Modric who?

[HobokenSpur]

There I said it. Football is a team game. 11 on 11. While talented do we really think we were better off 3 months ago. Vertonghen, Gylfi, dembele, Dempsey. Strength throughout. Mental resilience and can do attitude. Avb is the catalyst in a way that Harry could never be.

 

[InOffMeLeftShin]

We haven't really seen the best of the new side yet. We've seen good possession, incisive play and good movement but not really all at the same time. I think once it all comes together we're going to be pretty special as a side.

 

[Legacy]

We still have Lloris, Kaboul and Adebayor to come back into the side yet, too.

 

[mattdefoe]

and parker

 

[jonnyp]

There I said it. Football is a team game. 11 on 11. While talented do we really think we were better off 3 months ago. Vertonghen, Gylfi, dembele, Dempsey. Strength throughout. Mental resilience and can do attitude. Avb is the catalyst in a way that Harry could never be.

I just don't get posts like this. Did you even see the second half against United? We were terribly lucky. We had a good team and spirit under Redknapp too. What would you say about the 3-2 win at Emirates under Harry then?

And we have been abysmal at home so far too, far from playing as a team.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

Luka Modric - a supremely talented footballer, who recently signed for one of the worlds biggest clubs.

That's who.

 

[ajspurs]

We're going in the right direction, but lets not disregard the fact that Modric was a great player for us.

Also, I'm glad to see we're improving but let's not forget that our home performances have been pretty damn poor.

 

[Harry_Snatch]

and parker

To come back from a lengthy injury at his age and displace somebody playing as well as Sandro would be one hell of a feat. Sure He gives us another tactical option if we want to play Dembele further up but I doubt he will affect the regular starting 11 as much as Lloris, Adebayor and Kaboul.
I reckon we will sign a midfielder in January though. Sadly not Moutinho but somebody similar for less.

 

[nicdic]

I just don't get posts like this. Did you even see the second half against United? We were terribly lucky. We had a good team and spirit under Redknapp too. What would you say about the 3-2 win at Emirates under Harry then?

And we have been abysmal at home so far too, far from playing as a team.

I remember when Harry took a Spurs team to OT and was 2-0 up at half time and we lost 5-2. I also remember us doing something similar at the Emirates last season.

 

[whitelightwhiteheat]

There were good times and bad times under Harry. But that's water under the bridge now, innit? We need to leave that shit there and concentrate on the here and now, which is pretty good as things stand.

Onwards and upwards!

 

[Yid-ol]

So this should be Harry who? not Modric.

We still miss Modric and VDV, though i do agree i feel our team is now playing more like a team for 11 instead of 9 or 10 at times.

 

[Riandor]

I'm with Spurs_Bear on this.

Modric is a big loss and if we still had him here he would be starting every game and helping us to retain possession even better than we are now.

I am impressed that we are doing as well as we are without him tbh and I do agree that as a team we are playing pretty well.

I also believe that this AVB better than Harry or vice versa stance is all crap. None of us can judge until much later on into the season and possibly only once a full season has been completed and quite frankly, probably a 2nd one too. Harry did some great things, those should not be forgotten. Whether you felt we underachieved or not, we still got 4th twice and a great run in the CL. Were mistakes made, you betcha, but one thing that was said was true, for a verrrrry long time we have not had it this good.

Credit were it is bloody due and can we stop with the looking over our past with disdain, because it reeks of pettiness. Like a previous girlfriend who deep down you know was great, but you're saying she was rubbish to make yourself feel better.

I know there are those on here who never liked HR, but I for one praise his efforts. I also praise DL for making what I felt was the right call at a difficult time, I felt it was time to move on and I am excited at our set-up. BUT that does not mean I cannot recognise what was achieved.

There are things regarding Modric and HR I liked less, of course, but I consider myself above all that in the end and simply thank them for their time and efforts at the club and wish them success. (I would say the same about Berbatov, though I draw the line at Sol... yes even I have my limits!)

So can we not simply agree that we are happy enough that Modric and Harry are gone because of what was going on, but also remember the good times? Is that so hard?

Look to the future, but don't be so quick to dismiss the good stuff because it got a little sour.

 

[jonnyp]

I remember when Harry took a Spurs team to OT and was 2-0 up at half time and we lost 5-2. I also remember us doing something similar at the Emirates last season.

