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*******TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR VS Saudi Sportswashing Machine OMT**********************

I think it's fair to say with City, United and Liverpool all coming up we're potentially in serious trouble.

All the stats are a killer. Most shots on target, least goals bar 2 teams, 7 out of 11 games we've not scored in open play... literally if it wasn't for Hugo Lloris we'd be ****ed.
 
Typical Tottenham. You can take any player or manager out of Tottenham but you can never take Tottenham out of Tottenham, it seems. Traditionally we always feck up whenever we have a chance to move up. And we have done that yet again. Thought losing to West Ham at home was a one-off result but now annoyingly we have lost to Saudi Sportswashing Machine as well. Was looking forward to enjoying another routine win over Saudi Sportswashing Machine but this defeat has really spoiled the mood.

We did play well in the second half and created many chances but we failed to make use of the chances. The annoying thing was we had over 80 minutes to find the equaliser but we just couldn't do it. The Saudi Sportswashing Machine goalie did make many good saves but most of our shots were direct at him. We seem to badly lack a cutting edge to win this kind of matches now. Soldado had 1 good header saved but he should have done better with 2 other headers. Despite his record goals in Europe, Defoe was again a big letdown when he came on. Really disappointed Lamela didn't play at all. Thought this match was the perfect time to start Lamela as he has been in good form in the Cups but it was not to be. It is a pity that the untimely injury to Chiriches prevented us from bringing on Lamela.

I think this match proves we need to make drastic actions in midfield. Our midfield was a big letdown until Sandro came on in the second half. I think AVB should consider dropping Paulinho and Dembele for a few matches as they have been very poor lately. Paulinho did waste a few good scoring chances. Getting really restless with Townsend now. He has started our last 9 league matches but is yet to make any real impact. AVB will do well to drop Townsend and play Lamela in our next match. We cannot be risking our season by playing players who don't make much difference to the team. Thought Eriksen had a decent game but along with Holtby, he should be doing much better to help our attacks. Sigurddson was frustrating to watch again. He doesn't seem to contribute much unless he score goals.

As soon as I saw Friedel was in goal, I knew we were in trouble. He is just too slow to keep a clean sheet nowdays. Felt he should have reacted faster to stop their goal. I think Lloris would have closed the Saudi Sportswashing Machine player fast enough to stop him. Chiriches and Paulinho should take some of the blame for the goal. Chiriches should have been more carefull when passing the ball to Paulinho who should have reacted faster to the ball. It was really annoying to concede a goal as early as that.
Both Kaboul and Vertonghen should have scored from their chances. Was really annoyed when Vertonghen headed the ball onto the bar when it was an open goal. Really don't understand why we cannot score from headers even when we get open chances like that.

This defeat has really affected our progress in the league. I think we can now forget about the league title. When you lose to 2 teams you have a great record at home, you cannot hope to stay in the title race. Fortunately for us, most of our rivals dropped points. But we still have much harder games to play and we might lost out unless we start to play like champions. Hopefully we will be able to bounce back after the international break.
 
Nothing to do with Europa FFS how many players played on Thursday??? FFS hate the excuses being given to this inept management by AVB - he's got two f****ng XIs both good enough to finish in the top 6 - our Europa team on Thursday is better on paper than Southamptons first XI in almost every position!

But they're playing better and are higher in the table!

Emirates Marketing Project bought a lot of new players and are learning a new style. They're struggling away but at least they're smashing teams at home. I'd be more confident of them improving results wise as their general play is better. Whereas if anything our points flatter our general play and we have got wins with dodgy penalties and last minute goals

Be honest, if the situation was reversed and you were a Emirates Marketing Project fan, or we were in Emirates Marketing Project's position, how likely would you be to say, after yet another away defeat to a lower half team, 'Tottenham have brought in a lot of new players and are learning a new style. They are struggling to score goals but at least they are picking up points and above us in the table. I'd be more confident of them improving further as they look so hard to beat at the moment and just need to click into gear.'

Come on, be honest.

Grass always appears to be greener in football. Actually most clubs apparently have these glaring deficiencies that will hold them back from untold glory, even the biggest and most successful ones.
 
Be honest, if the situation was reversed and you were a Emirates Marketing Project fan, or we were in Emirates Marketing Project's position, how likely would you be to say, after yet another away defeat to a lower half team, 'Tottenham have brought in a lot of new players and are learning a new style. They are struggling to score goals but at least they are picking up points and above us in the table. I'd be more confident of them improving further as they look so hard to beat at the moment and just need to click into gear.'

Come on, be honest.

Grass always appears to be greener in football. Actually most clubs apparently have these glaring deficiencies that will hold them back from untold glory, even the biggest and most successful ones.

