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Ratings v Asteras Tripolis

MOTM?


  • Total voters
    230
  • Poll closed .

walworthyid

David Ginola
Oct 25, 2004
7,059
10,242
Was at the game and lamela really is a special player. For all his faults he just has that bit of stardust on his boots. He does little things that just stand out. When you compare him to town send you really see the difference.

Was a decent game, some good and some not so good.

Thought kane didn't do that much apart from score but are was poor again. Soldado will be back in on Sunday I reckon.
 

Spursidol

Well-Known Member
Sep 15, 2007
12,636
15,834
The Greeks came to WHL determined not to be overawed, and they were much better than I thiought they would be putting together some decent moves, and we had to be very careful - whilst there was often no precision in their finishing, Lloris had to make one almost world class save, and they kept going to the end, when before the match I thought they would not keep up the pace for the 90 minutes.

Attacking we looked very good, but defensively....oh dear and I thought the DM's wre good going forward, but not so good ar protecting the defence.

Maybe no surprise in the 2 MOTM conteners :

Lamela - 2 great goals, the first I'm not sure I've seen done before from 20 yards. Good passing too, but I noted several times that he lost the ball. But in the 2nd half he was better ay chasing back etc. Got to be his best performance for Spurs - and we hope a platform fopr him going forward.

Kane - Hatrick, the first a great strike from 30 yards hit with power and precision, the other 2 were oachers goals getting himself in the right place at the right time before anyone else. A couple of other decent attempts too. Made some great passes - the best of which has to be to put the ball on a plate for Capoue but unfortunately Capoue couldn't control it and the chance was lost. The 21 year old just looked the part tonight, great performance as a no 10...and with the maturity to take on goalkeeping duties at the end. Do I sense a future Spurs captain ? MOTM for me for a more complete performance, but what a choice !

Other very good performances :

Lloris - several decent saves, one possibly world class
Capoue - very good CM going forward, maybe from time to time allowed the oposition to get at the Spurs defence ?

Other good performances
Davies - Possibly his best performance in a Spurs shirt (although stilll needs to improve) ? Several decent crosses.
Townsend - Forced the keeper to make 2 saves, good passing and generally a nuicence to the opposition
Fazio - That retreival of the ball and cross for Kane's 3rd goal showed a touch of class upgrading the rest of his performance (like other defenders)

Average Performances
Adebayor - worked his socks off moving to left wing and right wing pulling defenders out of the way for the benefit iof others. But seems to have lost the instinctive 'poachers' technique to score goals. Hope he gets back to the form of 2nd half of last season
Dembele - Looked ok going forward until he got to last 3rd where he had no idea what to do..
Dier - Looked very good early in the game but less so later on. But playing at RB rather than CB, I'd certainly overlook that
Vertonghen - Decent passing forward, but like the rest of the defence a bit porous. Would have hoped Poch would ask Vertonghen to 'captain' and organise the defence, but that didn't seem to have happened.
 

faymantaray

Average-Sized Member
Apr 19, 2005
5,577
8,506
Kane was fantastic, but I had to go for Lamela as his moment of sheer impudence effectively killed the match off. Watching it again, that goal truly was a thing of wonder. Not many players would contemplate trying it and fewer would pull it off.
 

fortworthspur

Well-Known Member
Nov 12, 2007
11,244
17,536
Kane MOTM for me. The only thing he didnt do was cut the grass before the game.

I have no complaints about anybody. I thought the red was just about right, and why bother with a 5 goal lead but Lloris did everything else right.
 

CrazyHeart

Well-Known Member
Oct 26, 2013
3,702
4,288
Capoue played well, while Kane and Lamela ROCKED! But let's get real : Adebayor proved again why he should be DROPPED. Jesus H. Freakin' Christ, what's it going to take?! I wasn't sure he was even playing in the first half, and was even more shocked when a comrade at the bar thought he set up Lamela's goal (he didn't... it was a poor clearance by a defender who was unlucky). Look, I want Adebayor to succeed, however the way to do it is to BENCH him on the weekend (and the next) and give him some time to fire up again. Soldado deserves the start against the Barcodes. Lloris being out will give us a chance to see how Vorm fares up in Europe, which may be great to see. Fazio was impressive as well, and I look forward to him linking up with Stromboli in midfield when he returns into action.
 

