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OMT * Tottenham Hotspur v Brighton *

This is the key. Wingbacks are so important in the Conte system. Both offered nothing going forward against Brighton. Targeting two top quality wingbacks must be our highest priority in the next window.

It was significant that we carved two chances and neither was taken. Bergwijn’s was a sitter, no arguments, but those will happen. Reggie’s? I am less forgiving. This is a move we work on time and time again, PEH did an excellent job of getting around his man to pull that ball back, yet Reggie again failed to either time his run or slide onto a ball that was a tap in. He continually misses these chances and they are mechanised in the sense that we work on that sort of creation. I think he needs to be dropped for Sess next week. There’s an argument for Sess on the right and Reggie keeps his place, but he HAS to make those chances count.
 
My opinion of Potter went up yesterday. They were set up so well. Didn’t allow us to turn on the ball in the middle of the park, moved as a team and didn’t give Kane an ounce of space to drop deep into. Brilliant stuff. I saw them
win at Anfield last year and they played some smashing football doing it. I don’t buy into some of the hype about Potter but I do think he’s a very good coach. Whether he’ll do well at a big club is open to question. Bigger players, bigger egos, bigger expectations. Crowds, like ours, who want to win and be entertained. But I wouldn’t be against him either. Dyche is a manager who I do respect but will only ever manage in the lower half of the table. Potter has a chance to be a top level coach IMO.

And for those Brighton fans booing them earlier in the season…have a word with yourselves.
Potter only started to do well recently. Imo they've got a better scouting team, individual players fought and won every fifty fifty for them, kept pressing for each other, kept attacking and had the audacity to dribble past an England CB and France goalkeeper for the goal. Its years of the right scouting, even their subs made a difference.

Our players don't have the same mentality. Especially when Kulu and Bentan went off there was no way escaping the fact that we've got a lot of players that don't offer that much more to help this team.
 
curious, Royal actually made a lot of runs and was the spare player yet due to poor execution and/or lack of vision was not found. Again do not want to take anything away from Brighton whose tactics were perfect, their LB pushed up onto Kulu giving him no space, their RB left Son room so couldn’t get in behind while also covering Reggie and Bissouma stayed on Kane all game.

with their RB pushing up, Royal was key and I counted at least 4 times in the first half alone Royal would have been clear but the ball was passed side sides and back rather then into his run. I guess that’s where we rely on Kane’s vision and execution and your point regarding Eriksen is a good one, but can’t blame Royale for that imo he had some very good movement
They pressed our right side hard... Royal, Kulu, Bentancur literally monkeys stuck on their backs throughout.

Here is where a superior centre back can make a difference. With a clearer view of the balance of play when the right side is overwhelmed and forced to retreat, the CB should switch play to the left and make the other team chase the ball.

Unfortunately Dier is like the the Winks of defence and plays the safe, pedestrian sideway passes instead of initiating a long ball to Reggie.

I'm quite sure we will see more recruits at CB and won't be surprised if Romero takes Diers place at CCB.
 
They pressed our right side hard... Royal, Kulu, Bentancur literally monkeys stuck on their backs throughout.

Here is where a superior centre back can make a difference. With a clearer view of the balance of play when the right side is overwhelmed and forced to retreat, the CB should switch play to the left and make the other team chase the ball.

Unfortunately Dier is like the the Winks of defence and plays the safe, pedestrian sideway passes instead of initiating a long ball to Reggie.

I'm quite sure we will see more recruits at CB and won't be surprised if Romero takes Diers place at CCB.

Worth taking a look at this.
He’s not Toby in the ‘ping’ sense, agreed, but he has consistently been much better than given credit for. That being said, no-one was on it yesterday passing-wise, which is why he emerges with the best stats of the game.
Moving Romero to take Dier’s place would be a disaster. He is excellent where he is. The truth is, if we laid down the cash for a player like Bastoni, we’d have an equal on the left of the three in terms of progressive passing and carrying.
Reggie was an enormous problem yesterday. You’re asking Dier to ping 40 yarders to a player who is clearly not making things happen.

