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*** OMT Tottenham Hotspur v AFC Bournemouth ***

Really disappointing performance, could have easily been 3 or 4 nil. Easy to forget Frank has just got here. Felt like the game was played exactly how Bournemouth wanted it to be played. Oh and can we sign Semenyo please?! Frank should have taken Porro off at HT and put him out of his misery. The bloke (Semenyo) is twice Porro’s height and much faster than him.
 
Really disappointing performance, could have easily been 3 or 4 nil. Easy to forget Frank has just got here. Felt like the game was played exactly how Bournemouth wanted it to be played. Oh and can we sign Semenyo please?! Frank should have taken Porro off at HT and put him out of his misery. The bloke (Semenyo) is twice Porro’s height and much faster than him.
It highlighted AGAIN what I have been banging on about for ages. Porro is a massive weak spot in our team. As if you have a game where he is being consistently got at, it is game over. He isn't a defender. As a wing-back or winger = yes, ok, i can get on board with him being in the team. As a full back? Not good enough for the Premier League. Not by a loooooooong way. A good defender can defend against someone bigger and faster than they are. It requires positioning, timing and a bit of nouse. Porro has none of that. He is a liability against an aggressive high pressure team like that. He should only play full back against a low block.
 
It highlighted AGAIN what I have been banging on about for ages. Porro is a massive weak spot in our team. As if you have a game where he is being consistently got at, it is game over. He isn't a defender. As a wing-back or winger = yes, ok, i can get on board with him being in the team. As a full back? Not good enough for the Premier League. Not by a loooooooong way. A good defender can defend against someone bigger and faster than they are. It requires positioning, timing and a bit of nouse. Porro has none of that. He is a liability against an aggressive high pressure team like that. He should only play full back against a low block.

Spence is much better 1 on 1. Maybe Frank didn’t think Udogie could play more than 45 mins. I like Porro but he does have some glaring weaknesses I.e. pace and height, he can’t do much about either but any winger with real pace is going to cause Porro problems.
 
Spence is much better 1 on 1. Maybe Frank didn’t think Udogie could play more than 45 mins. I like Porro but he does have some glaring weaknesses I.e. pace and height, he can’t do much about either but any winger with real pace is going to cause Porro problems.
He has never played defence in his career. As I've said you can defend against pace and height if you don't have any, if you're a good defender and you've been having to do it your whole career in training. Porro is a winger/wing-back that was signed for Conte's system. Ange converted him to an inverted full-back. In his and this system he's an obvious route to target to get at us. Spence right and Udogie left is the route we should go down.
 
I think it was a bit of both (it sadly feels inevitable now that there will be boos when we lose, unless it's a valiant defeat).
The boos were certainly very loud as the officials were walking off the pitch, so I think in most part it was directed at them.

The ref was poor. Still not sure how Semenyo didn’t get a second yellow. Knew he was going to bottle it by his body language. That said it was an equally poor performance. Hopefully it might spur the club (excuse the pun) into action to sign another striker and winger.
 
The ref was poor. Still not sure how Semenyo didn’t get a second yellow. Knew he was going to bottle it by his body language. That said it was an equally poor performance. Hopefully it might spur the club (excuse the pun) into action to sign another striker and winger.
They should have rung Bournemouth up straight after the game and asked how much they wanted for Semenyo and offered a bottle of Porro's tears as an add-on.
 
We were second best throughout the entire game and I think it has to be said that Bournemouth are very good at what they do. Also, given their style of play, they probably peak in the first part of the season, before injuries and fatigue take their toll on the players.

Now, having said that, it's clear that we didn't have the passing ability, the technique, the strength nor the vision to go around their press. Even more disappointing, we often couldn't even go through their first line of defense.

Also, I'm not sure why we insisted on playing in tight spaces which, in my opinion, made their game that much easier. Bar for Vicario and Bergvall, nobody deserves any praise but Johnson was particularly terrible in the first half, which made our insistence to play down the left hand side even more puzzling.

The referee didn't help either but, quite frankly, even if he had been biased in our favour, I don't think the result would have been any different. At times, we looked like a team desperately trying not to score. We killed our own momentum on a few occasions too. If you can't beat the opposition one on one and you keep playing it slow and safe, that's what you get.

It shows there's still much work to be done. Hopefully, we'll get better as time goes on and we won't face teams of Bournemouth's quality every week but that was a really poor performance.
 
In a way he ran into similar problems that Ange did, imo for similar reasons. Too many players that aren't good at progressing the ball under pressure. Makes a game against a very good pressing side a pain.

The players available that could have made a difference in that regard, Odobert, Bergvall, Gray. All very young. Tough game. Can understand not starting them, but as you say in hindsight... Probably wouldn't have been much worse at least.

I do also think perhaps there are ways to change that game with the players on the pitch, but very early days and we're probably still in the getting the basics right of playing under Frank.
It does make you wonder if there's a tactic that makes you the top pressing team in a game.

If you think about it, City probably felt exactly the same as we did yesterday.

Ironically it's probably purposely giving the ball back to the opposition. So firstly hit those balls over the top/down the channels. They have a hope of being successful but if not...activate the rabid press.
 
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Get a technical creative 10 in there to get the ball into the space between the lines to then feed Johnson in a game like that and he's a real threat imo.

But him receiving the ball under pressure facing the wrong way just isn't going to bring any joy. This was the case against Burnley and City too, but we had other ways of creating as a team.
The issue is even with a Simons he's not always going to receive the ball in nice and clean situations. You're imaging some sort of perfect football scenario where Simon's is able to release him into acres of space every single time, that's just not going to happen. There are always going to be times he receives it under pressure or is immediately pressured and he is going to need to be able to keep the ball far better in those situations.

On your other point I agree Palhinha and Bentancur were also poor but they did win tackles occasionally, they did sometimes beat the press and every time they passed it forward to Richy or Johnson it was basically lost immediately. Again Simons alone won't fix that and you're just setting yourself up for disappointment if you think he will.

The fix is to get players with better care of the ball on the pitch. Simons and Kudus are progress in that regard but the rest of the front 4 also need some possession ability otherwise we will have more games like this. And I expect other teams to look at yesterday's result as a blueprint as how to combat us. It's down to Frank now to find a solution.
 
I’m more concerned with how many times we let them run untracked into our box. That caused us so many issues, including the goal.
This goes back to my point that our defenders just aren't very good. In the opening few games I was thinking "well maybe having better protection from the midfield has improved them. Unfortunately, yesterday simply illustrated that neither Romero nor VDV are very good positionally or 1 v 1. They're very individualistic in their decision making - i.e. they don't look at where others are and what they are doing before making a decision they just do their own thing. Only Davies in the squad is a natural full-back, the rest are all converted wing-backs bought for Conte and even without Ange's open tactics and with a proper DM our defence still hot carved open almost at will.
 
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Hes learning how it is to be a Spurs supporter 😂 worst thing about the game is that we did not get a goal. But it was a great day and we are soon of to the stadium tour.
It's all part of the journey... my first game was a 0-1 loss to Emirates Marketing Project in 1991 and it was an awful game, don't think Lineker touched the ball lol But, it made the future victorious all the more sweeter.

A special time though, loved taking my daughter for her first match. In her case Ndombele scored against Aston Villa, she then was disappointed he was so terrible ever since. So there are downsides to having it too good in there first game :)
 
Felt to me that every time we went to Kudus he had 2 men on him and they stopped him with whatever way they could
That should have been an opportunity for us if we switched play quicker but we just didn’t
It was very turgid
 
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