Gilzeanking

Well-Known Member
May 7, 2005
6,093
5,019
Entertaining match . Funny to see so many empty seats , they should reduce prices if they can't sell tickets .

I'm often complaining that Lamela (8.5) won't use his right foot . On my blurry stream I thought I was going to have to eat humble pie after his 1st goal (New word we've all learned 'Rabona')....but no , he contorted himself bizarrely rather than use his right foot.
Yes , it was amazing to see , but really he must start using his right even a bit , he would be so much more dangerous .
I was seeing him running with the ball from left wing and cutting in and thinking wtf ? he can't make an attacking shot pass because that would need his right foot . Madness that he isn't cutting in from the right wing where his left foot could do real damage.

To be fair I saw him use his right once a few matches ago just after Dembo (6) had hit a post , a reasonable pass/cross it was ,tho noone reached it .Anyway his work rate is excellent , very pleased for him , thought his skills improved a shade with the confidence the goal gave him .

I thought the Greeks had great skills . The classic Loris (7) save was excellent but the volleying skill from over the players shoulder was sublime . What a goal that would have been .

Like others here I did wonder about how many players needed for the barcodes game were playing . The stats for poor Prem results after European midweek matches are as plain as it gets . We're 9th for god's sake .
 

DaSpurs

Well-Known Member
Jan 20, 2013
11,816
13,655
The defense wasn't great tonight, but they've received far too much blame for the problems in this match. The midfield duo of Dembele and Capoue features two good players in their own individual rights, but when playing together they are just far too similar in their movement and responsibilities. The problem with this is that neither takes a more affirmed aggressive role, and more importantly that neither shoulders a more determined role of shielding the back line.

At almost any given point, even when on defense, the two of them were directly parallel and often neither of them would even run at a ball-carrier right in front of the back line until it was too late and the play was made. This is just unacceptable in the modern game with far more movement and incisive play through the center of the pitch. There has to be someone there designated to shield the back line. Sherwood did some things right, but his belief that a central midfield could establish balance through symmetry I could not disagree more with, and unfortunately this midfield pairing is likely our worst in this regard despite their individual talents.

So for me, despite their clear improved determination to get the ball forward, I save far and away the most negative reviews for them. They were directly responsible for the goal and the defense is being unfairly blamed for the incident. The defense weren't spectacular themselves either, but they faced far more awkward situations than they should have that for the most part would have been snuffed out with a genuine CDM doing his role.
 

atoubasrightfoot

Well-Known Member
Oct 1, 2006
534
1,159
Lamela showed again he has something very special about him.

Ade though? Has he banged his head, woken up from a coma and decided he's now a winger? He spends 90% of his time on the far wings, and whilst he was there he does some near inter play but nothing else. At least Bobby stays central and this gives Erikson, Lamela and Chadli a rough idea of where to play the ball to. Ade wandering impacts on the rest of the team and doesn't assist us going forward.

lloris 7
dier 6
Jan 6
Davies 7

Capoue 7
Demblele 6 (showed some skill but still crab like)
Andros 6
Lamela 8
Kane 8

Ade 4
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
18,106
45,030
Have a look at the replays of all the goals. They all have one thing in common, which is that there's a pool of space around the Spurs scorer. Although Asteras did many things well, such as their crisp passing in midfield and their dissection of our offside trap, marking was not one of them (and finishing was not another). They just gave us way too much space in attack and when you have superior individual talent, that is how you score 5 goals with relative ease.

Now look at the contrast with a typical Premiership game, where Lamela (particularly) and Kane do not get 2m of comfort-zone in every direction and do not get to spend 0.75 seconds weighing up their decisions; 'I know: why don't I try a rabona?'

Kane is good at working space anyway, it's one of his main attributes and is why he gets away with being quite slow and stills scores goals (see also: Keane, Robbie). But it was a luxury for him that he sometimes had a choice of spaces to drift into.

