Match Threads Spurs vs Southampton - Cup Replay Match Thread

Phomesy said:

That’s why Mouurinho keeps playing the same players Poch did - you can’t just find quality like that. Even out of form these players find a way

I’d have taken Dele off simply for not fouling Redmond for their goal but there you go

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NorfolkArgus said:

Thank fuck for that.

Now, where is SC going for the winter break?

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davidmatzdorf said:

There's a bit of a theme developing here: players with the capacity to do great things playing badly, without coordination or team focus, for an hour or more at a time. Then suddenly 2 or 3 players will do something inspired at the same time and we'll score. Everyone will say it's against the run of play and how did we pull that off and Spurs have been outplayed and got out of jail again, etc.

Someone will observe that Mourinho must have been kidding when he said it was a great squad. But he wasn't. For years now, we have had a squad full of brilliant individuals. For a couple of years, fired by youthful enthusiasm, a great coach and a unique key player (sorry to keep going on about Dembélé, but...), it gelled into a fantastic team and we played consistently well, grinding most opposition up and, if we couldn't do that, grinding them down.

Then multiple injuries, age, a couple of players needing to leave and jadedness crept in and the consistency departed, leaving us frustrating to watch, because it's always infuriating to see potential that won't realise itself.

We don't dominate matches anymore, scarcely ever. We win more than we lose, because we have enough players who are capable of the exceptional that we can suddenly turn a game around in a short time, as we did tonight and on Sunday against Man City. But to get to that point, we have to watch 60-70 minutes of midfield passes going astray, attackers dribbling into culs-de-sac, great moves breaking down and defenders passing directly to opposing strikers.

Every match thread degenerates into a procession of people blaming individual players for being not good enough, but we have a squad packed with superb individual players, or at least players capable of playing superb football. The problem has been getting them to do it together, consistently, match after match. That's what Man City did last season and it's what Liverpool are doing this season. It's what we did in 2015/16, when we were the best team in the country, except for a fluke run by an inspired first 11 where no one ever got injured and every match ended in a 1-0 win (Leicester).

I can tear my hair out over Son looking all out-of-sorts and making bad decision after bad decision, but he's so out of form that he has scored in four consecutive games. We can look at the dysfunctional midfield,where no one is quite clear who is the defensive shield and everyone seems second to the ball ... until suddenly they aren't and Dele gets two magic assists. How is it that Lucas and Son cannot pass to each other for 90% of the match, but each of them gets a goal?

Whatever the fuck it is that ails us, it isn't something that can be addressed by buying better players, because the individual players we have are capable of the truly inspired and they produce it most weeks, but only in flashes. Someone has to figure out how to weld this lot into a team, a smoothly functioning machine with the kind of spirit we had in 2016/17. Until Jose figures that out, we'll win enough matches to be good, but we won't achieve anything great.

Turning to the specifics of what happened in the last 20 minutes tonight: the substitutions were canny and effective and they turned the match. Obviously, Dele came on and turned the match, at a time when Southampton were tiring after 70 minutes of relentless pressing. But the influence of Gedson was also very obvious. Vertonghen has slowed down so much this season that his game-nous won't compensate anymore. The look on his face as he left the pitch and sat down was a bit enigmatic, but looked to me like a man facing decline as a player. Switching to a back 4 helped stabilise things and was overdue, but the main change was having Gedson chasing and harrying, closing down Southampton midfielders the way no one except Winks had been able all evening.

As someone else pointed out, Lucas has the gift of scoring important goals, goals at important moments. A lot of that is down to his pace and his inexhaustible energy - the man must be a gigantic pain in the arse to play against - which means that he's still buzzing about when his opponents are getting heavy legs. He scores late goals. They tend to be important goals.

Playing Ndombele, in his present condition, against teams who harry and press isn't going to work. He isn't yet ready to create and control in that kind of midfield environment and we won't know until next season whether he can adjust.

I thought Sessegnon looked a bit more ambitious tonight. He's been playing an excessively conservative game all season. Tonight he took on his man and applied some attacking pressure a few times.

To sum up: it's not that we're boring, we aren't. It's just incredibly frustrating to see all that talent not meshing together into a team.

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dondo said:

We wait with baited breath. What’s for dinner?
Got to be a zeros fuck dinner at 945?

