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OMT: Mighty Spurs vs Chelscumski

Man of the match

  • Total voters
    31
  • Poll closed .
Pirate55 said:
JM clearly felt a flat back five would stop them scoring. He said the first goal in that game was critical. Their goal had two big elements of good fortune in it. Despite five defenders in the box both rebounds went straight to the two attackers.

I also think that he believed playing three ball playing midfielders, we would be able to keep possession much better than we in fact did. These players badly let him down. You will notice his praise after the game was largely reserved for little Stevie, Lucas and Lamela. Again it was in midfield we lost this game. All three of our players there simply didn't turn up.
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While there was an element of good fortune in the first rebound going to their player, the problem with the second rebound is that not one of our players had bothered to get near to Giroud and he therefore had time to control and get his shot away under no pressure and therefore not having to rush. However the most worrying aspect of Chelsea's goal in my opinion was that the chance was created by a ball in behind where an old and never, ever fast Oliver Giroud was able to outpace the left side of our defence. Davies, Vertonghen and Alderweireld do not have an ounce of pace between them. Imagine how easily a team with even a modicum of pace up front could get in behind that trio if a player as slow as Oliver Giroud is able to do it?

Also if playing the midfield and attack that we are playing (containing only small, slight, ball players) then you need to have those players quite close to one another, otherwise passes tend to have to be over a reasonable length in order to get forward. With absolutely no physicality in midfield or attack passes over longer lengths will tend to result in losing the ball almost every time. The way to get those players closer to one another to take advantage of their skillset of close control is by playing the game higher up the pitch. The midfielder and attackers that we currently have available would surely be far better suited to playing an orchestrated pressing game, where turnovers in the opponents half could be capitalised on? Yet instead of that we let the opposition have the ball and drop off almost to our own penalty area, meaning that we have far too much to do to make goal scoring chances of any turnovers that we win, especially considering that we do not have a single player in the team with any pace over more than 10 yards.
 
Finney Is Back said:
Davies, Vertonghen and Alderweireld do not have an ounce of pace between them. Imagine how easily a team with even a modicum of pace up front could get in behind that trio if a player as slow as Oliver Giroud is able to do it?
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Finney Is Back said:
Also if playing the midfield and attack that we are playing (containing only small, slight, ball players) then you need to have those players quite close to one another, otherwise passes tend to have to be over a reasonable length in order to get forward. With absolutely no physicality in midfield or attack passes over longer lengths will tend to result in losing the ball almost every time. The way to get those players closer to one another to take advantage of their skillset of close control is by playing the game higher up the pitch. The midfielder and attackers that we currently have available would surely be far better suited to playing an orchestrated pressing game, where turnovers in the opponents half could be capitalised on?
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I think you're answering your own question: we can't play any higher because our defense is too slow and would be dangerously exposed. So we choose the lesser evil and play deep - which worked reasonably well until we found ouserselves with no forwards. I completely agree with your statement though but it just shows how poorly this squad has been built. Basically, everything revolved around our ability to play a high-tempo pressing game. As soon as we lost that (because our midfield wasn't up for it anymore and because our defenders have been exposed as a result), we became a very ordinary team.
 
Mr Gogolak said:
I think you're answering your own question: we can't play any higher because our defense is too slow and would be dangerously exposed. So we choose the lesser evil and play deep - which worked reasonably well until we found ouserselves with no forwards. I completely agree with your statement though but it just shows how poorly this squad has been built. Basically, everything revolved around our ability to play a high-tempo pressing game. As soon as we lost that (because our midfield wasn't up for it anymore and because our defenders have been exposed as a result), we became a very ordinary team.
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In which case Jose needs to find a better way. If we have no physical presence up front then we have to play higher up the pitch and look to press the opposition. If that means adding some pace at the back then play Sessegnon instead of Davies, pick Tanganga at centre half instead of Vertonghen and have Aurier at right back. We can still play a high tempo pressing game if we want to. If we're not going to play a high tempo pressing game, sit deep and be forced to play longer then it is inexcusable of the club to fail to bring in another number 9 in January.
 
