*Official Match Thread* Tottenham Hotspur vs Norwich

[Gilzeantoscore]

For the record, I was not a "Harry" man last season, but I cannot see why we got his guy in. It is such a cliche in football, you know, new manager comes in, perfectly good players shipped out, good ones brought in and a different system played. What about a bit of continuity? There was nothing wrong with the system last season, so why change it? All that was needed was a tweak to the squad, we did not need anything radical done to the 'system.'

 

[Pirate55]

I don't like losing and I loved having having Arry as manager. However this guy has been bought in to do a job and at the moment it isn't happening. I am sure if the results don't change in the next month Levy will be having a word in his ear and explaining that things need to turn around or otherwise he is out.

What a lot on here are saying is that the team is OK on paper but in their opinion the players aren't playing in the right position or formation. Well we can all be armchair pundits and "player managers" but when it comes to the crunch this guy has won stuff in Portugal (OK you may think it is a poor league) and he was employed by a successful club(Chelsea), so why not give him a dozen games and decide from there just before the January window. If he is doing crap then we bring in a new manager and let him spend the transfer kitty.

The thing that really gets me is all the people that are having a go at him would be silent if we had won the last three.

Theirin lies the rub. a soft pen at Saudi Sportswashing Machine, and two late late equalisers against us shows how close we were to two wins and a draw. The performances havent been great but we had lots of those last season too. We (still) arent having much luck.

 

[nayimfromthehalfwayline]

I will support him, and believe he does need time. But am not going to ignore what he did last season, and some of the decisions he made today. Ones which the previous manager would have been destroyed for.

Just so I understand this.

You will support him

You will also pick faults at him for what he did before he even came to us

And you will try to set up comparisons to the prior manager to stir up ill feeling

That right?

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

I don't like losing and I loved having having Arry as manager. However this guy has been bought in to do a job and at the moment it isn't happening. I am sure if the results don't change in the next month Levy will be having a word in his ear and explaining that things need to turn around or otherwise he is out.

What a lot on here are saying is that the team is OK on paper but in their opinion the players aren't playing in the right position or formation. Well we can all be armchair pundits and "player managers" but when it comes to the crunch this guy has won stuff in Portugal (OK you may think it is a poor league) and he was employed by a successful club(Chelsea), so why not give him a dozen games and decide from there just before the January window. If he is doing crap then we bring in a new manager and let him spend the transfer kitty.

The thing that really gets me is all the people that are having a go at him would be silent if we had won the last three.

No brick! Unless we had three one nil wins where all the goals were the the result of rebounds off Bale's arse you would assume we won because we were playing well. If we play well, I dont give a brick who the manager is.

 

[Pirate55]

For the record, I was not a "Harry" man last season, but I cannot see why we got his guy in. It is such a cliche in football, you know, new manager comes in, perfectly good players shipped out, good ones brought in and a different system played. What about a bit of continuity? There was nothing wrong with the system last season, so why change it? All that was needed was a tweak to the squad, we did not need anything radical done to the 'system.'

I am sorry but to all those that thought just "a tweek" was necessary. It wasnt. Harry's legacy to the team was toxic. We had a brick last half of the season. We lost three key players (Modric, VDV and King) we had only one recognised striker (Defoe) who wanted to leave under Harry. Wholesale changes were going to be required whoever was in charge.

Those that loved Harry (and I didnt) dont forget the team under him was on a real down swing at the end of last season.

 

[marcospur2]

Just so I understand this.

You will support him

You will also pick faults at him for what he did before he even came to us

And you will try to set up comparisons to the prior manager to stir up ill feeling

That right?

You do not need to understand anything. Yes I will support him, I believe he needs time but that he is not immune from questioning, not least becasue elements of what we saw today relate to what he did in the past. Hence it relates to how much confidence people might have in him. Your last point is not about ill feeling but more about you and your positon. So take it as you want.

 

[Daisuk]

I know, I know, Livermore a homegrown player and all, but fudge me, he's got little to offer. Can't believe we took off Sandro to keep him on - what the hell was AVB thinking? Livermore was utter brick today, at least Sandro did something in the first half. We're really, really going to miss Van Der Vaart and Modric. I sure as fudge hope Dembele doesn't get injured, then we're screwed.