For Lamela, it's an object-lesson: he absolutely must learn how to deliver this kind of inspiration even when he has two defenders all over him. It's the next step after his physical strength work during the off-season. He's nearly strong enough now, but he has to figure out how to do what he does in restricted spaces.

What was wrong with our defending was that our offside trap was very unreliable and we played a high line even after we had a 3 goal lead. Why would we want to do that? We had already shown that we could work opportunities without having to compress the play, so why push up even after Asteras had repeatedly shown that they could ping the ball neatly behind our defensive line?

Lloris 6.5 Loses a point for bad judgment, even though he was dumped in it by his defenders.

Dier 6 Some good moments, but messy offside trap timing.

Jan 6 OK, a bit anonymous.

Fazio 6.5 Extra half point for the assist.

Davies 5.5 Similarly to Dier, he doesn't quite get the offside trap, but also he drifted inside too often, tempting Asteras to ping numerous balls in behind our left side, which they duly did. Otherwise, good marking and decent passing.

Capoue 7 I can't work out why he is getting blamed by some for 'not protecting the defence'. Nearly all of Asteras' chances came from balls over the top or aerial balls in behind where Davies should have been. It's not Capoue's job to deal with these, indeed it's physically impossible for him to prevent them. His passing was sharp and his ball-winning was good. That's what he was there to deliver.

Dembélé 6.5 Although it was a good quality overall performance from Dembélé, winning and controlling possession and running the ball forward to relieve or apply pressure, he remains the most infuriating player to watch, because he simply cannot see when to release the ball. There must have been 5 occasions when everyone was willing him to shoot, or half the stadium could see an opportunity for him to play someone in, but instead he would take another few steps, dribble a bit further and ruin into a dead-end. If this man had better game-vision, he'd be a world-beater, but instead, he's just good. Finally, he unleashed a shot and it led to a goal. How long before he tries another one? A month?

Townsend 6 OK ernough, but a bit muted. Played his part, got one hard shot on target.

Lamela 7.5 As well as scoring his rabona and his volley, he worked hard, closed down and tried creative things. Just before his first goal, he had tried three creative moves in succession and failed to execute all of them, but he kept trying and finally things worked for him. Now he has to figure out how to do that under more physical pressure.

Kane 8 With every game, I have a stronger sense that Kane is going to be our no. 1 striker quite soon. As well as having a gift for finding the right place to be, he scores a variety of goals and plays multiple roles in our buildup (and I don't mean goalkeeper) and sees the game well. In the first half, he found himself in the right back position, looked up and sent a precise cross-field aerial about 50m to [can't remember who received it ... Davies?] running up the left. Lovely. And a hat trick. And probably a sleepless night...

Adebayor 6 He's not our point man for scoring goals in this formation. He's part of a rotating 4 man attack and his hold-up play and distracting presence are just as important as his [presently non-existent] goal-scoring. No one has mentioned his important assist, where he held the ball up under pressure from about 3 opponents for about 3 seconds, before squirting it to Lamela. He still has his uses, even while we wait for his goal-scoring touch to return.

It was plain that Pochettino issued instructions about pressing at half time. We hadn't been doing much of it until then and, in the first 10 minutes of the second half, everyone got right in Asteras' faces in midfield. Why don't they do it from the first whistle? It's not a 'philosophy' that takes months to learn, they just have to remember/bother to do it.

It was fun game to watch and quite relaxing because we were ahead from so early.
 
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CheeseGromit

Well-Known Member
Aug 22, 2013
745
578
What's eating Mopo ?

Sometimes we play quite well or match our opponent in general play but just come up against a team that has more individual quality and this tells. ManCity was a bit like that. The Greeks were a tidy little outfit, well coached and if truth be told had some good situations that they fucked up. It wasn't that we played bad, we had some really good phases and some really nice passages of play. But ultimately it was moments of individual superiority that told.

