Rating vs Real Madrid (a)

Hazardousman · Oct 18, 2017

JonnySpurs said:
This ratings thread gets more and more strange by the week. SO many weird comments. I honestly cannot understand if people are over-analysing or just trying to be a bit sensationalist, this isn't a complicated one IMO.

One of the things that has frustrated me about Poch previously is that, particularly against Liverpool, he has tried to stick to his principles and play football his way without considering that if you just look at what the opponent has struggled against then with the quality we have we could easily have beaten teams that have otherwise turned us over.

I feel like he has learned from those previous mistakes and last night was another example of that.

Picking Llorente could be seen as odd but equally it could be seen as Poch picking the most experienced player we have in a massive game. Calm heads and leadership were needed and I thought Nando was excellent. He worked hard, looked to flick the ball on to Kane where possible with his head and then later in the game found one utterly sublime touch pass into Kane which so nearly resulted in us going 2-1 up.

Beyond that I thought every player was good, apart from Eriksen who unfortunately seemed to struggle with the occasion. He looked a bit nervy on the ball to me, heavy touches, wayward passes. He still did some good but the lofty expectations he's set meant that by comparison he looked a bit average.

I dont want to single anyone out but I'm gonna. Sissoko was genuinely brilliant IMO. He looks so confident now and it's reflected in his touch. I also think his friendship with Aurier is working wonders for him and the two link-up really well. Beyond that Sanchez deserves a special mention. 21 years old this kid and he looked the calmest player out there. He was impeccable in my view and showed how good he could end up being in future.

Lastly, nobody loves Moussa Dembele more than me but Poch mentioned that he felt more pain in the warm-up and sadly it feels like he may not ever be able to play for us consistently again. That thought used to scare me but the highest praise I can give Winks is that I'm not scared anymore. I've been a massive fan of Winks since I first saw him play and last night he should a maturity and bravery that most players his age simply wouldn't cope with.

Great performance, unlucky not to win.

This is what I feel as well, it has yet to be seen if he will revert back to type against Pool this weekend, I personally hope we take the same approach that we did against Madrid because I think if we do, we will beat Pool quite convincingly.

walton · Oct 18, 2017

This game summed up Aurier, and it's something we're going to have to get used to if he's going to become a long term first teamer; not much different from Walker (although i'd suggest Walker sorted his defensive work out to a great extent than Aurier currently is). People talk about his 'brain fart' for their pen, but he also gave the ball away needlessly from which they mounted the attack. Furthermore, he gives away stupidly ill-dsicplined free-kicks, which Poch will need to be all over. Countering this we have his obvious attacking threat, athleticism/pace etc., and technical capability. I'm hoping Poch will tighten him up over the course of this season.

danielneeds · Oct 18, 2017

walton said:
This game summed up Aurier, and it's something we're going to have to get used to if he's going to become a long term first teamer; not much different from Walker (although i'd suggest Walker sorted his defensive work out to a great extent than Aurier currently is). People talk about his 'brain fart' for their pen, but he also gave the ball away needlessly from which they mounted the attack. Furthermore, he gives away stupidly ill-dsicplined free-kicks, which Poch will need to be all over. Countering this we have his obvious attacking threat, athleticism/pace etc., and technical capability. I'm hoping Poch will tighten him up over the course of this season.

I'm not really worried. His biggest problems at the moment is a lack of positioning awareness and decision making, both of which are things that we have seen Poch consistently improve players in. Basically coaching them where to be on the pitch at various moments and what to they when they are there.

Of course Aurier will always have a certain rashness to his game, because it's part of his character, but I'm sure Poch can temper it, and every player has weaknesses,

Bus-Conductor · Oct 18, 2017

Everlasting Seconds said:
If you didn't vote Lloris you didn't watch the game.

Vertonghen for me. Lloris had a good game, I’m not sure any of the saves he made were unexpected though? The Benzema one was as much about Benzema fucking it up as Lloris IMO.

deka- · Oct 18, 2017

Bus-Conductor said:
They are actually decent marks for L'Equipe.

