Weak, spineless, shite. Townsend doesn't even try anything, just runs and turns back and passes. Never thought I'd say it but I miss his long shots, at least tried to do something. Erisken was decent. Thought Bentaleb was MOTM. Chadli awful. Kane selfish a few times but not great service. Rose decent.
Lloris.........7.........French but not responsible for the goals. We gave you Wembley you owe us another season.
Walker.......6+......Good until injured. Scored, what more can you ask.
Dier...........7+.......Impressed by the youngster under provocation from nasty trousers Costa.
Verts.........7.........OK. Nearly broke sweat at one point. None of his faults exposed today.
Rose.........7+...... Another good performance from Danny. I'm getting to like him more and more.
Eriksen......7+ ..... Well marked but still played well. Doesn't need a lot of space.
Bentaleb....8........My MOM. Effort and drive to good effect. Not afraid to try.
Mason.......6+......A bit below par lately. Been taking shooting lessons from Andros
Chadli........6..... ..Struggling for form. Handsome devil but it's not enough.
Kane..........7-......Always gives everything but made little headway today.
Townsend..5........Surprised he started ahead of Lamela. Didn't justify it.
I thought we played well against a much more experienced side. and were a bit unlucky.
But on this showing by this young side the future is bright.........
It's not a cheap shot at all. I noted down what the ref was and wasn't giving as it happened. I included it in my ratings. The officials were absolute toss-pots. Here it is again, watch the match again and you will absolutely see all of these things (unless you have SelectiveSightitis:
Referee and assistants (particularly that baldy **** on our right) - oh, f'off, Mourinho's antics clearly got to them. Costa started on three players in quick succession, Rose was fouled by Ramirez and Cahill in quick succession, they were constantly niggling, pushing, pulling, Terry (the ****) walked behind Rose and stuck his elbow in his back in the build-up to a dead ball, Willian did a sneaky little pull-back (that I have seen players, particularly Eriksen, booked for) and we had a penalty appeal completely ignored for a handball where their player had 1 billion times more chance of getting his arm outta the way than the Vertonghen one Mourinho went on and on about at the Lane. And who got the first yellow - yeah, you guessed it, Dier (looked to me like Costa bought it a bit). And every time I see Ramirez, especially against us, I am left wandering how the hell he doesn't get about 7 yellow cards per game (obviously, would be sent off after 2, but y'know what I mean) = 4
And in not scoring. The defence wasn't shitty, they could have dealt with the situations better that led to the two goals, but that doesn't alter the fact that Chelsea scored from two scruffy deflections (I'm not that sure the second was even intended as a shot, TBH). But this kinda misses the point, anyway.
It was a poor decision, I said it was a poor decision in my ratings in this very thread. Questions have been raised, incidentally, as to whether it was actually a foul. But, again, it's kinda missing the point.
That's the narrative you want to see...so that is what you see! If we came desperately close to scoring and they only scored due to deflections on scuffed shots, then, surely, it is not so clear cut as saying they were always going to score and we were always going to not score - not unless you believe in some cosmic fate-pipe that gets turned on, for games like this, so a quota of fate pours out.
Again, you miss the point. I didn't ask it if hit the bar, I stated that it did. I didn't ask if stats wise it counted as on target. I asked you if you knew before hand that the ball from any Erisken free-kick would hit the bar today rather than go in, because that is the only way you can say you knew we wouldn't score. It missed by a fraction = therefore it was fahooking close = therefore no-one could have predicted that Erisen would not score with any free-kick today unless they have the sight.
And, as I explained to Enfield, taking a before hand understanding that Chelsea were the favourites, with a manager who knows how to grind out results in this type of game and experience of winning several trophies, and a team with the quality and nous to implement his tactics, and pairing that with knowledge of the final result doesn't mean you knew what the result would be. It means they were favourites...and we all knew that. It means a victory for Chelsea was the more likely outcome...and we all knew that. But it doesn't mean they were predestined to win and any such prediction would have been infallible! And it misses the point: if Eriksen's free-kick had hit the bar, would you absolutely certainty (or anyone else's, based on looking at the team-sheet, for instance) have still been correct?
Come-on, Shelfy, it's what is known in the legal profession as a leading question
Even the worse manager in the world has worked it out let alone probably the best one.....congest the area where Kane and Eriksen operate and bar abit of luck you stop Tottenham.....once i saw their line up with 2 holding players i feared we would struggle to really open them up.Jose was taking no chances and knew exactly who to stop.
No shame in the way most of the team played, infact Bentaleb was the best player on the park by a mile, Walker,Rose and Dier didn't let themselves down either,whilst Kane & Eriksen tried tirelessly to get through Mourinho's tactics with little help from Townsend & Chadli or Lamela & Moussa later.
Poch ,like our team, is a work in progress.....and he fell short against the master on the big stage, but he is the right man and he will hopefully learn from yesterday...Jose proved once again that there are different ways of winning...and did.
Regarding Mason, hasn't he been substituted in nearly every game he's played in? I wonder if he just physically cannot play 90 minutes yet.I'm not sure how to title this one. Maybe as I'm writing this one will come to me. The problem is there was no clear overriding narrative. There was some things to criticise, but some to praise. The bottom line is, no single facet cost us today, just football. Football doing it's thing, and somethings that thing favours you and sometimes it fucks you. Ultimately, though I think Poctettino got his selections a bit wrong, his tactics a bit wrong, and though we do show frustrating ineptitude at crucial moments, and we were up against an arch tactician and his very talented and well drilled team, it was really mostly football that fucked us more than any other factor, because for all those things to criticise we didn't play badly today, we were never embarrassed and with a bit of rub our way could easily have come out with more than we did.
