• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Next Manager?

StephenH said:
Strangely Upamecano has looked poor since his transfer was agreed. Who would have ‘Adam and eved’ it!
Click to expand...

I like how RB came back. They play with pace and passion and I like it. But let's not pretend they are cultured. It is a system I like but you need the players for it. We don't have that currently.
 
Jurgen the German said:
With all due respect mate, short of providing a Poch bloopers reel of games from up to 5 years ago I am not sure what you are expecting exactly? No manager is infallible. I’m saying that for the majority of Poch’s tenure, we actually had a better squad IMO than Arsenal, United and Liverpool, regardless of resources. Our squad was on a par with Chelsea some years, inferior in some years and superior in others. Are you saying you would have preferred Arsenal’s overpaid squad with the likes of Özil, Wheelchair, Welbeck etc? Or United’s with Sanchez on £500k a week or Pogba who earns ridiculous wages? Our squad was largely better than Liverpool until they signed Van Dijk and Alison. I don’t think we had an inferior squad to United for example when they beat us in the fa cup semi final.
Click to expand...
I think you are missing the point. Our first 11 could compete with any team at its peak. But we didn’t have a deep squad. Whatever you think of players such as Ozil, Sanchez, Pogba, Lukaku etc, they were far more accomplished players than Eriksen, Alli and Dembele. Poch made the team better than the sum of its parts. So Kane was better than lukaku but imagine being able to call on Martial or Sanchez to support or swap with Lukaku. Mata to support Pogba. Chelsea would have similar squad options. More than Poch could call on and crucial in one off games where margins are small.

These teams were not as consistent as Spurs over the season but were more than good enough to beat us in one off games. It certainly wasn’t the case that we clearly had the better squad and were outright favourites when we played them.

So if we look at when we did get through the semis, we then played Chelsea in the final of the carabao cup, with a midfield pivot of Bentaleb and Mason, against a team that went on to finish as Champions. We played Liverpool in the Champions league final we had a midfield pivot of winks and Sissoko. In neither of those games were we favourites and us winning would have been an upset.

We didn’t lose the games because of bottle. We lost because in the end we didn’t have the squad depth or variety to change things at crucial moments in the game.

With regard to Harry, Our squad was as good if not better in his last season than Poch had at his disposal imho. Harry knew how to build a beautifully balanced squad. We had world class players like Van dear vaart, Modric and Bale, and King at the back with talented strikers in Defoe and Adebayor. Sadly as brilliant as he was at building the squad I don’t think he was as good as Poch at using them game by game. I do think that squad could have done better than 4-5-4.
 
Last edited:
Robspur12 said:
I think you are missing the point. Our first 11 could compete with any team at its peak. But we didn’t have a deep squad. Whatever you think of players such as Ozil, Sanchez, Pogba, Lukaku etc, they were far more accomplished players than Eriksen, Alli and Dembele. Poch made the team better than the sum of its parts. So Kane was better than lukaku but imagine being able to call on Martial or Sanchez to support or swap with Lukaku. Mata to support Pogba. Chelsea would have similar squad options. More than Poch could call on and crucial in one off games where margins are small.

These teams were not as consistent as Spurs over the season but were more than good enough to beat us in one off games. It certainly wasn’t the case that we clearly had the better squad and were outright favourites when we played them.

So if we look at when we did get through the semis, we then played Chelsea in the final of the carabao cup, with a midfield pivot of Bentaleb and Mason, against a team that went on to finish as Champions. We played Liverpool in the Champions league final we had a midfield pivot of winks and Sissoko. In neither of those games were we favourites and us winning would have been an upset.

We didn’t lose the games because of bottle. We lost because in the end we didn’t have the squad depth or variety to change things at crucial moments in the game.

With regard to Harry, Our squad was as good if not better in his last season than Poch had at his disposal imho. Harry knew how to build a beautifully balanced squad. We had world class players like Van dear vaart, Modric and Bale, and King at the back with talented strikers in Defoe and Adebayor. Sadly as brilliant as he was at building the squad I don’t think he was as good as Poch at using them game by game. I do think that squad could have done better than 4-5-4.
Click to expand...

I think we will have to leave it there as I don’t believe we dropped points against Arsenal at home with 10 men or lost to Burnley in Poch’s last full season because of a lack of depth, they were about bottle IMO. Or at the very least, a lack of depth AND bottle.
 
