Match Ratings Ratings vs Man City

[Blake Griffin]

How the fuck is Toby not winning the MOTM poll? Honestly, what are you all watching?

Hugo had a decent game, one or two good saves, but he also didn't claim a header that went in from 3 yards out. That was one of the best CB performances we've had in the past decade, it was the culmination of a man truly pissed and frustrated to not have a trophy from his time at Spurs.

yeah i feel like i'm missing something here. hugo made three saves in total, he did his job as roy keane would say but for all of city's dominance they didn't actually test him all that much. toby meanwhile put in an absolutely heroic performance, he was almost single-handedly keeping us in the game right up until the very last minute.

 

[Dannyspur]

Lloris 8 - would be higher as he had a good game but fails to come for crosses which is infuriating. Laporte is 5 yards out and he's stuck on his line again. Just come and catch the ball, happens all the time sick of seeing it.
Reguilón 4 - erratic
Dier 7 - pretty solid except for a horrible cross from De Bruyne, some good blocks, one of his better games
Alderweireld 8 - didn't do anything wrong
Aurier 2 - braindead foul (again) would've been more but yet again a defensive mistake has cost us
Winks 3 - no idea why he's back in the team. Dreadful
Hojbjerg 3 - just waves arms about didn't do much else
Lo Celso 4 - average
Lucas 7 - no idea why he went off was the only attacker causing any sort of problem even if it was on the half way line
Kane 4 - wasted a good counter attack and like the whole team was way too far back on the pitch
Son 2 - shocking performance did he complete a forward pass? Could only be crying at the end as he knew he had a stinker.

Bale 4 - done nothing
Sissoko 2 - why is he marking laporte when dier or toby were on him first half and doing fine. Useless
Dele 4 - only thing he done was give the ball away but not much time to do anything.

Mason 3 - very weird subs. Sissoko and Winks has never worked never will both shouldn't ever be on the pitch. Leaving Lamela and Ndombele on the bench was criminal.

ref 1 - how is a man born in Greater Manchester allowed to ref this game. Sick of refs in England being awful.

Pretty much agree with your scores, but Bale and Dele don't deserve 4's. Neither did anything positive, so 2's for them too.

 

[ultimateloner]

I genuinely don't think Winks is any better than Ndombele defensively, though. Winks is bang average defensively and all he does is cover passing lanes. Can't be bothered to look up stats, but I bet Ndombele makes more defensive contributions than Winks, along with being a far better offensively. Sure, Ndombele has been dodgy recently, but even on a bad day he makes stuff happen. Winks never does.

If you're going to try and play out from the back you NEED to play Ndombele, or at the very least, Lo Celso, in the midfield 2. Those are the only midfielders we have that have any hope of beating the City press and without either of them on the pitch we deserved to be 3-0 down at half time. They smothered us and but for some last ditch defending and poor finishing they would've been out of sight.

The most frustrating thing of all was that, even after we miraculously survived the City onslaught, we still kept Winks on the pitch, took off Lo Celso and brought on bloody Sissoko of all people. I can see the very basic thinking behind it:

To make up for Bale's lack of tracking back I'll bring on Sissoko and have him play on the right to cover the channel.

Problem is, by taking off Lo Celso, he took away our one midfielder who could foot his foot on the ball and handed the initiative back to city. Bale barely got a touch as a result and the move completely played into City's hands.

I'm happy as anyone that Jose got sacked, but I still think we should've kept him for the final. He was shit, but I think we would've done better with him in charge today.

Re playing NDombele over Winks/Sissoko:
My view is that it wouldn't matter who any of those we play as far as holding onto the ball is concerned; that is how much better I think MC is than us. We would have 0 foothold in the game anyway. Our 'game plan' or 'viable choice' is to hit long balls or play in transition and hope that somehow the ball ends up with Kane or Son in a position where they could have a shot.

The main difference (and this is a minor one) between Winks and NDombele is that Winks knows he is out of his depth at this level, so he would at least try to play the ball to a safe option. Yes that comes with a cost of stiffling our counter attack, but it beats the risk of NDombele turning over the ball in midfiled when one of his faints dont work and our immobile backline failing to recover. The results also suggest that this negative game plan worked; we were undone by a setpiece in the end.

I think people make too much fuss about the subs/personnel changes. NDombele was very unlikely to have made a difference; he was shit against inferior opposition for weeks prior to this, so why would he turn up against the beat team in the country? It just wishful thinking.

Re taking off GLC for Sissoko/bring Bale on:
I agree with your thinking about what Mason was likely thinking. At that point we were essentially just hitting long balls forward for the 3-prong (Bale/Kane/Son) to chase/create; its Mourinho's game plan basically. I don't think we played into MC's hands; i dont think GLC made that much difference anyway to this game.

Overall I just feel that in the end of the day, the difference in quality and application is so vast between us and them, that no amount of personnel changes/alternatives would have made a difference. Lloris and our backline did well, so it took us until near the end of the game to lose. That was the only positive from this game.

 

[AnotherSpursFan]

In other teams, players asked for the ball, but in Tottenham, theres a culture of arm waving; no no no, dont pass to me, pass it backwards.

 

[southlondonyiddo]

Although Toby and to a lesser extent Eric did well today let’s not forget that they were camped pretty much on their own 18 yard line for the entire game

Much less chance of being caught out for pace or turned inside out when you’re pretty much just using yourself as a human shield for 90 mins!!!!!