Finney Is Back said:
In which case Jose needs to find a better way. If we have no physical presence up front then we have to play higher up the pitch and look to press the opposition. If that means adding some pace at the back then play Sessegnon instead of Davies, pick Tanganga at centre half instead of Vertonghen and have Aurier at right back. We can still play a high tempo pressing game if we want to. If we're not going to play a high tempo pressing game, sit deep and be forced to play longer then it is inexcusable of the club to fail to bring in another number 9 in January.
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Agree with your last point. We simply dont have the personnel available to play the way you want. Most of our team are either injured (Kane, Son, Siss) unfit ( Ndom, Lamela, Davies, Sess) past it ( Verts and Toby) a defensive liability (Aurier), broken ( Dier and Wanyama), knackered ( Dele, Winks, Lucas) or deemed "not ready " (Parrott) . Almost impossible to construct an attractive team and winning tactics out of that lot!
 
Finney Is Back said:
In which case Jose needs to find a better way. If we have no physical presence up front then we have to play higher up the pitch and look to press the opposition. If that means adding some pace at the back then play Sessegnon instead of Davies, pick Tanganga at centre half instead of Vertonghen and have Aurier at right back. We can still play a high tempo pressing game if we want to. If we're not going to play a high tempo pressing game, sit deep and be forced to play longer then it is inexcusable of the club to fail to bring in another number 9 in January.
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We're going to pay dearly for our failure to bring in a cover for Kane, that much is pretty obvious now. Whoever thought we could save on that front got it massively wrong. It's a testing situation because (I think), Mourinho also has next season in mind. Is it worth risking Tanganga in central defence in a back four or should he continue to build-up his confidence playing in less exposed roles? My take on Davies keeping his place despite some average performance is that we want to bring him back to match fitness to provide different options. Mourinho likes his full-backs rock solid and Davies fits that bill better than Sessegnon.

Also, I remember him saying we needed some stability when he was appointed. Since injuries have prevented him to do otherwise, I'm guessing he wants to stick to his gameplan as much as possible, in the hope that the force of habit will bring better performances. It's also quite clear that he wants to keep the scorelines respectable to avoid a complete collapse within the team. I don't think he could afford to take a battering like the thrashing we got against Bayern.

For me, the current situation proves two things: a) 4th place was ours for the taking with a full squad, despite a incredibly poor season and b) our main problem isn't individual performances but rather the fact that we can't rotate our squad at all. Maybe Dele would be sharper if he didn't have to play every game. Aurier would be a far more interesting option if we could play him against lesser sides, to provide some width and an attacking edge. Unfortunately, the players we have at the moment lack complementarity and look poorer than they are as a result.
 
Bullet said:
Partly it was pleasing to see Bayern absolutely destroy Cheatski tonight.
But.
Partly it highlighted how far away we are from 'Bayern level' right now.
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Its frightening the gap between Bayern and Spurs! Chelsea are sadly closer but still worlds apart!
 
Disappointing performance and result. With Chelsea being our direct rivals to 4th place, we had to get at least a draw to stay in touch with them. Instead, we played poorly and deserved to get beaten. This defeat might come back to affect us later in the season. After the rare win over Emirates Marketing Project, we showed yet again that we are mentally weak against the big teams. We really need more big-name players with big-match mentality.

Our attack had a poor match. We did create a few goal scoring chances but wasted them all. Moura, Tanganga and Ndombele really should have done better with their chances. We badly missed the goals of the injured Kane and Son. Without them, we don't really have a reliable goal scorers. Thought Moura or Bergwijn will inspire us but they didn't have much impact. Credit to Lamela for forcing the own goal late in the match. Wish we had started Lamela who could have lifted the team with his work rate and passion. Alli cannot complain about being dropped as he had been poor for some time now.

We lost this match in midfield. Our midfield got outplayed yet again. Winks is simply not good enough while Ndombele and Lo Celso failed to lift their game. This match shows yet again that we need a top quality defensive midfielder. Wish we still have Dembele to control the midfield.

Our defence went to sleep for both their goals. Lloris and the defence really should have done better for both the goals. It was really poor of Lloris to be beaten at his near post for the first goal. Our defence should have stopped the shot instead of ball-watching for the second goal as well.

We could have moved above Chelsea into 4th place if we had won this match. Instead, we now have to look for our rivals to drop points to help us get back into the top 4 race. Hope we will improve our performance and results in the coming matches.
 
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