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MOTM?


  • Total voters
    214
  • Poll closed .

stemark44

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2005
6,598
1,829
I thought that Townshend (especially 1st half) and Verts were good (both 7.5). Benteleb was the most active but had a fair few moments of ball watching (7). I didnt think that Paulinho, Lloris, Walker, Fazio, Soldado were that bad (6.5). They just didnt have the consistency and drive to put Fiorentina to the sword. Chadli had some bright moments and should have got on the scoresheet (6).I though Davies was mostly meh (5).

Eriksen was 93 minutes of dross. What's happened to the lad (2)?

I simply can't understand how the manager can't see this.
Eriksen should have been taken off at half time against Liverpool and should not have even made half time last night.
What is Poch thinking?
 

JimmyG2

SC Supporter
Dec 7, 2006
15,014
20,779
Out of this world.........No contenders currently
Stratosphere............. Bentaleb,Townsend,Vertonghen
Cloud cruising............Davies,Soldado,Walker.
Ground level...............Lloris,Fazio,Chadli,
Feet of clay.................Eriksen,
Underground..............Paulinho.

Should have wrapped it up by half time.
Soldado showed glimpses of his real talent, unlucky not to get a couple.
Chadli should have scored to settle it.
My MOM Townsend for his constant threat even if nothing much came of it.
Jan (Cool Dude)Vertonghen should wear shades when playing.
 

kremlyn

Well-Known Member
Jul 30, 2004
1,823
2,803
This is one for the unpopular opinion thread but I didn't think Paulinho was as gash as some believe. He put in a shift and, whatever the reason for not playing Stambouli, allowed us to play most of the game without needing to call on Mason.

What galls me is that he is so obviously not a midfielder for a cm2. In that respect he does remind me of Lampard when he played there for England. Just a waste. He is a 10 and comes alive in the box.

The problem for him is he isn't as good as our 2 best options and what the second half was screaming out for was for us to retain the ball in their half; Dembele was the obvious choice to replace Chadli. We kept breaking down in the middle of the park and they were excellent on the counter.

A word for the oppo. After a torrid first half they settled into a sort of catenaccio and it was a stroll. I thought they displayed the sort of calmness and systemic flexibility that you have to envy.

I'm hoping to see our own squad mature in the same way for Pochs second season because he isn't making the the most of his subs so you'd like to think the players might take a little more responsibility on the pitch to cope with the fluctuations of a game that runs away from them.

Bentaleb, Vertonghen for MOM.
 

Mr Pink

SC Supporter
Aug 25, 2010
54,774
99,336
A game of two halves

Owen Hargreaves sounds like the cliché vomiting love child of Alan Shearer and the Queen of Duisburg, so I was quite surprised that he failed to spot the most obvious one of the night.

I actually thought the team selection was pretty logical and a good balance of the right players were rested and the right choices made to replace them.

And we came out of the traps all bright eyed and bushy tailed, aided and readily abetted by a Fiorentina side who were tactically woeful for the first 45 minutes. Unfortunately the second string understudies are even more wasteful than the fist teamers and failed abysmally to capitalise on Fiorentina's benevolent mood. They also don't work anywhere near as hard or as coherently without the ball as the first teamers they replaced had done recently and as a result the game become very open and we were lucky that more punishment wasn't dished out in the end.

This was the problem, not that they got organised or we ran out of ideas, but we didn't do to them what we'd done to Arsenal or LIverpool. We didn't throttle them. Soldado, Townsend, Chadli and Paulinho just don't press and harass like their first team counter parts and as a result tempo faded and our play became predictable, they came at us, fuck it up on our 25 yard line, we go at them, fuck it up on their 25 yard line. And so the second half petered out.

Townsend had yet another one of those eye catching games where he wheels out his full repertoire of step overs, flicks and jinks, sees plenty of ball, gets himself into numerous great positions and delivers almost nothing of tangible quality. If this boy could get his fucking head up and just deliver something with even 50% of the situations he has the chance to, he'd be a really useful player. I'm sure there'll be plenty bedazzled by his jinky flickery into giving him a MOTM. He's now played 73 times for us, 183 in his career. Surely it's time he delivered something of discernible quality. I could forgive him more if he worked off the ball to win it back but he's averse to defensive work and tackling. Enough with the smoke and mirrors now, needs to pull a fucking rabbit out of the hat more often.

For the record, Eriksen was even more disappointing on the night, wasting various situations with limp attempts at incisiveness and carelessly giving the ball away a few times.

Vertonghen was the stand out player, fucking loved his little stud roll in amongst 3 players. Atoubaesque. Bentaleb was damn good for most of it. Everyone else had a bright first 20 minutes but got steadily more insipid in ever decreasing circles.

