***Official Match Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool Sat. 20th Dec. 5:30pm***

[thfcsteff]

Because he's being tasked with being our playmaker and thus he makes the dangerous passes. He shouldn't be our sole ball player, that's actually the cause of the issue more so than the actual pass. If you have all of your critical passes coming from a CB these mistakes will happen. This is a deeply structural issue and one that will consistently bite us in the arse.

You can't ask him to play through the lines and expect him to get it right every time, no one can do that and certainly not Romero, his passing isn't that amazing.

100% this. It was an ambitious pass to Muani which was (obviously) poorly executed, but you're on point IMO, he is being tasked as the main playmaker and as such, a massive issue in an of itself. We're back at the 'what we need' versus 'does the manager want what we see we need'...

 

[thfcsteff]

Kudus doesn't have the ability to run at players? He played a great ball to Bergvall in the second half, there were a few breaks with easier passes on for him but instead he went backwards. That's coming from Frank. He should be getting instructions to go forward when we are breaking. It's nothing to do with ability.

THSI!
I'd like someone to explain to me why we didn't play Muani off Richy today? That scouse defence was there for the roughing and taking, indeed, the spaces between FBs and CBs was huge. Yet once again we ask Muani to try and be the hold-up 9, and many times when breaking we simply don't have a pattern/trigger system to release players beyond the ball. The Kudus situation is becoming comical; he clearly can beat his man, maybe two, on half a dozen clear occasions a matchm yet most of these see him having to check and go backwards because we don't have enough forward and Frank instructs him to hold it!!!! Madness.

 

[thfcsteff]

Personally, I thought he was a disgrace for two incidents. First half, Spence created some space and sprints towards their area (think it was when Bradley fell over). He has no one within 10 yards to help him. Muani is jogging up behind him. Unforgivable.

Second half we launched a long one and are desperate for a ball to stick. He didn’t even jump for it.

He can fudge off for all I care and I do think he’s a boy with talent. If you aren’t good enough, fair enough. If you can’t be bothered, that’s a million times worse.

I saw that and did a double-take!!!!
FWIW I thought Spence was really good today, so positive.

 

[tommysvr]

I thought the best thing to come out of the game was that for once it wasn't the Spurs players who were the enemy. The crowd found a bit of that siege mentality when the ref started to do his thing. The red card was the correct decision and it's pretty pathetic to boo van Dijk for being fouled...but at the same time I thought it was great. Better than booing your own players or condescending cheers for Vicario.

Fully expect things to go back to normal pretty soon though, because we are made of teflon.