And? It could so easily have been 5-3 to United at full time or even worse on Saturday and you know that if you saw the match. The ironic thing is that I was one of the few who were optimistic about gaining something from the game against United, because we look better away when we have more room (at home we lack the creativity when the away team is defensive). I was viewed as optimistic by people on here. But the reason we won was because United had a bad first half, we had a good one and utilised the space afforded to us, the referee for once made decisions that went our way - on most other trips they'd have at least two penalties and RvP would bury his chance 9 out of 10 times and we'd have lost. So I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Because we were lucky this time means Harry was shit in creating a team and AVB is a god at it? Is that the level of argumentation we are at now?

And the time under Redknapp when we were up 2-0 at Old Trafford, we looked good for it up until 60 minutes until the referee gave United a shocking penalty call. It was a horrendous decision, truly laughable and after that United and the home fans got a huge boost and we imploded - much like what transpired in the second half on Saturday but we held on this time by hard work and much luck.


Were we not lucky against United? Did we not win 3-2 at Emirates after trailing 2-0 under Redknapp? If there was one thing under Redknapp that was usually praised it was the team spirit - we were known as the comeback kings in our CL season because we won so many points after first conceding. Must've been a terrible team and spirit in that side.

Are people actually trying to revise history and say we weren't playing as a team under Harry with Modric and VdV? How on earth did we manage 4th - 5th and 4th place if that was the case?


Do people really think we're much better off without Modric?

Have we not been playing badly at home so far this season?

Is this the twilight zone or something?

I don't get the need to try and shit on everything Harry ever did and hail AVB as some sort of Messiah after winning at Old Trafford. I didn't hail Redknapp as a demi-god and thought we'd win the league after we won at the Emirates. I praised the team though. What is the agenda, and what purpose does it serve other than belittle our most succesful manager since I started supporting Tottenham and put needless pressure on our new manager, who's already under enough pressure as it is.

This post is not to praise Redknapp or to slate AVB, I just don't understand why we just can't stay level-headed for one second around here, try and analyse objectively without hyperboling the crap out of everything.

 

[jonnyp]

I'm with Spurs_Bear on this.

Modric is a big loss and if we still had him here he would be starting every game and helping us to retain possession even better than we are now.

I am impressed that we are doing as well as we are without him tbh and I do agree that as a team we are playing pretty well.

I also believe that this AVB better than Harry or vice versa stance is all crap. None of us can judge until much later on into the season and possibly only once a full season has been completed and quite frankly, probably a 2nd one too. Harry did some great things, those should not be forgotten. Whether you felt we underachieved or not, we still got 4th twice and a great run in the CL. Were mistakes made, you betcha, but one thing that was said was true, for a verrrrry long time we have not had it this good.

Credit were it is bloody due and can we stop with the looking over our past with disdain, because it reeks of pettiness. Like a previous girlfriend who deep down you know was great, but you're saying she was rubbish to make yourself feel better.

I know there are those on here who never liked HR, but I for one praise his efforts. I also praise DL for making what I felt was the right call at a difficult time, I felt it was time to move on and I am excited at our set-up. BUT that does not mean I cannot recognise what was achieved.

There are things regarding Modric and HR I liked less, of course, but I consider myself above all that in the end and simply thank them for their time and efforts at the club and wish them success. (I would say the same about Berbatov, though I draw the line at Sol... yes even I have my limits!)

So can we not simply agree that we are happy enough that Modric and Harry are gone because of what was going on, but also remember the good times? Is that so hard?

Look to the future, but don't be so quick to dismiss the good stuff because it got a little sour.

Totally agree mate.

 

[InOffMeLeftShin]

And? It could so easily have been 5-3 to United at full time or even worse on Saturday and you know that if you saw the match. The ironic thing is that I was one of the few who were optimistic about gaining something from the game against United, because we look better away when we have more room (at home we lack the creativity when the away team is defensive). I was viewed as optimistic by people on here. But the reason we won was because United had a bad first half, we had a good one and utilised the space afforded to us, the referee for once made decisions that went our way - on most other trips they'd have at least two penalties and RvP would bury his chance 9 out of 10 times and we'd have lost. So I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Because we were lucky this time means Harry was shit in creating a team and AVB is a god at it? Is that the level of argumentation we are at now?

United are guilty of exactly the same thing in this case. Even with players like Rooney, Van Persie, Wellbeck, Hernandez, Nani, Scholes etc. they still didn't create many chances considering all of the possession they had. Just as AVB has praised our second half all be it in a different way to praising our first half, United should be criticised for their poor second half (yes it was poor, the movement was good enough, the creativity and incisiveness wasn't there and they should be embarrassed at how few times they made Friedel do anything) as well as their poor first half. In both cases they were poor because of us, rather than inspite of us, first half we out-played them and attacked positively against areas of their side which are undoubtedly weak. Second half we backed way off (which clearly made our play worse) but cut out areas for United to play into, won almost everything in the air and reduced them to shots outside of the box. In the 40 minutes after Kagawa scored they created one real chance of note, which was the Van Persie shot. Defoe misses chances like that most weeks, does that mean our opposition are always lucky?

