Andre Villas-Boas - Head Coach

[Spursalot]

Yeah but wasnt that Harry using those type of games to risk those type of tactics? To see what works for future games?

Its better to practice those tactics in those type of games than against the manures of this world.

People accept that playing the young players means there will be mistakes same with those tactics I suppose.

Doesn't really wash imo. If it works, then what? It worked against a lower league side, that's no justification for it working against a better PL side.

 

[DHSF]

Doesn't really wash imo. If it works, then what? It worked against a lower league side, that's no justification for it working against a better PL side.

A younger player doing well against inferior opposition - then what? Carrol played well against Maribor yet everyone on here wants him to play against the likes of Arse and Liverscum etc. No justification that Carroll will perform against them.

Similar principle - you gotta start somewhere and its best to start 'experimenting' against the lower opposition as the chances are they wont make you pay.

The training pitch is one thing but competitive games is another.

I could only think of twice where three defenders was used and that was stoke (which worked) and stevenage (awful)

 

[Spursalot]

A younger player doing well against inferior opposition - then what? Carrol played well against Maribor yet everyone on here wants him to play against the likes of Arse and Liverscum etc. No justification that Carroll will perform against them.

Similar principle - you gotta start somewhere and its best to start 'experimenting' against the lower opposition as the chances are they wont make you pay.

The training pitch is one thing but competitive games is another.

I could only think of twice where three defenders was used and that was stoke (which worked) and stevenage (awful)

Young players are completely different though, you can stick a young player into an experienced side and It'll make a difference, but you'll still have 10 players who you know are good enough.


You either have to go three at the back or not, there is no easier way to do it.


Am sure it was used more then that, but i can't recall when. So fair enough.

 

[metalgear]

I felt this summer was more about damage limitation in terms of buys, we needed to plug some huge gaps in the team. I won't be drawing any conclusions until next season. Hopefully we can add some quality in January, but I think next summer is the big one. AVB will know everything about our current team and what is needed to move forward.

aye. at the end of Jan after all the signings were concluded - including not signing moutinho - most felt that we had not replaced Modric and VDV and that this would be a transitional season.
most thought that AVB would rush into his favoured 4-3-3 formation but he has used other formations that we are more familiar with. and recently back to 4-4-2 it seems that it is more a gradual transition limited by the lack of specific player types.

credit to avb for getting us where we are thus far given the situation with transfers and injuries. but i agree we haven't seen the end of the changes yet.

 

[thfcsteff]

Taking Naughton off would have been a good start. Everyone could see he was getting raped by Walcott.

You say the goals were 3 individual errors, but it's not like we couldn't see those goals coming.

What about the Chelsea game? He brings Livermore on. It's basically saying we're looking to hang on and it's inviting them to come at us. I would have gone for a more positive substitution and took the game to them.

And then what? Who do you bring on at that point? You've just lost a very important man, are you seriously suggesting that suddenly you go 3 at the back? Naughton was absolutely FINE until we went down to 10 men. So you're asking him to decide, in a 10 minute spell between the 20th and 30th minutes, that he should either

a) haul Naughton off, put Daws on and put Verts out wide where the pillaging would've been even worse
b) go 3 at the back in that time, thus putting into effect a system we haven't payed in 3 years without so much as a half-time cuppa to discuss it?

I think you're in wonderland.
BTW, you talk about Livermore against Chelski, again, who would YOU have brought on and what would YOU have done? Remember, two individual errors cost us goals that day and one of those occurred in the 94th min, before which we'd nearly tied things up.

 

[thfcsteff]

Er wut?


We went three at the back under Redknapp several times. It was a disaster every time.

I will stand humbly corrected if you can show me those games.
But Stoke away? Are you seriously going to tell me that Younes Kaboul getting sent off in the 82nd minute counts as Harry craftily forumlating a 3 at the back master plan? :ross:

edit: I stand corrected re: Stevenage. Not Stoke though, sorry.

 

[Spursalot]

I will stand humbly corrected if you can show me those games.
But Stoke away? Are you seriously going to tell me that Younes Kaboul getting sent off in the 82nd minute counts as Harry craftily forumlating a 3 at the back master plan? :ross:

Stevenage was the only one that came instantly to mind.

 

[Modric THFC]

Harry's 3 at the back was completely different than AVB's idea of 3 at the back.
Redknapp played with 3 centre halfs and 2 wing backs, effectively 5 at the back when defending.
Against Arsenal when we were down to 10 men AVB saw we had 2 centre halfs playing against one striker. He put on Dawson and we had Vertonghen playing left back, Dawson in the centre and Gallas as rightback. Lennon and Bale played as wingers not wingbacks. It was much more attacking than the mid 90's 352 wingback formation.