Lets start with Lamela. The goals were superbly taken, one of them outrageously cheeky, but what I still like most is that 2 minutes after scoring he's back in our half, chasing back and flying full blooded into a tackle to win the ball back. His second goal came from him diving into a challenge that could have got him hurt to win the ball for Kane. This kid has plenty of learning to do. His decision making needs to become more reliable, but at the same time you do not want to completely restrain his natural unpredictable flare either. For me, even in this still raw, unrefined state, he's delivering so much more than the likes of Lennon ever could. Not only did he score a couple of crackers, he also played in Adebayor, made 50 passes with a 90% success rate, put in tackles and generally worked his nuts off with and without the ball. For me, he's more than earning the right to make the mistakes he does, because he's bringing a much needed dimension to this side.

You can't help but like Kane. He's like a Dawson/Sheringham hybrid. Half dopey, half clever. Great night for the kid, worked hard, scored a varied hat trick and went between the sticks too.

Both he and Lamela were great, but my MOTM tonight was Capoue. He absolutely bossed this game. He was everywhere. Spreading the ball right and left, left footed and right footed, long & short, driving us forward, anyone lamenting Hudd's passing is a fucking fruit loop. In all his years at this club he never once took a game by the bollocks - even against opposition of this standard - like Capoue did this game. 74 passes 92% completion, and the full gamut on show, and if Adebayor wasn't so habitually offside he might have had an assist and a goal to boot.

The consternation on Pochetino's face is possibly due to the fact that our willingness to attack in numbers, combined with a highish line, left us a little vulnerable at times and but for wastefulness or last ditch defending or outstanding keeping might have seen the scoreline looking a little bit narrower. I'm not entirely sure whether the defenders were to blame for any of the problems, I think Dier played their guy onside that led to the sending off, or whether it was everyone else leaving them exposed at times or not preventing those killer passes.

I thought some of the selections tonight were questionable (I'm relieved Lloris is suspended and won't have to play for a couple of games in the Europa), Vertonghen & Capoue should have been saved for the weekend and why are we risking throwing on Eriksen & Chadli into a game well and truly won ?

Work is still in progress, but sometimes, just sometimes, it's fun to watch that process.

Not for MoPo though I guess.


Individual stuff:

Lloris - Outstanding.

Dier - Bit Iffy but generally OK.

Fazio - pretty OK. Great ball for Kane's third.

Vertonghen - Generally OK I thought.

Davies - Pretty decent game

Capoue - Outstanding performance. Great examples were the passes he made just before and just after half time. Has that picture in his head and just sweeps the ball out to the flanks, one with either foot, whilst under pressure. Was busy and productive. Orchestrating most of our play.

Dembele - Was pretty good in spells, but hangs on to the ball too long in midfield. Much prefer to see him dribbling further forward. If he's to stay, it should as an attacking midfielder.

Townsend - The first 20 minutes every final ball he seemed to make he just got wrong, misplaced, over kicked etc. He settled and got better but there is still a distinct lack of actual quality end product in much of what he does. You'd forgive him shooting so much if he hit the target more maybe. Although both he and Lamela can be erratic, with Townsend you don't get the promise of pay off occasionally that you do with Lamela, you don't get the work rate off the ball, the game play and tackling too. I think his second shot in quick succession second half sums him up, he had the chance to get his head up and play a through ball to Adebayor. But didn't. He just blasted wide. Again.

Kane - Great game in general. Worked hard - especially first half - and scored a diverse hat trick.

Lamela - See above. He's clearly got some learning to do, but what he produces in terms of creative spark, work rate when we have and don't have the ball and his tenacity with and without the ball makes him well worth his place.

Adebayor - I thought he was a passenger first half. He just looked mentally a shadow of his best self. I think he was much more involved second half and made some good moves. The pairing with Kane never seems to work for me, they want to do similar things in similar places. Seems to work much better for Kane than it does Adebayor.

Sort of nice to see someone who saw the same game as I did

I read some of the posts and ratings and wonder what game they watched. Must be all about expectation
 

BringBack_leGin

Well-Known Member
Jul 28, 2004
27,719
54,929
Lloris made a world class save and had to mop up more than I'd like as a result of our susceptibility to balls over the top. Shame about the sending off but Vorm is top class for the next game and at least this game was already won.

