The Style v Substance discussion

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Cravenspurs said:
Question. Why chose brighton? The side that can't find the back of the net because they have Welbeck and Maupay as their strikers.

Why not pick Southhampton, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City as the litmus test? Fuck, even Man U who are back ahead of us, play a more enjoyable brand of football.

We are sitting 5th, and could be 8th if the people behind us get their 3pts.

Shit even Aston Villa play a more attractive game than us and they have 2 games in hand. They could be 3pts ahead of us by the end of it all.

We have the squad to compete with anyone. We have seen that even with playing the most conservative style.

Why can't we turn it on a bit and be more than one dimensional?
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Ok. Man U. You want to swear Man U play attacking football? Because they won a few games by many goals? Haven’t we done the same THIS same season? We beat the same Man U you are sucking off 6-1.
Soton? We beat that lot 5-2. This same season. So what are you on about?
 
3 points by any means

The problem with playing dull, "percentage containment football" as a style, is that its only really acceptable if we're getting the 3 points at the end of it.

People will put up with shite football (in terms of entertainment) if we win the games and pick up the 3 points.

Unfortunately we've been playing dull football the last 3 games and have come away with a solitary point - which is crap whichever way you look at it.

An attack of Kane, Son, Los Celso, Bale and Ndombele should be registering shots on target but I think we had 3 on target the whole of yesterday and only 1 on target when the dream Son, Kane, LOS Celso and Ndombele lineup was together in the first half.

Still seething about this last weeks worth of utter garbage.
 
halothagod said:
Ok. Man U. You want to swear Man U play attacking football? Because they won a few games by many goals? Haven’t we done the same THIS same season? We beat the same Man U you are sucking off 6-1.
Soton? We beat that lot 5-2. This same season. So what are you on about?
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What are you on about? Your post says we can't have it both ways.

You are saying this: "don't you want points? If so, shut up and stop complaining about the way we play".

I just responded saying "these teams play differently and are doing as well or better than us".

So yes, we can play better ball and still be competitive.

Man U for all of their shithousery and pathetic displays and disfunction are sitting ahead of us at the moment. This has nothing to do with their big win at the weekend. This goes by what I have seen all year. They don't sit in a shell all game.

Either way, my point remains. Our squad is more than capable of playing a more entertaining game and a game that gets us results.
 
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Gmspurs said:
3 points by any means

The problem with playing dull, "percentage containment football" as a style, is that its only really acceptable if we're getting the 3 points at the end of it.

People will put up with shite football (in terms of entertainment) if we win the games and pick up the 3 points.

Unfortunately we've been playing dull football the last 3 games and have come away with a solitary point - which is crap whichever way you look at it.

An attack of Kane, Son, Los Celso, Bale and Ndombele should be registering shots on target but I think we had 3 on target the whole of yesterday and only 1 on target when the dream Son, Kane, LOS Celso and Ndombele lineup was together in the first half.

Still seething about this last weeks worth of utter garbage.
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To be honest, we have done so in the last 3 games because it was what we could do. I fear the players we have in the back are not 100% the quality we need. If you want to play expansive footy then you need defenders who don’t kick it out to row Z and can pick a pass 8 out of 10. Eric Dier loses the ball every single game, literally. Toby is better but he has struggled in the last 3 games. Then you have Aurier - enough said. Our defenders have been making schoolboy mistakes since last season and we seemed to improve for a while, until now.

We have defenders who need to be baby sat to do the basics of defending, never mind spraying passes about and picking out midfielders, attackers. Our midfielders are overwhelmed trying to help out the back four that they don’t do enough attacking. Our attackers are requested to drop to cover the gaps the midfielders have left and that leaves us looking like we have looked the last 3 games.

The issue we have is in our defense. Improve that and our midfield improves as all our midfielders won’t be required to be quasi defenders all game.
 
Footballs dull enough at at the moment with zero atmosphere never mind the ugly tactics. The problem with playing the way we do (in most cases - Utd we were so on it) is that if we don’t get the result it’s been an awful watch. We’ve been great getting our noses in front, defending well and getting a killer on the break. If we don’t get in front we’re probably fucked.
 
I preferred the high pressing game we played at Wembley when the young team had the legs.
Give JM a season to see if his tactics win us something. I don’t remember the Chelsea counter attack team with Drogba as the finisher giving away possession so easily like we have done recently, some fine tuning to do no doubt.
 
Linesman said:
I preferred the high pressing game we played at Wembley when the young team had the legs.
Give JM a season to see if his tactics win us something. I don’t remember the Chelsea counter attack team with Drogba as the finisher giving away possession so easily like we have done recently, some fine tuning to do no doubt.
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Agreed. We are in a rebuild and I think the fact we are up there is a credit to the management team. Wherever we end up, we are better than we were and we will be even better and more experienced next season. Winning a trophy would do wonders to that end.
 
Cravenspurs said:
What are you on about? Your post says we can't have it both ways.

You are saying this: "don't you want points? If so, shut up and stop complaining about the way we play".

I just responded saying "these teams play differently and are doing as well or better than us".

So yes, we can play better ball and still be competitive.