Marty said:
Unlike UK media, L'Equipe actually use the full 1-10 scale when they rate players - as they bloody well should. You can score two OGs and make numerous mistakes and still get a 4 in UK media. It's ridiculous. I think L'Equipe have been a bit hard on a few players on both sides, Sissoko, Sanchez and Jan in particular, but it's not totally out there.

Positions and Poch's nationality are obviously wrong, I'll give you that.

Yes I know about the general level of ratings in L'Equipe, I'm french

. You're right about that. What baffles me is the comparison between players, how can Eriksen have the same rating as Vertonghen, Sanchez or Sissoko, as you mentionned? I mean I love the guy, and you can tell he had the ideas yesterday, but he missed pretty much everything he tried. So that's already 4 ratings that don't make sense to me.

I'd also argue over the rating for Ramos, Casemiro and Isco (4 each) but then again that's not our point here.

Anyway, criticizing ratings from L'Equipe is just a tradition here, don't mind me. :cautious:

mpickard2087 · Oct 18, 2017

jonnyp said:
I distinctly remember it wasn't only him involved in that exchange. It wasn't exactly an easy situation for him once he got the ball back from Lllorente. So I guess my question is why aren't you complaining that Llorente or even Sissoko didn't kick it away? Also there was a lot of play in between that and the penalty - so to totally blame that incident for the goal is a bit harsh IMHO.

Apart from where I specifically mentioned Kane/Llorente (couldn't remember which one of them it was)?

Aurier was the one with the most time and space, control, and the luxury that he could see the whole pitch in front of him. Once he decides to go for another give and go the others, such as Llorente with his back to goal, kinda had to play for it. I don't think it was very smart bit of play at the end of a half, just whack it down the line and let us regroup and push up the pitch. It gifted them the ball in our third and allowed them the opportunity to do what the best teams do - put together a good move and cut us open.

Everlasting Seconds · Oct 18, 2017

Bus-Conductor said:
Vertonghen for me. Lloris had a good game, I’m not sure any of the saves he made were unexpected though? The Benzema one was as much about Benzema fucking it up as Lloris IMO.

Vertonghen was useless!
I'm kidding, he was really, really good. Lloris, Vertonghen and Winks stood out to me. That moment when Vertonghen could.not.contain himself and clenched his wrists and shouted in pure frustration. That was priceless dedication.

Klinsmannesque · Oct 18, 2017

Lloris edges it, even his kicking was on point.

Saw this team put down a marker for what they are capable of after so many poor performances in Europe. Showed maturity and experience after an edgy first 10.

Poch though, he really is the main man. Spot on both against Dortmund and now Real. He's still an incredibly young manager, and the CL is a new stage to him too - we talk about how fantastic the team is developing, and that is all down to the manager and his staff (without giving a discredit to the players and their own mentality) but he is also improving every year in his own tactics, development and game strategy. Just hope he takes it into Sunday as he has got it wrong against Liverpool a few times now - be another interesting test for him

Bus-Conductor · Oct 18, 2017

deka- said:
Yes I know about the general level of ratings in L'Equipe, I'm french . You're right about that. What baffles me is the comparison between players, how can Eriksen have the same rating as Vertonghen, Sanchez or Sissoko, as you mentionned? I mean I love the guy, and you can tell he had the ideas yesterday, but he missed pretty much everything he tried. So that's already 4 ratings that don't make sense to me.

I'd also argue over the rating for Ramos, Casemiro and Isco (4 each) but then again that's not our point here.

Anyway, criticizing ratings from L'Equipe is just a tradition here, don't mind me.

Personally I can understand Eriksen and Sissoko having similar ratings, because ultimately they contributed about the same, Eriksen just contributed some additional wastage too. Sanchez was decent but his remit was pretty straight forward (i.e. just stop the fuckers), But Vertonghen deserves a point more I'd say, even by LEquipe's standards.

