Tottenham vs West Brom: Match Thread

SpursDave88 · Nov 25, 2017

ljinko888 said:
Much of the same at Wembley and for a lot of games this season to be honest. Certainly in the league. A lot of ball possession but slow and labored. Not many clear or even decent chances at goal and as much as you can give credit to the opponent - and I have this season - when it's happened for what must be a third of the matches we've played in the league there's a problem with us.

If you take away the 4-1 against Liverpool our Wembley PL record is as follows:
1-2 vs Chelsea [own goal]
1-1 vs Burnley [Alli]
0-0 vs Swansea
1-0 vs Bournemouth [Eriksen]
1-0 vs Palace [Son]
1-1 vs WBA [Kane]

Five goals in six games of which one was an own goal. A pitiful return with the talent in our array. And of those games above it was the defeat to Chelsea which in my opinion was the best performance because we created enough chances, hit the post and was unlucky to not get something from the game.

Another common factor among those games is the timings of the goals. None came in the first half. We've had six goalless first halves which gives the opposition confidence. It gives them confidence that they have kept us at bay and the longer the game goes in that pattern, our fans get reckless and our players get careless. That's just the nature of home games for any team.

Contrast this to last season at WHL where we only dropped four points out of fifty seven. Fast starts, often going a goal or two up inside the first twenty minutes. The opposition were killed by an early blitz and our robust midfield and defence meant they couldn't get back into the games. Now look at these Wembley games again: we gifted Chelsea a winner, we dropped too deep and let Burnley equalise, Sanchez could have given a penalty away vs Swansea, Defoe hit the post with 10 minutes to play for Bournemouth and Palace probably should have been 2-0 up before we scored. It's hard work for us to score a goal yet our robustness isn't so impressive either. We're giving opponents a sniff of getting something from the game.

The Liverpool, Madrid and Dortmund games showed signs of last season again in the way we attacked but why has this been exceptions rather than the norm? Poch is a manager who demands passion and energy from players after-all. It's possible to say teams in the PL raised their game 5-10% at Wembley against us and we raised our games against those three teams. Certainly in intensity and concentration.

I have raised concern that it feels like we're getting too ahead of ourselves and behaving as if we're top dogs. We're not. We're very good and can become special but there is an air of hubris lately. Do the basics right again and take it from there lads...

I agree with everything except for the myth that teams raise their game for Wembley. It's nothing to with Wembley...we have just been very poor in the league. Our attaching players have been utter garbage for the majority of the season so far.

Mr Pink · Nov 25, 2017

It's time to go balls deep for Zaha before he really does get out of our reach.

We need more pace, trickery and basically endeavour to take a man on, beat him and disrupt deep lying defenses.

Zaha will bring that in spades. Top dollar it will be, but we need this type of player badly.

Tippy tappy football with the vast majority of the league coming to sit deep isn't going to cut it.

dondo · Nov 25, 2017

First time I’ve been to the new Wembley today and I can see why we are struggling at home In these “smaller matches”. The atmosphere was non existent today and a lot of the crowd is made up by non fans on a tourist day out

felmani26 · Nov 25, 2017

Mr Pink said:
It's time to go balls deep for Zaha before he really does get out of our reach.

We need more pace, trickery and basically endeavour to take a man on, beat him and disrupt deep lying defenses.

Zaha will bring that in spades. Top dollar it will be, but we need this type of player badly.

Tippy tappy football with the vast majority of the league coming to sit deep isn't going to cut it.

Wasn't Richarlison mentioned as a possibility too?

Along with the like of Pulisic and Sancho, it seems it's a position that's well on the wish list of the powers that be.

Twizzle · Nov 25, 2017

We just dont seem to be able to manage 2 games a week, We seem to be up for the UCL games but we look tired for the PL games and we just dont have the squad to be able to rotate all our players like the big spending clubs.

We are making inroads but injuries to key players are preventing us from rotating players and maintaining quality. We've shown we can beat any one but only once a week.

Small steps, but we are increasing the depth in our squad but still have a way to go before we can say we have quality depth for rotation purposes to be able to maintain our ability to perform at a high level twice a week.

JayB · Nov 25, 2017

Mr Pink said:
It's time to go balls deep for Zaha before he really does get out of our reach.

We need more pace, trickery and basically endeavour to take a man on, beat him and disrupt deep lying defenses.

Zaha will bring that in spades. Top dollar it will be, but we need this type of player badly.

Tippy tappy football with the vast majority of the league coming to sit deep isn't going to cut it.

