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Andre Villas-Boas

Danners9

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Mar 30, 2004
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One week the fans moan the team isn't winning.

Next week the team is winning and the fans moan they aren't winning well enough. What next? Oh, it should have been 3 or 4, not just the 2-0 canter.. It's a tough life at times.

Teams like Hull come to stifle the play, wasting time from 30 minutes in to the match. They sit with 9 outfield players in their half and one 'fast' striker lurking on halfway for the break. It's the Spurs way of the last 5 or 6 seasons to struggle against teams who create a wall in front of the box.
 

sebcole

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Sep 1, 2009
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How is criticising a manager who's been here for over a season a knee jerk?
Dumb.

I think most of us would agree AVB is a very effective manager but he's more Mourinho than Wenger. It's about results, not pretty football.

I think once Adebayor gets in the team we will start to see good football.
was going to hit agree until the last sentance.
 

Dharmabum

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Aug 16, 2003
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Spurs had 66 % of possession so they can't have played that bad against a team Hull have have played Chelsea, Man City and Everton, and lost 2-0, 2-0 and 2-1 respectively. Hull parked the bus, and it's not easy to open up such a defense.
Some fans are never satisfied. I've even seen Spurs fans complain that Barca are boring because they dominate so much with their tiki-taka football. When Barca got knocked out by Inter and Chelski recently, on their way to their respective CL wins, I doubt any of their fans complained despite of Barca have more than 75 % possession in all 4 of those games, as Inter and Chelski "competed" to play the most boring, defensive tactics a CL winner has ever employed.
Then there are those who claim that under Harry's reign Spurs never played dull football but always played the other team off the field. Not so, there were plenty of boring, dull, "non-creative" games under Harry.
Spurs are 4th with a team that has yet to gel - and yes, it can take almost a season for certain players to adjust to life in the EPL, not to speak of a whole team to gel...
 

Danners9

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Then there are those who claim that under Harry's reign Spurs never played dull football but always played the other team off the field. Not so, there were plenty of boring, dull, "non-creative" games under Harry.
Spurs are 4th with a team that has yet to gel - and yes, it can take almost a season for certain players to adjust to life in the EPL, not to speak of a whole team to gel...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/7639500.stm

I'll take a 1-0 win over a 1-0 defeat, thanks.
 
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Spurger King

can't smile without glue
Jul 22, 2008
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I do believe there are some valuable criticisms here. I, for one, am happy because we are getting results. But, even though I'm an ever-optimistic person, I'm just as guilty of holding the same feelings towards our "style" of play.

We generally start slow. We very rarely score early against lesser opponents. As a result, said opponents gain in confidence as their tactics continue to prove effective. Every club wants to score first as it's a great advantage obviously. But, I feel as though so many times we aren't adventurous enough at the start. We tend to play the safe passes and often times just end up stringing together passes between our deepest midfielder, center backs and fullbacks. It's incredibly lame and achieves absolutely nothing.

Today I felt the bigger problem was a huge lack of precision with passing. It wasn't just in the final third but all over the pitch. Our passing was atrocious and often times led to Hull's biggest opportunities to establish possession and/or chances on goal.

My biggest problem with the way we are playing is the lack of movement by our wide players. Townsend has been fantastic but I rarely see him making good runs in behind the defense. He relies on picking the ball up and charging directly at a defense. He has shown this can be incredibly effective, but I'd like to see him mix things up a bit.

Lennon is still working his way back and I really do not believe he can be the answer on the left. He's at his best on the right and that just happens to be where our best player (currently) is at his best. What's up with Chadli? I personally thought he was starting to come along before his injury and I love that he can get into the box and will do so happily. I believe Chadli could be incredibly effective now that we have Townsend on the right. He'd give us another physical presence in and around the box to get on the end of crosses after Townsend's runs.

I do think we are missing Rose badly. Vertonghen, for all of his strengths, is not that effective charging forward from the left as his lack of pace is generally exposed. When Rose was starting to click, it felt like we were attacking in waves. He was sending in dangerous crosses, space opened up on the inside because right backs had to keep width to track his overlapping runs. And, before he went down at Tromso I was smitten with the way he was playing.

In the end, I think it really is a mentality thing. Our players don't seem to get that killer instinct right at the start of matches. They look complacent with just holding on to the ball and hoping that an advanced pass will open something else up. I think the runs off the ball could be much better and I think we need an answer for our LW position. Oh, and Danny Rose needs to get healthy.