Bulletspur · Oct 18, 2017

lukespurs7 said:
Think you and others being very harsh on erisken! Real completely dominated possession and Kane and Llorente aren’t the quickest so it’s hard for him when his n.o1 Job y-day was to hold his shape while the team wait to patiently attack at the right times, when on the few occasions he did get the ball, he didn’t have many options. He did fine, sure not his best game ever but no need for all the criticism!

Seriously?! And you even try to mitigate his poor performance on the pace of Kane and Lloriente! He was poor on this occasion as a result he had a bad game, end of.

Japhet said:
Great performances all over the pitch. Lloris with 2 fantastic saves, Dier full of pssion, Verts cool as they come. Winks looked totally at home and unphased, Sanchez like a rock. Llorente with some great hold up play and lay offs to create chances. Eriksen not at his best but ran himself ragged. Sissoko like a bull. My MOM is Toby Alderweireld though. Kept it all together and controlled our backline under intense pressure.

At first I read this as "Dier full of piss"!

JimmyG2 · Oct 18, 2017

Harry Winks surges into second and closes the gap with Hugo.
Only 180 votes to go.
Come on fellas we can do this.

C0YS · Oct 18, 2017

deka- said:
French journal L'Equipe. Not sure what's worse : players positions, ratings or the fact they think Pochettino is italian?

L'equipe in fairness are famous for giving very harsh ratings and 8 is crazy high, a 6 is good, 5 is okay. Don't know what they are doing with the formation though!

Bus-Conductor · Oct 18, 2017

THFCSPURS19 said:
I was looking forward to your post, turns out you praised us more when we scraped past Bournemouth at home.

I just held my hands up and said "I really can't figure out what I thought of everything involved in that game last night". I really don't think I praised us more on Saturday, just that Saturday was pretty straightforward and followed a blueprint we've seen a thousand times. I just pretty much said "it wasn't a terrible performance, just one we've seen many times".

I think Poch deserves credit for trying to come up with a different tactical solution to a new tactical problem. I think he got some aspects of it very right, and some aspects of it were less right. Right up until the Kane chance the game was very much going away from us, Llorente and Kane were offering nothing, not even dropping in and helping what was a very lightweight midfield that was getting over ran completely. Then Llorente sets up two great chances, meaning I'm now not sure whether what he did was because he's Llorente or because anyone could have done it and given us a bit more too ?

The defence were deep and spread laterally to stop them getting their full backs in behind and causing the havoc they can. I sad before the game that this was a vital issue, once Marcelo starts pulling the opposition RB's pants down, it usually spells big trouble, and Poch completely nullified that threat. Kudos to him for that. He was helped by the fact that they had a rookie kid at RB though.

I've seen teams deploy similar tactics against us. Chelsea did something similar at Wembley but used quicker players in attacking areas. Which is completely cede the midfield, pack out the defence, sit quite deep, block the flanks off, but leave two players up just to try and stop them stepping up and completely overloading midfield, and ergo completely overloading the attacking third when midfielders have to step out to defenders coming forward etc. But for that to be super effective the two strikers have to work harder off the ball than ours did, and you also, ideally, want to stop players like Modric and Kroos having too much time and space. A midfield of Winks, Sissoko and Eriksen is not designed to do this. And didn't. Maybe it was brave of Poch to think our defensive structure will hold and then with players like Winks, Eriksen and Sissoko we can cause them problems on the counter, but this would have made far more sense to me if he'd played someone up front with some pace and an ability to run and isolated defenders and cause havoc, like we did against Dortmund with Son.

But I'm also happy to admit that I could be wrong, that that was maybe a completely genius piece of tactical management - I did say this a couple of times - Just couldn't work it all out immediately.

RM have also failed to win or lost to three other - fairly ordinary - teams at home. They are not infallible.

doctor stefan Freud · Oct 18, 2017

Spurrific said:
As you will be aware, language evolves constantly. In recent years, with the prevalence of football twitter and Reddit, the word has taken on another meaning - more in-line with the definition of "plonker". I'm not saying you were being a paedophile/sex-pest, just a pompous plonker.

Noncesense

Spurger King · Oct 18, 2017

Sanchez was my MotM. A colossus that looked absolutely comfortable against one of the toughest opponents in football. I swear he grew about two feet during the course of the game. Not going to make any idiotic claims against those who disagree with that assessment though.