 

[Poker Boy]

I will stand humbly corrected if you can show me those games.
But Stoke away? Are you seriously going to tell me that Younes Kaboul getting sent off in the 82nd minute counts as Harry craftily forumlating a 3 at the back master plan? :ross:

edit: I stand corrected re: Stevenage. Not Stoke though, sorry.

The changes were made at HT Bassong and Defoe for BAE and Lennon. We completely dominated the second half and as I said earlier we probably would have won if it wasn't for Foy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/16021626

 

[ArcspacE]

I'm so bored of that excuse. This Spurs team, even minus those players, is good enough to challenge top four.

Which is exactly what we're doing with a weaker squad

 

[braineclipse]

The changes were made at HT Bassong and Defoe for BAE and Lennon. We completely dominated the second half and as I said earlier we probably would have won if it wasn't for Foy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/16021626

I agree that was a very good change at half time. However he also started a team that was short and incapable of competing in the air at set pieces. He had Sandro, Corluka and Bassong available, but went for the shorter option of Parker, Walker and Gallas. What I thought was a mistake we made several times against Stoke and similar teams.

AVB showed with his selection against West Ham at least an indication that he's ready to make some changes to deal with teams that play like that.

 

[Kingdawson]

I agree that was a very good change at half time. However he also started a team that was short and incapable of competing in the air at set pieces. He had Sandro, Corluka and Bassong available, but went for the shorter option of Parker, Walker and Gallas. What I thought was a mistake we made several times against Stoke and similar teams.

AVB showed with his selection against West Ham at least an indication that he's ready to make some changes to deal with teams that play like that.

So the manager that apparently has little to no tactical ability and adopts a "just kick it about" attitude to football sticks with the players he trusts in terms of footballing ability but the tactical genius (As some call him) chooses the players based on height and strength..who would have thought.

 

[Kingdawson]

Read the interview I put up with him a few pages back when he was at Chelsea. His ideal isn't to be defensive. He even says in that interview that he would never play in a way that waits for the opposition to make mistakes. But with us, it is what he is doing. We are a counter attacking side. But that's why to be where we are even though AVB has basically been forced to be pragmatic and play a style he doesn't really want to is a great thing. He's lost absolute key players, he's lost further important guys to injury, but we are 5th, 3 points of 3rd. That's fantastic, because it means that if we can get in the players in January, we will absolutely fly.

Yes we should be beating Norwich and Wigan at home, and performances particularly at home haven't been great. But he is making the best of what he's been left with. The squad has individual talent, but isn't universally geared to a way of playing. But he is still getting us results, we are still winning, and that's the important thing. I mean, last night we did play some lovely stuff. But he was forced into playing Dawson alongside Gallas, and neither centre back is going to be part of his ideal team next season. Neither is particularly comfortable carrying the ball out of defence. But that's how we were. We were forced into going deep last night by the necessity of winning. Because Liverpool would have got in behind them if we didn't go deeper. Yes it wasn't pretty, it certainly wasn't ideal and AVB knows that, but it's doing what we had to do to win.

Results wise he is doing that but not performance wise. Results wise we're around the right place that our squad talent (including injuries) suggests (about 5th/6th including injuries i would say) but performance wise he's certainly not getting the players to perform as a team. With that group of players we should be putting in much better performances.

 

[braineclipse]

So the manager that apparently has little to no tactical ability and adopts a "just kick it about" attitude to football sticks with the players he trusts in terms of footballing ability but the tactical genius (As some call him) chooses the players based on height and strength..who would have thought.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Results wise he is doing that but not performance wise. Results wise we're around the right place that our squad talent (including injuries) suggests (about 5th/6th including injuries i would say) but performance wise he's certainly not getting the players to perform as a team. With that group of players we should be putting in much better performances.

Agreed, but considering he hasn't got the players he wants to play his desired system he is going down the route of alternating tactics on a game by game basis, and choosing to go for a win in an ugly fashion to secure the points rather than try to play in a way that he doesn't have the players for yet. So all in all, good management. Making the best of what you have. Yes we do have good players, but it's quite unbalanced in terms of being good for a particular style of play.

