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Match Threads Spurs vs Burnley - Match Thread

Match Prediction

  • Spurs to win - Clean Sheet

    Votes: 26 20.5%
  • Spurs to win - No Clean sheet

    Votes: 71 55.9%
  • Spurs to Lose

    Votes: 9 7.1%
  • Score Draw

    Votes: 18 14.2%
  • Goalless Draw

    Votes: 3 2.4%

  • Total voters
    127
  • Poll closed .

Everlasting Seconds

Well-Known Member
Jan 9, 2014
14,914
26,616
It’s weird isn’t it, and I can imagine the agents must play a part.

You also have so many different cultural backgrounds, and of course regular close proximity in the changing rooms. Plus without meaning to generalise too much, footballers usually aren’t the smartest bunch.

What surprises me is the lack of former players coming out.
You are on to something about the IQ comment. If we look at past rumours, players have been identified as "potentially gay" for reasons such as reading books, being interested in art or having any hobby that isn't playing FIFA or whatever they do. Picture thinking about coming out, and then you see a married team mate being ridiculed as "probably gay" because he knows how to find the entrance to the national gallery. That doesn't shout "it's safe to be who you are".
 

fishhhandaricecake

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2018
18,702
46,941
I don't speak for all fans.

That said I feel a common theme that most don't really care if we play some defensive football and win shit.

We're in a winning mood and not terribly bothered if the football isn't going to be eye ball popping amazing for a bit. So long as we are finally getting some trophies I don't really care.

Plus as you say Mourinho ball has never been as bad as people would try to make out.
Spot on lad
 

Spurger King

can't smile without glue
Jul 22, 2008
43,881
95,147
You are on to something about the IQ comment. If we look at past rumours, players have been identified as "potentially gay" for reasons such as reading books, being interested in art or having any hobby that isn't playing FIFA or whatever they do. Picture thinking about coming out, and then you see a married team mate being ridiculed as "probably gay" because he knows how to find the entrance to the national gallery. That doesn't shout "it's safe to be who you are".

Yep, that’s exactly what I meant. I’m not blaming the players. It’s just the nature of the existing culture in football. Players aren’t getting a proper education or mixing with a diverse group of people because they’re too busy becoming professional footballers. I really can’t imagine that a football club would be a comfortable environment to announce that you were gay, sadly.

Of course another factor could simply be that the existing culture in football discourages gay players from pursuing a career in the sport, and therefore the true figures might just be very small.
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
18,106
45,030
Some thoughts about the match itself.

The midfield worked, in part, because Sissoko repeatedly did what I mentioned before kickoff, which was to run the ball forward 20-25m. This substituted for the missing vertical passes from Winks or Eriksen, as a way to connect the ball in defence to our attacking quartet. It's what Dembélé used to do, during the period when people would insist that he "only passes sideways", without noting that he was passing sideways from a position 20m forward from where he had collected the ball.

In Dele's first season, the long, raking, precise aerial passes from Alderweireld were a lethal feature of our attack. They created goals and won matches. Crucially, they also created variation, thus making it impossible for teams to assume that we would always build slowly from the back. Then he stopped doing them. Why? Was he told to stop? From the moment Mourinho arrived, he has started doing them again, 5-6 times a match at least, and they are again creating goals and causing havoc in opponents' strategic attempts to close down our build-up. So why the hell did he stop? It's blatantly obvious that Mourinho has instructed him to start again.

This leads to another point about Mourinho generally. When he was appointed, there was a rash of posts about his "negative, defensive football" and the lack of goals. Mourinho's teams have never played negative football and they have almost always scored goals by the bucket-load. He doesn't ask his teams to play negative football, he asks them to play direct football as a part of their variety of attack.

Our attacking play has come to life again because we are playing with more variety. This flummoxes opponents, because they can't set up against one approach, they have to work out how to snuff out several different ways to attack. The obvious way to do that is to press us to death, to be quicker and more hungry. Man Utd did that on Wednesday and it worked, in part, because I think some of our players had got a bit smug after a few good results.

I would wager that Mourinho had some harsh words this week about the need to play with intensity, concentration and desire in every match. That no one will lie down and let us win - we have to go out and beat them.

Burnley are not a bad team. They were ineffective today because we were first to every 50/50 ball, exactly the opposite of what happened on Wednesday. Their not-half-bad midfield kept losing the ball, throughout the match, because they had a Spurs player - or three - in their faces every time they tried to set up an attack. It's what we used to do in 2016/7, to such devastating effect.

I thought our defence played very well today, especially Sanchez. Burnley had chances because Burnley are a decent football team. You can't snuff out everything. The transition between a back 3 and back 4 worked reasonably smoothly and Dier was sound and reliable throughout.

