OOMT - Tottenham Hotspur V Boro

[Hashegotthesackyet?]

There were a couple of moments in the 2nd half when i thought Tim Sherwood had set the team up, fortunately we held out.
Great attacking, just need to be even more clinical.. Dele

 

[Bedfordspurs]

another great result

 

[Kandi1977]

Oh is that why!

can't we swap for thier Traore lad?

That guy who could run quite fast, but couldn't make one single pass to a team mate? I'd pass on that!

 

[StephenH]

That guy who could run quite fast, but couldn't make one single pass to a team mate? I'd pass on that!

I was joking - but bloody furious with Sissoko's lack of work rate and then there was the goal!.......I know, give him time....gritted teeth

 

[Kandi1977]

I was joking - but bloody furious with Sissoko's lack of work rate and then there was the goal!.......I know, give him time....gritted teeth

I've seen quite few replays of the goal, and Sissoko was heavily pushed down. Should have been awarded a free kick. Was never gonna be given though, by the bloke from the blind people's association, that somehow had been appointed to referee the game.

 

[Baleforce]

I thought the Gibson goal was a foul too

 

[StephenH]

I've seen quite few replays of the goal, and Sissoko was heavily pushed down. Should have been awarded a free kick. Was never gonna be given though, by the bloke from the blind people's association, that somehow had been appointed to referee the game.

Sissoko stooped to head the ball and the ref was never going to disallow that goal.
Should have had two pen but they were both a little soft.

I'm not a blame the ref supporter it's like blaming the weather, totally pointless, it just is!

 

[Robspur12]

I don't agree with the comments that we are playing brick. Our chance creation has been very good but our chance conversion has been poor. Surely anyone can see we should have had won by a far greater margin against Sunderland and Boro. I hope as the season progresses our chance conversion rate will improve. We also struggle still with high balls into the box . None of our current defenders are dominant in the air. Maybe this is something we need to address in the next transfer window.

 

[parklane1]

another great result

Bang on, i have just read through the thread and i can not believe some of the moans, we were by far the better team and the only thing that let us down was not being clinical enough ( again). We were all over them for the first 60 mins and if we could have finished off the GOOD chances ( Ali take note) and got the bang on penalty the game would have been over at half time.

The only time we looked in any danger was between the 60th and 75 minute when they made a few changes, Traoe ( spl) caused us a few problems at first with his direct running but we regrouped and ended the game on top again. Lloris made one save in the whole match and we have some fans saying we were meh . And i see some are at it again writing off a player ( Sissiko) who has played only a handful of minutes.

Madness.

I spoke to a few Boro supporters after the game and they said we could/should have won by large margin.

 

[Baleforce]

my wife's family are all Boro fans, their feeling is they were outclassed and the result flattered them

 

[thfcsteff]

Bang on, i have just read through the thread and i can not believe some of the moans, we were by far the better team and the only thing that let us down was not being clinical enough ( again). We were all over them for the first 60 mins and if we could have finished off the GOOD chances ( Ali take note) and got the bang on penalty the game would have been over at half time.

The only time we looked in any danger was between the 60th and 75 minute when they made a few changes, Traoe ( spl) caused us a few problems at first with his direct running but we regrouped and ended the game on top again. Lloris made one save in the whole match and we have some fans saying we were meh . And i see some are at it again writing off a player ( Sissiko) who has played only a handful of minutes.

Madness.

I spoke to a few Boro supporters after the game and they said we could/should have won by large margin.

Could not agree more.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Good game. Was worried that we wasted a lot of chances. Sissoko does look slow but he did provide some moments. Alli worried me in this game - made a series of selfish Hollywood decisions. Glad we got the three points. That Traore kid that came on for Boro looked deadly - powerful, fast and driven.

He was rubbish. Zero end product. He excited the crowd in the way that Jose Dominguez would excite the Spurs crowd, but the end result was the same with Traore as it was with Dominguez - a poor option taken, an overhit pass/cross, or a wayward shot.

I am surprised to read a few slightly negative opinions on this thread. I thought we executed a pretty much textbook (superb) away appearance. We completely dominated the home team for pretty much the entire first 45, they could barely get out of their own half. We created a number of chances and had loads of good possession around their penalty area.

It is unlikely that a team could ever keep up that sort of pressing for an entire match and with a 2 goal lead at around 60 minutes, we dropped off a little and played on the counter. Yes Boro got a goal from a set piece (from just about their first chance) but I think that amounted to half of their entire efforts on goal. They had one other chance that you could describe as anywhere close to 'reasonable' (a header from about 12 yards out from which Rhodes would score on about 1 in 10 occasions.

While we were restricting the home team to just about nothing, we had numerous opportunities where we could've put the game to bed.

IMO the only thing that wasn't hugely impressive about our performance on Saturday was the score. We played some fantastic football and completely nullified the opposition in what is traditionally quite a hard place to get a win. It was easily an 8 out of 10 performance from Spurs I'd say and IMO it was better than the Stoke performance.

We are improving week on week I think and we have new players in our squad (Janssen, Sissoko, Wanyama and Nkoudou) that I think offer us much better alternatives for squad rotation and sustained good performances compared to the last season.

 

[StephenH]

Bang on, i have just read through the thread and i can not believe some of the moans, we were by far the better team and the only thing that let us down was not being clinical enough ( again). We were all over them for the first 60 mins and if we could have finished off the GOOD chances ( Ali take note) and got the bang on penalty the game would have been over at half time.

The only time we looked in any danger was between the 60th and 75 minute when they made a few changes, Traoe ( spl) caused us a few problems at first with his direct running but we regrouped and ended the game on top again. Lloris made one save in the whole match and we have some fans saying we were meh . And i see some are at it again writing off a player ( Sissiko) who has played only a handful of minutes.