Managers are a puzzling breed. Anyone who watched the Arsenal game would say "There's the blueprint". So I really don't understand why he didn't go with that team, including Lamela and Dembele in the ARM and ACM and try and fuck up Chelsea like we fucked up Arsenal. Set about them, rattle them higher up before that impenetrable Mourinho bus gets into it's parking bay.
It baffles me that after nearly 40 league games and 73 first team games of largely futile clucking Townsend was given this gig. We all know Lamela is flawed but against a team like Chelsea his willingness to operate the press high up could have made a difference, and the admittedly small but real chance he may have produced something tangible could have also made a difference. An example of the pressing thing arrived early in the first 10 or so minutes, Kane and Eriksen go to press Cahill and Terry, but Townsend is off message, he's stood still 10 yards from Azpillicueta and Chelsea can easily escape to pincer movement. Townsend wasn't idle but there were occasions where he just doesn't work with the group or its a late dash afterthought. I wouldn't have had Chadli either because he's too erratic and not great for the high press either but I could at least make a case for him as he does produce sometimes. The other thing is that neither Townsend or Chadli show up for the ball as much as Lamela and Dembele do. And on tough days this is also important. Another example of this was early on when Walker was desperate for an out ball but Townsend actually ran further away and stood behind Azpillicueta as a result Walker was forced to hump away possession. Both Townsend and Chadli seem to struggle with their first touch when under pressure too. They both had moments where they got the ball and ran at Chelsea, but neither created anything you could tangibly call "good". And defensively they can both be mentally lazy. This was evidenced by the free kick Chadli gave away for the first goal. Just mental laziness, thinking I won't make the extra bit of effort to position myself properly.
I think these two selections made a difference to the way we played. Maybe Pochettino liked the 5-3 WHL Chelsea blueprint, but I thought that although we played well, that game was vey messy and open and we were very lucky that night that we buried our chances and they wasted more of theirs.
I wanted that ferocious strangle we put on Arsenal and Liverpool, not the slightly more stand offish open version we got today.
That said, after an iffy first 15 minutes I thought we grew into the game and pretty much dominated the ball, bar little pockets of the game, for the majority of it. Part of that was of course Mourinho's penchant for shelling once his team are a goal (and especially 2) to the good and also his very defensive selection of Zouma. But a big part of it was also how well Mason, Eriksen and Bentaleb played. Eriksen faded a bit second half but was everywhere first half.
Some of our approach play was very good, the ball gets moved around and we worked players into some half promising situations but unfortunately we do some mind numbingly stupid things once we get there. Rose and Walker wasted their usual quota, Kane chose to run into crowds instead of a couple of times playing simpler more effective options, Townsend and Chadli created knish and Eriksen, great everywhere else, just doesn't seem to be able to pick an incisive pass this season.
Not for the first time I thought Pochettino's subs were banal and added nothing at best and made us weaker at worst. I just do not get the tactical notion of effectively swapping mason for Dembele as CM's when you are desperate to get the ball forward quicker. And playing Soldado and Kane hasnt improved us once. He should have left Dembele in the attacking midfield and added Lamela and finished with Erikisen left, which would have also got him away from his man marker Zouma.
There are qualities I am liking about this young team, and despite the grumbles I have I thought there was plenty of honour in our defeat today. Even in this less diligent mode we are still much more tenacious and competitive than in years gone by, and we keep working to the bitter end. These are qualities that have come from Pochettino and are worth applauding because they aren't really in our DNA. 5 months ago people were making relegation threads. Here we are with the youngest team in the league playing cup finals and duking it out at the right end of the table with a load of pretty decent teams in the toughest every EPL.
The End is possibly not nigh.
Individual
Lloris - No chance with the goals. Decent game.
Walker - Started early with one of his trade mark careers up the pitch that's all promising but ends up, under no pressure, fizzing the ball to their CM and creating a counter attack that has everyone back peddling frantically. After that he had a pretty decent game until the second goal where he drops two yards behind the defence and plays Costa onside. As ever Wasted the chance to put a couple of decent crosses into the box. A pretty standard game.
Dier - Good game, big future.
Vertonghen - Good game.
Rose - As Walker, wasted 2 or three great chances to put a telling cross in, but apart from that had a very decent game.
Mason - He still loses composure at those vital forward moments but I thought he had a very good game and should never have been taken off.
Bentaleb - Outstanding game.
Townsend - Poor. See above
Eriksen - Saw shitloads of the ball, and I appreciate that he's often involved in setting up the setting up, but we really could do with him finding his creative boots and actually creating some quality chances for others. That said, had a very good game overall and worked extremely hard with and without the ball.
Chadli - More involved than Townsend, but ultimately pretty disappointing.
Kane - Disappointing really. Needs to get his head up sometimes and play the simple pass instead of trying to plough through traffic.
Jose trumped Poch in the tactics stakes.
We were mismatched from the start and Mourinho knew he could surrender possession and we would do fuck all with it.
We need a big investment in our first team quality if we are properly going to be a force.
Also Poch needs to learn from this, needs to be more fleixble
Regarding Mason, hasn't he been substituted in nearly every game he's played in? I wonder if he just physically cannot play 90 minutes yet.