I’d like to have seen Antonio take Reggie off with 20 mins to go, bring Son to LWB, shuffle Harry to the left of the three and allow Bergwijn the central striking areas; you suddenly have an option to really test Brighton via the left. Harry and Sonny could swap off as they try to drag Brighton out of shape, and critically would be playing closer together in an area of the pitch where others can profit from space created. If Brighton don’t budge, then Kane finds extra pockets from which to either carry or pass from a deeper position, with Sonny able to get ahead of him. Bergwijn -as Conte said (I never saw it TBH)- is a potential 9. We even saw that yesterday when he missed a sitter at the death; he was in the perfect predatory 9 spot for the chance and IMO should’ve put it on target. FWIW I would not have brought Lucas on before Bergwijn, and even though Kulu was having a bad day.

When you look at that pass map, it actually confirms that when Harry has an off-day, we get hit hard. He clearly needed to drop deeper and try to shorten the lines (congestion not withstanding) but for whatever reason did not.

I think blaming Dier here is confirmation bias on your part.
Probably the most confusing thing about the game is that post-match, Antonio spoke of the need sometimes to just sit on a point and not lose. His subs prior did not fully send that message, furthermore they were odd in so much as they changed nothing other than players. I did not see the sense in subbing Sonny for Bergwijn when looking to win a game, especially with Reggie having been so poor (don’t get me started on his miss)…

 
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They pressed our right side hard... Royal, Kulu, Bentancur literally monkeys stuck on their backs throughout.

Here is where a superior centre back can make a difference. With a clearer view of the balance of play when the right side is overwhelmed and forced to retreat, the CB should switch play to the left and make the other team chase the ball.

Unfortunately Dier is like the the Winks of defence and plays the safe, pedestrian sideway passes instead of initiating a long ball to Reggie.

I'm quite sure we will see more recruits at CB and won't be surprised if Romero takes Diers place at CCB.

I personally thought Dier was hitting a lot of long balls, it seemed like thats all we did
 
Actually I'm not asking Dier to do much more than get into a position where he can switch play quickly. This means he needs to be brave enough to drop back momentarily so that he receives the ball from Romero facing front and has full view of the play ahead so he can put a ball up for Reggie or Son to chase.

Instead Dier looks oblivious to the entire play and opportunities, just concerned about keeping possession not starting attacks.

On the heat map Kane looked deep enough for me. The gap between Kane and the rest of the team is where Potter put a wall of players to stop Kulu and Bentancur from ticking and prevent Kane from getting the ball. Conversely their weak spot is they have many players pressing high.

Reggie and Son are best chasing the ball in front of them, we must find other ways to make the full use of their pace. At the moment I can see how Conte's hands are tied. But we need a CCB more like Toby for Conte's system to work. I'd rather lose Dier than Conte.
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Potter only started to do well recently. Imo they've got a better scouting team, individual players fought and won every fifty fifty for them, kept pressing for each other, kept attacking and had the audacity to dribble past an England CB and France goalkeeper for the goal. Its years of the right scouting, even their subs made a difference.

Our players don't have the same mentality. Especially when Kulu and Bentan went off there was no way escaping the fact that we've got a lot of players that don't offer that much more to help this team.

Agree, once Kulu and Bentan were subbed, it was pretty obvious that the pre January team were unlikely to make a difference. Just needed to sub Cuti for Dav to complete the scene. It really highlights the need for another clear out and fresh talent in the summer. Maybe that was Conte's long-term master plan.
 
I’d like to have seen Antonio take Reggie off with 20 mins to go, bring Son to LWB, shuffle Harry to the left of the three and allow Bergwijn the central striking areas

Or Harry to the right could have been interesting - put him up against 5 foot 8 Cucurella and Bergwijn up against Dunk

Whether its that or 4-3-3, it was disappointing that none of Conte's changes tried to change the balance / pattern of the game. Mainly like-ish for like changes

Then again, in his post-match interviews he said he was content with settling for a point
 
My opinion of Potter went up yesterday. They were set up so well. Didn’t allow us to turn on the ball in the middle of the park, moved as a team and didn’t give Kane an ounce of space to drop deep into. Brilliant stuff. I saw them
win at Anfield last year and they played some smashing football doing it. I don’t buy into some of the hype about Potter but I do think he’s a very good coach. Whether he’ll do well at a big club is open to question. Bigger players, bigger egos, bigger expectations. Crowds, like ours, who want to win and be entertained. But I wouldn’t be against him either. Dyche is a manager who I do respect but will only ever manage in the lower half of the table. Potter has a chance to be a top level coach IMO.

