Match Threads Palace vs Spurs - Match Thread - Day 12

[IamSpurtacus]

What Spurs Community expects
Played 38
Won 38
Drawn 0
Lost 0
For 250
Against 0
Points 114

"but i didn't like the way we played, so it sullies it for me, Jeff"

 

[Everlasting Seconds]

They didn't "energy-save". They got outplayed by a motivated and well-coached Palace team.

It's always the same here. No one considers the opposition. Everything is about Spurs' performance, usually about individual players' performances.

There were two Premiership teams on the pitch, each coached by an experienced and canny manager. Their goalkeeper was MotM. They have a good team. They won a draw at least as much as we lost a win.

They let themselves be outplayed.
They clearly demonstrated that their ability was there, but it was more important to not be attacking at 1-0 than to get a 2. goal. Our team was best when attacking, their team was at best uneasy when defending. That was purely down to a choice of not attacking enough at one goals lead, after having learnt this same lesson once this season.

 

[Trix]

They let themselves be outplayed.
They clearly demonstrated that their ability was there, but it was more important to not be attacking at 1-0 than to get a 2. goal. Our team was best when attacking, their team was at best uneasy when defending. That was purely down to a choice of not attacking enough at one goals lead, after having learnt this same lesson once this season.

They had plenty of chances on the counter when we were pushing. They were a well drilled side with 3 or 4 players having a 9 out of 10 performance.

They will definitely take points off those around us playing like that. We weren't at our best but they were. Sometimes you have to give credit to the opposition and yesterday was one of those days.

 

[Mungo63]

First half we were very good, for 30 minutes they were the better side but for me that was down to poor control and bad passing rather than tactics or negativity. Their keeper made 4 great saves, ours dropped a cross he shouldn’t have, on another day we take 3 points.
Anybody who thinks we’re going to any away game and cozily winning is deluded, just look at the results from the weekend.

 

[shoggy33]

OK, so people need to develop some peripheral vision.

It's a disaster! Spurs drew away to a pretty good mid-table side! The title is gone! Top 4 is but a dream!

Out of the notional "top six" this weekend, not one of them won.

The Manchester derby was a draw.
Chelsea lost.
Arsenal lost.
Liverpool drew.
We drew.

You don't win all your games. Palace are a much more balanced team than last season and an away point at Palace is now a reasonable result in context.

No goals in Manchester. Arsenal lost at home to Burnley, FFS. Liverpool relied upon a penalty to draw at a side well below Palace in the table. Chelsea lost at Everton.

So who did best? Us.

The fact the other teams did badly doesnt mean we did well. It doesnt change the fact we should have won that game comfortably, and if we had we would be 2 points clear. A draw at Palace isn't the end of the world, but if we want to win the league, which evidently we do, we need to aim higher. I actually think we played really well for about twos thirds of the game which makes it all the more frustrating. We've actually dropped points in some of our better performances this year.

 

[Dzejkob]

It's interesting to read Mourinho comments after the game: https://www.football.london/tottenh...ults/every-word-mourinho-said-lloris-19451193

He basically said that in the second half team did exactly the opposite to what they planned to do. Which is a bit of relief for me as I thought team did exactly what he wanted to do. Still planning is one thing and other execution. We can say that this is his job to make those players execute the plan. But I think the players let him down a little bit yesterday. I'm thinking here about our defensive line. Aurier and Dier were all really poor with getting the ball out of our own half. They lost it countless times, hitting long to often. Reguilon also had poor game.

 

[dimiSpur]

Whilst we obviously dropped two points, I think we have to credit Palace for the point rather than come down too hard on ourselves. Could we have sought to kill them off at 1-0? Sure, of course. But it's easier said than done. This is a good PL side, not a pub-team. They did well in the 2nd half and we were pushed back. Once we conceded and woke up, we really ought to have scored the winner. I dare say if they scored in the 75th minute instead of the 81st, we would have scored a late winner.

 

[Serpico]

Question-would Liverpool had played better and won if we picked up all three points. Was our performance outcome a direct reflection on Liverpools performance later that day. Had we won would they have tried a little harder?

 

[spursfan77]

It wasn't just us dropping back and a tactical thing.

People need to understand that Palace were more aggressive and won more of the niggly second balls and had us under pressure as a result.

What we needed was aggression to match them..PEH can't do it all himself.

Had we competed better for most of that second half I'm sure we would of got over the line.

In fairness you have to give some credit to Palace for a real battling performance, and we're coming up against that level of effort after a really difficult run of fixtures and European games. Always going to be difficult.

But I tell you what they will cause Liverpool all sorts of problems next week.

Exactly. That’s my point about there being two teams on the pitch. Clubs won’t roll over and let us beat them because we are top, actually quite the opposite. It seems some think that’s what is going to happen.

