Olé football.

[Spurger King]

Last season we were playing it (at least for 1/2 of the season).

My question is...how important is it?

Now I don't mind admitting that in between my spectacular Hollywood antics during the day I still find the time to go over the occasional recorded footage of our games from last season. The evidence suggests that we really only played that level of "we're-so-fucking-good-we-do-what-we-want" football in a few games, in patches.

To name just three examples, Liverpool, QPR, and Villa were all teams we pissed all over for 45 mins, before allowing them back in. We had a great run of wins/unbeaten, but not many of those points were gained by Spurs playing at our best.

Basically my questions are.....how important is style over results? Is the idea of beautiful football a bit of an idealistic illusion?

 

[kazzah9]

Points plz

 

[Spurger King]

Points plz

Well yeah that's the other thing. We're not playing that well in terms of attacking football, but we're collecting points. At the moment we seem like the kings of the crapulets.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Beautiful football isn't just stringing 43 unanswered passes together. The best games we played under Redknapp were the games where we worked harder, pressed the ball hardest, were coherent off the ball, out of possession, moved well off the ball in possession and passed the ball well.

Games like Chelsea away last year (0-0) gave me as much pleasure the game we beat Wigan 9-0. Of course the Milan away, Newcastle, Liverpool home, Norwich away and Swansea home games were good examples too. Other than those I don't think we played brilliant football for 90 minutes in any game. Played some decent football often, and often in patches, but were way to reliant on Redknapp's ability to gee up or get performances from individuals rather than a collective, coherent strategy, being gilded by talented individuals. Redknapp definitely did do tactics, he just didn't do them very well, very often. And there was no tangible coached ethos.

The last few games have really encouraged me. Home and away we have been pretty systematic. Players like Defoe and Lennon are working harder for the collective than they ever have. Bale has played some of the best football of his career in the few games before he got suspended, IMO. We are lacking the individual brilliance of 2/3 players we had last year that would really guild the coaching lilly, which makes it all the more impressive that we are dominating games and playing some decent stuff.

I think we are going to miss (even a less than 100%) Adebayor, and certainly our glue - Sandro - so once again AVB is working with his hands tied behind his back, but I'm fucking chuffed we've got him, because I fancy our chances without those players more than I would to the more random "chance" approach of Redknapp.

 

[lol]

i'll take 1-0 win and league champions over 5-5 draw or 4-3 losses anyday

 

[Spurger King]

Beautiful football isn't just stringing 43 unanswered passes together. The best games we played under Redknapp were the games where we worked harder, pressed the ball hardest, were coherent off the ball, out of possession, moved well off the ball in possession and passed the ball well.

Games like Chelsea away last year (0-0) gave me as much pleasure the game we beat Wigan 9-0. Of course the Milan away, Newcastle, Liverpool home, Norwich away and Swansea home games were good examples too. Other than those I don't think we played brilliant football for 90 minutes in any game. Played some decent football often, and often in patches, but were way to reliant on Redknapp's ability to gee up or get performances from individuals rather than a collective, coherent strategy, being gilded by talented individuals. Redknapp definitely did do tactics, he just didn't do them very well, very often. And there was no tangible coached ethos.

The last few games have really encouraged me. Home and away we have been pretty systematic. Players like Defoe and Lennon are working harder for the collective than they ever have. Bale has played some of the best football of his career in the few games before he got suspended, IMO. We are lacking the individual brilliance of 2/3 players we had last year that would really guild the coaching lilly, which makes it all the more impressive that we are dominating games and playing some decent stuff.

I think we are going to miss (even a less than 100%) Adebayor, and certainly our glue - Sandro - so once again AVB is working with his hands tied behind his back, but I'm fucking chuffed we've got him, because I fancy our chances without those players more than I would to the more random "chance" approach of Redknapp.

Fantastic post. I'm not sure if I've ever agreed so much with one of your posts, but on this occasion I'd say you've nailed it. I'm also very happy that we've got AVB in charge.

