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***TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR vs West Ham United OMT***

Why are you only considering the second half? I thought games were 90 minutes long?
They are and the first half performance was excellent. The problem, as I see it, is that once West Ham sat in, we had no answer. Once we went behind, we never looked like scoring. That’s a worry because it’s not the first time.
 
Why are you looking for me to point out all of the chances? Do goals from corners not count? Does Kurt Zouma’s wild swing and hitting the post not count? What about Sarr, Bissouma and Porro(?) blasting over. Just because they’re not all 100% clear cut like Richarlison’s doesn’t mean we didn’t have good chances. And poor finishing often means no…the keeper doesn’t need to make a save.
Kurt Zouma taking a wild swing and hitting the post for an own goal counts as a chance for us? Sarr, Bissouma and Porro blasting over I’m not sure were great chances? Maybe they just didnt look to be from my seat? I though we played some pretty stuff in the first half today but we’re not close to being as good as we were against Aston Villa.
 
They are and the first half performance was excellent. The problem, as I see it, is that once West Ham sat in, we had no answer. Once we went behind, we never looked like scoring. That’s a worry because it’s not the first time.
I disagree that we never looked like scoring. But rather than not creating clear cut chances all game long, I think the bigger worry is that we’re not finishing those chances when we’re on top and dominating. Villa and West Ham both followed a very similar pattern. We need to be getting the 2nd and 3rd goals.

Edit: basically what Ange is saying here:

 
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And a team that gets two lucky moments (double rebound and the ball hitting the post and coming back perfectly for JWP).

And the other goal a tired pass back, which Vicario could have held. Two gifts, wham did nothing.
Didn't they miss the open goal too and hit the post first off? Right angle tho to score the rebound from.

Terrible run of results. Hope Ange can keep spirits up. I think we have been marginally the better side in the villa game, this game, and the chelsea game too. Without a squad it isn't a shock. Posted at the time that our season imploded during the chavs game . Never quite seen a game like that, where you go from hero to zero. This way of playing needs strong subs around 60 mins. VDV, Maddison and Romero 3 of our best players missing.

We are building for next season.
 
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No one is suggesting we twist again. We have to stick with Ange.

But he has serious questions to answer. Today wasn’t luck or injuries. We had Romero back. How many times has someone said over the last month “if Romero doesn’t get sent off, we’d have x points”? He had a decent midfield and attack.

The problem wasn’t individuals today, it was two things. An inability to finish a team off when on top. An inability to generate chances against a team sitting deep. We’ve been here before this season.

Conte took absolute pelters last year for the pattern of losing first halves and scraping results second half. It was a pattern and we asked why on earth he couldn’t reverse it.

We’ve now seen a similar thing happen with Ange over 5 games. Score first and not win. It’s a pattern. He’s got to up his game. He’ll get time, he’ll get backing but tonight was not good enough.

I'm talking generically not specifically that people are calling for it.

My point is we can't commit to a change a radical change, one that also is a change to a club that has been mentally weak for decades and for that to happen in 15 games.

ABSOLUTELY We need to ask questions of Ange I 100% agree, have said it myself

The only way we change as a club this year, next year and for longer is to pick a plan, stick to it and back it, that's club and fans.
 
Kurt Zouma taking a wild swing and hitting the post for an own goal counts as a chance for us? Sarr, Bissouma and Porto blasting over I’m not sure we’re great chances? Maybe they just didnt look to be from my seat? I though we played some pretty stuff in the first half today but we’re not close to being as good as we were against Aston Villa.
Why wouldn’t they count as chances? It came from a cross…we created a situation and the ball nearly went in the goal. I see why you don’t think we created anything…you don’t give anything we created any credit. A corner doesn’t count, an opposition defender hitting the post doesn’t count, apparently Richarlison’s doesn’t count.
 
I disagree that we never looked like scoring. But rather than not creating clear cut chances all game long, I think the bigger worry is that we’re not finishing those chances when we’re on top and dominating. Villa and West Ham both followed a very similar pattern. We need to be getting the 2nd and 3rd goals.

It looks to me that we are pushing teams to far and leaving absolutely no room to play the final ball.
I don't think it's a deliberate tactic by other teams to compress the game because we have made some teams look ridiculously bad.
First half in particular had maybe 18 players in a 25-30 yard space.
We aren't giving teams a chance to come out, so we can't get in behind them.
 
Have a look at the xg. Pretty sure that will show that we should have scored more than them.
Xg means dingdong all to be honest. If you went by Xg, City should have beat us by 2 on Sunday but, personally, I thought we were good value for a draw and were the better side second half. Likewise, I thought we got what we deserved tonight because we didn’t show enough quality when we needed to.

When West Ham cut off the space second half, we had no answer. We were slow and narrow and played into their hands.