Lloris was of course incredible too, and produced a save that I'm still not entirely sure wasn't a mass hallucination.

Some great performances all over the pitch (Eriksen not included). Winks and Dier we're both impressive and assured, whilst Sissoko had his best performance in a Spurs shirt by some distance.

Mr Pink · Oct 18, 2017

Bus-Conductor said:
I just held my hands up and said "I really can't figure out what I thought of everything involved in that game last night". I really don't think I praised us more on Saturday, just that Saturday was pretty straightforward and followed a blueprint we've seen a thousand times. I just pretty much said "it wasn't a terrible performance, just one we've seen many times".

I think Poch deserves credit for trying to come up with a different tactical solution to a new tactical problem. I think he got some aspects of it very right, and some aspects of it were less right. Right up until the Kane chance the game was very much going away from us, Llorente and Kane were offering nothing, not even dropping in and helping what was a very lightweight midfield that was getting over ran completely. Then Llorente sets up two great chances, meaning I'm now not sure whether what he did was because he's Llorente or because anyone could have done it and given us a bit more too ?

The defence were deep and spread laterally to stop them getting their full backs in behind and causing the havoc they can. I sad before the game that this was a vital issue, once Marcelo starts pulling the opposition RB's pants down, it usually spells big trouble, and Poch completely nullified that threat. Kudos to him for that. He was helped by the fact that they had a rookie kid at RB though.

I've seen teams deploy similar tactics against us. Chelsea did something similar at Wembley but used quicker players in attacking areas. Which is completely cede the midfield, pack out the defence, sit quite deep, block the flanks off, but leave two players up just to try and stop them stepping up and completely overloading midfield, and ergo completely overloading the attacking third when midfielders have to step out to defenders coming forward etc. But for that to be super effective the two strikers have to work harder off the ball than ours did, and you also, ideally, want to stop players like Modric and Kroos having too much time and space. A midfield of Winks, Sissoko and Eriksen is not designed to do this. And didn't. Maybe it was brave of Poch to think our defensive structure will hold and then with players like Winks, Eriksen and Sissoko we can cause them problems on the counter, but this would have made far more sense to me if he'd played someone up front with some pace and an ability to run and isolated defenders and cause havoc, like we did against Dortmund with Son.

But I'm also happy to admit that I could be wrong, that that was maybe a completely genius piece of tactical management - I did say this a couple of times - Just couldn't work it all out immediately.

RM have also failed to win or lost to three other - fairly ordinary - teams at home. They are not infallible.

Re your very last paragraph. They were league games l, CL games being more profile. They havn't lost at home in CL since 2009 IIRC.

Make no mistake, it's been a real fortress in this competition.

Phomesy · Oct 18, 2017

Bus-Conductor said:
I just held my hands up and said "Moussa Sissoko's made a complete and utter mug out of me but rather than admit it and show some humility, I'll write two thousand words of shite and hope no one notices"...

FYP

For what its worth I agree with 1800 words of your posts! Just couldn't resist... I'm bad and going to hell...

swarvsta · Oct 18, 2017

BC is utterly comical - his posts always make me laugh. Feels the need to pretend he is Gary Neville with a PhD after every game.

Really quite a shame that a football fan would question last nights tactics or performance. It's nice to have an opinion, but to waste your life trying to analyse football in such detail - I just don't understand.

Keep up the comedy, BC!

Bus-Conductor · Oct 18, 2017

Mr Pink said:
Re your very last paragraph. They were league games l, CL games being more profile. They havn't lost at home in CL since 2009 IIRC.

Make no mistake, it's been a real fortress in this competition.

Surely what they are doing in the league in 2017-18 says more about their current situation and is more relevant to what they did in the CL in 2010? RM have to win every game. Period.

Spurs_Bear · Oct 19, 2017

Bus-Conductor said:
But I'm also happy to admit that I could be wrong,

Close the site. Batten down the hatches. This is going to be worse than Brexit.

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