I don't think the subs were as bad as some made out, but none had the required effect and I don't think going 442/4411 with Kane deeper is a great idea. Lamela was piss poor, but he was only on for 17 minutes

Individuality:

Lloris - OK

Arbi (the anti Ibra) - I think he had a pretty decent game but how many times does he get laid a ball that he could cross first time but because he doesn't trust his technique he stops and rolls it then the moment is lost and he ends up dripping it back inside. The one time he hit a first time cross it nearly got us a goal.

Dawsonazio - Somewhere between OK and iffy.

Vertonghen - Classy.

Davies - Has his moments, but they are few and far between, the rest of the time he's pretty meh.

Mehlinho - Started ok, the mehometer was off the scale by the time he came off

Bentaleb - Very good for the most part. Liked that he bollocked Walker for not crossing the ball.

Townsend - I dig that he tries so hard to get on the ball and do his thang, but has a player's tomfoolery ever promised so much and delivered so little of actual...you know….stuff.

Eriksen - Very poor game. Careless with the ball a few times. I'm loving his work rate and ability to whack a ball from the D but for a guy with his ability and brain his inability to create at crucial moments is a little disappointing this season.

Chadli - mainly meh with patches of OK.

Soldado - Like others, started bright like a fucking samelar hound, finished dim like unsamelar hound.

Agree withe the majority of this but I thought Davies had a bloody good game.
 

talkshowhost86

Mod-Moose
Staff
Oct 2, 2004
48,105
47,061
Lloris - 6 - Didn't really look very commanding last night, but didn't really do much wrong.

Walker - 6 - Got into some great positions and worked very hard but his final ball isn't just poor...it very rarely even happens!

Veronghen - 8 - Excellent and seemed to be the only one who kept a clear head when we conceded.

Fazio - 6 - Poor positioning for the goal and he looked very wobbly a couple of times, even though he got away with it.

Davies - 7 - Looked solid. Needs to add more going forwards but we didn't really give him that chance last night anyway.

Paulinho - 5 - Played okay for about 15 minutes and then just seemed to shut down. Passing was poor, he gave away stupid fouls and generally looked a bit amateurish.

Bentaleb - 8 - Looked excellent and very composed whilst given no help in the middle. Give him a defensive midfielder to play with and I think we'll start to see the best of him.

Eriksen - 5 - Very poor. Should have scored and barely hit an accurate pass all night.

Chadli - 6 - Decent enough going forwards but his finishing was poor and he needed to do more creatively.

Townsend - 6 - Tore them apart but to no real effect. I think he put in about 2 decent crosses (which nobody attacked) but considering the amount of possession he had that simply wasn't enough.

Soldado - 6 - Gets a 6 for the goal but other than that fairly terrible, and their goal has to be put down mainly to his stupidity.

Subs:

Kane - 6 - Didn't really get into the game at all.

Lamela - 5 - Didn't seem to bother getting on to the pitch at all.

Mason - 6 - Didn't have enough time to make a difference.
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
39,837
50,713
Agree withe the majority of this but I thought Davies had a bloody good game.

I remain very nonplussed by Davies. He was ok, but I don't really see what he did that constituted the description "bloody good". I don't think he supports the attack as well as Rose, but on the odd occasion he does he is more thoughtful with his final ball. And defensively he is tenacious but also clumsy and was lucky not to get booked early in the game.
 

eddiebailey

Well-Known Member
Oct 12, 2004
7,452
6,672
I simply can't understand how the manager can't see this.
Eriksen should have been taken off at half time against Liverpool and should not have even made half time last night.
What is Poch thinking?
That Eriksen has got him out of jail on numerous occasions this season?
 

Bus-Conductor

SC Supporter
Oct 19, 2004
39,837
50,713
They did. Townsend down the right in the first half (towards the end), flicked it back to Walker who put in a good cross that Soldado met with his head and the keeper saved.

One swallow maketh not a summer.

Considering how open (and poor their FB was) they were for the first 45 that was a woefully poor return.
 

talkshowhost86

Mod-Moose
Staff
Oct 2, 2004
48,105
47,061
Think the problem was not so much the lack of supply as the failure to capitalise on it.

Certainly Townsend did put in a couple of crosses that nobody seemed interested in getting on the end of, but generally considering the space and time they had, I have to agree with BC that Townsend and Walker didn't deliver nearly enough.

They deserve credit for they way they got into good positions, but their end product from there was pretty poor.
 

Mr Pink

SC Supporter
Aug 25, 2010
54,774
99,336
I remain very nonplussed by Davies. He was ok, but I don't really see what he did that constituted the description "bloody good". I don't think he supports the attack as well as Rose, but on the odd occasion he does he is more thoughtful with his final ball. And defensively he is tenacious but also clumsy and was lucky not to get booked early in the game.