Yep. I agree with all of that, especially the bits about Chadli, Rose, and our slow starts.

I've noticed that if we're running out of time and need a goal we tend to improve a lot. We pass the ball faster, and break forward with more purpose....in short we don't over-think things.

That's my biggest issue with our attacking play under AVB. It's just so slow and predictable. Perhaps as people have been saying, it's a product of playing a high line that compresses the final third too much, but it's also to do with a lack of movement, and as I've said elsewhere, a propensity to try and play to a template.

According to VDV, Harry rarely if ever bothered with detailed tactics, which had the positive of allowing the natural abilities of the players to come through, whilst having the negative problem of lacking a plan when faced with organised opponents. AVB is the exact oppositie, whereas what we need is something in the middle.

It's not that AVB's tactics never work. Clearly we've become significantly more difficult to beat, and we're incredibly difficult to break down. Then again so were Everton under Moyes, and it was hardly a recipe for success. On certain occasions (such as against Norwich this season) everything seems to click and we play with verve and tenacity, but I fear that AVB is trying to micro manage every game instead of encouraging the team to develop a more natural way of expressing itself.

I certainly don't want AVB out, or anything ridiculous like that. However I'm worried that he's not getting the team to click (Bale really did carry the team last season), and that in a league as tight as it is this season we'll end up 6th or lower. If that happens I'm not sure if Levy would stick with AVB, as anything other than top four is a failure to meet his objective (which despite a record Prem points total, he also failed to do last season).

Other than that, the biggest gripe I have is the positivist knee jerkers on here who seem to think that anyone unhappy with the way we're playing are somehow lesser fans. I agree that whatever is happening on the pitch the fans at the ground should get behind the players, but there are dickheads on here laying into anybody that doesn't just look at the results and conclude that we must be doing great as we're winning. The whole point is that we simply won't sustain those results if we carry on playing as we are. We're scraping over the line too often for that to be a success over the course of a season. Being critical isn't the same as being fickle - it's about recognising that something isn't right, and being frustrated that there are very few signs of things changing.
 

StockSpur

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May 20, 2004
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I felt it wouldve also been fair for AVB to point out that Hull were mugging our players left right and center and as for this Mcshane 50 s throw back character, sticking your fingers in a guys eyes are ok it seems.
 

lukespurs7

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Feb 21, 2006
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In the end our position and success will reflect how we are playing and quite often that is too slowly,too predictably and with not enough creativity.

Thank goodness we have a world class goalkeeper to bail us out. We are not in a terrible situation but we have to play better and AVB criticising the support won't help,I went to the game and there was very little to cheer about!

COYS
 

Shanks

Kinda not anymore....
May 11, 2005
31,159
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Would you take a season of 1-0's, tight defensive games that got us near the top of the table?

Or would you prefer us to go all guns blazing at 110mph each game and finish outside of the top four?

I know what I'd prefer.
 

Spurs_Bear

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Jan 7, 2009
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Would you take a season of 1-0's, tight defensive games that got us near the top of the table?

Or would you prefer us to go all guns blazing at 110mph each game and finish outside of the top four?

I know what I'd prefer.

What about the tight defensive games and still finishing outside the top four?
 

Kendall

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Feb 8, 2007
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Harry inspired us to a 0-0 draw at home with Hull, but we did beat them away 2-1 and 5-1 under him. Lennon scored a belter in the first and even Palacios scored in the second one - JD hat trick. When we were fun and I felt like paying to watch us.

We finished 4th that year by the way. Pray4Harry, all is forgiven.
 

WestBelfast Spurs

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Jul 15, 2011
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4th best start to a season in X amount of years would have been 3rd had Joe Hart not fucked up, swear some people complain for the sake of complaining!
 

Spurs_Bear

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Jan 7, 2009
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Don't want him to go but if he did, Mauricio Pochettino.

Proper football man it would seem. I thought he would struggle not being able to speak the lingo, but it appears his approach to the game is certainly an effective one.
 

Spurs 1961

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Aug 31, 2012
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Just been on another thread and their was a team sheet from a few years ago; King, Modric, VDV, Bale (all world class), Ade on form, Lennon flying, BAE playing well, Kaboul & Sandro before injuries etc. Made me realise how much less AVB has than Harry did.

Guess we can't expect too much with the current crop and certainly not the quality of football this old side was capable of
 
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