 

[Cal_Yido]

Just got back, we were awful today, players look so disinterested its a joke. Main observation is how slow our tempo is. Last season particularly at home, we started off fast and dominated teams with the tempo we set, whilst today its slower passing tippy tappy sideways really slow with no penetration.

The other observation, which I am quite surprised no-one else has mentioned was our full backs. I love BAE and Walker, but i brought this up last week, although Walker had a slightly slightly better game today, BAE was again very poor. After about 70 minutes he almost seemed to lose his head! The amount of times the pair of them get caught out of position is a joke, its usual stuff, when one full back goes, the other stays. Numerous times today, they both go, then when long ball is played, they are chasing back after their men. Walker in particular is lucky he is so quick because that gets him out of trouble nearly all the time.

On a final note, the boo boys can fudge off to be honest. Get behind our team, we're in transition, there have been lots of changes, yes we were poor today, and yes i was frustrated sitting there watching it, but booing at half time and full time isn't exactly going to help. Instead everyone sat in silence

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

I am sorry but to all those that thought just "a tweek" was necessary. It wasnt. Harry's legacy to the team was toxic. We had a brick last half of the season. We lost three key players (Modric, VDV and King) we had only one recognised striker (Defoe) who wanted to leave under Harry. Wholesale changes were going to be required whoever was in charge.

Those that loved Harry (and I didnt) dont forget the team under him was on a real down swing at the end of last season.

Not arguing with the part concerning Harry mate, as I said earlier I held no brief for him. King was always going and he has been replaced. VDV did not need to be sold, but has been replaced. Modric has not been replaced, but was always leaving We also have a new keeper. What was really required was a top class striker to give ADE some competition. I would have preferred to play the same sytem as last season.

 

[Mulletperm]

I am sorry but to all those that thought just "a tweek" was necessary. It wasnt. Harry's legacy to the team was toxic. We had a brick last half of the season. We lost three key players (Modric, VDV and King) we had only one recognised striker (Defoe) who wanted to leave under Harry. Wholesale changes were going to be required whoever was in charge.

Those that loved Harry (and I didnt) dont forget the team under him was on a real down swing at the end of last season.

Yes the back end of last season was desperately disappointing. But to say Harry's legacy to the team was 'toxic' is insane.

We played some of the best football I've seen us play in a long, long time.
He was our most succesful manger EVER in terms of PPG.
Got us into the Champions League
Put Spurs back into the limelight as a 'top 4' club enabling us to attract bigger name player

People have such fudging short memories.

 

[GLENROYID]

----- Parker --- Modric
Lennon --- VDV--- Bale

...sigh

 

[joey55]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I have a little different view of it all. I think the players you mention are to develop and exploit their strengths in a more stable way to play as a team. Playing with high pressure is efektivt against both the good and bad teams, to ensure that it becomes a fast pace, then skill will be the deciding factor in a game like that favored the better team. I hope Spurs will be the better team in most games we play and have a greater skill than the opponents. But for all the teams, there must be some smart players that can read what is happening at the moment and adapt to it, do they exist in today's Spurs?

Ps: And do not worry if I understand you or not, I hav enough years at university to follow your reasoning )

My honest opinion is that the idea that we weren't already a stable, tactically effective unit comes purely from reading message boards and not fair assessment of what happened on the pitch last season. I'm not a fan of tactics in general. Or rather I think they are far more straight forward and easy to recognize than fans make out. I think this is actually beyond debate, but no matter what happens in terms of results, many fans will still fight for the idea of a tactical genius. To my mind tactics are simply playing in a way that best exploits are qualities and restricts theirs.

So when I look at our best players qualities, I want us open and playing quickly from deep positions. I wont forget the way we beat Arsenal, Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project in the run in of 2009/10 by absorbing their pressure and hitting them with Bale's runs. We did the same against Inter. I watched us blow away loads of teams with our width and pace last season. I loved our lightening fast end to end style and it's definitely the best way to play with the players we have. Watching Bale charge past Villa's right side, with Lennon charging down the left to receive and cut back for VDV to slot home, was simply magnificent and sums up what is best about us.