Man U for all of their shithousery and pathetic displays and distinction are sitting ahead of us at the moment. This has nothing to do with their big win at the weekend. This goes by what I have seen all year. They don't sit in a shell all game.

Either way, my point remains. Our squad is more than capable of playing a more entertaining game and a game that gets us results.
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But we don’t sit in a shell all game either! I am not saying you should shut up cos frankly you can scream yourself silly, won’t do me no harm whatsoever.

All I am calling for is cool heads and asking people to be a bit objective. When people are saying we never play good footy or we always park the bus I find it embarrassing and quite frankly an insult to the work the lads have put in having us top of the league for weeks.

People can have a moan but don’t rewrite history like the journos and oppo fans do.
 
halothagod said:
Alright then.

v Soton
v Newcastle
v Maccabi Haifa
v Utd
v W Ham
v Lask
v City
v Ludogrets

Are those many games or are they not?
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We should really exclude the EL games as the opposition is sub-par at this stage. Even Rangers qualified!

On the rest....

I agree we were excellent against Utd, Newcastle and City.

We certainly weren’t against West Ham, watch the game again

We’ve also been poor against Everton, Burnley, WBA, Brighton, Palace and Leicester. Our league form has been at best patchy.

What is quite frustrating is that you are illustrating in your post above that it is possible to play well and with a balance between defence and attack. The reason many of us are frustrated is that those occasions have been too infrequent thus far this season.
 
halothagod said:
But we don’t sit in a shell all game either! I am not saying you should shut up cos frankly you can scream yourself silly, won’t do me no harm whatsoever.

All I am calling for is cool heads and asking people to be a bit objective. When people are saying we never play good footy or we always park the bus I find it embarrassing and quite frankly an insult to the work the lads have put in having us top of the league for weeks.

People can have a moan but don’t rewrite history like the journos and oppo fans do
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I don't know where you have been, but there has been a healthy collective of people that have voiced their issues with the way we play the minute Jose came in.

Check my history. I have been backing Jose and praising him for changing the mentality and getting the squad to completely shift their way of play. He has done a great job of installing his way and instilling some belief in the squad. Never going to argue that and have been more than vocal about how I was wrong in that manner.

But that doesn't mean I like it or want it. I think he has taken us back a couple of notches in terms of being a scary team to play. We have seen it the past couple of games. Mark out Kane and you mark out the team.

We have sat in a shell against the big boys. We didn't even attempt to get the ball up the pitch by playing football on the ground. Against the lesser teams? We don't sit with a back 6 like we did against Chelsea, but we do sit in a low block and still allow lesser teams to control large majorities of the game.

For me this shouldn't happen.

Under Poch we were one of the most fun teams to watch for years. But we couldn't seem to show up for the big games. Then came a Liverpool match where we sat in a mid block and didn't press Pool much. It was a complete diversion of the way we played, but we won 4-1 I believe. It was mostly quick counters if I remember correctly. The squad hasn't changed much from that point and so my point is, you can have your cake and eat it to. You can play aggressive football and conservative football with the same squad.
 
halothagod said:
Alright then.

v Soton
v Newcastle
v Maccabi Haifa
v Utd
v W Ham
v Lask
v City
v Ludogrets

Are those many games or are they not?
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You're scraping the bottom of the barrel here

First remove all europa games as oppositions were borderline league 2 level

Soton - we were shit, individual brilliance won is that game
Newcastle - attacked for few minutes, scored, then stopped playing
Utd - utd threw the towel after red card
West Ham - the first 15 minutes, followed by 75 minutes of mediocrity
City - city were toothless, we stank up the place and scored 2 from 2 shots on target

None of those games we looked excellent for majority of the game
 
halothagod said:
We are not good at the moment. But we are not as awful as some people are making out. Yes, we have played a low block in our run against the top teams but we have basically been putting out fires and trying to create a win at all costs mentality, which is pretty new to the club. So the wheels will come off a bit in the process. Normal.

The question is, would you rather play expansive footy like Brighton have been doing and winning the square root of fuck all?

Put it this way? Would you rather we play exactly like Brighton v Man U and come away with nothing (I know we have better finishers at Spurs) or as we did v Brighton and came away with a late win and all 3 points?

I know which one I’ll take.
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Why an earth is this a binary choice between having "possession" and losing or dour and "winning".

What I would like is that if we are going to be pragmatic in games and phases of games we do it well. More aggressively, and with a view to getting out of our half and creating more chances of hurting teams more often than the one or two a game we often muster.

I would also like there to be some coaching and structure to games and phases when we need to take some initiative and be more proactive - ie when we are playing teams with their own bus park strategy and vastly inferior individuals.

Constant arch pragmatism - ie parking a very deep bus - is not the tactical methodology I'd choose for such a high percentage of games/phases that we are doing, but I would be OK with us doing it for certain games and certain phases if we did it better than we are, and what we do the rest of the time looks coherent. And both were done with some real aggression.

What we are getting a lot of the time is a pretty passive, often insipid deep block with minimal counters, or a kind of incoherent trepidatious bumbling when we have to try and have the ball for phases.
 
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