What's new

Match Threads Spurs vs Southampton - Cup Replay Match Thread

Match Prediction

  • Spurs win outright

    Votes: 117 89.3%
  • Draw - Spurs win on Penalties

    Votes: 6 4.6%
  • Soton win outright

    Votes: 4 3.1%
  • Draw - Soton win on Penalties

    Votes: 4 3.1%

  • Total voters
    131
  • Poll closed .

ernie78

Well-Known Member
Jun 13, 2012
7,220
15,218
How can a team as Southampton produce some decent football with so called average players - the coach Raliph Hasenhutti and players, are as one. He sets them up and they perform for him-simple, he is in control.

Mourhino is not in control and as one with the team. Because is is unsure how we will perform/result and his uneasiness with the way it represents him. After a game, he develops this intellect conceit about the events. IF we win/lose play great or shite he will develop a hypothesis about how it all happened and talk nonsense as though he was in control all along.

He is a top coach, winning everything and coaching the best so in a coaches twilight years you should reap the benefits , their experience and respect-hopefully he will get us back to where we deserve to be-playing great football and getting results and Muorhino is in control.
Maybe give JM a bit of time to work with the players. You do know that Southampton with the same manager was in the relegation zone recently. He was given time and now you think he’s great. Give JM the same amount of time before you write him off
 

Guernman

Well-Known Member
Aug 24, 2013
1,507
7,838
Dele gets a lot of stick when his "flicks and tricks" don't always work out,

But it is worth watching the build up to the penalty time and again to rejoice in when they do.

He takes three touches of the ball only!

Touch 1, being in the right place to receive Southampton's misplaced pass, Dele's single touch nutmegs the referee - totally intentionally as he has practised this skill thousands of times - and he runs around the bemused official.

Touch 2. a perfect backheel completely flummoxing the player closing him down and releasing Gedson to run into space. In the meantime Dele legs it down the wing to receive the return pass.

Touch 3. Once again hitting it first time, he manages to nutmeg Vestergaard from a distance where such things just shouldn't be possible and the perfectly weighted pass lays the ball perfectly at the feet of Son.

I don't know of any other player who is capable of a sequence of impudent skill like that - not even Dele Alli's brother...
 

spursfan77

Well-Known Member
Aug 13, 2005
46,680
104,956
Mourinho: "Southampton were the better team but we deserved to win. I think I did very well"

I don’t mind him saying things like that when he’s correct. (He was talking about the subs). I think it was his way of saying he was happy his sub decisions paid off.
 

rupsmith

Well-Known Member
Jul 29, 2006
1,714
2,328
I don’t mind him saying things like that when he’s correct. (He was talking about the subs). I think it was his way of saying he was happy his sub decisions paid off.

I think he did do very well. Kept the team in the game and made changes to shift the game in our favour.
 

rupsmith

Well-Known Member
Jul 29, 2006
1,714
2,328
Well that’s what Jose brings to the table - results. And his teams never give the game away. We are still having the Poch hangover - not fluid and not playing with confidence and therefore freedom. But real team spirit (also part of most of the Poch era to be fair to him). But for Jose to keep us in top 4 running, still in the FA Cup - that’s what he does. He is winning games with his substitutions and tactical switches. Obviously he can’t make us Barcelona ina few months. But real progress in my view. Really looking forward to the Jose era



Really like his honesty and analysis.
 

Matthew

Well-Known Member
Aug 29, 2012
4,597
15,867
Poor Jan? Fuck off. You know how much he makes? Sulking isn't going to win anyone over.

Edit: this went down well :p

see, these posts infuriate me! we as fans demand loyalty, passion and commitment ( case in point, the way we turned on eriksen) then we have a model pro like jan, who who has all these in abundance, and gets shitty comments like this! pathetic.
 

spursville

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2019
753
1,190
Disappointed in the lack of emphasis on possession. Having less % than Southampton at home (or away!) is poor. Let's hope the break and some returns from injury help us to get more fluidity, consistency and control of games.
 
Last edited:

thebenjamin

Well-Known Member
Jul 1, 2008
12,164
38,545
Disappointed in the lack of emphasis on possession. Having less % than Southampton at home is poor.

Problem is you play 3 centre backs with Dier in front. So 4 centre backs. Plus 2 full backs - 6 defenders. Plus Winks and Ndombele who are deep lying midfielders. So 8 players who aren't forwards and Lucas and Son who can't / don't pass.

I don't see any possibility of a possession game with these players.
 