Staying up is worth something like £100m, and selling Zaha would be a death sentence for Palace. There's no way we would come anywhere close to what he is worth to them in January. In the summer, maybe, but we need to be sounding out more realistic targets (Barkley, Goretzka, Meyer) in January.

DiamondLites · Nov 25, 2017

Not sure a Zaha type is the answer, pace is marginalised when there’s no space to run into and his end product is far too erratic

We need a dribbler who can pick a pass at the end of it - look at the difference Hazard makes to Chelsea. These kind of players are hard to come by, and the price tag reflects this so whether we will ever realistically be in the running for a Pulisic level player remains to be seen, or if we go for a Poundland version like Lanzini or Barkley and hope he ever puts it all together

I think we need to temper our expectations, we aren’t going to make a title challenge if we can’t address our inability to break down the piss ant teams at Wembley. Which is fine, but it is imperative we consolidate our CL place and this is under serious threat if we don’t make drastic improvements

Streetspur77 · Nov 25, 2017

heelspurs said:
So the end justifies the means? Is that your level of critical thinking? And I won't even waste time deriding your quality of ratiocination; it's low hanging fruit. But today's game serves as a great example as one of 'they' lost us two points with poor control and shitty situational recognition by losing the ball in the center circle and not busting a gut to either 'take one for the team' or protect the ball with all his life.

I'll ignore the ad hominem and it's unfair to single him out for the goal considering how much went wrong (Sanchez and lloris), although he defintly should have done better.

Say what you want about him, Alli did more than anyone else to get us that point in a game where everyone was below par so why is he being singled out so harshly? That's where my problem with the Alli bashing lies, it's scapegoating pure and simple

TURKISH69 · Nov 25, 2017

dondo said:
First time I’ve been to the new Wembley today and I can see why we are struggling at home In these “smaller matches”. The atmosphere was non existent today and a lot of the crowd is made up by non fans on a tourist day out

Totally agree along with completely wrong team selection, as he should of gone like for like and started 4-4-2 Dembele , Rose and Aurier should of started which would of give us the pace to get behind us. Ali, Eriksen and Dier just as well stayed at the training ground, there performance was not good enough, I'm sorry but all 3 are awful Dier can't even pass properly. These are footballers who play everyday and don't know how to pass and beat the first man when crossing the ball. Ali set the goal up but just as well gone off. When you look at it down to 8 players the way them three played shocking!!!!!

TheChosenOne · Nov 25, 2017

DiamondLites said:
Not sure a Zaha type is the answer, pace is marginalised when there’s no space to run into and his end product is far too erratic

We need a dribbler who can pick a pass at the end of it - look at the difference Hazard makes to Chelsea. These kind of players are hard to come by, and the price tag reflects this so whether we will ever realistically be in the running for a Pulisic level player remains to be seen, or if we go for a Poundland version like Lanzini or Barkley and hope he ever puts it all together

I think we need to temper our expectations, we aren’t going to make a title challenge if we can’t address our inability to break down the piss ant teams at Wembley. Which is fine, but it is imperative we consolidate our CL place and this is under serious threat if we don’t make drastic improvements

This is what I haven't seen every time I watched the guy.

rossdapep · Nov 25, 2017

felmani26 said:
Wasn't Richarlison mentioned as a possibility too?

Along with the like of Pulisic and Sancho, it seems it's a position that's well on the wish list of the powers that be.

It's imperative we bring in a player of this ilk. We have everything else but we just don't have that player who can operate in the final third in tight spaces, dribble beyond others and generally cause a bit of havok. Whilst Salah and Mane have been mentioned we have to remember that these players have also struggled against packed defences.

I do however think Poch has got the set up wrong on each occasion and it's time for him to try something different. Eriksen isn't creating or being anywhere near as effective as he is away from home, Kane isn't get half as many chances, Alli can't play with his back to goal and our full backs just aren't able to get at their opposition like they did at the lane.

I'd be tempted to take Dier out of dm and have Winks and Dembele there. I'd also like to see llorente get more starts because he can at least play with his back to goal and Kane, son, Alli could play off of him. It's then a case of who misses out, do we take Eriksen out or drop him deeper where he can get on the ball more and get shots off? Do we drop Alli because he's largely been ineffective and look to use him as a super sub in the hope he's able to effect the game with something to prove?

I think there is room for manoeuvring and Poch needs to find it. If he picks that same set up again then I'll start to get a bit peeved with him because there will be a real risk that we'll miss out on the top 4 and these points at home we are dropping will come in to play.

Having said that, we were there or thereabouts last season and I had my doubts, yet we had that incredible run of form that really propelled us and set us up for the final run in. We need to mirror last season to give ourselves the best chance.