Madness.

I spoke to a few Boro supporters after the game and they said we could/should have won by large margin.

"we could/should have won by large margin."
Spot on yet again.

What it boils down to is ones personal expectations of Spurs 2016.
Are we we a side that belongs up there with City or are we just visiting?
We can pat the new players on the head for good effort or look for an end product?
IMHO Sissoko in particular tinkled me off, he is an experienced premier league and international player, I expect more.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Just back from the Boro. Gonna read what looks like the surprisingly short OMT in a min.

First up. Heads up to both sets of fans, cracking atmosphere for MOST of the match. Got a little tense at the end
Second. Well done Son, You have turned it round in my eyes. For me he just got himself 3 league MOTMs on the bounce.

But Jeeeeesus, do we make things hard. After what I thought was the most impressive first halves I have seen us play for donkeys (how we werent 4-0 up I will never know), we ended up timewasting to hang on for a win. What happened to us immediately after the hour mark I just dont know. Maybe it was their subs, but we seemed to go to mush.

Hey, at the end of the day we saw it out and that is something, and we sit 2nd. Still a little concerned over Janssen's finishing, cant fault him off the ball though

Hi mate - I was there too.... agree that it was a brilliant atmosphere. Also agree with our first half performance - was as good as I have seen for a long while.

Unlike you though I don't think we went to mush. Boro had a little spell (as any team will in any game). During that spell they still created pretty much nothing, while we still looked dangerous on the break. We then weathered that little spell and controlled the game again for the last 10 minutes or so. The little spell that Boro had came about because they scored with just about their first chance of the game (and even that was from a set piece).

While we were (sensibly) wasting time at the end, I would argue that any team with a 1 goal lead will do this when in the last 5 minutes of a game. It looked to me like we could've played for another 30 minutes and the only team that scored would've been us.

 

[Finney Is Back]

No one and that was the problem.
Well it wasn't an issue in the first half when Boro couldn't deal with 5 attackers and two full backs bombing on constantly.
But when Adama came on in the second half and it was 3 versus one in midfield. He kept picking it up deep and coasting past everyone like Dembele.
Poch's solution was for the full backs to stay back and we ended up with a terrible disjointed formation with 5 defensive players and 5 attacking players. Our attacks were now all narrow with little wide support.

I didn't think it was a problem in the second half either.... Boro barely had the ball in our half and we looked far more likely to score throughout the game than they did. Our problem wasn't that we had nobody there to win the ball off of Traore, it was simply that Traore dribbled past those players. You could put it down poor tackling on our part or good dribbling on his part (probably a bit of both).

 

[Finney Is Back]

I was joking - but bloody furious with Sissoko's lack of work rate and then there was the goal!.......I know, give him time....gritted teeth

I didn't notice any lack of workrate from Sissoko. It seemed to me that he was always willing to track back and get goal side. I thought it was a stark contrast to watching Chadli play the same role and choose to regularly ignore his opposing fullback's forways forward.

 

[Finney Is Back]

"we could/should have won by large margin."
Spot on yet again.

What it boils down to is ones personal expectations of Spurs 2016.
Are we we a side that belongs up there with City or are we just visiting?
We can pat the new players on the head for good effort or look for an end product?
IMHO Sissoko in particular tinkleed me off, he is an experienced premier league and international player, I expect more.

The fact that we could/should've won by a large margin just shows that it was clearly a very good away performance. As I pointed out in a thread last week - I think that you are guilty of assuming that not scoring as many goals as we should/could must be down to a poor performance from the team. When the team is performing very well at the moment.

 

[StephenH]

The fact that we could/should've won by a large margin just shows that it was clearly a very good away performance. As I pointed out in a thread last week - I think that you are guilty of assuming that not scoring as many goals as we should/could must be down to a poor performance from the team. When the team is performing very well at the moment.

The "team" as group were great for large parts of Saturday! Trouble is I now expect it from Spurs 2016. They have all raised the bar and for that I'm delighted. I want and I believe they are now good enough for our expectation to be raised also.
We put ourselves under pressure in the last 20 minutes Saturday due to our profligacy in front and around their goal earlier and then "mush" descended.

 

[Finney Is Back]

The "team" as group were great for large parts of Saturday! Trouble is I now expect it from Spurs 2016. They have all raised the bar and for that I'm delighted. I want and I believe they are now good enough for our expectation to be raised also.
We put ourselves under pressure in the last 20 minutes Saturday due to our profligacy in front and around their goal earlier and then "mush" descended.

Except there was no "mush". We were comfortable, in control, not conceding chances and creating them ourselves. If we play like that in the closing 20 minutes of every game that we are leading by a goal we will win pretty much all of them (and a fair few by a bigger margin than 1 goal). I was at the game and not nervous at all. Boro barely even had a corner or set piece with which to test us in that time.

It's fair enough to have raised expectations. However I don't believe it is fair to expect perfection. We were as good as I think any of us could realistically hope for at the weekend. Yes we should've scored more, but I would be far more concerned if we weren't creating chances. I actually like the Expected Goals For/Against statistics. I would imagine we are currently rated pretty high on XGF and pretty low on XGA.... Carry that on throughout the season and we will do very well.

 

[StephenH]

I didn't notice any lack of workrate from Sissoko. It seemed to me that he was always willing to track back and get goal side. I thought it was a stark contrast to watching Chadli play the same role and choose to regularly ignore his opposing fullback's forways forward.

Ill have to watch it again re Sissoko tracking back, I can remember. Yes I'm on his case (the poor thing) because I want to see a big upturn from the 'normal' Saudi Sportswashing Machine version, I want to version we played against and the one that played for France. I agree re Chaldi and he has paid the price by being sent the football equivalent of hades.