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davidmatzdorf said:

There's a bit of a theme developing here: players with the capacity to do great things playing badly, without coordination or team focus, for an hour or more at a time. Then suddenly 2 or 3 players will do something inspired at the same time and we'll score. Everyone will say it's against the run of play and how did we pull that off and Spurs have been outplayed and got out of jail again, etc.

Someone will observe that Mourinho must have been kidding when he said it was a great squad. But he wasn't. For years now, we have had a squad full of brilliant individuals. For a couple of years, fired by youthful enthusiasm, a great coach and a unique key player (sorry to keep going on about Dembélé, but...), it gelled into a fantastic team and we played consistently well, grinding most opposition up and, if we couldn't do that, grinding them down.

Then multiple injuries, age, a couple of players needing to leave and jadedness crept in and the consistency departed, leaving us frustrating to watch, because it's always infuriating to see potential that won't realise itself.

We don't dominate matches anymore, scarcely ever. We win more than we lose, because we have enough players who are capable of the exceptional that we can suddenly turn a game around in a short time, as we did tonight and on Sunday against Man City. But to get to that point, we have to watch 60-70 minutes of midfield passes going astray, attackers dribbling into culs-de-sac, great moves breaking down and defenders passing directly to opposing strikers.

Every match thread degenerates into a procession of people blaming individual players for being not good enough, but we have a squad packed with superb individual players, or at least players capable of playing superb football. The problem has been getting them to do it together, consistently, match after match. That's what Man City did last season and it's what Liverpool are doing this season. It's what we did in 2015/16 and 2016/17, when we were the best team in the country, except for a fluke run by an inspired first 11 where no one ever got injured and every match ended in a 1-0 win (Leicester).

I can tear my hair out over Son looking all out-of-sorts and making bad decision after bad decision, but he's so out of form that he has scored in four consecutive games. We can look at the dysfunctional midfield,where no one is quite clear who is the defensive shield and everyone seems second to the ball ... until suddenly they aren't and Dele gets two magic assists. How is it that Lucas and Son cannot pass to each other for 90% of the match, but each of them gets a goal?

Whatever the fuck it is that ails us, it isn't something that can be addressed by buying better players, because the individual players we have are capable of the truly inspired and they produce it most weeks, but only in flashes. Someone has to figure out how to weld this lot into a team, a smoothly functioning machine with the kind of spirit we had in 2016/17. Until Jose figures that out, we'll win enough matches to be good, but we won't achieve anything great.

Turning to the specifics of what happened in the last 20 minutes tonight: the substitutions were canny and effective and they turned the match. Obviously, Dele came on and linked everything together, at a time when Southampton were tiring after 70 minutes of relentless pressing. But the influence of Gedson was also very obvious. Vertonghen has slowed down so much this season that his game-nous won't compensate anymore. The look on his face as he left the pitch and sat down was a bit enigmatic, but looked to me like a man facing decline as a player. Switching to a back 4 helped stabilise things and was overdue, but the main change was having Gedson chasing and harrying, closing down Southampton midfielders the way no one except Winks had been able all evening.

As someone else pointed out, Lucas has the gift of scoring important goals, goals at important moments. A lot of that is down to his pace and his inexhaustible energy - the man must be a gigantic pain in the arse to play against - which means that he's still buzzing about when his opponents are getting heavy legs. He scores late goals. They tend to be important goals.

Playing Ndombele, in his present condition, against teams who harry and press isn't going to work. He isn't yet ready to create and control in that kind of midfield environment and we won't know until next season whether he can adjust.

I thought Sessegnon looked a bit more ambitious tonight. He's been playing an excessively conservative game all season. Tonight he took on his man and applied some attacking pressure a few times.

To sum up: it's not that we're boring, we aren't. It's just incredibly frustrating to see all that talent not meshing together into a team.

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davidmatzdorf said:

There's a bit of a theme developing here: players with the capacity to do great things playing badly, without coordination or team focus, for an hour or more at a time. ETC

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GetSpurredOn said:

I think we’ve seen something there to work from. Playing Dele as almost a False 9, with Son & Moura given the freedom to play in the channels, we looked to play on the ground rather than aim hopeful balls in the air. Equally, allowed us to play 3 CM’s, one sitting, the other two working up and down. Better balance.