Sorry I think you are giving United too much credit and discounting our efforts slightly. I think we deserved the win, we scored 3 at Old Trafford and reduced them to very few real chances.

Not sure what it has to do with Harry though, I think that was simply a chance to have a pot shot at him.

 

[jonnyp]

Sorry I think you are giving United too much credit and discounting our efforts slightly. I think we deserved the win, we scored 3 at Old Trafford and reduced them to very few real chances.

Not sure what it has to do with Harry though, I think that was simply a chance to have a pot shot at him.

I'm not saying we didn't deserve it mate, nor did I intend to discount our efforts. I said we worked hard for it. But there's no question that we were lucky, especially with the refereeing decisions (long overdue of course). That doesn't mean I think we didn't deserve it, I just meant to say it could easily have been a very different result and comparing it to the time under Redknapp when we lost 5-2 after being up 2-0 is very silly.

I think you nailed with the last sentence. Some people have a pretty sad agenda, and I don't understand the point of it.

 

[idontgetit]

We might be a better team. We would be a fucking amazing team however if we still had Modric and VDV. Imagine having Sandro Dembele and Modric in the middle of park

 

[Ionman34]

I'm not saying we didn't deserve it mate, nor did I intend to discount our efforts. I said we worked hard for it. But there's no question that we were lucky, especially with the refereeing decisions (long overdue of course). That doesn't mean I think we didn't deserve it, I just meant to say it could easily have been a very different result and comparing it to the time under Redknapp when we lost 5-2 after being up 2-0 is very silly.

I think you nailed with the last sentence. Some people have a pretty sad agenda, and I don't understand the point of it.

I think there's a bit of a skewed perspective here. In the 'What do we expect from Utd?' thread, all bar a small handful expected us to play well but get screwed by bad reffing. In other words Utd get lucky once again. They have hammered us in the past but also been very lucky with some extremely dubious decisions, and that is without even considering the Mendes goal. I seem to remember some dodgy ones in the 5-3 too.

The fact of the matter is that we made our own luck by restricting their chances to a handful. Had they finished them all they'd have scored 5 or 6, but who finishes every chance they get? Additionally, had we finished every chance we had we'd still have won.

The difference was the ref didn't give it to them. None of their penalty appeals were dead cert bankers, even the Verts one was run of the mill jostling. Yes I've seen them given but I've seen a play on call far more often.

We deserved the win regardless of the second half performance. It was a backs to the wall, gutsy, resilient performance that showed we are more than just a 'flair' team.

 

[chiversandgilzean]

I think we'd be a much much stronger side with Modric and VDV and without Sigurdsson and Dempsey. Dembele and Vertonghen are superb buys, the others are fine, but they are no Modric or VDV.

It was too early to bury AVB and it is too early to give him messianic powers. This is a medium-to-long term project for want of a better word and I think we will need to be patient whether a game goes wrong or right or like Saturday right and wrong in the same 90 mins.

I think Harry did very well at Spurs but had run his course and that AVB may well be the right man and I was content with how things were progressing before Saturday evening. At HT I was thinking we'd come on a bomb, at FT I felt we still have a great deal to work on. Though I accept we did hold out and were strong, if riding our luck somewhat in the second half.

 

[Lo Amo Speroni]

I think we'd be a much much stronger side with Modric and VDV and without Sigurdsson and Dempsey. Dembele and Vertonghen are superb buys, the others are fine, but they are no Modric or VDV.

It was too early to bury AVB and it is too early to give him messianic powers. This is a medium-to-long term project for want of a better word and I think we will need to be patient whether a game goes wrong or right or like Saturday right and wrong in the same 90 mins.

I think Harry did very well at Spurs but had run his course and that AVB may well be the right man and I was content with how things were progressing before Saturday evening. At HT I was thinking we'd come on a bomb, at FT I felt we still have a great deal to work on. Though I accept we did hold out and were strong, if riding our luck somewhat in the second half.

Um, not so much VDV in my opinion. Great player with a good goal scoring record but he lacked the pace and energy levels required to play to a style that AVB would like.

Modric with Dembele would have been awsome but Modric ain't coming back and neither is VDV. The poster who referred to us looking more of a team has hit the nail on the head in my view, it is clearly less about individuals and this in itself will make us stronger.

Yes we miss Modric's abilities but not so much him as an individual.