Match Threads West Ham Vs Spurs

14/04/91 said:

All seemed to go wrong after PEH's injury. I thought we were very, very comfortable in the first half and kept West Ham at bay and the crowd extremely quiet.

Not sure what went on with Hojbjerg. He appeared to signal he was 100% done right after half time - I'd have thought Skipp & Sarr would've had an extensive warm-up at half time in case that happened but everyone seemed surprised. Somehow he stayed on though.

After that it was clear he was very uncomfortable and barely getting around the pitch; coupled with Bissouma being on a yellow that meant we lost the middle of the park.
Skipp clearly isn't match fit and they felt he couldn't last best part of 45 minutes.

Even so, West Ham still weren't in the game until we gifted them a goal. Conte should be fuming; so many players switched off but I'm going to pinpoint Perisic as worst culprit and with his wealth of experience that should not be happening.
This lifted the crowd and gave West Ham belief that really didn't seem to be there before that. Instead of keeping them at arms' length we got into a nasty habit of passing the ball slowly (especially at the back), not giving each other options (partly due to PEH immobility) and their backs were up meaning they found an extra 20% and their press become much more aggressive.

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Skipp clearly wasn’t the slightest bit fit enough, if he was PEH would’ve come off

Conte clearly didn’t trust Sarr in that game, or maybe any game

spurs mental said:

Nuno ball was boring to watch because we got mullered every week. So much so I stopped watching after the Chelsea game at home last season until Conte arrived.

This is nowhere near that bad. You're over exaggeration is laughable. But I know you're generally negative in your posts anyway so it shouldn't be surprising

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I also find our football pretty turgid to watch atm and its not that different to Nuno and Jose currently imo (in case you missed that it means in my OPINION). Im happy that you like what you see though, I was there last night and found it a very tough watch.

archiewasking said:

Hope you're right, but people said the same about Leicester.

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People were saying that alot later in the season, not after 5 games.

As it happens though, Leicester had 11 points after 5 games that season, same as us now.

This system heavily relies on wingbacks so it's staggering we haven't upgraded RWB

The argument at the time was well we have Doherty and if he can produce end of season form then we will be ok... I feel onto that trap. The fact he hasn't even played 1 minute speaks volumes

shelfboy68 said:

Not at all mate but if you are enjoying it then fine it's yours to enjoy ?

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I enjoy us winning whether we play like shite or play like prime Barcelona. I can accept we're a work in progress and things don't happen over night. I'm patient. I'm prepared to ride it out that we may not click for another few weeks yet, but as long as there's a plan and Conte is trying to implement it, I'm absolutely fine with that.

Nuno and Jose, and even Poch towards the end of his tenure, had no plan, or rather there was no progress with the way they were coaching or managing.

I really don't mind whether we have 75% of the ball or 25% of the ball, there's more than one way to win a football match.

Check back my other post in this thread. Last night was painful, we didn't play well and it was hard to watch but I still believed we could win it even playing as poorly as we were. We looked shaky in defence for probably the first time since Chelsea away and it was nervy. But it was a Derby, away from home, against a team that is notorious for giving absolutely everything against us and then falling off a cliff afterwards.

I don't think there would be even a quarter of the whinging and whining if Arsenal weren't top after FIVE games. But because its them people are panicking and conflating our issues. Let's not forget Arteta has had about 2 more years with his team vs Conte.

Pay no attention to the league table until 10 games in. Everton were top this time 2 seasons ago and finished middle of the bottom half.

A note, Contes Chelsea team that won 13 games on the spin didn't get motoring until GW7/8, and their early wins came very late in games, they scored a handful of goals after the 80th minute in those. Relax. He's got this.

wadewill said:

The whole World has enjoyed going on about “what will Spurs do when Kane and Son aren’t playing well”

Guess what…. They haven’t been playing well and we are 3rd after 5 games

We know they start slow, once they kick in we are going to be very strong. We are an extremely solid defensive side now, that is the first building block, the rest will come

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Absolutely this. If either of them were any near 100% match sharpness we'd have scored 3 or 4 more goals over the course of the first 5 games. Last night, one move stood out, when Kane was put through, he managed to hold of Zouma (I think) into the box, and then played the ball back to Kulu. But he didn't look up and passed it instead straight to a West Ham player. Little sloppy things like that, not just the finishing, have plagued both Son and Kane so far in every game. Neither of them seem to be making the right decisions. But when they both get back to form, my goodness*chefs kiss*

HedgieSpur said:

I was there last night and am blessed to be able to follow us home and away pretty much every game. I find our football incredibly turgid atm...its not an easy watch. Lets hope it improves


I also find our football pretty turgid to watch atm and its not that different to Nuno and Jose currently imo (in case you missed that it means in my OPINION). Im happy that you like what you see though, I was there last night and found it a very tough watch.