For the 4-3-3 AVB idealises to work, you need goalscorers in the wide forward positions. Bale can do it, and now it seems Lennon is getting in on the act a little more, so that's good. But he's not exactly ideal and we are better suited to counter attacking on that front. Dempsey and Sig are more suited to playing the patient game in the opponents half rather than the quick game, but we've only set up like that very few times and it hasn't been ideal for them to shine. The 4-3-3 also needs a link man from midfield to attack, ala Modric, Moutinho or Dembele. We had Dembele out and were forced to play Huddlestone and Sandro, neither of whom are capable of doing that. And against Liverpool for example, we were forced to go deep due to the fact that we had Gallas and Dawson at the back, the slowest and oldest of our central defenders. If we had pushed up, Liverpool probably would have scored. So a lot of times we have been forced to do what isn't really ideal in terms of what the manager wants.

He's realised that against weaker teams at home, 4-4-2 is probably the way to go especially if he doesn't have his link man in midfield. So he's shown he can be adaptable. And the fact is we are 5th, we are winning games and getting points. Sometimes that's all that matters when you're forced into unkind situations. We are no where near playing AVB's style of football yet, and he hasn't even tried to implement it other than in sporadic games. But we are where we are and that is fantastic. Rodgers has got good players, he's implementing his style but they are 12th. It could be worse for us.

And it's no use saying the league is weaker, Arsenal and Chelsea have had their worst starts etc. All that means IMO is that the league overall is stronger, the teams further down have more quality. Teams like West Brom, West Ham and even Stoke are showing more. Everton are more consistent in the early part of the season now. So to be where we are, 3 points off 3rd heading into Christmas, with key players returning from injury and a transfer window to really sign the players we need...we really should be happy with our lot IMO.

 

[Kingdawson]

Has he realised 4-42 at home is the way to go though? i'm not 100% sure he has tbh but i do think he will go that way.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Has he realised 4-42 at home is the way to go though? i'm not 100% sure he has tbh but i do think he will go that way.

I think he may have, and I think going for it that way against Maribor soon after the Wigan game was an acknowledgement of that. I think if anything, it would only be a temporary measure until we can get the players we need in January, because after that and indeed against stronger teams, there's nothing wrong with playing the 4-2-3-1 that we do.

Another thing I would say is that yes, we didn't put in a great performance with the ball against Liverpool, but maybe it was the football Gods rewarding us/AVB after hard luck against Emirates Marketing Project and Arsenal, where we put in good preparation and looked to get some good results out of those games but we didn't. Emirates Marketing Project weren't really creating too many clear cut chances against us and Arsenal looked brick scared of us. So we had to hold on a bit against Liverpool, but we won.

Liverpool's performance reminded me of ours at Everton last season, where we did spend a lot of the game in their half but we didn't actually create too much ourselves. Everton made the choice to sit back and I think it was a good point made by a RAWK poster, that we were only sitting back because we were 2 goals up (and we had slow centre backs that almost certainly would have gotten exposed had we pushed up) and so that was how the pattern of the game looked - just like West Ham battering Man United for the final moments in their game. If we were drawing we wouldn't have been sitting back, but I think a decision was made that Liverpool would inevitably pressure us and so it was best to deny them as much space as possible. They didn't have that many chances despite a lot of territory. With a key player in Dembele coming back from 7 weeks out, Adebayor suspended and Kaboul, Caulker and Assou Ekotto's absences forcing us into a makeshift defence, it was an excellent win.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Tricky one to evaluate AVB on yesterday. On one hand, we won a very difficult game against a team that have been proving very difficult to beat lately. The first half performance was very encouraging and good to see. But we were very poor in the second and I thought we were very lucky to win the game in the end.

It's not his fault that Caulker wasn't available and we had to expose Gallas to Suarez. The only alternative would have been playing Naughton at LB and moving Vertonghen into the centre, but after Naughton got absolutely raped by Walcott last time out, I'm not sure I'd have felt comfortable with him against Sterling. It's also not his fault that Adebayor was suspended, leaving Defoe as the only real option up front. But a few other decisions did surprise me.

For starters - bringing Sigurdsson on made no sense. Why did Dempsey come off? He was actually playing well for a change! I've complained about AVB's indecisiveness on almost a weekly basis, so it was good to see him actually realising that something had to be changed, but that was a strange one. Once we lost Dempsey, Defoe was also completely isolated in attack. Yet we kept hoofing the ball in the air up to him, with a complete lack of composure, only for him to be shat on by Liverpool's defence as he's tiny, and to invite more pressure onto us. I personally would have preferred to see Huddlestone come on, with Dembele moving a little further forward, to improve our ball retention and also have a better option in attacking players when we countered. The other thing I thought he could have done was to exploit the fact that Downing didn't have a fudging clue what he was doing and move Bale onto the right-wing.

