 - 1.6
xThreat: 1.37 - 1.26

Again, xG higher than xThreat.

(4)
Leicester 1 : 1 Spurs

xG: 0.95 - 1.43
xThreat: 1.01 - 2.87

On that one xT higher than xG.

(5)
Spurs 4 : 0 Everton

xG: 2.18 - 0.74
xThreat: 1.76 - 1.8

Back to xG being higher than xThreat.

(6)
Spurs 0 : 1 Woolwich

xG: 0.65 - 1.06
xThreat: 1.52 - 1.11

xThreat higher on that one.

(7)
Man Utd 0 : 3 Spurs

xG: 0.62 - 4.39
xThreat: 1.1 - 1.97

xG much higher than xThreat.

(8)
Brighton 3 : 2 Spurs

xG: 2.46 - 1.01
xThreat: 1.17 - 1.28

xThreat marginally higher than xG.

----

So from the 8 games I could find data on, 5 the xG was higher than the xThreat, and three the xThreat was higher than the xG. Pretty mixed bag. Certainly doesn't support the narrative though that we're not creating xG from good xT.
 

I liked this comment:

"Like with all his previous teams, he is prepared to lose a battle to win a war. That can only happen if the lessons from the battle are heeded. It’s not about today. Which is what makes his tenure in the EPL so thrilling, because at that level, it’s almost always only about today"

I don't give a fuck what he says to the press. I'm pretty sure he hates them as much as I do. He throws them bones, gives them a very light meal and fucks off. What he says to the media and what he says to the team are two very different things.

No, I don't have proof, but from what I've seen and heard (and reading between the lines), it seems to be the case.
 

I have no issue with going until the end, I'd love us to. I hate it when teams sit back on a lead. But if you have to put 5 sets of fresh legs and lungs on to achieve that then you fucking do it. Couldn't give a shit if it isn't pure or whatever his thinking is. Training is for fitness/stamina not matches. Matches are for hardness/sharpness. For me his words in the press conference were utterly ridiculous, and making the subs shouldn't contradict what I've heard (and now read) of his philosophy.
 
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