He impressed me last night in most things he did. Nothing spectacular of course, but I liked what I saw when he was on the ball and he put in one great ball into a dangerous area in the second half.

I prefer Rose overall but he's a very good back up/rotating option for LB IMO.
 

mpickard2087

Patient Zero
Jun 13, 2008
21,886
32,513
Sorry but I didn't see any positives last night at all really. Fiorentina massively helped us by going with a back three when they had such immobile centre backs, and compounded this by taking half hour to wake up and play football like professionals instead of Sunday league players. The tie really could have been put to bed, but even though we looked half dangerous with all the time/space in the world to play in we continuously wasted opportunities and were very sloppy with the ball. When they then woke up, and smartened up tactically, we had no control over the game for the rest of the match. No pressure on the ball, little energy as the match progressed, and very little in the way of quality. A golden opportunity completely wasted.

Bentaleb and Vertonghen were the best of the bunch. Everyone else was average, with Paulinho a bit below that and Eriksen having the worst match I have seen from him.
 

Mr Pink

SC Supporter
Aug 25, 2010
54,774
99,336
Well Paulinho disagrees that he had a bad game last night!:

There were a few times earlier in the season where I was not playing, but, as always, I did my job and now I'm taking advantage of the maximum possible matches in which I play. I had a good game again against Fiorentina, despite being a bit tired in the second half because of a knock I took."
 

eddiebailey

Well-Known Member
Oct 12, 2004
7,452
6,672
Well Paulinho disagrees that he had a bad game last night!:

There were a few times earlier in the season where I was not playing, but, as always, I did my job and now I'm taking advantage of the maximum possible matches in which I play. I had a good game again against Fiorentina, despite being a bit tired in the second half because of a knock I took."
I thought he was okay in the first half; should have been taken off much sooner in the second. But I would like to know what the story is with Stambouli because I would pick him over Paulinho every time.
 

Blackcanary

Dame sans merci
Jul 15, 2012
5,621
12,168
I thought he was okay in the first half; should have been taken off much sooner in the second. But I would like to know what the story is with Stambouli because I would pick him over Paulinho every time.

Somebody at the match said he looked like he was doing a fitness test last night so i'm assuming he's not 100%. I hope that's it because it would be very odd if he was playing regularly (and improving) and then just got dropped.
 

Larryjanta

Well-Known Member
Apr 22, 2014
1,953
5,040
Don't really want to rate them as, first half, that was, by some distance, the best out fringe players had played. They then reverted to type in the second half and showed why they are so far from the starting line up.

Bentaleb was excellent throughout, couple of poor defensive errors (where he assumed someone would mop up behind him) but otherwise exceptional.

Soldado was excellent first half but non-existant 2nd and him and Kane, I have now decided are incompatible, as it blunts Kane having to labour behind him.

Townsend looked excellent first half but struggled when double marked

Paulinho, urgh, what is wrong with him. Some really great stuff mixed with just shit

Fazio wasn't at it and i thought Davies was good definsively.

Eriksen and Chadli, non existant
 

L-man

Misplaced pass from Dier
Dec 31, 2008
9,979
51,364
Well Paulinho disagrees that he had a bad game last night!:

There were a few times earlier in the season where I was not playing, but, as always, I did my job and now I'm taking advantage of the maximum possible matches in which I play. I had a good game again against Fiorentina, despite being a bit tired in the second half because of a knock I took."
Jesus christ, everything is wrong with this guy. Willing to accept a below-average game as acceptable
 

Gilzeanking

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2005
6,093
5,019
Eriksen (4) was playing poorly like this early in the season . The Denmark coach had a public go at him and Eriksen came out of the slump soon after . He's clearly back in the same hole now and has been for a couple of matches . We really need him on form now . Whatever got him out of the hole last time...repeat .

Lamela (3.5) I've been a long term supporter... obv last night's 17 mins was atrocious , but I'm concerned these days that he's just not showing enough overall to warrant his place . His dribbling has collapsed, creative contributions seem low . Last night was vs an Italian side...the type of side against which he made his name .

Verts (8) MoM he's good this season compared to last long may it continue .
 

steve

Well-Known Member
Oct 21, 2003
3,503
1,767
I don't see how so many people have voted for Townsend for MOTM compared to Soldado. Soldado scored one and almost scored another and set up another great chance or two yet Townsend who didn't create anything is currently leading him by 11 votes. I'd understand if Townsend was whipping some crosses in that Soldado was wasting but I think the phrase "flatters to deceive" is appropriate here. Townsend is fast and can beat players which makes it even more frustrating when the best we get from it is a corner

He did also give away a stupid and petulant foul on the edge of our box which led to their goal....
 
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