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The glorious march to CL qualification

the dza said:
If the goons lose today, they are done imo. They won't get the away wins required for them to grab top 4, they are hopeless away from home.

Right now, we need Chelsea to slip up and Arsenal to be Arsenal (and keep losing/drawing away from home). It seems our most likely route to Champions League football from here is to squeak 4th ahead of Chelsea, with Man Utd getting 3rd.

Win our home games and hope it's enough.
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On an arsenal forum is probably the same post with Spurs/Arsenal swapped around.
 
galeforce said:
On an arsenal forum is probably the same post with Spurs/Arsenal swapped around.
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Probably! :D

Arsenal really are poor away from home though, so if they don't take maximum points from their home games, they have no chance imo.

Whether we can win our home games is another matter. Hopefully, there will be a "New Stadium Bounce" (or just a "thank phuck we're not at Wembley now" bounce).
 
galeforce said:
No need to tell me, nobody was banging the “we are favourites for the title” drum longer than I was, right up until the Burnley game I was convinced we would be champions.
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We had a tiny chance but would have to win every game and set a league record

We’re not that good

Similarly the way people are talking about united currently they will win every game and their not that good either

City though...
 
the dza said:
If the goons lose today, they are done imo. They won't get the away wins required for them to grab top 4, they are hopeless away from home.

Right now, we need Chelsea to slip up and Arsenal to be Arsenal (and keep losing/drawing away from home). It seems our most likely route to Champions League football from here is to squeak 4th ahead of Chelsea, with Man Utd getting 3rd.

Win our home games and hope it's enough.
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We should still be aiming for 3rd, there should be no talk of sneaking in. We are still 3rd (for now) with plenty of games left, focus on picking up points and stop worrying what other teams are doing and looking at fixture lists etc. Should win, should lose doesn't come into it now, it's really a case of who wants it, who has things left to play for and who has the mental ability to dig in deep.
 
P.D. said:
We should still be aiming for 3rd, there should be no talk of sneaking in. We are still 3rd (for now) with plenty of games left, focus on picking up points and stop worrying what other teams are doing and looking at fixture lists etc. Should win, should lose doesn't come into it now, it's really a case of who wants it, who has things left to play for and who has the mental ability to dig in deep.
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And possibly who has a break to reset and refresh

United came back from their back a different side and more united. Pool haven’t looked any different to be fair
 
So, (at the risk of blatant repetition) I’m on holiday, haven’t seen the Soton game nor had a chance to watch the highlights yet.
But reading this thread, the match thread and the Poch thread - it seems we’ve gone into full blown suicide/slash wrists mode? It all makes incredibly depressing reading. I mean it is really disturbing to read.
I don’t know what’s gone wrong but I refuse to believe these players can’t turn this around. They are a talented bunch, individually and collectively and I have never doubted that they will prove themselves as capable winners. But if they don’t have the balls to step up in our remaining games then I am going to be more disappointed than I would ever have thought I could be.
I continue to have faith in Poch. Best thing to have happened to our club in a long, long time. But something is not gelling right now and it’s down to Poch to sort it out.
Top 4 is still well within our grasp and now is the time to show our mettle and make it ours.
I am concerned at where we are now, but remain optimistic that we can pull ourselves up again.
Come the summer, a shake up is needed.
 
It's both a good and bad thing that we lost in a different manner yesterday (compared to the Chelsea and Burnley defeats). I'm only going by reports as didn;t watch yesterday but we actually played well in the first half and created several good chances - that was only the second time in 13 games that we've scored a first half goal. Against Burnley and Chelsea we started very slowly an then couldn't shift momentum and get into 2nd gear.

Yesterday appears to be a case of complacency creeping in having dominated the 1st half which presents its own problems.

The league table would indicate that over the first 30 games of the season there is in effect very little between 4 sides with all suffering upturns and downturns in form. Chelsea had a real peak in the first third of the season; were dismal in the mid third but seem to have found a mid ground now; Woolwich similarky peaked in Autumn but have been hit and miss since and United were woeful until Mourinho left; I think they've slightly overachieved with exceptional high goal conversion rates which will probably, by law of averages, drop at some point whilst we have largely plodded through the season at a consistent rate until the last 4 weeks.

Regardless of today's results I'd still rather be in our position in terms of points on the board and with the run-in (of 5 home games) which should provide us with the 18 points I think we'll need.
 
Right. We are where we are. Can't really do much but look forward now and not dwell on what's gone on, but the reality is 8 games left of which 5 are in the new stadium. Win all 5 and that gets us to 76 points. I truly believe this will be enough for top 4.