Admittedly I thought Alli was the wrong choice of sub today, but the that’s why I’m not a professional football manager I suppose.

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Toast said:

This is an excellent analysis, though I can't help but think we'd be a fuck sight more effective if Son and Lucas would sometimes pass the ball to someone else.

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Spurs 1961 said:

no he won’t. It’s clear in the live games I have seen recently that JM has given the team strict instructions to defend first not allowing both full backs to come over the halfway line or central defenders to be up for corners. His plan is to hold out for 60-70 minutes and then go on the offensive. Against Liverpool it was a good tactic, we were unlucky to lose, as having watched them this season they tire badly in the last twenty minutes. Clearly He feels this is the best way to approach games without a big guy up top as he can’t see another way of playing. All is OK if we defend like Milan of old in which case it’s a good tactic against pressing teams but we have always been at our best when we attack. Still in time he may change things and be more progressive but I doubt it. I remember all to well his Man U side doing us in the FA Cup semifinals when we played them off the park but lost. This is the Jose way and hopefully will satisfy those who want a cup win, any cup win, as his record shows he usually delivers

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SpursTillIDie1882 said:

Big Sam and Tony Pullis would be very proud today was right out of their play book but with the fouls , strength and aggression ........ Just hang in somehow, then Smash and Grab lol

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davidmatzdorf said:

There's a bit of a theme developing here: players with the capacity to do great things playing badly, without coordination or team focus, for an hour or more at a time. Then suddenly 2 or 3 players will do something inspired at the same time and we'll score. Everyone will say it's against the run of play and how did we pull that off and Spurs have been outplayed and got out of jail again, etc.

Someone will observe that Mourinho must have been kidding when he said it was a great squad. But he wasn't. For years now, we have had a squad full of brilliant individuals. For a couple of years, fired by youthful enthusiasm, a great coach and a unique key player (sorry to keep going on about Dembélé, but...), it gelled into a fantastic team and we played consistently well, grinding most opposition up and, if we couldn't do that, grinding them down.

Then multiple injuries, age, a couple of players needing to leave and jadedness crept in and the consistency departed, leaving us frustrating to watch, because it's always infuriating to see potential that won't realise itself.

We don't dominate matches anymore, scarcely ever. We win more than we lose, because we have enough players who are capable of the exceptional that we can suddenly turn a game around in a short time, as we did tonight and on Sunday against Man City. But to get to that point, we have to watch 60-70 minutes of midfield passes going astray, attackers dribbling into culs-de-sac, great moves breaking down and defenders passing directly to opposing strikers.

Every match thread degenerates into a procession of people blaming individual players for being not good enough, but we have a squad packed with superb individual players, or at least players capable of playing superb football. The problem has been getting them to do it together, consistently, match after match. That's what Man City did last season and it's what Liverpool are doing this season. It's what we did in 2015/16 and 2016/17, when we were the best team in the country, except for a fluke run by an inspired first 11 where no one ever got injured and every match ended in a 1-0 win (Leicester).

I can tear my hair out over Son looking all out-of-sorts and making bad decision after bad decision, but he's so out of form that he has scored in four consecutive games. We can look at the dysfunctional midfield,where no one is quite clear who is the defensive shield and everyone seems second to the ball ... until suddenly they aren't and Dele gets two magic assists. How is it that Lucas and Son cannot pass to each other for 90% of the match, but each of them gets a goal?

Whatever the fuck it is that ails us, it isn't something that can be addressed by buying better players, because the individual players we have are capable of the truly inspired and they produce it most weeks, but only in flashes. Someone has to figure out how to weld this lot into a team, a smoothly functioning machine with the kind of spirit we had in 2016/17. Until Jose figures that out, we'll win enough matches to be good, but we won't achieve anything great.

Turning to the specifics of what happened in the last 20 minutes tonight: the substitutions were canny and effective and they turned the match. Obviously, Dele came on and linked everything together, at a time when Southampton were tiring after 70 minutes of relentless pressing. But the influence of Gedson was also very obvious. Vertonghen has slowed down so much this season that his game-nous won't compensate anymore. The look on his face as he left the pitch and sat down was a bit enigmatic, but looked to me like a man facing decline as a player. Switching to a back 4 helped stabilise things and was overdue, but the main change was having Gedson chasing and harrying, closing down Southampton midfielders the way no one except Winks had been able all evening.