Finally: I wonder what will happen when Lloris is fit again. I don't think it's a slam-dunk that he gets his place back. He's quicker than Gazzaniga and a better shot-stopper, but our style under Mourinho requires a goalkeeper who can play accurate long balls to an attacking teammate, line-drive style, in the manner of Paul Robinson. Gazzaniga can do that, as we saw today multiple times. Lloris' distribution is weak and imprecise.
 

BTN1

Well-Known Member
Dec 6, 2006
354
738
Important win today - started as a mid table battle - 2 points between us and them - if we’d folded they’d have been above us and the bubble burst - but no not only did we win but we ripped them a new one! Well done lads COYS! Loving the ‘boring’ Mourinho ?
 

Ionman34

SC Supporter
Jun 1, 2011
7,182
16,793
I do agree with you that there is a taboo, or at least this unspoken don't ask-don't tell notion. But at the same time though, part of equality to me is that one shouldn't have to be "the gay footballer". People just shouldn't care to such a degree that it truly didn't matter one way or the other. So there was no taboo, but just genuinely a lack of interest/controversy.
Couldn’t agree more. I really couldn’t give a shit what a player’s sexuality is, it has zero bearing on their ability or their personality.

My Son is gay, he came out to me when he was 15, he’s now 17. He attends every Pride march every year. The day he told me he was concerned about what my reaction would be, and was reduced to tears when he saw it. Not because I went mental, but because I told him instantly that his sexuality had absolutely no bearing on my feelings for him. He is my Son, I love him and am immensely proud of him. Not because he came out, just because he is a Son that any parent would be immensely proud to have due to his personality and everything that goes with it.

I don’t see a gay Son, I just see my Son, and this applies to anyone as far as I’m concerned.
 

ClintEastwould

Well-Known Member
Jul 3, 2012
4,748
9,845
Excellent performance but have to say Burnley were absolutely terrible.

What in the hell were they trying to do taking the game to us? I’ll need to watch the game in full again but any reasonable manager must have known we are now a counter attacking side under Mourinho.
 

Timberwolf

Well-Known Member
Jan 17, 2008
10,328
50,217
Lighting up the stadium isn’t a catalyst for change on its own merit, you’re right, but it is symbolic of Tottenham Hotspur saying “we recognise this issue, and we as a club refuse to be neutral on it”.

If you’d told me at 14 that one day my club would light the ground up to tell the world they stand with people like me, I wouldn’t have believed you.

I appreciate it means nothing to 90% of the fan base, but to a small number of us, it means everything.
This is such a brilliant way of describing it.

It's easy to be cynical about progressive measures when they don't really affect you but that completely misses the point. They aren't for the majority - they're for the minority.

Even if on some level it is a marketing or a publicity ploy or isn't the most effective way of making change, if it makes one person feel valued and included then it's damn well worth it.
 

daryl hannah

Berry Berry Calm
Sep 1, 2014
2,674
7,717
You are on to something about the IQ comment. If we look at past rumours, players have been identified as "potentially gay" for reasons such as reading books, being interested in art or having any hobby that isn't playing FIFA or whatever they do. Picture thinking about coming out, and then you see a married team mate being ridiculed as "probably gay" because he knows how to find the entrance to the national gallery. That doesn't shout "it's safe to be who you are".
The fans would be the worst bit - the neanderthal ones, I mean.
 

tiger666

Large Member
Jan 4, 2005
27,978
82,214
What in the hell were they trying to do taking the game to us? I’ll need to watch the game in full again but any reasonable manager must have known we are now a counter attacking side under Mourinho.

It was down to Kane getting the early goal I suppose. I'm sure Burnley wanted to come and sit back but they were on the back foot from so early on.
 

Ionman34

SC Supporter
Jun 1, 2011
7,182
16,793
Couldn’t agree more. I really couldn’t give a shit what a player’s sexuality is, it has zero bearing on their ability or their personality.

My Son is gay, he came out to me when he was 15, he’s now 17. He attends every Pride march every year. The day he told me he was concerned about what my reaction would be, and was reduced to tears when he saw it. Not because I went mental, but because I told him instantly that his sexuality had absolutely no bearing on my feelings for him. He is my Son, I love him and am immensely proud of him. Not because he came out, just because he is a Son that any parent would be immensely proud to have due to his personality and everything that goes with it.

I don’t see a gay Son, I just see my Son, and this applies to anyone as far as I’m concerned.
What exactly is optimistic about this freeeki?
 