But City are playing better. Yesterday, they played better than we did. The result was the same, but they looked better, and their results will come. If anything, I think ours will tail off as the results start to match the turgid performances, as refs stop giving us dodgy pens and teams start to work out how to score against our defence.

We struggle against EVERYONE. We don't put any teams to the sword like a decent team should. Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal, Emirates Marketing Project, Liverpool and Southampton have all smashed teams this season already.

We make Sheriff look like a decent team ffs. Wake up and smell the coffee! We're going nowhere fast with AVB. This start reminds me of Santini's start. Santini was another manager that loved a 1-0 win. Low scoring, turgid performances that started off with some good results due to keeping clean sheets, but quickly fell apart before he jumped ship.

Our next run of fixtures is horrendous and we're in terrible form playing wise (not necessarily results wise, but the results are starting to look less than great given our easy start).
 
I must say seeing the highlights on MOTD after having listened to the game on radio I feel a bit better; we really gave it a good go and Saudi Sportswashing Machine were hanging on from about the 50th min. Only me seeing the highlights and the chances created (compared to listening on the radio) gave me the better impression of the chances created.

Still, why can't we do that from the off??!! And why oh why wasn't Lamela introduced instead of Defoe???

Pretty much the same. Came out of the ground fuming, depressed, disgruntled and so on.
Drove home in a mood, posted on here last night still p#ssed off, then saw the highlights on MOTD2, and actually felt a littler better.
Yes, we were still very poor first half, but seeing that 2nd half again, good grief we were unlukcy
 
If you were a Emirates Marketing Project fan, or we were in Emirates Marketing Project's position, how likely would you be to say...'Tottenham have brought in a lot of new players and are learning a new style. They are struggling to score goals but at least they are picking up points and above us in the table. I'd be more confident of them improving further as they look so hard to beat at the moment and just need to click into gear.'
I don't think top 6 sides are that worried about us tbh. I reckon they smell blood and feel we are right for the picking and its a good time to play us. You look at their teams and they have established proven strikers and midfielders. We basically have none.

Look at Samuel Eto. Never played in England before, mostly in Spain, and yet Chelski only signed him for one season. So they must have been confident he wouldn't take an age to learn a 'new style and system and adjust to PL'. How long did it take Torres having arrived from Spain? Michu? Aguero from Atletico?

You are right, we struggle to score goals. Is there a timeframe on this? Its our team, our system,our players, we chose them and we chose to go this route. Other teams made different choices. But we made our own bed and now we are sleeping in it. And, if it comes good at all, its taking time...which we don't have much of.
 
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Pretty much the same. Came out of the ground fuming, depressed, disgruntled and so on.
Drove home in a mood, posted on here last night still p#ssed off, then saw the highlights on MOTD2, and actually felt a littler better.
Yes, we were still very poor first half, but seeing that 2nd half again, good grief we were unlukcy

So is AVB going to sit down with the coaching staff and players and say "ok, how can we reproduce what was probably our best performance of the season attacking/chance creation wise, for 90 minutes every match?" Or is he just going to think "oh we were unlucky, nothing needs to change".

I hope for his sake its the first option, but I have a suspicion that it might be the 2nd, given what little change I saw following the West Ham game.
 
Pretty much the same. Came out of the ground fuming, depressed, disgruntled and so on.
Drove home in a mood, posted on here last night still p#ssed off, then saw the highlights on MOTD2, and actually felt a littler better.
Yes, we were still very poor first half, but seeing that 2nd half again, good grief we were unlukcy

I came out of the game gutted we never got the goals we deserved in that second half - haven't watched the game back yet but it sounds it sounds about right
 
I don't think top 6 sides are that worried about us tbh. I reckon they smell blood and feel we are right for the picking and its a good time to play us. You look at their teams and they have established proven strikers and midfielders. We basically have none.

Look at Samuel Eto. Never played in England before, mostly in Spain, and yet Chelski only signed him for one season. So they must have been confident he wouldn't take an age to learn a 'new style and system and adjust to PL'. How long did it take Torres having arrived from Spain?

You are right, we struggle to score goals. Is there a timeframe on this? Its our team, our players, we chose them and we chose to go this route. Other teams made different choices. But we made our own bed and now we are sleeping in it. And, if it comes good at all, its taking time...which we don't have much of.

Exactly - its a complete myth that 'teams need time to gel' - what crap. Yes, teams need time to "perfect' their game. But as I know for playing sunday league football with a bunch of ringers, that football is such as simple game that if you get a load of players that can play and let them get on with it, they will be able to produce good football.