If Ange attributes our loss to bad finishing or bad luck, we’ll be beaten again by Saudi Sportswashing Machine this weekend. There’s a consistent pattern, like there was with Conte last year. He needs to think about how to solve that.
 
An open goal has to be a sizable probabilitty of scoring. That they hit the post initially was funny. Shame we didn't have cover.

It wasn't just Richarlison's opening. There were testing balls into the box. There were half openings for Gil to shoot, but he passed back. Sarr's shot over. Bissoumas shot blocked. etc. We were tired, and outside of Son and Madison we lack confident goal scorers. edit: Le Celco has shown he can finish but he also missed the target frequently tonight.
Yeah their open goal was massive xG but ours was also low. We just didn't create much, I was saying it in this match thread so it's not a hindsight thing and those chances you mentioned were half chances at best. You score them once in a blue moon. They are not good chances.
 
Kurt Zouma taking a wild swing and hitting the post for an own goal counts as a chance for us? Sarr, Bissouma and Porro blasting over I’m not sure were great chances? Maybe they just didnt look to be from my seat? I though we played some pretty stuff in the first half today but we’re not close to being as good as we were against Aston Villa.
I think we were as good as v Villa the difference was Villa were parked about 30 yards further up the pitch and I think we could and should have exploited that even more than we did.
West Ham's low block was never going to yield as many clear cut chances.
 
Why wouldn’t they count as chances? It came from a cross…we created a situation and the ball nearly went in the goal. I see why you don’t think we created anything…you don’t give anything we created any credit. A corner doesn’t count, an opposition defender hitting the post doesn’t count, apparently Richarlison’s doesn’t count.
I think you’re frustrated and stretching to try to twist my words. I never said a goal from a corner doesn’t count, I also specifically called out the Richarlison chance. You and I differ on whether an opposition defender nearly scoring an own goal counts as a chance created by us, I would say, at best, it is a low XG type of chance.
 
Yeah their open goal was massive xG but ours was also low. We just didn't create much, I was saying it in this match thread so it's not a hindsight thing and those chances you mentioned were half chances at best. You score them once in a blue moon. They are not good chances.

Richarlison a free header only a meter or two away from goal. Zuma deflection - an inch away from being a goal. Plenty of shots from just outside the box which were wayward. Poros crosses could have been ogs. Johsons failed crosses and weak shot. All you need is one of them to convert. Or for wham not to get so lucky with two gifted goals. We didn't get a lot of chances, but you never do when a team sits deep in a low block. You just need one to go in, to open the game up.

If we get a second goal as per our XG, and don't gift two goals to them, we win. So I think the XG stats broadly back up us being marginally the better side if you take out two fuk ups that lead to their goals.
 
It looks to me that we are pushing teams to far and leaving absolutely no room to play the final ball.
I don't think it's a deliberate tactic by other teams to compress the game because we have made some teams look ridiculously bad.
First half in particular had maybe 18 players in a 25-30 yard space.
We aren't giving teams a chance to come out, so we can't get in behind them.

I think we went through a game today which is a result of our recent games. Trying too hard to score the perfect goal without any real instinct taking over. Johnson and Deki who I think are both excellent players were guilty of holding on too much and wanting to almost walk the ball in which slowed everything down. Against a team like West Ham that's suicide as they fill in and get numbers back in whilst anyone's foot is on the ball. Quick quick quick where as today was IMO at times slow slow slow.

BUT that said I don't think it's anywhere near doom and gloom as the build up play at times first half from back to front was fully competent and was very much within a style, you don't keep hold of the ball for 80% of a game and be a bad side, yes what you do is important, but I'm hugely hopeful we shift the tentative monkey off our back and finish with conviction
 
We've seen plenty of games over the last few years where we come up against an opposition who is happy to sit back, frustrate and counter one or two times a half. This evening i felt, mostly from the first half tbf, that we were a lot more assured in trying to break that sort of approach down than anything i can remember going back to the Poch days (even back then it was still a crux for us with multiple match winners on the pitch) the game was played deeper in the opponents half than what we have been used to and the speed of pass and movement off the ball again was much better (for the most part) - so despite the result there's still signs we're moving in the right direction.
The movement was excellent. Ange really has the squad drilled into falling onto his shape. There is always a player available and a pass to be made so that part of the game worked today.

What didn't work is sometimes you need to play into space, especially in tight triangle passing systems. It's not enough to always play into feet you also need to play into space for players to run onto, that's what stretches defences and makes defenders second guess themselves. We had very little of that and we have very little of it without Maddison and Sarr to a lesser extent on the pitch.

So the movement was good, but the incisive passing was very lacking today and without those cutting balls the likes of Son isn't going to achieve much against a tightly packed hunkered down defence.

I was quite disappointed with GLC today as I was hoping he would play more of the killer pass but he was very much just a passing rotational player and that's a good thing to have but you need the through ball as well and that's what the missing Maddison has us lacking.
 
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