 

[Cal_Yido]

Re: Bad substitution two weeks in a row

The criticism of Hudd is laughable! Thats first piece of Premiership football he's had in ages, he had one shot and a very harsh sending off! I personally thought JD didn't have a great game today and was actually thinking AVB would take him off instead of Sig

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

My honest opinion is that the idea that we weren't already a stable, tactically effective unit comes purely from reading message boards and not fair assessment of what happened on the pitch last season. I'm not a fan of tactics in general. Or rather I think they are far more straight forward and easy to recognize than fans make out. I think this is actually beyond debate, but no matter what happens in terms of results, many fans will still fight for the idea of a tactical genius. To my mind tactics are simply playing in a way that best exploits are qualities and restricts theirs.

So when I look at our best players qualities, I want us open and playing quickly from deep positions. I wont forget the way we beat Arsenal, Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project in the run in of 2009/10 by absorbing their pressure and hitting them with Bale's runs. We did the same against Inter. I watched us blow away loads of teams with our width and pace last season. I loved our lightening fast end to end style and it's definitely the best way to play with the players we have. Watching Bale charge past Villa's right side, with Lennon charging down the left to receive and cut back for VDV to slot home, was simply magnificent and sums up what is best about us.

Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mumorn]

Watching the game I thought Friedel was class and kept us in the game. His save from the header in the first half was really good, couldn't do nothing about the goal, don't think even Lloris would have saved that even though I'm sure some of you would believe he should have saved it, caught it, did a rolie polie and booted upfield to score our second goal.

Our defence really isn't that good, I don't know if its because we are missing King (even at his worst last year we didn't look this bad at the back). I don't know if it's some defensive issue AVB is pursuing with our team, I just don't know but they need to sort it out because a team like City or Man Utd or even Chelsea would absolutely tear it apart.

Dembele and Sandro need to start our next game. I don't know what AVB's infatuation is with Livermore but it needs to stop. I sort of wish it was Livermore getting sent off today just so we don't have to endure him the next game. As for Hudd's sending off, he really didn't look bothered coming on, didn't really look like he wanted to be out there playing and didn't care that he was sent off, oh well, you go in two footed it's going to happen, defend him all you like, if Howson went in on Hudd like that and got a yellow you'd all be fudging going for the refs head.

Defoe needs a rest, and by rest I mean he needs to be dropped. He offers nothing but constant moaning if someone doesn't pass to him. I don't think he's hit the target since the Saudi Sportswashing Machine game and that was lucky itself. Adebayor needs to start the next game with Sigurdsson or even Dempsey off of him for GHod sake, it's getting embarrassing now.

Come on Spurs, sort it out.

 

[joey55]

I am sorry but to all those that thought just "a tweek" was necessary. It wasnt. Harry's legacy to the team was toxic. We had a brick last half of the season. We lost three key players (Modric, VDV and King) we had only one recognised striker (Defoe) who wanted to leave under Harry. Wholesale changes were going to be required whoever was in charge.

Those that loved Harry (and I didnt) dont forget the team under him was on a real down swing at the end of last season.

Or up swing, depending on who you want to look at it. We took 10 points from our last 12!

 

[colin fishwick]

Re: Bad substitution two weeks in a row

The criticism of Hudd is laughable! Thats first piece of Premiership football he's had in ages, he had one shot and a very harsh sending off! I personally thought JD didn't have a great game today and was actually thinking AVB would take him off instead of Sig

Not actually blaming Hudd, this was not the time to bring him back, after months off with a very bad injury, has we been 3 up, then no problem.

He did it last week with Jenas, JD was not having a great game, but none of our front 6 were, he got an assist and was plaing quite well when he was taken off.

We did not have anyone good enough on the bench to replace him with. AVB should have just left it as it was, as he should have last week. Surely Defoe woulòd have done better than Hudd and Jenas last week.

Could he have done worse ? It backfired last week, would you expect AVB to do it next week in the same circumstances?

 

[diego_maradona]

Re: Bad substitution two weeks in a row

i thought the huddlestone sub made a lot of sense actually.

 

[Jordinho]

Re: Bad substitution two weeks in a row

All the subs made sense today, apart from Sandro going off and not Livermore.

 

[DubaiSpur]

Re: Bad substitution two weeks in a row

Hudd was supposed to help us keep possession. It would have worked, were it not for a West Brom goal and an over-zealous ref. Sigh. It was a good substitution in theory.