And for those Brighton fans booing them earlier in the season…have a word with yourselves.
Totally agree, they were excellent. Bissouma was superb, gliding past our centre mids like they weren't there. They pressed us constantly and didn't allow us to play out from the back. Granted, we were well off the pace but you could see they had a plan and executed it perfectly.
 
It was significant that we carved two chances and neither was taken. Bergwijn’s was a sitter, no arguments, but those will happen. Reggie’s? I am less forgiving. This is a move we work on time and time again, PEH did an excellent job of getting around his man to pull that ball back, yet Reggie again failed to either time his run or slide onto a ball that was a tap in. He continually misses these chances and they are mechanised in the sense that we work on that sort of creation. I think he needs to be dropped for Sess next week. There’s an argument for Sess on the right and Reggie keeps his place, but he HAS to make those chances count.

Not sure a first time volley dropping over the shoulder is a sitter! Especially having only been on for a matter of minutes
 
They pressed our right side hard... Royal, Kulu, Bentancur literally monkeys stuck on their backs throughout.

Here is where a superior centre back can make a difference. With a clearer view of the balance of play when the right side is overwhelmed and forced to retreat, the CB should switch play to the left and make the other team chase the ball.

Unfortunately Dier is like the the Winks of defence and plays the safe, pedestrian sideway passes instead of initiating a long ball to Reggie.

I'm quite sure we will see more recruits at CB and won't be surprised if Romero takes Diers place at CCB.

My impression was that we played quite a few more long balls down the left rather than the right, at least in the first half. The problem is that Reggie is not a threat going forward (his merits or lack of already been discussed elsewhere). Put it this way would you be worried if he was in the opposing team? I don’t think so.
 
My impression was that we played quite a few more long balls down the left rather than the right, at least in the first half. The problem is that Reggie is not a threat going forward (his merits or lack of already been discussed elsewhere). Put it this way would you be worried if he was in the opposing team? I don’t think so.

I thought Reggie was really good and pacy down the wing when he first arrived. Took me some time to realise that he had very little end product though. But Son with Reggie should work.

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Whether its that or 4-3-3, it was disappointing that none of Conte's changes tried to change the balance / pattern of the game. Mainly like-ish for like changes

Then again, in his post-match interviews he said he was content with settling for a point

Had we earned that point, the narrative today would be so very different. The initial disappointment of dropping two points would have soon changed to satisfaction of gaining a useful point, further opening the gap to a clumsy Arsenal and to maintain a cushion over MancU.
 
Think that may have been his first touch

he’d had one before, it was the first time in the game one of our forwards controlled a vertical and made a pass to a teammate.

the chance was wide of goal from a badly heighted ball, in a moment of panic due to the incompetence of the team over the previous 92 mins
 
he’d had one before, it was the first time in the game one of our forwards controlled a vertical and made a pass to a teammate.

the chance was wide of goal from a badly heighted ball, in a moment of panic due to the incompetence of the team over the previous 92 mins
It was flick on wasn’t it
 
Actually I'm not asking Dier to do much more than get into a position where he can switch play quickly. This means he needs to be brave enough to drop back momentarily so that he receives the ball from Romero facing front and has full view of the play ahead so he can put a ball up for Reggie or Son to chase.

Instead Dier looks oblivious to the entire play and opportunities, just concerned about keeping possession not starting attacks.

On the heat map Kane looked deep enough for me. The gap between Kane and the rest of the team is where Potter put a wall of players to stop Kulu and Bentancur from ticking and prevent Kane from getting the ball. Conversely their weak spot is they have many players pressing high.

Reggie and Son are best chasing the ball in front of them, we must find other ways to make the full use of their pace. At the moment I can see how Conte's hands are tied. But we need a CCB more like Toby for Conte's system to work. I'd rather lose Dier than Conte.
55a1240c8bd7c6d667929f7b5a0bba39.jpg


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We literally are not watching the same game it seems.

And when it comes to that gap in the heat map, that is precisely why I would've been looking to drop Kane deeper into midfield positions with 20 mins to go to test Brighton's
discipline and focus. Go with him and space opens up for Son/Moura and a midfielder. Don't go with him and have the best passer on the pitch able to receive deep and pick passes/runners.
 
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