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See below.

spurs mental said:

I enjoy us winning whether we play like shite or play like prime Barcelona. I can accept we're a work in progress and things don't happen over night. I'm patient. I'm prepared to ride it out that we may not click for another few weeks yet, but as long as there's a plan and Conte is trying to implement it, I'm absolutely fine with that.

Nuno and Jose, and even Poch towards the end of his tenure, had no plan, or rather there was no progress with the way they were coaching or managing.

I really don't mind whether we have 75% of the ball or 25% of the ball, there's more than one way to win a football match.

Check back my other post in this thread. Last night was painful, we didn't play well and it was hard to watch but I still believed we could win it even playing as poorly as we were. We looked shaky in defence for probably the first time since Chelsea away and it was nervy. But it was a Derby, away from home, against a team that is notorious for giving absolutely everything against us and then falling off a cliff afterwards.

I don't think there would be even a quarter of the whinging and whining if Arsenal weren't top after FIVE games. But because its them people are panicking and conflating our issues. Let's not forget Arteta has had about 2 more years with his team vs Conte.

Pay no attention to the league table until 10 games in. Everton were top this time 2 seasons ago and finished middle of the bottom half.

A note, Contes Chelsea team that won 13 games on the spin didn't get motoring until GW7/8, and their early wins came very late in games, they scored a handful of goals after the 80th minute in those. Relax. He's got this.

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wadewill said:

The whole World has enjoyed going on about “what will Spurs do when Kane and Son aren’t playing well”

Guess what…. They haven’t been playing well and we are 3rd after 5 games

We know they start slow, once they kick in we are going to be very strong. We are an extremely solid defensive side now, that is the first building block, the rest will come

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We are but only due to organisation. Last night was one of poorer defensive performances and Conte was shitting bricks on the touchline. He went especially mad when Perisic decided to chase the ball from the right side of the pitch all the way to Fabianski, who booted it upfield where there was vacant space on the left. Davies went out to cover two players, Dier came across in his lacklustre style, leaving two Pikeys to fuck it up between them on the pull back. If that goes in Conte has a meltdown after the game.

So yes, we are much better defensively, but the personnel needs upgrading and specifically Dier IMO.

spurs mental said:

I enjoy us winning whether we play like shite or play like prime Barcelona. I can accept we're a work in progress and things don't happen over night. I'm patient. I'm prepared to ride it out that we may not click for another few weeks yet, but as long as there's a plan and Conte is trying to implement it, I'm absolutely fine with that.

Nuno and Jose, and even Poch towards the end of his tenure, had no plan, or rather there was no progress with the way they were coaching or managing.

I really don't mind whether we have 75% of the ball or 25% of the ball, there's more than one way to win a football match.

Check back my other post in this thread. Last night was painful, we didn't play well and it was hard to watch but I still believed we could win it even playing as poorly as we were. We looked shaky in defence for probably the first time since Chelsea away and it was nervy. But it was a Derby, away from home, against a team that is notorious for giving absolutely everything against us and then falling off a cliff afterwards.

I don't think there would be even a quarter of the whinging and whining if Arsenal weren't top after FIVE games. But because its them people are panicking and conflating our issues. Let's not forget Arteta has had about 2 more years with his team vs Conte.

Pay no attention to the league table until 10 games in. Everton were top this time 2 seasons ago and finished middle of the bottom half.

A note, Contes Chelsea team that won 13 games on the spin didn't get motoring until GW7/8, and their early wins came very late in games, they scored a handful of goals after the 80th minute in those. Relax. He's got this.

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Ok mate nice post we shall see hopefully ?

HedgieSpur said:

I dont disagree with anything the poster wrote. Our performance was horrendous imo. Did you think we played well then?

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We were very good in the first half but we dropped off in the second half - overall a bit disappointed however it's another tough away derby game so you can't be too annoyed to get a point. We lost that game last season.

wadewill said:

Skipp clearly wasn’t the slightest bit fit enough, if he was PEH would’ve come off

Conte clearly didn’t trust Sarr in that game, or maybe any game

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If Skipp wasn't fit enough he shouldn't be on the bench

If Sarr isn't good enough then he also shouldn't be on the bench

You can't tell me that neither of them would have coped for 20-30 minutes at least than an obviously crocked PEH. Worst of all he may well have aggrevated his injury by playing more and end up missing future games

Danny1 said:

3rd in table. Unbeaten and the two draws coming at notoriously difficult grounds to get points from. Things will come good.