 

[kazzah9]

Well yeah that's the other thing. We're not playing that well in terms of attacking football, but we're collecting points. At the moment we seem like the kings of the crapulets.

I think the style we're playing at the moment is more likely to win us points than last season

 

[beats1]

I think the style we're playing at the moment is more likely to win us points than last season

I disagree, I dont our style has yet been found and if anything last year we looked unstoppable before terry decided to highlight his racist credentials on Camera

Also if this is our style i.e. defending leads at the end of the match then god helps us as that is the only way for us to have healthy hearts and make it to retirement age

 

[TheAmerican]

The thing is, we played that "Ole" football against teams that attempted to attack us and played openly. Against other teams, we either played defensively (united/city), or the other teams sat back and defend, squishing the field. If you look at all great "ole" teams, such as Barcelona, you see teams sit back against them and take away the beauty of their play.
You only really see this in games where both teams are attempting to win the game. Sadly, we are probably the 3rd or fourth best team in the league. So, the majority of teams are playing for a point against us. It is against Liverpool, Arsenal, etc that we are able to have open play and show the beauty of our game.

 

[Ionman34]

Last season we were playing it (at least for 1/2 of the season).

My question is...how important is it?

Now I don't mind admitting that in between my spectacular Hollywood antics during the day I still find the time to go over the occasional recorded footage of our games from last season. The evidence suggests that we really only played that level of "were-so-fucking-good-we-do-what-we-want" football in a few games, in patches.

To name just three examples, Liverpool, QPR, and Villa were all teams we pissed all over for 45 mins, before allowing them back in. We had a great run of wins/unbeaten, but not many of those points were gained by Spurs playing at our best.

Basically my questions are.....how important is style over results? Is the idea of beautiful football a bit of an idealistic illusion?

For me it is substance over style in these early stages of AVB's tenure. He has had to adapt to the staff he has working for him and, as many have commented on in the recent past, not all of these are suitable for the style of play that will be his 'finished product.' As a work in progress it is important that he sets the foundation of the style correctly. he has started with building a relatively strong base, in that our defence and midfield are noticeably more solid and on the same page with little in the way of exploitable gaps. This wasn't necessarily apparent in the early part of the season but is far more apparent now and this, for me, is the basis on which you build a creative side. It's difficult to show expressive Football when the opposition is able to move freely through you via the gaps you leave without that coherency.

Couple that with the pressing game that, as BC has pointed out, is also becoming more apparent then, with the addition of the right players, the creativity should then be a natural progression.

Like many on here, I was pleased that we got AVB, even more so now as I believe we are seeing him progressively prove that he wasn't all hype but a truly talented coach who, given time and backing, will produce an extremely good team. His Porto team were quick, powerful and incisive, three key ingredients to exciting Football.

In summary, Ole Football IS important, particularly to us Spurs fans, as this is the beautiful game and it is this style of Football that spawned the name. But to get to the stage where we get the desired results along with the desired style then we have to sacrifice the style in the short term. Once we have the blend then the sky really is the limit.

 

[beats1]

The thing is, we played that "Ole" football against teams that attempted to attack us and played openly. Against other teams, we either played defensively (united/city), or the other teams sat back and defend, squishing the field. If you look at all great "ole" teams, such as Barcelona, you see teams sit back against them and take away the beauty of their play.
You only really see this in games where both teams are attempting to win the game. Sadly, we are probably the 3rd or fourth best team in the league. So, the majority of teams are playing for a point against us. It is against Liverpool, Arsenal, etc that we are able to have open play and show the beauty of our game.

Whilst I agree with this we haven't been good attacking or been good defensively, at the moment our quality is seeing us through, not our overall play

For example we rated our team terrible against QPR but yet if Bale, Ade or Defoe scored and still had the same performance we would have been happy. This season we have had too many matches where there hasnt been much between us dropping points or losing than us winning it. At the moment I think we are stuck in a unhappy medium of where AVB wants to take us(playing style, philosophy and etc.) and where our current squad will allow him to play(those AVB is willing to give a chance to). Which isnt helped by the fact him not getting his players in.