We have our part to play to ensure we do not let the levels drop. Our new home, we make it a f******g fortress. COYS
 
harr1984 said:
Some of you won’t like this, but maybe it will teach some of you not to be so arrogant about our rivals. All season I’ve heard posters talk down the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea and Man U making out like we are so much better than them when in reality there is no real difference in quality at all. They’ve all dropped out of the top 4 in recent years, and we will at some point too whether it’s this year or not. I often hear other fans say the thing they hate about Spurs fans is because they have delusions of grandeur and I was a bit mythed as to what they were talking about until coming on sites like this. We’ve won absolutely nothing in recent times yet a couple of seasons where we actually finish ahead of our rivals for once and we talk them down as if we are far superior. It’s cringeworthy and might come back to bite us in the bum....
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I think the part of this which carries truth is that it would appear our team drank that Kool Aid at half-time in Soton. We have lost a few games this season, and for the most part I feel we've been unlucky or at least competed. The second-half yesterday was different to any sub-standard performance we have put in, in so much as the sheer lazy arrogance (and baffling inability to find the energy to change it) was shocking. Poch has alluded to it a couple of time already this season, and I have to say, I believe that Saturday will at least ensure we never see a performance like that lack of second-half again.
 
thfcsteff said:
I think the part of this which carries truth is that it would appear our team drank that Kool Aid at half-time in Soton. We have lost a few games this season, and for the most part I feel we've been unlucky or at least competed. The second-half yesterday was different to any sub-standard performance we have put in, in so much as the sheer lazy arrogance (and baffling inability to find the energy to change it) was shocking. Poch has alluded to it a couple of time already this season, and I have to say, I believe that Saturday will at least ensure we never see a performance like that lack of second-half again.
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You’d hope we never see a second half like that again but Poch has been banging the drum all season. Perception vs Reality. After United and before Watford. No real coincidence we are going down to teams like Saints and Burnley that have something to really fight for. Our players just don’t seem to have the stones right now.

I think in previous seasons when we’ve lost, I agree that we’ve mostly been unlucky. It was always usually some unlucky deflection or pinball in our box that goes against us, but this season we’ve just been outworked in games and have given it up. Watford. Wolves. Burnley. Saints. We’ve really deserved to lose those games.

I’d like to think we recover for the final stretch but I can’t remember a time under Poch’s reign where we’ve struggled so much with performances at this point in the season. I fully trust the man and think after this summer when he’s able to make some required changes, we’ll be back and firing again. But for the rest of this season, I’m not convinced he has the control over this particular group that he’s had previously. They are sloppy and complacent right now, and that’s a different thing to what we’ve seen under Poch since his first year.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
You’d hope we never see a second half like that again but Poch has been banging the drum all season. Perception vs Reality. After United and before Watford. No real coincidence we are going down to teams like Saints and Burnley that have something to really fight for. Our players just don’t seem to have the stones right now.

I think in previous seasons when we’ve lost, I agree that we’ve mostly been unlucky. It was always usually some unlucky deflection or pinball in our box that goes against us, but this season we’ve just been outworked in games and have given it up. Watford. Wolves. Burnley. Saints. We’ve really deserved to lose those games.

I’d like to think we recover for the final stretch but I can’t remember a time under Poch’s reign where we’ve struggled so much with performances at this point in the season. I fully trust the man and think after this summer when he’s able to make some required changes, we’ll be back and firing again. But for the rest of this season, I’m not convinced he has the control over this particular group that he’s had previously. They are sloppy and complacent right now, and that’s a different thing to what we’ve seen under Poch since his first year.
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I'm going to play devil's advocate and suggest that it's mental fatigue. It's been a long hard season for a lot of our players, starting with the World Cup. They'll have been asked to do all sorts of things outside their comfort zones to cover for all the injuries. There's also been some pressure from our short-lived title challenge. Mental stress is cumulative and I think it's this that we're seeing now.

Hopefully a good rest will sort them out. Hopefully Dele has come back raring to go (I'm still sulking so haven't seen the highlights from Saturday). Hopefully Nike Hart Lane will give them the boost they need for the run-in.
 
FatBloke said:
I'm going to play devil's advocate and suggest that it's mental fatigue. It's been a long hard season for a lot of our players, starting with the World Cup. They'll have been asked to do all sorts of things outside their comfort zones to cover for all the injuries. There's also been some pressure from our short-lived title challenge. Mental stress is cumulative and I think it's this that we're seeing now.

Hopefully a good rest will sort them out. Hopefully Dele has come back raring to go (I'm still sulking so haven't seen the highlights from Saturday). Hopefully Nike Hart Lane will give them the boost they need for the run-in.
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I do hope that’s the case and we get reinvigorated after this break. It’s just slightly concerning seeing Poch’s comments. He’s always tried to protect the players if he feels they have been stretched too much ‘they aren’t machines’etc, but he saw some arrogance and complacency creeping in before the United game and it bore out in the next one.

What concerns me is that it’s either something he can see but can’t stop, or if it’s mental fatigue then again it’s not easy to figure out the solution at this point in the season. I just get the sense he is struggling to control this group as well as he has done for the last 4 years, he isn’t influencing it. 3 losses in 4 games? 2 to relegation strugglers? This just doesn’t happen under Poch’s Spurs.
 
I'm sort of waiting for the summer now. Hopefully Poch to Madrid won't drag on for ages in it and we know exactly where we stand. Hopefully they hire someone new early on and then Poch gets to sell all the players he wants to sell and add to the squad as he sees fit. The squad seems fragmented as others have said, with so many players reaching the ends of their times here.
 
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