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OMT *** Tottenham Hotspur v Stoke ***

braineclipse said:
Awful? I've seen awful this season, and that wasn't it.

We started fine, better than we have for weeks in the league.
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Well I watched both very closely and noted that in the first 25 minutes or so Davies lost possession literally every time he touched the ball - around half-a-dozen times - whilst Trippier struggled to do anything at all useful with the ball whenever he got possession for most of the first half. If you don't call that sort of start awful well that's your prerogative, but I certainly do.

Fortunately both shook off their poor starts as the games wore on and though neither stood out at any point they both played their part in helping us not only dominate but produce some of our most entertaining stuff we've played since the RM game.
 
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braineclipse said:
Awful? I've seen awful this season, and that wasn't it.

We started fine, better than we have for weeks in the league.
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Yeah, I think there was something of a narrative trying to be developed in the media - I even read the Standard yesterday saying that we were just as bad in the first 20 mins as in all the other home games before the 1st goal went in, but I just didn't see that at all.

I thought we sacrificed control and played a more direct game, and it worked. We can still play lovely football when in possession but in that transition from defense to attack, we clipped it forward more quickly rather than trying to set ourselves and give the opposition too much time to get back and set themselves too. I thought Davies and Trippier still put useful crosses into the box but they were less involved in our build up play. Unsurprisingly though, Son was awesome and Eriksen was pretty good on the other side - we were getting the ball to them quicker and they had more space to operate.

If teams are going to come to us to frustrate, and the pitch being so big and slow that there is too much time for the opposition to set and recover then there is just no point in us being methodical and building up as we usually have done. I guess the first few games were Poch seeing / assuming that the usual system could work on the bigger pitch but the results and performances were not good. He's always been adaptable though and I saw a clear difference against Stoke. It's just wasted time and while it may go against Poch's instincts of control and suffocation of the opposition, if we are prevented from doing so due to pitch factors we do need to change, otherwise it's wasted time and being dogmatic for the sake of dogma. We can't press as well when there's too much space to cover, and more methodical build up just allows the opposition too much time to set.

I fully expect us to beat Brighton now, because I feel like we've made a crucial leap forward. It may be slightly different to what we usually see, in terms of how the full backs are utilized, but I think it's what we need to do. And hopefully it's yet another string to our bow.
 
Personally having been at the game i thought it felt like it was going to follow the same pattern as our previous home games against lower opposition up until we got the own goal
 
billyiddo said:
Personally having been at the game i thought it felt like it was going to follow the same pattern as our previous home games against lower opposition up until we got the own goal
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I thought we were already looking good and it looked different to other games because we were getting it forward quicker. It's not often likely to be a blitz because the first 20 mins, the opposition is at their fittest and will be harder to break down. But I'm pretty confident Poch made subtle yet significant tactical tweaks which lead to our performance and I expect us to beat Brighton comfortably. If we go back to 1-0 scrappy wins against Brighton I'll think of Stoke as a one-off, but I'm pretty confident it was the start of a slightly new style of play at home to these types of teams.
 
BrainOfLevy said:
I thought we were already looking good and it looked different to other games because we were getting it forward quicker. It's not often likely to be a blitz because the first 20 mins, the opposition is at their fittest and will be harder to break down. But I'm pretty confident Poch made subtle yet significant tactical tweaks which lead to our performance and I expect us to beat Brighton comfortably. If we go back to 1-0 scrappy wins against Brighton I'll think of Stoke as a one-off, but I'm pretty confident it was the start of a slightly new style of play at home to these types of teams.
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I would agree that we lined up and approached the game somewhat differently - less balls in to the box from deep/wide positions was the most obvious change that i noticed and i also that Trippier was occupying positions a lot higher up the pitch too - was quite surprised how little attention their left back seemed to give him actually abd wondered why we never exploited the space that much.
 
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