It seems AVB wants to play his Porto system but one thing for sure is we are not playing anything like them atm.

 

[InOffMeLeftShin]

The thing is, we played that "Ole" football against teams that attempted to attack us and played openly. Against other teams, we either played defensively (united/city), or the other teams sat back and defend, squishing the field. If you look at all great "ole" teams, such as Barcelona, you see teams sit back against them and take away the beauty of their play.
You only really see this in games where both teams are attempting to win the game. Sadly, we are probably the 3rd or fourth best team in the league. So, the majority of teams are playing for a point against us. It is against Liverpool, Arsenal, etc that we are able to have open play and show the beauty of our game.

Agree with pretty much all of this except the bolded part. I'm not very sad about that considering that for the majority of my life we've been about the 10th or 12th best team in the league.

 

[dontcallme]

For me it's a building process. Playing great football isn't about having lazy genius up-front and a defence that lets in 3 a game.

At the moment AVB has to build a playing style and a work ethic. Most teams that do this start by building a strong foundation in defence. When fit we have two top centre-backs in Vertonghen and Kaboul with a rock-solid midfield on front of them in Dembele and Sandro with Parker as another excellent option.

At the moment our attacking play is looking to the skill and speed of Lennon and Bale and then for Defoe to do his quick turn and shot routine. In time as we get the players needed for AVB's system I hope we break teams down better as a collective and our players are more in tune with each other.

Playing good quality football isn't just for entertainment's sake. When you get to a certain level many teams in the league will play defensively and be happy with a draw. We need to play high quality attacking football to break these teams down. If we don't then we will end up with too many draws.

 

[whitelightwhiteheat]

We played some good stuff under Redknapp for sure... but people also forget that we didn't play that well a lot of the time. Even in our run at the start of the season where we went 11 (or 12?) unbeaten - at times we got extremely lucky in that run. We weren't exactly brilliant the whole time.

I think the season before that we were infinitely better. Especially during our Champions League campaign. We were at our most swashbuckling brilliant then, for me. Some of the stuff we played was out of this world - but even then it could be in sporadic patches (First half against Werder Bremen away.... but not the second half so much, etc!)

So yes, for me the type of football we play is important - but the bottom line is results for now, at least until AVB is allowed to put the pieces of his jigsaw together (if he's allowed to do so).

 

[Spurs_Bear]

Beautiful football isn't just stringing 43 unanswered passes together. The best games we played under Redknapp were the games where we worked harder, pressed the ball hardest, were coherent off the ball, out of possession, moved well off the ball in possession and passed the ball well.

Games like Chelsea away last year (0-0) gave me as much pleasure the game we beat Wigan 9-0. Of course the Milan away, Newcastle, Liverpool home, Norwich away and Swansea home games were good examples too. Other than those I don't think we played brilliant football for 90 minutes in any game. Played some decent football often, and often in patches, but were way to reliant on Redknapp's ability to gee up or get performances from individuals rather than a collective, coherent strategy, being gilded by talented individuals. Redknapp definitely did do tactics, he just didn't do them very well, very often. And there was no tangible coached ethos.

The last few games have really encouraged me. Home and away we have been pretty systematic. Players like Defoe and Lennon are working harder for the collective than they ever have. Bale has played some of the best football of his career in the few games before he got suspended, IMO. We are lacking the individual brilliance of 2/3 players we had last year that would really guild the coaching lilly, which makes it all the more impressive that we are dominating games and playing some decent stuff.

I think we are going to miss (even a less than 100%) Adebayor, and certainly our glue - Sandro - so once again AVB is working with his hands tied behind his back, but I'm fucking chuffed we've got him, because I fancy our chances without those players more than I would to the more random "chance" approach of Redknapp.

Straight up and down this is a good post.