As someone else pointed out, Lucas has the gift of scoring important goals, goals at important moments. A lot of that is down to his pace and his inexhaustible energy - the man must be a gigantic pain in the arse to play against - which means that he's still buzzing about when his opponents are getting heavy legs. He scores late goals. They tend to be important goals.

Playing Ndombele, in his present condition, against teams who harry and press isn't going to work. He isn't yet ready to create and control in that kind of midfield environment and we won't know until next season whether he can adjust.

I thought Sessegnon looked a bit more ambitious tonight. He's been playing an excessively conservative game all season. Tonight he took on his man and applied some attacking pressure a few times.

To sum up: it's not that we're boring, we aren't. It's just incredibly frustrating to see all that talent not meshing together into a team.

Click to expand...

swarvsta said:

I have posted this numerous times since Kane got injured.

Seemed so obvious to me to play Dele as a false 9. Praying that Jose has finally got the idea to play this way now. ?

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davidmatzdorf said:

There's a bit of a theme developing here: players with the capacity to do great things playing badly, without coordination or team focus, for an hour or more at a time. Then suddenly 2 or 3 players will do something inspired at the same time and we'll score. Everyone will say it's against the run of play and how did we pull that off and Spurs have been outplayed and got out of jail again, etc.

Someone will observe that Mourinho must have been kidding when he said it was a great squad. But he wasn't. For years now, we have had a squad full of brilliant individuals. For a couple of years, fired by youthful enthusiasm, a great coach and a unique key player (sorry to keep going on about Dembélé, but...), it gelled into a fantastic team and we played consistently well, grinding most opposition up and, if we couldn't do that, grinding them down.

Then multiple injuries, age, a couple of players needing to leave and jadedness crept in and the consistency departed, leaving us frustrating to watch, because it's always infuriating to see potential that won't realise itself.

We don't dominate matches anymore, scarcely ever. We win more than we lose, because we have enough players who are capable of the exceptional that we can suddenly turn a game around in a short time, as we did tonight and on Sunday against Man City. But to get to that point, we have to watch 60-70 minutes of midfield passes going astray, attackers dribbling into culs-de-sac, great moves breaking down and defenders passing directly to opposing strikers.

Every match thread degenerates into a procession of people blaming individual players for being not good enough, but we have a squad packed with superb individual players, or at least players capable of playing superb football. The problem has been getting them to do it together, consistently, match after match. That's what Man City did last season and it's what Liverpool are doing this season. It's what we did in 2015/16 and 2016/17, when we were the best team in the country, except for a fluke run by an inspired first 11 where no one ever got injured and every match ended in a 1-0 win (Leicester).

I can tear my hair out over Son looking all out-of-sorts and making bad decision after bad decision, but he's so out of form that he has scored in four consecutive games. We can look at the dysfunctional midfield,where no one is quite clear who is the defensive shield and everyone seems second to the ball ... until suddenly they aren't and Dele gets two magic assists. How is it that Lucas and Son cannot pass to each other for 90% of the match, but each of them gets a goal?

Whatever the fuck it is that ails us, it isn't something that can be addressed by buying better players, because the individual players we have are capable of the truly inspired and they produce it most weeks, but only in flashes. Someone has to figure out how to weld this lot into a team, a smoothly functioning machine with the kind of spirit we had in 2016/17. Until Jose figures that out, we'll win enough matches to be good, but we won't achieve anything great.

Turning to the specifics of what happened in the last 20 minutes tonight: the substitutions were canny and effective and they turned the match. Obviously, Dele came on and linked everything together, at a time when Southampton were tiring after 70 minutes of relentless pressing. But the influence of Gedson was also very obvious. Vertonghen has slowed down so much this season that his game-nous won't compensate anymore. The look on his face as he left the pitch and sat down was a bit enigmatic, but looked to me like a man facing decline as a player. Switching to a back 4 helped stabilise things and was overdue, but the main change was having Gedson chasing and harrying, closing down Southampton midfielders the way no one except Winks had been able all evening.

As someone else pointed out, Lucas has the gift of scoring important goals, goals at important moments. A lot of that is down to his pace and his inexhaustible energy - the man must be a gigantic pain in the arse to play against - which means that he's still buzzing about when his opponents are getting heavy legs. He scores late goals. They tend to be important goals.