To be in 5th place and 3 points off third is ok, but it's nothing spectacular. Especially not when you consider that:

1. Chelsea have their lowest points tally at this stage of a season under Abramovic - yes, even worse than last year
2. Arsenal have their lowest points tally at this stage of a season since 1994 - they finished 12th that year.
3. Liverpool have their lowest points tally at this stage of a season since the first Premier League season in 1992. If you apply the three points for a win to old English First Division seasons, Liverpool haven't been worse off at this stage since 1964-65 when they had a record of W4 D3 L7.
4. We are 8 points behind where we were at this stage last season
5. 23 points from 14 games averages out to 62 points over a season - would have had us two places lower last season

I know you can't win every game, but even with the injuries we've had, I still feel our squad could have more points on the board than we have now and be taking more advantage of our rivals slipping up. Certainly, without those dreadful tactical decisions against Norwich, Chelsea and Arsenal, as well as the horror show against Wigan, we could be doing even better.

Get us top four at the end of the season AVB and I'll take my hat off to you. Until then, whilst we still play poor, negative football and you make bizarre tactical mistakes, I won't be impressed.

I think he may have brought Sig on to play on the 'extra motivation' he spoke of when referring to Ade against his former clubs, that there may have been a bit of extra spark there because he'd want to show he made the right decision in turning Liverpool down to come to us. It's fair enough.

In addition to my earlier posts I would also say I think it's clear he's also easing Carroll in more now and so we can hopefully expect to see him especially at home against teams that are likely to sit back. I feel a bit sorry for Livermore who should probably go on loan in January but I'd say the reason he was brought on the other match in which someone was referring to is because AVB likes to have everyone feel involved, and Livermore hadn't seen much action lately. Regardless of him soon leaving (possibly, I don't know) it's good to keep everyone in the squad feeling like they have a part to play and not have any bad apples.

 

[Gazza Dazzla]

Has he realised 4-42 at home is the way to go though? i'm not 100% sure he has tbh but i do think he will go that way.

He's not really had the chance to play it. Ade finally gets himself fit a few weeks ago, plays a couple of games then gets suspended for 3 more ! I think his preferred formation is quite clearly 4-3-3 (or variation of) but he'd be willing to play Ade over Dempsey or the currently woeful Sigurdsson for sure.

 

[Rorschach]

Agreed, but considering he hasn't got the players he wants to play his desired system he is going down the route of alternating tactics on a game by game basis, and choosing to go for a win in an ugly fashion to secure the points rather than try to play in a way that he doesn't have the players for yet. So all in all, good management. Making the best of what you have. Yes we do have good players, but it's quite unbalanced in terms of being good for a particular style of play.

For the 4-3-3 AVB idealises to work, you need goalscorers in the wide forward positions. Bale can do it, and now it seems Lennon is getting in on the act a little more, so that's good. But he's not exactly ideal and we are better suited to counter attacking on that front. Dempsey and Sig are more suited to playing the patient game in the opponents half rather than the quick game, but we've only set up like that very few times and it hasn't been ideal for them to shine. The 4-3-3 also needs a link man from midfield to attack, ala Modric, Moutinho or Dembele. We had Dembele out and were forced to play Huddlestone and Sandro, neither of whom are capable of doing that. And against Liverpool for example, we were forced to go deep due to the fact that we had Gallas and Dawson at the back, the slowest and oldest of our central defenders. If we had pushed up, Liverpool probably would have scored. So a lot of times we have been forced to do what isn't really ideal in terms of what the manager wants.

He's realised that against weaker teams at home, 4-4-2 is probably the way to go especially if he doesn't have his link man in midfield. So he's shown he can be adaptable. And the fact is we are 5th, we are winning games and getting points. Sometimes that's all that matters when you're forced into unkind situations. We are no where near playing AVB's style of football yet, and he hasn't even tried to implement it other than in sporadic games. But we are where we are and that is fantastic. Rodgers has got good players, he's implementing his style but they are 12th. It could be worse for us.

And it's no use saying the league is weaker, Arsenal and Chelsea have had their worst starts etc. All that means IMO is that the league overall is stronger, the teams further down have more quality. Teams like West Brom, West Ham and even Stoke are showing more. Everton are more consistent in the early part of the season now. So to be where we are, 3 points off 3rd heading into Christmas, with key players returning from injury and a transfer window to really sign the players we need...we really should be happy with our lot IMO.

That's a good post.

A lot of what AVB has done tactically has rather been forced upon him through available personal, or lack of. He has not been blameless but he's playing the hand he was dealt. The failure to sign Mountinho has undone his master plan I would guess, or at least delayed it.