Got back from the Lane

[Robspur12]

The main reason we lost today was not AVB's tactics! I think the anti AVB phalanx are just looking for things to want him to fail. We made 3 major defensive mistakes. 2 by Gallas and one from Walker. Put this together with the brilliance of Mata in particular and chelsea have just got a better squad at the moment I did have a feeling beforehand that this was game we were going to lose. What I did notice is we have no one able to thread a through ball so most of our threats come via crosses (thought Lennon was fantastic today) which, when we are missing bale, generally means they are only coming from one side and are more easy to defend. We need a "Santi Cazorla/Juan Mata" type play maker to give us a threat through the middle of the park. By the way thought Defoe played well but Ade was annoying me with his ambling around the pitch. Hope he hasn't lost his motivation now he has a permanent contract. Never seems to settle for long.

 

[metalgear]

i saw this on tv too.
we were outclassed but did well to get ahead. what a shock considering that we weren't at full strength.
we'll beat them with dembele, bale, BAE and Lloris back, and Ade fit!

 

[spasm]

The main reason we lost today was not AVB's tactics! I think the anti AVB phalanx are just looking for things to want him to fail. We made 3 major defensive mistakes. 2 by Gallas and one from Walker. Put this together with the brilliance of Mata in particular and chelsea have just got a better squad at the moment I did have a feeling beforehand that this was game we were going to lose. What I did notice is we have no one able to thread a through ball so most of our threats come via crosses (thought Lennon was fantastic today) which, when we are missing bale, generally means they are only coming from one side and are more easy to defend. We need a "Santi Cazorla/Juan Mata" type play maker to give us a threat through the middle of the park. By the way thought Defoe played well but Ade was annoying me with his ambling around the pitch. Hope he hasn't lost his motivation now he has a permanent contract. Never seems to settle for long.

you are right. it was a good effort by spurs given the gulf in class exacerbated by the absence of Bale & Dembele. .i posted in the OMT that we had Dempsey & they had Mata..& in return was asked to elaborate on what i thought was a simple enough point to work out without the need for an accompanying dissertation. are some of us that clueless??

 

[metalgear]

don't let it bother you. theres a gulf in optimism/pessimism here that tends to colour posts - especially on and immediately after matchdays!

 

[Park Lane James]

Very true this...

is the champions of europe the only song they have now, tinpot tossers

tbf, they sang more songs than us yesterday

 

[SUIYHA]

23 reasons

Shows how much attention he paid to Dempsey last season tbh.

No...it shows that the only attention you paid was the few articles you read about him when we signed him that said he started games on the left wing.

Dempsey did start a number of games for Fulham on the left last season, but he was hardly a left winger for them. He drifted into the middle and would regularly swap positions with Dembele, Ruiz, Duff and Johnson. It made him very difficult to mark and as a result he ended up popping up unnoticed to finish off chances regularly for Fulham. But to say he scored 23 goals from the left wing is completely wrong. If you were to draw a heat map of his average position over the season it would probably look like a deep-lying forward slightly to the left of centre.

Now that's not to say a player in this position can't be effective, but it takes tactical training for the entire team and it wasn't what the players were used to. For the last couple of years, Spurs have played with fast outlets the wing. In a game against Chelsea, you will expect the opposition to have a lot of the ball in your half, you need players who can counter-attack quickly and Dempsey is not one of those. I don't think he's a bad player but we can't put him on the left wing in the same formation we've been playing before and expect similar results.

 

[jts1882]

.... If you were to draw a heat map of his average position over the season it would probably look like a deep-lying forward slightly to the left of centre.

A roving inside left, perhaps.

Its funny how we ignore the old positional names when they describe a player quite effectively. Inside forwards played in a variety of ways, as secondary wingers or secondary strikers, as an extra midfielder or playmaker. Its was a versatile position and fits quite well with modern players who move about more. The main difference is that in the past the inside forward would tend towards one of the roles, becoming the second striker or #10 or attacking midfielder, whereas now they vary it in the game more.

The other term which needs bringing back is the half back which seems to fit the 4-2-3-1 perfectly, with the three becoming the quarterback line. It seems particular apt with the Chelsea trio of Hazard, Oscar and Mata.

 

[Spursalot]

No...it shows that the only attention you paid was the few articles you read about him when we signed him that said he started games on the left wing.

Dempsey did start a number of games for Fulham on the left last season, but he was hardly a left winger for them. He drifted into the middle and would regularly swap positions with Dembele, Ruiz, Duff and Johnson. It made him very difficult to mark and as a result he ended up popping up unnoticed to finish off chances regularly for Fulham. But to say he scored 23 goals from the left wing is completely wrong. If you were to draw a heat map of his average position over the season it would probably look like a deep-lying forward slightly to the left of centre.

Now that's not to say a player in this position can't be effective, but it takes tactical training for the entire team and it wasn't what the players were used to. For the last couple of years, Spurs have played with fast outlets the wing. In a game against Chelsea, you will expect the opposition to have a lot of the ball in your half, you need players who can counter-attack quickly and Dempsey is not one of those. I don't think he's a bad player but we can't put him on the left wing in the same formation we've been playing before and expect similar results.

He played on the left but cut inside to the middle.

That's like not playing on the left at all!

ens sarcasm.

 

[SUIYHA]

If you can't see the difference between a player who stays on the left hand side and a player who spends as much, if not more time, in the centre of the pitch than he does on the left, then there's no point continuing this conversation.

It's not the end of the world to have a player that drifts inwards, but when your left-back is actually a centre-back it means that we really struggle down the left. No coincidence that most of our best attacking play yesterday came from the right.