I’ve seen people slating Conte and more than one “fuck Conte”, I mean seriously. Calm down morons.

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They will come good, you are right , you could see it. Son was an inch away from a couple of goals , Bissouma was rusty and the yellow card fucked him but you could see in patches how he would liven up the midfield. It was a penalty(game over) .

HildoSpur said:

We were very good in the first half but we dropped off in the second half - overall a bit disappointed however it's another tough away derby game so you can't be too annoyed to get a point. We lost that game last season.

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I hear you but I see it a little differently. We talk a lot about mentality, but in order to drive a high performance culture and mentality, one needs to be intolerant of underperformance imo. Which is why I cant get overly excited about previous season like for like fixture comparisons or being happy with a point away from home. With the talent at our disposal and our first half performance, we should have comfortably won yesterday.

Just a different perspective, its only been 5 games and hopefully we get better

dimiSpur said:

I think that we saw last night we had some really poor passages in the game, which are a plus and a minus at the same time.

What I mean by that is, at moments, we were really sloppy. We fell completely asleep for their goal. Hugo was so sloppy in just booting it out when he could have just tried to ping it up to Harry who was winning aerial duels often and just re group. After the equaliser, we looked hellbent on getting caught in the triangle of death that was Dier, Lloris and Sanchez last night. All three of them were super poor.

The positive is that I'd forgotten almost that we were capable of being so shit and careless. It was "Spursy" at times in that 2nd half, in that we looked to create our own problems. The reason this is a positive, IMO, is that it shows how far Conte has pushed them in eliminating this shit from their game. Yes, we aren't the finished product by any means and we need some bolstering at the back (Dier just isn't good enough IMO and is the one of the three that needs immediate upgrading, more so than Davies). However we haven't seen shit like that from us in ages, where we almost lack intensity.

It was almost a window into our past, when Conte first came in and I'd forgotten what we were like.

Whether it's because we have this newfound grit, generally speaking, or just plain luck that no one was there to tuck home that last minute chance for the Pikeys, in any other season we lose that game 2-1. So all in all, despite the fact that they were there for the taking for long periods of the game, I do think it's a point gained rather than 2 lost overall.

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I honestly admire your spin on this but, sorry, we were well in control at 1-0 and then Lloris had a brain fart and we let them in for a well taken goal. This gave them new confidence and Lloris continued to be rattled and erratic - not through any particular great pressure from them either. We had a great platform to push on and get another goal up until that point but all the good work was destroyed from the brain fart moment onwards. Next time Lloris does this I wouldn’t be surprised to see him subbed, it puts the jitters into the defence onwards and we become a shapeless mess.

HedgieSpur said:

I hear you but I see it a little differently. We talk a lot about mentality, but in order to drive a high performance culture and mentality, one needs to be intolerant of underperformance imo. Which is why I cant get overly excited about previous season like for like fixture comparisons or being happy with a point away from home. With the talent at our disposal and our first half performance, we should have comfortably won yesterday.

Just a different perspective, its only been 5 games and hopefully we get better

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I agree. We have a real chance of competing this season and that means everyone associated with the club has to have very high expectations to get there. That means us fans, guys.
Just don’t boo your own, I hate booing.

wadewill said:

Skipp clearly wasn’t the slightest bit fit enough, if he was PEH would’ve come off

Conte clearly didn’t trust Sarr in that game, or maybe any game

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Agreed. Seems odd in even naming him on the bench in that instance; Romero was said to be back in training at the same time and he wasn't a sub.

Concerning that Conte would rather PEH hobble around for 45 mins than trust someone from the bench. Even if he'd tried something different like maybe slotting Lenglet into the DM role. Really think it screwed us last night and also hope it hasn't made Hojbjerg's injury worse.

spurs mental said:

I enjoy us winning whether we play like shite or play like prime Barcelona. I can accept we're a work in progress and things don't happen over night. I'm patient. I'm prepared to ride it out that we may not click for another few weeks yet, but as long as there's a plan and Conte is trying to implement it, I'm absolutely fine with that.

Nuno and Jose, and even Poch towards the end of his tenure, had no plan, or rather there was no progress with the way they were coaching or managing.