Archibald&Crooks · Nov 25, 2017

SpursDave88 said:
It's nothing to with Wembley...we have just been very poor in the league. .

I don't agree with that at all. It well known that a new stadium can be a 'thing' and I reckon it's worth noting our away record is probably superior both in goals scored and performances. Suggesting it's 'nothing to do with Wembley' isn't correct when it blatantly is a factor and that's becoming more an more obvious, you simply cannot just write it off like that.

Shadydan · Nov 25, 2017

DiamondLites said:
Not sure a Zaha type is the answer, pace is marginalised when there’s no space to run into and his end product is far too erratic

We need a dribbler who can pick a pass at the end of it - look at the difference Hazard makes to Chelsea. These kind of players are hard to come by, and the price tag reflects this so whether we will ever realistically be in the running for a Pulisic level player remains to be seen, or if we go for a Poundland version like Lanzini or Barkley and hope he ever puts it all together

I think we need to temper our expectations, we aren’t going to make a title challenge if we can’t address our inability to break down the piss ant teams at Wembley. Which is fine, but it is imperative we consolidate our CL place and this is under serious threat if we don’t make drastic improvements

I don't think it's pace we are in need of against these teams, we need to provoke the opposition and we need players to run at defenders and make them commit to challenges. Zaha can do that, he's tricky in tight spaces and unpredictable and defenders have no idea what he's gonna do.

TheChosenOne · Nov 25, 2017

JayB said:
Staying up is worth something like £100m, and selling Zaha would be a death sentence for Palace. There's no way we would come anywhere close to what he is worth to them in January. In the summer, maybe, but we need to be sounding out more realistic targets (Barkley, Goretzka, Meyer) in January.

So who reckons Zaha will come to us for less than HK's wages because I can see an apple cart and it is going to get upset, big time ?

coys200 · Nov 25, 2017

Honestly don’t think there’s a lot wrong. Yeah the option of Zaha type player be nice. But a bit of luck today could have been 3-1 pretty easy.its a bit like United last year drawing all those home games with loads of chances. And today they nick it with an OG.

Spurs 1961 · Nov 25, 2017

At the match today we just needed wing backs who can get to the byline. Davies never can and Trippier does it rarely. They had so much of the ball and did little or nothing with it of a positive nature.

But overall the biggest problem seems to be the lack of intensity in our game. The very thing we did so well in the last couple of seasons has been lost. Maybe players have been over hyped and now believe they are better than they are.

Finally it seems we have suffered from losing the Wanyama / Dembele midfield axis. What we have tried in midfield has largely proved inadequate

Gassin's finest · Nov 25, 2017

Spurs 1961 said:
At the match today we just needed wing backs who can get to the byline. Davies never can and Trippier does it rarely. They had so much of the ball and did little or nothing with it of a positive nature.

But overall the biggest problem seems to be the lack of intensity in our game. The very thing we did so well in the last couple of seasons has been lost. Maybe players have been over hyped and now believe they are better than they are.

Finally it seems we have suffered from losing the Wanyama / Dembele midfield axis. What we have tried in midfield has largely proved inadequate

I was at the game as well, and each of these paragraphs is inaccurate.

RichieS · Nov 25, 2017

glacierSpurs said:
Chelscum had Pedro, Willian and fibreglass to bring on, while Liverfools has had Mane and Llalana to come on, with Firminho still on bench I think? Their depth vs ours. Miles apart. Games changers? I say we had none.. The rest of the title contenders can probably sub in 3 game changers for the subs ffs..

Yes, let's conveniently ignore that Chelsea had decided to start the game with only Hazard on the pitch who fits your "game-changer" definition. Whereas we started with 4 players (Kane, Alli, Eriksen and Son) who can and do regularly change games for us and brought on a fifth (Dembélé) who literally changed today's game right before our very eyes.

Whoever described Burnley as "dross" earlier in the thread needs to stop being so ignorant and look at the league table - if they beat Arsenal at Turf Moor tomorrow they go 4th FFS!

And if whoever it was that said we were lucky to get a draw today genuinely believes that then football may not be the game for them.

There are several legitimate criticisms to be made of today's performance (their goal was just weird, Eriksen was very poor etc.), but can we all please refrain from making stuff up?

aliyid · Nov 26, 2017

Biggest issue today (aside from WBA having a well organised defence) was the ref allowing them to kill any momentum in the game by allowing the gk a good 30sec extra on every goal kick, letting them waste so much time on every throw in and never pulling them up for it. He even booked Dier for complaining about the time wasting before taking any action

DCSPUR · Nov 26, 2017

there are some so call fans who should be ashamed of their comments.....
COYS!!!

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