In one of my previous posts I talked about the loss of Modric, VDV and Bale and how it hurt the team, as when you get a collective of very good players together, to an extent you're always going to get a minimum base-line of performance (i.e. there's only so rubbish these kind of players can play). Our base-line has reduced because the players we now have aren't as good, so need more effort by the coaching staff to get the best out of them. I.e. more tactics and preparation are needed to keep us at the same level of performance as the natural performance level of the players is lower.

The problem is that coaching, tactics and preparation can be too much. As i keep saying, football is a simple, mostly instinctive game. Redknapp to be fair to him understood this, he said football is "90% players, 10% coaching". I disagree with the level of his players to coaching ratio, which is probably where his downfall is. He believes in sticking the XI best players he can get on a pitch and letting them relax and do their stuff. THe problem he has is this method meets a natural ceiling as with a bit more preparation he could get a performance level ABOVE the collective sum of the parts.

AVB is the opposite though. He DRILLS his teams like a Soviet mining operation in Communist russia. You can tell everyone of our players is thinking about what to do everytime they're on the ball, its like ...oh er, i'm in this bit of the pitch, where should everyone else be, where should i pass to... no wonder our build-up play is soooooooo slow. We saw this under Hoddle. The players have to think too much and our play is not instinctive or quick enough.

AVB needs to strike a balance, in drilling the defensive players, but letting the creative players do what the hell they like.

He's stifling the team at the moment and it's really affective our performances attacking-wise.

As some have said, its only when we're a goal-down and AVB's rule-book is thrown out the window in desperation, that we look like a coherent attacking outfit!
 
So is AVB going to sit down with the coaching staff and players and say "ok, how can we reproduce what was probably our best performance of the season attacking/chance creation wise, for 90 minutes every match?" Or is he just going to think "oh we were unlucky, nothing needs to change".

I hope for his sake its the first option, but I have a suspicion that it might be the 2nd, given what little change I saw following the West Ham game.

Well he stated directly in the press conference that the first half wasn't good enough. He's shown clear signs in the past that he tries to fix what isn't working.

Exactly - its a complete myth that 'teams need time to gel' - what crap. Yes, teams need time to "perfect' their game. But as I know for playing sunday league football with a bunch of ringers, that football is such as simple game that if you get a load of players that can play and let them get on with it, they will be able to produce good football.

Have you seen any top manager agreeing with you that teams needing time to gel is crap? Any respected pundit?

I don't think sunday league football with sunday league opposition is directly comparable to top level professional football in that manner myself.
 
Well he stated directly in the press conference that the first half wasn't good enough. He's shown clear signs in the past that he tries to fix what isn't working.



Have you seen any top manager agreeing with you that teams needing time to gel is crap? Any respected pundit?

I don't think sunday league football with sunday league opposition is directly comparable to top level professional football in that manner myself.

Er, have you seen any top manager come out and say teams need time to gel? Even offer it as an excuse for poor results? ******** to pundits. The pundits on TV are GHod-awful cliche driven robots that don't have a clue!

Suarez and Sturridge hit it off the first time they played together. They had a natural chemistry as two good players and their styles complimented each other - they didn't need time to gel.

On the other hand no amount of playing Townsend, Soldado and Sigurdsson together as a front 3 will make them gel because Townsend and Sig will always cut in ANC shoot, if they do happen to cross it will be with their wrong foot or a chipped cross after cutting back, none of which is ideal. Neither look to get in the box to get on the end of stuff so Soldado not only doesn't get service he gets isolated! FFS it's not about time to gel it's about buying players who are good technically with a desire to succeed who fit your system and compliment the other players!!!
 
I came out of the game gutted we never got the goals we deserved in that second half - haven't watched the game back yet but it sounds it sounds about right

I would agree. 1-0 down at HT was probably fair enough, but 1-0 defeat after 90mins certainly wasnt a fair reflection of the game. And 31 shots to 8 backs that up
 
I think it's fair to say with City, United and Liverpool all coming up we're potentially in serious trouble.

All the stats are a killer. Most shots on target, least goals bar 2 teams, 7 out of 11 games we've not scored in open play... literally if it wasn't for Hugo Lloris we'd be ****ed.

Against teams sitting back and making themselves hard to break down. None of the above opponents apart from maybe United will look to do that. I think we will respond with goals...
 
Er, have you seen any top manager come out and say teams need time to gel? Even offer it as an excuse for poor results? ******** to pundits. The pundits on TV are GHod-awful cliche driven robots that don't have a clue!

Suarez and Sturridge hit it off the first time they played together. They had a natural chemistry as two good players and their styles complimented each other - they didn't need time to gel.

