Spot The Difference

[davidmatzdorf]

This is just the same old misconception, just articulated better.

The problem wasn't some mythical brain washing. AVB didn't brain wash anyone not to take any risks, or how do you explain the quantum difference in Bale's game before and after AVB. The problem was we sold every single player of reasonable footballing IQ during AVB's tenure. King retired, Modric left, VDV left and then even Bale was sold. The one player who might have helped was Adebayor, and his prozac wasnt working. He was left with a choice of playing a completely different, more haphazard way or keep applying what he believed with players he found himself with.

It wasn't that this collective thinking got slower in the final third, it was that AVB's method was to push the opposition into that third, this meant stupid players squashed into heavy traffic. A possible mistake in itself, but not the one you alleged.

His smaller mistake was within that framework, he didn't always make the best personnel decisions to suit that perseverance and was also very unlucky with injuries to key players. Kaboul's long term problems meant Dawson being used in a high defence, left back problems meant Vertonghen being used as a LB, Sandro out long term, Dembele continually injured, Eriksen got injured just as he was beginning to click, and AVB didn't handle Lamela well or some of the younger players who could have helped.

He made mistakes, as do all managers, but for all that his PPG was still healthy, as healthy just about as Sherwood's with Adebayor, so for all his mistakes, it's hard to make a clear case for him changing a methodology he believed would compensate for deficiencies in other (IQ e.g.) departments. Because it probably did. It just didn't appeal to those that would prefer to watch the Keystone cops over an episode of Morse.

You always start from the premise that it is about the individuals. It almost never very rarely is. It's about the team. It's the central fallacy in your entire approach to understanding football. You aren't alone. You just articulate it better .

 

[ralvy]

Yes, Pochetino's regime will be very similar to AVB's, which is why Im extremely happy we hired him. He will be able to salvage some of AVB's good work while perfecting those aspects of our game we didn't gave AVB enough time to do so.

The best part is all those fucktards AVB haters don't even realize that's what we're doing, and therefore can't see the sweet hilarious irony of some of them now supporting Pochetino.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

You always start from the premise that it is about the individuals. It almost never is. It's about the team. It's the central fallacy in your entire approach to understanding football. You aren't alone. You just articulate it better .

That's trite bollocks. Not even that well articulated as I'm sure "almost never" is an oxymoron, or at the very least semantically flawed.

 

[davidmatzdorf]

...I'm sure "almost never" is an oxymoron, or at the very least semantically flawed.

It's not an oxymoron, it's a qualified absolute. But how about 'very rarely', if it makes you happier?

 

[punkisback]

Yes, Pochetino's regime will be very similar to AVB's, which is why Im extremely happy we hired him. He will be able to salvage some of AVB's good work while perfecting those aspects of our game we didn't gave AVB enough time to do so.

The best part is all those fucktards AVB haters don't even realize that's what we're doing, and therefore can't see the sweet hilarious irony of some of them now supporting Pochetino.

With AVB people disliked him on a personal level, mainly due to him replacing Harry. May I say there was a bit of xenophobia towards his foreign methods, from certain factions of the fan base. Let's hope that these fans can remain patient with Poch.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

It's not an oxymoron, it's a qualified absolute. But how about 'very rarely', if it makes you happier?

It's got fuck all to do with an individual or collective issue, it's about calling something what it is not and believing because you articulate that opinion well it is correct.

Where's the collective accountability in blaming AVB for everything ? And what has that got to do with blaming him for mistakes he didn't make and not blaming him for mistakes he did ?

 

[Sandros Shiny Head]

i think the basic difference was that now we are getting the ball forward to the strikers within seconds rather than 2-3 minutes before

 

[Bus-Conductor]

It's impossible to tell yet (the OP has a point) what the difference will be. People can guess and predict based on what we saw at Southampton, but until we actually see him do it with us, anyone saying he is is talking out of their jacksy.

They both have very similar philosophies, high line, high press, possession based football. We can just hope that Pochettino can get this group doing things better than AVB, because if he does, we'll be pretty OK.

Strange thing was, at the time AVB was sacked, with all the problems of new foreign players and "shit robotic mental programming" he was still above Pochettino's Southampton with all it's 25m footballers and wonderful football.

Go figure.