Playing Ndombele, in his present condition, against teams who harry and press isn't going to work. He isn't yet ready to create and control in that kind of midfield environment and we won't know until next season whether he can adjust.

I thought Sessegnon looked a bit more ambitious tonight. He's been playing an excessively conservative game all season. Tonight he took on his man and applied some attacking pressure a few times.

To sum up: it's not that we're boring, we aren't. It's just incredibly frustrating to see all that talent not meshing together into a team.

Click to expand...

davidmatzdorf said:

There's a bit of a theme developing here: players with the capacity to do great things playing badly, without coordination or team focus, for an hour or more at a time. Then suddenly 2 or 3 players will do something inspired at the same time and we'll score. Everyone will say it's against the run of play and how did we pull that off and Spurs have been outplayed and got out of jail again, etc.

Someone will observe that Mourinho must have been kidding when he said it was a great squad. But he wasn't. For years now, we have had a squad full of brilliant individuals. For a couple of years, fired by youthful enthusiasm, a great coach and a unique key player (sorry to keep going on about Dembélé, but...), it gelled into a fantastic team and we played consistently well, grinding most opposition up and, if we couldn't do that, grinding them down.

Then multiple injuries, age, a couple of players needing to leave and jadedness crept in and the consistency departed, leaving us frustrating to watch, because it's always infuriating to see potential that won't realise itself.

We don't dominate matches anymore, scarcely ever. We win more than we lose, because we have enough players who are capable of the exceptional that we can suddenly turn a game around in a short time, as we did tonight and on Sunday against Man City. But to get to that point, we have to watch 60-70 minutes of midfield passes going astray, attackers dribbling into culs-de-sac, great moves breaking down and defenders passing directly to opposing strikers.

Every match thread degenerates into a procession of people blaming individual players for being not good enough, but we have a squad packed with superb individual players, or at least players capable of playing superb football. The problem has been getting them to do it together, consistently, match after match. That's what Man City did last season and it's what Liverpool are doing this season. It's what we did in 2015/16 and 2016/17, when we were the best team in the country, except for a fluke run by an inspired first 11 where no one ever got injured and every match ended in a 1-0 win (Leicester).

I can tear my hair out over Son looking all out-of-sorts and making bad decision after bad decision, but he's so out of form that he has scored in four consecutive games. We can look at the dysfunctional midfield,where no one is quite clear who is the defensive shield and everyone seems second to the ball ... until suddenly they aren't and Dele gets two magic assists. How is it that Lucas and Son cannot pass to each other for 90% of the match, but each of them gets a goal?

Whatever the fuck it is that ails us, it isn't something that can be addressed by buying better players, because the individual players we have are capable of the truly inspired and they produce it most weeks, but only in flashes. Someone has to figure out how to weld this lot into a team, a smoothly functioning machine with the kind of spirit we had in 2016/17. Until Jose figures that out, we'll win enough matches to be good, but we won't achieve anything great.

Turning to the specifics of what happened in the last 20 minutes tonight: the substitutions were canny and effective and they turned the match. Obviously, Dele came on and linked everything together, at a time when Southampton were tiring after 70 minutes of relentless pressing. But the influence of Gedson was also very obvious. Vertonghen has slowed down so much this season that his game-nous won't compensate anymore. The look on his face as he left the pitch and sat down was a bit enigmatic, but looked to me like a man facing decline as a player. Switching to a back 4 helped stabilise things and was overdue, but the main change was having Gedson chasing and harrying, closing down Southampton midfielders the way no one except Winks had been able all evening.

As someone else pointed out, Lucas has the gift of scoring important goals, goals at important moments. A lot of that is down to his pace and his inexhaustible energy - the man must be a gigantic pain in the arse to play against - which means that he's still buzzing about when his opponents are getting heavy legs. He scores late goals. They tend to be important goals.

Playing Ndombele, in his present condition, against teams who harry and press isn't going to work. He isn't yet ready to create and control in that kind of midfield environment and we won't know until next season whether he can adjust.

I thought Sessegnon looked a bit more ambitious tonight. He's been playing an excessively conservative game all season. Tonight he took on his man and applied some attacking pressure a few times.

To sum up: it's not that we're boring, we aren't. It's just incredibly frustrating to see all that talent not meshing together into a team.

Click to expand...