Last edited:
Jurgen the German said:
I think we will have to leave it there as I don’t believe we dropped points against Arsenal at home with 10 men or lost to Burnley in Poch’s last full season because of a lack of depth, they were about bottle IMO. Or at the very least, a lack of depth AND bottle.
Click to expand...
People confuse bottle with ability and mental aptitude. It has to be said we aren't signing players with both, those players join Real or Barca and now City and Chelsea. We sign players with talent but if they aren't bought very early on in their cycle they will usually be lacking something that deters the real elite from buying them.

That is why sometimes when the heat has been on the players haven't been able to make the best decisions or find that pass. Under Poch we played as if we had players of the level of a Barcelona or Emirates Marketing Project and we never did but we had the team element synergistically balancing out all of our attributes to seem as so.

When you have a quality borne out of the collective strength it requires every cog in that machine no matter how small to continue to work at its maximum and in this big games and big moments you more so need game breakers more than you need the team. The team is what gets you to the summit but it is usually an individual in the moment that gets you over the hill.

Think of Spain in 2010, a fantastic team yet in the final when push came to shove it was a moment of individual calmness and quality from Iniesta that got them the winner even though he was not a player that regularly scored goals or could even be relied on to score goals (despite his absolute world class quality).

To sum it up it's not bottle that we've lacked but both creative quality and a depth of that quality. I'll repeat again look at any team that has won a league and or CL there will very few that have just a single creative player in their starting line up let alone their squads.
 
Jurgen the German said:
I think we will have to leave it there as I don’t believe we dropped points against Arsenal at home with 10 men or lost to Burnley in Poch’s last full season because of a lack of depth, they were about bottle IMO. Or at the very least, a lack of depth AND bottle.
Click to expand...
It’s not bottle or depth.... it’s just football. We were never as good as Liverpool last season or City the season before that for example where they can go virtually the whole season without a defeat. We had a great manager, a great system and a great collective. In our very best season (the one where Wanyama had come in) we were a bit unlucky to come up against a very good Chelsea team with no European football.
 
Finney Is Back said:
It’s not bottle or depth.... it’s just football. We were never as good as Liverpool last season or City the season before that for example where they can go virtually the whole season without a defeat. We had a great manager, a great system and a great collective. In our very best season (the one where Wanyama had come in) we were a bit unlucky to come up against a very good Chelsea team with no European football.
Click to expand...

Yeah, contrary to the opinion of some I’ve never said our squad was perfect or that it didn’t have holes, no squad in the history of football didn’t have some holes. But I do believe we had a better squad than United, Arsenal, Liverpool for a large part of Poch’s tenure. Chelsea and city had better squads IMO but they didn’t get the best out of them in certain seasons. And I’ve also never said Poch got everything wrong, I actually think he got most things right. However, do I think he got absolutely everything right and have could have things differently in some of the big games? I think he could have been more proactive with subs and not been so against using them until the last 20 mins of games. He’s a huge part of why we finished top 4 so many times and got to the CL. But the failure of the team to get over the line is also in part down to him IMO along with the players and the club as a whole. I didn’t ever expect us to beat teams like United or Liverpool in semis and finals but I just didn’t see any progression in the latter stages of knockout tournaments. Ok early on you could put it down to a lack of experience on the players and Poch’s part but as the years went on we got knocked out of competitions and lost big league games in similar fashion, we weren’t unfortunate to lose this games IMO.
 
first thoughts after a good win is to claim bragging rights on an internet messageboard deary me
 
I've been critical of Jose and I still don't think he's the right man for the job. We've done well over the last two weeks and there are a lot of encouraging signs. But id expect us to take 7-9 points from the last three games. It's good we did it but it proves very little. There are bigger tests to come.
 
Mikey10 said:
First thoughts of a few after some games which could have gone either way was to act like drama queens for a month.

I’m mentioning no names...:D
Click to expand...

I've got one but he's slowly piped up and fully avoiding talking about how Mourinho has got the results and also playing good football. All the while getting players improving.
 
DeanoAustin said:
I've been critical of Jose and I still don't think he's the right man for the job. We've done well over the last two weeks and there are a lot of encouraging signs. But id expect us to take 7-9 points from the last three games. It's good we did it but it proves very little. There are bigger tests to come.
Click to expand...

Somewhat agree, however we could have folded against Fulham and could have done a u turn after their goal today.

The team is playing well and the players Look like they are playing for the manager that's all ask for.

As for Mourinho if he can continue with this selection and tactics of playing on the front foot I think we will do well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back