 

[ralvy]

With AVB people disliked him on a personal level, mainly due to him replacing Harry. May I say there was a bit of xenophobia towards his foreign methods, from certain factions of the fan base. Let's hope that these fans can remain patient with Poch.

I don't like accusing people of racism or xenophobia, but I do think its highly suspicious how many if not most of the people who were against AVB from the start couldn't then bring themselves to point out some of the endless flaws and amateurish and unprofessional behaviour from Sherwood.

 

[shaqTHFC]

Our 'defence' includes Lloris. If 'our defence is breached', that means that we have conceded a goal.

Not necessarily. You have forgotten about Fernando Torres.

 

[davidmatzdorf]

Where's the collective accountability in blaming AVB for everything ? And what has that got to do with blaming him for mistakes he didn't make and not blaming him for mistakes he did ?

It's really rather strange that you read my post as 'blaming AVB for everything' when the only mention of the man in the entire long post was the first phrase, which read 'There wasn't much wrong with AVB's theory'. Says way more about you than it says about my post.

It's got fuck all to do with an individual or collective issue...

I don't know what 'it' you mean. The 'it' I'm talking about is your personal selective blindness, which consists of an obsession with the individual 'stupidity' of specific Spurs players, the conviction that everything wrong with our performances is the result of individual players' failings and the presumption that our individual players have less footballing intelligence than other teams' players. All of that is absolute moonshine, but I'm not going to convince you of that, because it's the limit of your perception.

It's also, incidentally, why you overrate AVB and underrate Redknapp. The latter's skills were largely in making players such as van der Vaart, Modric and King look even better than they were by nesting their skills in a well-bonded, smoothly-functioning squad with good team spirit. They were good before he got hold of them, but he maximised their abilities, as he did with lesser talents such as Assou-Ekotto.

Pochettino's reputation is that he has similar skills. I'll wait and see. But if he can manage to get players such as Lamela, Eriksen and Vertonghen playing to the same standard as van der Vaart, Modric and King, whilst applying a formation strongly resembling that favoured by AVB, then I think it will reinforce the point that the best players only look like the best players when they are playing in a happy and balanced team. I don't think Lamela, Eriksen and Vertonghen have dramatically less ability and intelligence than van der Vaart, Modric and King. They just haven't been given the right stage to show it.

So 'it' has everything to do with an individual or collective issue.

 

[Bobbins]

I don't think you'll notice a significant difference until about Christmas - the team needs 15-20 games to really get into what the manager wants them to do. There also won't be a hell of a lot of training time early in the season as it'll be raining games, twice a week, plus the usual infuriating international breaks which ruin the start of the season. And finally you'll have the problem of Poch not being able to choose his first 11 for some time due to injuries.

We'll see signs - we quite obviously already have. But time, as usual, is needed. Poch needs a full season plus next summer's transfer window to implement what he wants to do, and I expect if he gets it then next season we'll see significant improvement.

And, as usual, I expect quite a lot of fans to forget that and expect instant results. Our first 0-1 at home to Burnley or similar will ring to the usual chorus of boos no matter what we do.

 

[Spurs_Bear]

Morning SC,

Probably need to leave it until the first couple of league games to start thinking about this, pre-season with a load of players missing against a side also in pre-season with some players missing isn't really going to tell you much.

Only things I took out the game were that I liked the way Lennon was getting in behind (still needs a lot of work as he was offside a few times) when coming in from the left, that is the kind of thing you can see has been worked on.

Second half was a non event due to the chopping and changing of players, as expected. I still think we will struggle if Adebayor is out, maybe why Poch is trialling the two striker theory with Soldado and Kane, both of them appear to get isolated if on their Johnson up front.

Don't like Holtby as the deeper CM, don't agree at all that he is positionally disciplined enough to play that role, hope to see a different pairing against West Ham. I fear for us against them, if Walker is out and we start with Naughton and Rose we'll get absolutely barbecued down the flanks, both with wingers running at them and the ball being lumped up, especially with how high Rose was up the pitch, acting as the width on Saturday.

As an aside on Naughton, he did something on Saturday which I have never seen him do before and it nearly registered a bit of blood in the tip, he actually advanced up the wing with the ball at his feet. It's a start (potentially an instruction of Poch, no other bugger has managed to get him to do it), and if he can continue to do that then he can potentially be able back up, though with the news that we are looking at signing Yedlin I would only assume it to be offski time for the less talented Kyle.