If Palace are brave and play like that against Liverpool, they’ll beat them. They should of got a result last season but their keeper chucked one in. Basically the opposite of yesterday!

 

[Jamturk]

We done more than enough to win 3 games, alas it wasn't to be.

That's football.

 

[Deleted member 29446]

It's interesting to read Mourinho comments after the game: https://www.football.london/tottenh...ults/every-word-mourinho-said-lloris-19451193

He basically said that in the second half team did exactly the opposite to what they planned to do. Which is a bit of relief for me as I thought team did exactly what he wanted to do. Still planning is one thing and other execution. We can say that this is his job to make those players execute the plan. But I think the players let him down a little bit yesterday. I'm thinking here about our defensive line. Aurier and Dier were all really poor with getting the ball out of our own half. They lost it countless times, hitting long to often. Reguilon also had poor game.

Do you actually believe any of that? Was just to cover himself and not take the blame..

 

[Jamturk]

What yesterday did for me was show the flexibility in our approaches to different teams and situations.

1st half looking for goals, 2nd half defending what we had, last 10 minutes going for a winner.

Very pleasing to see.

 

[Serpico]

We all need to remind ourselves, no matter how disappointed we were with the result, Hodgson is no fool. Place are a decent side getting forward and will turn decent teams over this season at home. Palace move the ball quick and get forward with width. They always seem to have speed and play hard, a bit calamitous at times with their enthusiasm to get the ball back and that where opposition players shy away from. They can be physical. If Benteke was better player they may have won yesterday.

 

[Everlasting Seconds]

They had plenty of chances on the counter when we were pushing. They were a well drilled side with 3 or 4 players having a 9 out of 10 performance.

They will definitely take points off those around us playing like that. We weren't at our best but they were. Sometimes you have to give credit to the opposition and yesterday was one of those days.

Yeah it’s a good point. Palace was probably at their best. But that was a typical Hodgson side and as such they played in a predictable way, too. Furthermore they had absolutely horrendous finishing throughout and I doubt that they will take that many points because few other top teams will let them have that many chances. I mean that was horrendous finishing from at least three different players. And their counter attacks were good, but we were better at being in control of them. The overall game play was in our favour throughout when attacking. Then our team started getting nervous when defending (contrary to for instance vs. Burnley) and that could have been mitigated. You are right in what you are saying, but I feel still that despite that, we’d have nicked it if we wanted that second goal earlier in the game. It boils down to my one criticism of Mourinho. With one goal up, I’d like to see the attacking that we saw for the last 10 minutes sooner and paced out throughout the match.

 

[floydiohead]

It's funny how we see the same game so differently. I don't think there was anything in our performance to cause concern - the difference between yesterday's game and the same on another day was their keeper making 3-4 worldies, and our keeper spilling the ball. On another day, those things don't happen and we either win 1-0 or 2 or 3-1.

 

[Dzejkob]

Do you actually believe any of that? Was just to cover himself and not take the blame..

Yeah I do. Cause why would he lie? Imagine you are a player and you are told to defend deep second half and then you hear your manager in the interview saying "yeah that's exactly opposite to what we wanted to do". You would feel like an idiot. So yeah I believe that's not what we wanted to do. Execution of the plan failed which, as I said, I think is part Mou fault and part players.

 

[hamsup_sotong]

What i dont understand is why we tend to concede so much from free kicks.. our players dont seem to be attacking the cross.
I'm not a tactician.. but can someone explain to be why we keep such a high line then rush back towards goal and try and head it out.. seems counter intuitive shouldnt the goalie claim those?

 

[Deleted member 29446]

Yeah I do. Cause why would he lie? Imagine you are a player and you are told to defend deep second half and then you hear your manager in the interview saying "yeah that's exactly opposite to what we wanted to do". You would feel like an idiot. So yeah I believe that's not what we wanted to do. Execution of the plan failed which, as I said, I think is part Mou fault and part players.

So the Palace players were just better than ours, right? Or like he said in his interview: "The players wasn't capable of scoring a 2nd".

And the last 7 minutes we started to play again suddenly?

All makes perfect sense.

 

[midge]

Watch the match again.
We started having problems when Benteke started to win almost everything in the air
Toby and Dier could not handle him. Should have put on Rondon who is suppose to be dominating in the air in place of Sissoko who was on a yellow and maybe go to a 5-4-1

 

[davidmatzdorf]

I think you need to make your notional top 6 a floating one. The traditional top 6 doesn’t exist any more. It’s 2020 baby. Tradition is out of the window.

The whole reason for writing "notional top six" was exactly that - to distinguish it from my personal opinion. My point was about other people's assumptions - how fans think. There's a perception, based on a team's historical reputation, that we "should" be winning away at clubs that are presently playing a good standard of football. A recent case in point is that it is clearly easier for opponents to win at Arsenal than it is to win at Crystal Palace.