Tottenham Hotspur vs Chelsea. 4.30 Sunday 19th September. EPL

[Ionman34]

I can see the game quite well I believe (still easier when actually playing it than watching) but I'm useless at spotting a tactical change(s) made by the oppo, it's obvious that player 'x' has been brought on but it's really hard to assess what they are doing that's changed/improved their team and even harder to work out what needs to be done to counter it.

But I was hugely impressed with the first half, I never expected we'd play with a high press under Nuno. His comments after the game have also given me some positive vibes as he's said he wants to build on that (whether he does we'll just have to see).

Somewhat difficult to have a plan b when your bench is still massively light, it somewhat reduces the options. A complete guess here but if Bergwign or Lucas were on the bench that might have still enabled us to get behind Chavs with longs balls and for us to drop into a midblock??? For me though, any plan goes out the window once the control of midfield is conceded, this is our issue.

I've been saying that for quite a while now. The midfield is the engine room, games are controlled from there, not from defence or attack. Get your midfield right, the defence should just be there to clean up and your attack to finish off.

It's telling that we were at our absolute best when we had midfielders like Dembele, Wanyama and Modric winning and recycling, with the likes of Eriksen then able to pull the strings, all from midfield.

So many on here were banging on about how our defence needed strengthening, we needed another striker etc, when the key issue always lay in midfield as the primary concern.

Chelsea made one key change to undo us, that was to bring on Kante. Once they won the midfield battle, the game got away from us.

The hope I have is that Sarr will turn out to be that key midfielder for us, in that Kane role, but we'll have to wait and see on that.

 

[Mick Cooper]

That’s just not the case.

It was possible that they would go have gone into administration but there was no way that the ground could / would have been sold because Bates had transferred ownership of the bulk of the site such as the stands pitch and even the name Chelsea FC into a separate entity called Chelsea Pitch Owners to protect those assets from the hands of developers should the worse happen.

It was a clever move by Bates. Chelsea lent the Pitch Owners a significant sum ( most of that debt remains outstanding) and that loan was in turn used to buy the assets I mention from Chelsea. Chelsea had had significant issues going back to the 70s when developers did actually own the site.ironically those developers entered insolvency and Chelsea bought the site back from the administrators

OK

I'm no accountant, or lawyer

But if the football club went into deep debt, and no fairy godmother arrived

Then the law would have come after Bates and everything to do with the football club wanting it's money back. So whether he transferred ownership or not, the lenders would have gone after everything associated with the debt. The discussion is relatively pointless because Abramovich rocked up and bought it all up.

My point still stands, about how Chelsea achieved what they did pre Roman, and how it was all on promises. RA simply wiped the debts and had himself a ready made team, that all he had to do was pour a billion or so quid into.

so it is the case, you are just delving into the semantics of commercial obfuscation

 

[Bazali]

"I think both managers came out of it well."

Absolute nonsense. One of those managers lost 3 - 0 at home.

Kudos to you for getting through it!

 

[Bazali]

The other thing that changed in the second half was we stopped pressing them high up the pitch.

When Silva was under a bit of pressure in the first half they didn't play out all that effectively. Second half he had an armchair ride and was spraying passes about with all the time in the world.

Amazing what a decent manager can do at half time

Shame we haven’t got one

 

[Skooch]

I think people are being a bit harsh on Nuno - what he set out to do in the first half was clearly working better than what he had at Palace. For instance, Ndombele and Lo Celso combined 16 times in 60 minutes yesterday. Their counterparts against Palace, Dele and Skipp, only combined 13 times in 90 minutes.

I've been very skeptical of Nuno from the start, but he played the best players and had a plan that utilized their talents against one of the best teams in Europe. That's progress at least, and right now, with this team, progress is something.

And when Tuchel changed things then what?

Seem to remeber it being a 3-0 defeat that could have been 7 or 8.

A week after getting an utter hammering against a nothing manager and a side much weaker tha our own.

 

[Skooch]

Amazing what a decent manager can do at half time

Shame we haven’t got one

Or a decent midfielder.
Or a decent DOF

 

[Raiders]

It’s hard where we are to hear a lot other than the away fans, but it did seem to be quiet at times today.

Does not matter who I seem to chat to about Spurs at the moment. Optimism, expectation and “buy in” for more Levy nonsense is completely missing. I think that’s why fans are not singing up or bothering much with what’s going on. Good will and faith has gone.

I don't think we are actually that good as a fanbase at the best of times. Saying that is blasphemy and gets disagrees, but I have been going for 20 years. The person I was with went as far as to say our fans were directly responsible for the two goals. I don't think one can say that but it was embarrassing.

I don't think it had much to do with what you say. In my opinion, it is simply down to people wanting/needing to get a drink or one of those terrible pizzas. I had one before the game and was shocked.

 

[LeeMcl]

I don't think we are actually that good as a fanbase at the best of times. Saying that is blasphemy and gets disagrees, but I have been going for 20 years. The person I was with went as far as to say our fans were directly responsible for the two goals. I don't think one can say that but it was embarrassing.

I don't think it had much to do with what you say. In my opinion, it is simply down to people wanting/needing to get a drink or one of those terrible pizzas. I had one before the game and was shocked.

Away, we are very good. At home, at times we are also very good, but our crowd tends to know their beans and basically won’t bother if they spot the players not bothering.

I spent most of the last 15 years of the old WHL in block 31 and with being close to the Park Lane the atmosphere generally was good, but even then there are lots of memories where I can legitimately say that the atmosphere was zero in some games, but in all those games it was never zero when the players gave a fuck.