Wig

Well-Known Member
May 23, 2018
2,812
11,078
We need to have a practitioner of the dark arts though.. in the middle the park.. thats what stuffs up their rhythm.
Dier and demebele were masters of that.. tackles bordering on fouls .
Diers too slow to reach them.. and winksy is too nice..
That redmond run was a prime eg.. no one put an arm on him..
Romeu and the saints captain were doing that all game long
That goal won't have gone unnoticed by Jose and his coaching staff... how on earth can Redmond run all the way from inside his own half without being challenged? If an opposition player is breaking like that and our defence is stretched, the player needs to be tackled - fair or foul - unless our tackler already has a yellow card. The quicker the tackle goes in and the opposition player is in their own half, the less likely the ref will deem a foul is worthy of a yellow. Stop their attacks at source
 

Gloryhunter

Well-Known Member
Jan 31, 2013
157
308
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.
Great stuff you have there.
 

Riandor

COB Founder
May 26, 2004
9,413
11,620
That goal won't have gone unnoticed by Jose and his coaching staff... how on earth can Redmond run all the way from inside his own half without being challenged? If an opposition player is breaking like that and our defence is stretched, the player needs to be tackled - fair or foul - unless our tackler already has a yellow card. The quicker the tackle goes in and the opposition player is in their own half, the less likely the ref will deem a foul is worthy of a yellow. Stop their attacks at source
Exactly, I said this earlier in the thread at the time it happened! Literally Dele, Winks and if memory serves Moura? Or was it Son, whomever it was, they just needed to put in a challenge. All 3 though just ran with him and tried to close the gap without really challenging.

At our height under Poch we would have fouled Redmond in his half before the attack starts (just like City do). I am not sure why we have stopped doing this.
 

spursville

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2019
753
1,190
Problem is you play 3 centre backs with Dier in front. So 4 centre backs. Plus 2 full backs - 6 defenders. Plus Winks and Ndombele who are deep lying midfielders. So 8 players who aren't forwards and Lucas and Son who can't / don't pass.

I don't see any possibility of a possession game with these players.
I agree but feel Poch (in his pomp) would have somehow had them controlling the game more.
 

jimbo

Cabbages
Dec 22, 2003
8,035
7,435
That goal won't have gone unnoticed by Jose and his coaching staff... how on earth can Redmond run all the way from inside his own half without being challenged? If an opposition player is breaking like that and our defence is stretched, the player needs to be tackled - fair or foul - unless our tackler already has a yellow card. The quicker the tackle goes in and the opposition player is in their own half, the less likely the ref will deem a foul is worthy of a yellow. Stop their attacks at source

He mentioned it in his BT interview. Something about Dele not wanting to pick up a yellow because he would have been suspended, with a tone that suggests he expects a different outcome next time.
 

UbeAstard

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2005
3,354
2,413
In Son/Moura/Dele we have 3 players with a cutting edge. They have two in Ings and Redmond. That made the difference IMO.
That is despite Soton out-playing us most of the game.

Not sure if I'm looking at this in isolation of the other things Redmond did but that solo run when he kept the ball, burst with pace then composed himself again to combat Spurs defenders getting in position to stop him, burst into another space then the layoff. Compared to the head down run into the opposition we sometimes get from both Moura and Son. Our pair and especially Moura could learn from that.
BTW I dont agree with 'take one for the team' philosophy that has been suggested to stop him.
 
Last edited:

Shanks

Kinda not anymore....
May 11, 2005
31,159
18,914
He does mention that in his conference, people already booked and would miss the next game - oth current injury list could further impact the team.
 

Riandor

COB Founder
May 26, 2004
9,413
11,620
Well, that's a tricky one for sure.
You can se what happens when you don't put the challenge in. Had that goal been the last one, we wouldn't have been in the next round at all, let alone Dele not getting a game.

However, Dele was 1 of 3 players who could have challenged and should have risked a yellow card.
 

Spurs 1961

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
6,665
8,739
He does mention that in his conference, people already booked and would miss the next game - oth current injury list could further impact the team.
You have to hand it to JM he is a master at controlling media opportunities to get his message across, at the moment every excuse so wins are seen as genius at work against all odds. However it is true that he has been with us for very little time, has had to deal was a squad in transition, loss of form, loss of confidence and key injuries. The malaise set in 12 months ago needs time to turn around and his way is the classic one of stopping the flow of goals against. It is how most good teams have been built, remember for two years we had the best defence. What I do know is we have the attacking quality to hurt any opposition so I hope this is what JM is up to.
 

hamsup_sotong

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
512
1,130
Well, that's a tricky one for sure.
You can se what happens when you don't put the challenge in. Had that goal been the last one, we wouldn't have been in the next round at all, let alone Dele not getting a game.

However, Dele was 1 of 3 players who could have challenged and should have risked a yellow card.
Should have been winks.. or anyone at that point.. it was a triple team then.. he shouldnt have been allowed to go past fair or foul..
If you factor in the bloody touchline thats 4 hahahah
 
Top