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*** OMT Tottenham Hotspur v Crystal Palace FC ***

If the only thing left to play for is a European cup, do you show all your cards in the league, or do you keep them close to your chest and save them for the cup?
You play your team into form so that they are ready to perform to their best when that final arrives. Just losing game after game cancelled not helping the momentum and mentality of the players. Their confidence is not going to be at its peak possibilities with loss after loss after loss.
 
Is Ange disregarding the league or is it the case that he cannot get the players motivated?

Since we dropped out of the 2 domestic cups, we have had 12 league games and 6 EL games. So that "second string" have had twice as many games playing together as the so called first team. Even then, the league teams are stacked with 1st team players and the drop off between a first team and seconds string player is minimal. The exception is VDV to Davies.

I'm also wondering why Palace who have a cup final 6 days after their game with us made 2 changes, 1 enforced. They crossed the white line with a totally professional attitude and executed the game plan. Clearly, their manager hasn't got a mentality where he allows his players to take their foot off the throttle. Reminds me of Pep when City did the treble. No chance he was making 8 changes. No chance any of his players didn't buy in to his system or were unable to execute it. Pep didn't need to be a spin doctor either when things weren't going so well.
 
You play your team into form so that they are ready to perform to their best when that final arrives. Just losing game after game cancelled not helping the momentum and mentality of the players. Their confidence is not going to be at its peak possibilities with loss after loss after loss.
The players that played yesterday won't be playing in the cup final, at least not starting. We lost 5-1 at Liverpool four days before we beat Bode Glimt at home. We lost 4-2 at Wolves four days before we beat Frankfurt away. We have been playing completely different teams in the league and has had zero impact on our first eleven in Europe....
 
Is Ange disregarding the league or is it the case that he cannot get the players motivated?

Since we dropped out of the 2 domestic cups, we have had 12 league games and 6 EL games. So that "second string" have had twice as many games playing together as the so called first team. Even then, the league teams are stacked with 1st team players and the drop off between a first team and seconds string player is minimal. The exception is VDV to Davies.

I'm also wondering why Palace who have a cup final 6 days after their game with us made 2 changes, 1 enforced. They crossed the white line with a totally professional attitude and executed the game plan. Clearly, their manager hasn't got a mentality where he allows his players to take their foot off the throttle. Reminds me of Pep when City did the treble. No chance he was making 8 changes. No chance any of his players didn't buy in to his system or were unable to execute it. Pep didn't need to be a spin doctor either when things weren't going so well.
Did Palace have a game Thursday night then? Pretty obvious why we made 8 changes, we had a big game in Norway - what on earth did you think we was going to do....
 
Only just saw MOTD2, wow we looked a shambles.....my worry (amongst other things) is you can't turn form off and on like a light switch, we looked so uncoached it was unreal...but then we have looked that way for a long time.

Did anyone see Man Utd's highlights? Did they look worse than us?
 
Did Palace have a game Thursday night then? Pretty obvious why we made 8 changes, we had a big game in Norway - what on earth did you think we was going to do....

I don’t have any issue with resting players, but I’d still expect the team that goes out there to be better prepared and more organised. If we win the Europa League then we will be ecstatic, but there’s almost an acceptance that we’re going to lose most league games and turn in poor performances which I just can’t get behind. Almost like a “what did you expect?” kind of attitude.
 
I don’t have any issue with resting players, but I’d still expect the team that goes out there to be better prepared and more organised. If we win the Europa League then we will be ecstatic, but there’s almost an acceptance that we’re going to lose most league games and turn in poor performances which I just can’t get behind. Almost like a “what did you expect?” kind of attitude.
Agreed. Not bothered about people complaining about the performance, but posters questioning why Palace didn't rest players when they have an upcoming final too are completely missing the point. Our squad got back Friday and had one training session together, Palace had a whole week to prepare....
 
The players that played yesterday won't be playing in the cup final, at least not starting. We lost 5-1 at Liverpool four days before we beat Bode Glimt at home. We lost 4-2 at Wolves four days before we beat Frankfurt away. We have been playing completely different teams in the league and has had zero impact on our first eleven in Europe....
Let's put out our strongest team in the league, win a few, but pick up some injuries, finish 13th at best, and play our only chance of silverware with fatigue/injuries. That would make everyone much happier. How the fudge these departs have the audacity to question the clubs decision making beggars belief.
 
Is Ange disregarding the league or is it the case that he cannot get the players motivated?

Since we dropped out of the 2 domestic cups, we have had 12 league games and 6 EL games. So that "second string" have had twice as many games playing together as the so called first team. Even then, the league teams are stacked with 1st team players and the drop off between a first team and seconds string player is minimal. The exception is VDV to Davies.

I'm also wondering why Palace who have a cup final 6 days after their game with us made 2 changes, 1 enforced. They crossed the white line with a totally professional attitude and executed the game plan. Clearly, their manager hasn't got a mentality where he allows his players to take their foot off the throttle. Reminds me of Pep when City did the treble. No chance he was making 8 changes. No chance any of his players didn't buy in to his system or were unable to execute it. Pep didn't need to be a spin doctor either when things weren't going so well.
Yeah I don't buy the narrative that's he's given up on the league, he just doesn't know how to make it work. When we have played more defensively in the cup games we've made far fewer chances and I'd argue that he's aware of this and is leveraging the risky setup for the gain offensively. Given that he has always played this way, maybe it's more a case of him being unable to coach in any other way rather than being unwilling?

I've even begun to think that the quarter and semi tactical setups are more down to the players unilaterally deciding to be more cautious due to what is at stake rather than Ange actually coaching that approach. As you would otherwise think that if you're going to implement a fairly significant adjusted system that you would use it in the intervening games to guarantee it's familairty?
 
The players that played yesterday won't be playing in the cup final, at least not starting. We lost 5-1 at Liverpool four days before we beat Bode Glimt at home. We lost 4-2 at Wolves four days before we beat Frankfurt away. We have been playing completely different teams in the league and has had zero impact on our first eleven in Europe....
I do get that, I'm just thinking that if someone gets injured you'd rather have your entire squad in the ball and ready to perform to their best rather than just the select 11. It's a bit of a risky approach especially given how many absences we've consistently had throughout the season.
 
Only just saw MOTD2, wow we looked a shambles.....my worry (amongst other things) is you can't turn form off and on like a light switch, we looked so uncoached it was unreal...but then we have looked that way for a long time.

Did anyone see Man Utd's highlights? Did they look worse than us?
Not seen highlights but heard from some of their fans that they were horrible.
They are worried that Yoro is out of the final as he went off injured and Amorim was cagey afterwards - will probably hear more today.
 
Only just saw MOTD2, wow we looked a shambles.....my worry (amongst other things) is you can't turn form off and on like a light switch, we looked so uncoached it was unreal...but then we have looked that way for a long time.

Did anyone see Man Utd's highlights? Did they look worse than us?
They were horrendous
West Ham rocked to with 2 attackers and United didn’t know what to do
 
I do get that, I'm just thinking that if someone gets injured you'd rather have your entire squad in the ball and ready to perform to their best rather than just the select 11. It's a bit of a risky approach especially given how many absences we've consistently had throughout the season.
Ange had already mentioned after the Bode game he will want to give players minutes leading up to the final, but there were going to be a load of changes for the Palace game understandably. My guess is the vast majority of first team players will get 45 minutes or more against Villa....
 
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