Timberwolf

Well-Known Member
Jan 17, 2008
10,328
50,217
It was down to Kane getting the early goal I suppose. I'm sure Burnley wanted to come and sit back but they were on the back foot from so early on.
Weirdly I think Burnley came to play a bit. In previous years they just sat deep and their legion of giants were impossible to break down, but today they seemed a bit more progressive which played into our hands: in the first half it seemed like they tried to pass it out from the back more than we did.

That said, I'm not sure how much of that was us and how much was them. In previous years we would play Poch-ball with slow possession build-up from the back. In response Burnley sat deep and soaked it up. If we scored early we'd destroy them but otherwise it often descended into a slow and tense grind. Today we mixed it up and they didn't seem to know how to deal with it. As @davidmatzdorf said in his post hopefully this variety this will be a real weapon for us going forward and we can combine the residual Poch possession football with a more lethal, direct approach that Fucks. Shit. Up.
 

muppetman

Well-Known Member
Jul 29, 2011
8,901
24,817
Couldn’t agree more. I really couldn’t give a shit what a player’s sexuality is, it has zero bearing on their ability or their personality.

My Son is gay, he came out to me when he was 15, he’s now 17. He attends every Pride march every year. The day he told me he was concerned about what my reaction would be, and was reduced to tears when he saw it. Not because I went mental, but because I told him instantly that his sexuality had absolutely no bearing on my feelings for him. He is my Son, I love him and am immensely proud of him. Not because he came out, just because he is a Son that any parent would be immensely proud to have due to his personality and everything that goes with it.

I don’t see a gay Son, I just see my Son, and this applies to anyone as far as I’m concerned.
and this is why the rainbow laces stuff is important - it sparks these sort of interactions amongst fans.
 

Ionman34

SC Supporter
Jun 1, 2011
7,182
16,793
Some thoughts about the match itself.

The midfield worked, in part, because Sissoko repeatedly did what I mentioned before kickoff, which was to run the ball forward 20-25m. This substituted for the missing vertical passes from Winks or Eriksen, as a way to connect the ball in defence to our attacking quartet. It's what Dembélé used to do, during the period when people would insist that he "only passes sideways", without noting that he was passing sideways from a position 20m forward from where he had collected the ball.

In Dele's first season, the long, raking, precise aerial passes from Alderweireld were a lethal feature of our attack. They created goals and won matches. Crucially, they also created variation, thus making it impossible for teams to assume that we would always build slowly from the back. Then he stopped doing them. Why? Was he told to stop? From the moment Mourinho arrived, he has started doing them again, 5-6 times a match at least, and they are again creating goals and causing havoc in opponents' strategic attempts to close down our build-up. So why the hell did he stop? It's blatantly obvious that Mourinho has instructed him to start again.

This leads to another point about Mourinho generally. When he was appointed, there was a rash of posts about his "negative, defensive football" and the lack of goals. Mourinho's teams have never played negative football and they have almost always scored goals by the bucket-load. He doesn't ask his teams to play negative football, he asks them to play direct football as a part of their variety of attack.

Our attacking play has come to life again because we are playing with more variety. This flummoxes opponents, because they can't set up against one approach, they have to work out how to snuff out several different ways to attack. The obvious way to do that is to press us to death, to be quicker and more hungry. Man Utd did that on Wednesday and it worked, in part, because I think some of our players had got a bit smug after a few good results.

I would wager that Mourinho had some harsh words this week about the need to play with intensity, concentration and desire in every match. That no one will lie down and let us win - we have to go out and beat them.

Burnley are not a bad team. They were ineffective today because we were first to every 50/50 ball, exactly the opposite of what happened on Wednesday. Their not-half-bad midfield kept losing the ball, throughout the match, because they had a Spurs player - or three - in their faces every time they tried to set up an attack. It's what we used to do in 2016/7, to such devastating effect.

I thought our defence played very well today, especially Sanchez. Burnley had chances because Burnley are a decent football team. You can't snuff out everything. The transition between a back 3 and back 4 worked reasonably smoothly and Dier was sound and reliable throughout.

Finally: I wonder what will happen when Lloris is fit again. I don't think it's a slam-dunk that he gets his place back. He's quicker than Gazzaniga and a better shot-stopper, but our style under Mourinho requires a goalkeeper who can play accurate long balls to an attacking teammate, line-drive style, in the manner of Paul Robinson. Gazzaniga can do that, as we saw today multiple times. Lloris' distribution is weak and imprecise.
0549DB41-0B71-4600-A80D-C3D491D9E98D.jpeg
 

TottTommy

Active Member
Jun 29, 2019
126
248
By far the best forty five minutes of football since we played Pep's side at home during his first season. Outstanding performance and for me Harry with another faultless display, sublime passing and clinical finishing.
 
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