Bump this thread in 5 games and have another look would be my view.

 

[SonicSarr]

Have found preseason mostly positive. The tactics seem to be working but I don't think we are quite up to speed with them yet so with further improvement expected that is a positive.

A bit concerned that we have seen so little of some main players likes Verts but trusting that Poch knows what he's doing and is just giving them time after the WC.

Defensively we still look like we are capable of having a few calamitous performances. Hopefully he gets a settled back 4 sooner than later. Dier was a major plus on Saturday, a very assured performance. On the downside Eriksen seems to be getting lost a bit in games under the current tactics but perhaps that is an adapting thing and once it clicks he'll come more to the fore.

My biggest concern from what I saw Saturday is the flip side of our pressing tactics. The idea is to cut of the opponents options for a pass and to get them to pass to non-dangerous areas or lose the ball. What I noticed on Saturday is that when that did not work and the opponents got their pass away we looked horribly exposed. The 4 or so players that were pressing were immediately taken out of the game and their was space everywhere for the opponent in the areas in which we were not doing the pressing. Perhaps that was due to the changes at H-T as it was more apparent second half but it was something that gave me horrible flashbacks to some of the drubbings we got last season.

All in all I don't think we've seen Poch's best 11 yet and hopefully when we do he'll have them well drilled and the apparent weakness highlighted above will be less apparent.

 

[bubble07]

definitely seemed to be quicker passing with more intent and better movement

 

[SonicSarr]

A couple of quotes from Poch which seem to indicate that he is well aware that there is plenty more work to do before he has the tactics & personel nailed down:

Hotspur Related @HotspurRelated · 15s
Pochettino: "We only been training for 25 days and very difficult to translate philosophy to players and put into practice in short time.”

Hotspur Related @HotspurRelated · 24s
Pochettino: "It has been a difficult period because some players arrived late back from the World Cup." #THFC

 

[Spurs_Bear]

I don't like accusing people of racism or xenophobia, but I do think its highly suspicious how many if not most of the people who were against AVB from the start couldn't then bring themselves to point out some of the endless flaws and amateurish and unprofessional behaviour from Sherwood.

Should you check that those same people didn't like Martin Jol, Juande Ramos and obviously have already started slagging off Poch before you air your suspicions?

 

[Spurs_Bear]

With AVB people disliked him on a personal level, mainly due to him replacing Harry. May I say there was a bit of xenophobia towards his foreign methods, from certain factions of the fan base. Let's hope that these fans can remain patient with Poch.

They will no doubt if he is better than AVB.

 

[Main Man]

Yes, Pochetino's regime will be very similar to AVB's, which is why Im extremely happy we hired him. He will be able to salvage some of AVB's good work while perfecting those aspects of our game we didn't gave AVB enough time to do so.

I suppose in essence, that is what I am trying to understand - because on face value MP does just seem a slightly tweaked version of AVB.

Whereas in the past, every managerial change has been completely different to the previous regime (and Levy admitting he was wrong imo), this time the club seem fairly settled on structure etc. We aren't just going far left to far right etc

But you are right, I think fans are deliberately ignoring the obvious similarities between the two. But like you say, I don't thinkAVB was a million miles away with what he was trying to do - let's just hope MP achieves it first and foremost, but also in an entertaining fashion.

 

[Main Man]

A couple of quotes from Poch which seem to indicate that he is well aware that there is plenty more work to do before he has the tactics & personel nailed down:

Hotspur Related @HotspurRelated · 15s
Pochettino: "We only been training for 25 days and very difficult to translate philosophy to players and put into practice in short time.”

Hotspur Related @HotspurRelated · 24s
Pochettino: "It has been a difficult period because some players arrived late back from the World Cup." #THFC

I do understand this to a certain extent, but he has had 25 days working with a core set of players working entirely on philosophy and what he wants etc - he will not have this kind of contact with them again this season, with each week purely focusing on the next fixture.

Also, bar Llloris the World Cup returnees haven't played 90 minutes between them...

So beyond that fact being incredibly worrying IMO, that second comment has no real relevance to our performance against Schalke.