Dier was solid enough defensively but he really didn't offer much going forward. He tries, and he's a competent last resort right back who is gaining very valuable experience, but we all know his future lies as a very good centre back.

Fazio seems generally able, has more pace than you'd expect and he did well to assist Kane, but when so many balls over the top succeed you need to question the centre backs.

Vertonghen, like Fazio, was generally good, winning his one on ones and bringing the ball out well, but I am concerned at how easily we get caught out by balls over the top.

Davies had his best game, combining very well in attack and not being caught out defensively. He's a talent, but like with the other young players at Spurs, we must be patient.

Capoue played very well going forward (and u do sometimes wonder if he's more suited to attack) and needed to after his performance v City. Showed a great and intelligent range of passing. However, as with the centre backs, if he's meant to be shielding the defence, then he needs to be questioned with regard to all the simple balls that unlock us.

Dembele was tidy and impressed on a few occasions in the second half with his use of the ball under pressure, but I can't help but ask why, with the tools he has, he can't give us more forward thrust.

Townsend started poorly but improved. He dribbled well on a few occasions, and hit one amazing cross field pass to Adebayor, but the lack of end product with him continues to frustrate. Needs to calm down and think about what he does more.

Kane had a great game and is improving constantly. Great first goal, very clever second (note the composure in placing that shot away from the goalie rather than just snacking it) and scored a nice header after seeing his initial shot blocked well. The maturity he's showing at 21 is fantastic and his personality on the pitch seems to drive on those around him. He should start in the league in my opinion but I don't think he will just yet. Endearingly humble in his interview afterwards.

Lamela scored perhaps the best strike I've seen at Spurs, and another lovely goal (like Kane, straight after his initial shot was blocked). At first he appeared to be trying too much, but after his first goal he relaxed and really started running the show, running at their defence dangerously and passing very cleverly. Like Kane, he's getting better all the time.

Adebayor frustrates me, and I really hope his withdrawal doesn't indicate a starting spot v Newcastle. I don't understand how a striker with his ample gifts can do so little. He improved in the second half and got involved more but if we're being run as a meritocracy, he won't keep his place in the side.

All three subs came on and got involved, kept things ticking over and bought into the game that we were playing.
 

prawnsandwich

Well-Known Member
Jul 19, 2014
6,035
4,064
For Lamela, it's an object-lesson: he absolutely must learn how to deliver this kind of inspiration even when he has two defenders all over him.
What was wrong with our defending was that our offside trap was very unreliable and we played a high line even after we had a 3 goal lead.
Adebayor is part of a rotating 4 man attack and his hold-up play and distracting presence are just as important as his goal-scoring. No one has mentioned his important assist, where he held the ball up under pressure from about 3 opponents for about 3 seconds, before squirting it to Lamela.
Great post-agree with 90%. Very good Ade summary.
At home (at least) Ade + Kane = goals.
Last 5 home games they played together 3-2, 5-1, 3-1, 3-0, 5-1
 
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0-Tibsy-0

Well-Known Member
Aug 13, 2012
11,201
43,790
H

Adebayor 6 He's not our point man for scoring goals in this formation. He's part of a rotating 4 man attack and his hold-up play and distracting presence are just as important as his [presently non-existent] goal-scoring. No one has mentioned his important assist, where he held the ball up under pressure from about 3 opponents for about 3 seconds, before squirting it to Lamela. He still has his uses, even while we wait for his goal-scoring touch to return.

I.

Just to be very pernickety, why not it's the internet, if you're talking about an assist for THE Lamela goal; he was tackled and the defender played it across to Lamela. He had certainly lost control of the ball.
 

Peters

SC Supporter
Nov 4, 2003
363
86
Lamela 8.5 including extra point for the rabona
Kane 9.0 MOM - would have been 10 if he had saved the free kick with a rabona
 

Coyboy

The Double of 1961 is still The Double
Dec 3, 2004
15,506
5,032
I found the eloquence and mastery with which you described our players' performance too intellectually stimulating to handle.
 
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