I really don't mind whether we have 75% of the ball or 25% of the ball, there's more than one way to win a football match.

Check back my other post in this thread. Last night was painful, we didn't play well and it was hard to watch but I still believed we could win it even playing as poorly as we were. We looked shaky in defence for probably the first time since Chelsea away and it was nervy. But it was a Derby, away from home, against a team that is notorious for giving absolutely everything against us and then falling off a cliff afterwards.

I don't think there would be even a quarter of the whinging and whining if Arsenal weren't top after FIVE games. But because its them people are panicking and conflating our issues. Let's not forget Arteta has had about 2 more years with his team vs Conte.

Pay no attention to the league table until 10 games in. Everton were top this time 2 seasons ago and finished middle of the bottom half.

A note, Contes Chelsea team that won 13 games on the spin didn't get motoring until GW7/8, and their early wins came very late in games, they scored a handful of goals after the 80th minute in those. Relax. He's got this.

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This, this and only this.

At this stage of the season, performances will be patchy. But a draw away at West Ham is always a decent result given how much better they play against us. It's their cup final, after all.

We are unbeaten. Third in the league. We've got two of our toughest fixtures (both of which we lost last year) out of the way. We have Romero and Bentancur to come back in. Take a step back and consider those facts.

people her banging on about our point-haul.

we have been lucky in every game, bar southampton, to get the points we have.

we play like shit, we have zero creativity and Conte`s game management have been poor.

but none (least very few) are saying Conte out - but for god sake - dogshit doesn`t turn to confetti just because you wrap it up in confetti paper.

yesterday - if anyone is happy about that performance - just plain ridiculous.

hope we click into gear soon - because we all saw much better football at the end of last season.

Quite a lot of hot-takes about last night that aren't really true. Blaming it all on defenders who can't pass etc. The problem is completely systemic in matches like this, that last night was no different to eg. Brighton at home last season, where we had the "elite ball progressor" in Romero available and served up exactly the same performance.

Conte-ball, in a Spurs shirt at least, just wants space in behind to attack. Either from counter attacks turning over opposition ball, or we get deep possession rotations trying to bait the opposition on to us and hoping they overcommit. When this happens we play some fairly basic but functional "up-back-through"' 's into the forwards and can then go at an exposed defence. Most weeks we get/create a decent number of these situations and our attackers have been in the form to make the most of them.

The most "clueless" performances thus far under Conte have always been against obdurate teams doing exactly the same thing. All behind the ball, happy to just defend their half, compact between the lines, remain disciplined in the task. In these games we have no idea. We shuffle the ball around the back endlessly trying to bait them, they don't take it and press in minimal numbers, and we (and the game) go nowhere. Then reduced to slamming it long or maybe getting it wide to sling in hopeful crosses. Basic, basic, basic.

We're just not comfortable being the possession protagonists in tighter spaces and pushing higher up the pitch. That isn't just an issue at the back though and finding passes. In fact for me the attacking quintet (forwards and wingbacks) is the bigger problem. As I say often, none of our three attackers are great between the lines, either finding space, sharp in touch and movement, playing at one-two touch, rotating possession in tricky areas, etc. They're pretty easy to crowd out. Whilst I still think the flanks are a big issue - Perisic has shown glimpses and had some classy intelligent touches so far but I think he's playing a bit too deep too often and could be a bit more aggressive in his play down the left, whilst the right hand side is utterly dismal still. We need more thrust and ability to stretch the play and contribute to proceedings in the final third.

It also doesn't help that whatever we're doing, I don't think our attackers have really turned up yet this season and it will be a struggle, to play well and get results, if they don't. Kulu in patches ok but no more, Son has been awful, Kane really not any better. Forest at the weekend loads of promising positions barbecued, even last night, goal aside, they had half a dozen squandered really tamely. And when we've been under the cosh they're all tending to disappear; people can say we didn't get the ball forward enough, but many times last night in the second half when the ball did go forward it came straight back at us with zero resistance.

But back to the crux of it, games like this are a big problem for us and we must start to find the solutions and hopefully more comfortable performances in them. But it isn't just about being better at the back and having passers in defence and midfield, our final third creative/passing/combo/pattern play, taking it at the heart of the opposition defensive lines, must also be light years better.

MightySpurs said:

people her banging on about our point-haul.

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If we didn't have many points at all would you be mentioning it.

A testicle, some toe jam, two fruit pastilles (the orange ones) and a rusty old padlock key says you would