On the other hand no amount of playing Townsend, Soldado and Sigurdsson together as a front 3 will make them gel because Townsend and Sig will always cut in ANC shoot, if they do happen to cross it will be with their wrong foot or a chipped cross after cutting back, none of which is ideal. Neither look to get in the box to get on the end of stuff so Soldado not only doesn't get service he gets isolated! FFS it's not about time to gel it's about buying players who are good technically with a desire to succeed who fit your system and compliment the other players!!!

Mourinho has said in several jobs that it's the second season where he thinks his teams start performing at their best.

This is AVB's second season, but we've replaced a large portion of our attacking players. Defensively we don't really need to gel as has been evident, but going forward players coming in from different leagues might need some time I think.

Suarez and Sturridge is one example, I'm sure there are others and some players just seem to click into place. Like Vertonghen did for us last season. But does the fact that this happens with some players mean that it's fair to expect this to happen with all new players? I don't think so. Since you bring up Suarez and Sturridge and since Rodgers gets mentioned on here a lot these days look at some of his other signings. Where is Joe Allen? What happened to Sahin? Is Sakho looking like he's fully adapted? So in the same club, with the same manager, as your example of someone adapting very quickly there are others that need time (or failed).

I think your expectations are unfair if you thin that teams needing time to gel is just a crap opinion.
 
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Mourinho has said in several jobs that it's the second season where he thinks his teams start performing at their best.

This is AVB's second season, but we've replaced a large portion of our attacking players. Defensively we don't really need to gel as has been evident, but going forward players coming in from different leagues might need some time I think.

Suarez and Sturridge is one example, I'm sure there are others and some players just seem to click into place. Like Vertonghen did for us last season. But does the fact that this happens with some players mean that it's fair to expect this to happen with all new players? I don't think so. Since you bring up Suarez and Sturridge and since Rodgers gets mentioned on here a lot these days look at some of his other signings. Where is Joe Allen? What happened to Sahin? Is Sakho looking like he's fully adapted? So in the same club, with the same manager, as your example of someone adapting very quickly there are others that need time (or failed).

I think your expectations are unfair if you thin that teams needing time to gel is just a crap opinion.

No there's a difference between being the wrong player, to needing time to gel. Allen didn't need time to gel, he was just s***. Same with Sahin. Wrong player for this league, not going to make it in the Premiership as a top player in a million years.

Sakho I feel will probably not live up to his billing. There's a reason PSG wanted rid, you know.

My point is that players either fit the team and system and therefore slot in pretty much straight away and start performing. Yes, of course they will get even more comfortable and therefore better, but they don't look like useless lumps of lard from the off, like Soldado has.

No manner of "waiting" for Soldado to perform in the current system will work. The current system needs changed or Soldado needs to be written off as an expensive mistake and we can all move on with our lives.

If we persist with the current system, using the current attacking personnel, in my opinion it WON'T get better, becausee A) there are no signs of it getting better and B) it just doesn't work and doesn't look like it will ever work.
 
No there's a difference between being the wrong player, to needing time to gel. Allen didn't need time to gel, he was just s***. Same with Sahin. Wrong player for this league, not going to make it in the Premiership as a top player in a million years.

Sakho I feel will probably not live up to his billing. There's a reason PSG wanted rid, you know.

My point is that players either fit the team and system and therefore slot in pretty much straight away and start performing. Yes, of course they will get even more comfortable and therefore better, but they don't look like useless lumps of lard from the off, like Soldado has.

No manner of "waiting" for Soldado to perform in the current system will work. The current system needs changed or Soldado needs to be written off as an expensive mistake and we can all move on with our lives.

If we persist with the current system, using the current attacking personnel, in my opinion it WON'T get better, becausee A) there are no signs of it getting better and B) it just doesn't work and doesn't look like it will ever work.

Easiest examples ever, but how about Evra and Vidic?

Slightly less obvious examples perhaps, but how about Modric or Kaboul? How about Fletcher at United? Or how about Ramsey? Or Coloccini?
 
Easiest examples ever, but how about Evra and Vidic?

Slightly less obvious examples perhaps, but how about Modric or Kaboul? How about Fletcher at United? Or how about Ramsey? Or Coloccini?

Mulletperm said in the other thread that apart from wanting AVB out, NWND's other points were valid. This 'players are either good straight away or rubbish' point alongside the 'football is easy, let the attacking players play' garb shows that right up.
 
I've just realised that braineclipse and brainoflevy are two different posters; why can't you upload an avatar to make it easier to remember you and your thoughts so people can remember what you stand for, you lazy, naughty, naughty boys.
 
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