Only issue I disagree with is the one in bold, I think with the more organised approach that we have with our first eleven, we shouldn't see as many random results as we used to, I think we've now got into a position where if we were to play the Wigan/Norwich/West Brom games from the start of the season at a time like now, with the work we have done on creating a shape and platform to build from, we would 90% certain see better results. Which is a obviously good.

However...we have 12/13 what I would call 'good' players, who are able to work to a plan, to a team ethic and carry out instructions. In my opinion and this is clearly where it differs from yours, we then have a back up set of players that are clearly just not good enough. Players like Huddlestone and Livermore aren't able to do this, lack of ability/intelligence call it what you want. It's because of this that if we were to lose more players to injury I think we would struggle and where the 'chance' approach would work better. When players are limited you have to get them doing the bits that they are reasonable at to the best of their ability, to try and cover for their limitations. If you get them to try to approach the game like someone playing 2 levels above them, that's where they are going to fail.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

I think the style we're playing at the moment is more likely to win us points than last season

I don't really agree with this, but only to the part that we don't actually have a 'style'. What we have is an organisation/system that has made us harder to beat so I agree that to an extent it could help us draw games we would have potentially lost, but I don't think it's any more likely to 'win' us points.

As someone else pointed out earlier in the thread, what makes us more likely to win at the moment is whether the other team decide they want to show some ambition to win the game. If they sit back, that's where we tend to struggle.

 

[guiltyparty]

Totally agree with BC. Milan away stands out so strongly in my mind, it felt like we were a really good team indeed. Made you dare to dream

I think some people have rose-tints on about our standard of football last year. Of course, there was some great stuff, but it wasn't consistent, even within 90 minutes

 

[idontgetit]

Beautiful football is why I supported Spurs in the first place. Last year we were pretty in nearly every single game but lacked a bit of direct running from central midfield to give us penetration. Spain at the Euro's were similar. They didn't look dangerous until they actually started running at players because their passing became predictable and defenders weren't getting dragged out of position.

This year we've got the direct side of things nailed down but have lost the players like VDV and Modric. It will start to come back though and I think we will end up better than we were at our height last year. Combination of German efficiency, Spanish passing and Brazillian flair played at a Premier League pace. Ha wouldn't that be nice. And optimistic!

 

[JimmyG2]

If only life were so simple.
The dreaded either/or proposition: good football or good results:
play rubbish and win or do the ole stuff and lose.

It has always been my contention and belief that good football
over an extended period is the most effective way to get results.
Of course you can win when playing badly, negatively however you define this
But not for long.
Which teams that play 'bad football' and employ negative tactics enjoy extended success?
Which teams with 'poor' players win the league?.

The best teams with the most talented players playing good football get the results over a season.

My reason for continuing to support Spurs over a very long time
is that their default position and tradition is 'ole' football
I mean football played in some style with gifted players and additionally
played in the right spirit with respect to our both opponents and the officials
with one eye on entertainment for the fans.
These last are optional Tottenham extras though vital to me.

Deviate from this for an extended period and the club, its reputation, its status
and its results and performances will deteriorate
until rescued by a manager and a management that restores its reputation
by a return to quality and standards.
There is no other way in my mind.

JimmyG2's warcry:
Success through good football: good football before success.
It's what the game is for and fittingly it's a virtuous circle.

 

[Adam]

Personally, when I go to the Lane now, I don't just go in hope that we win, i'd also like to see us put in a decent performance. As much as anything, I believe that if you are playing well then results are ultimately inevitable, but also I would always consider the sport of football to mean more to me than Spurs (realize that's not true of everyone), so it's always nice to see a good game too. A lot of fans will have a more 'points or nothing' attitude which I totally appreciate, and will base their narrative of the game around what the score was, with the example being the Swansea and Stoke games, where I personally thought we were very average in both, but the differing final score dictated a totally different set of match descriptions on the forums and social media sites etc.

Ultimately, we all want to see the team get better, and tangibly, results are the way to do that. But I would always be nervous if we were consistently getting results through playing poorly, as I don't think that ever actually lasts over the course of the season.