Spurs vs West Ham - Match Day Thread

[glacierSpurs]

Oh man, just saw Son interview by SpursTV and he really sounded so sad and disappointed for only getting one point despite scoring the screamer. Almost wanna cry. What a player.

 

[rocklink]

Oh man, just saw Son interview by SpursTV and he really sounded so sad and disappointed for only getting one point despite scoring the screamer. Almost wanna cry. What a player.

What did sissoko say ? Was he disappointed ?

 

[Ionman34]

Citeh don’t seem to have any problems at the moment and we didn’t last season

Taking the ref out of the equation?

City?

Riiiiight.

 

[thefierycamel]

Said it in Josh's thread but what does sissoko offer that he doesn't? Experience? Similarly edwards needs to be on the bench more, dude is about the only player on our list capable of breaking these teams down.

 

[Bulletspur]

Sissoko and Dier were not the reason we didn't win. Poch is culpable for playing them in the first place, and even so he should have substituted them way before he did. I am angry at Poch, not Sissoko or Dier. They didn't pick themselves.

 

[shelfboy68]

Considering it was looking like we was going to lose at one point a draw has made today bearable at work, but in all seriousness the inability to see off teams like this Is becoming frustrating and all too common in equal measure.

 

[lis spur]

Another one of those games that felt like a cup final ,small team comes to Wembley all behind the ball and sucker punch goal!!.
Roll on August and back home again.

 

[Super Tottenham]

Woke up in a good mood as it’s Friday and then I remembered the football, ages to wait until our next Premier League game to set it right as well!

 

[EQP]

So reading 'Brave New World' on page 218 this paragraph stood out to me

" Around that time I had a very tricky conversation with one of the key men, whose name I'll keep to myself for the time being. It was our second in the space of a year. I got Jesus to prepare the ground the spent almost an hour talking. I swooped to add the finishing touches although Jesus kept chiming with phrases like " You do this in training, this in games and these are the statistics". I went down the contract route: " If you carry on like this, we don't need you" There ended being a trigger in a video that we showed him, clearly proving that he reacted conservatively on two occasions in the same match instead of doing what he should've done, which was to move forwards. His decision affected him and the team"

There is no doubt in my mind after reading the bulk of the book that Poch and the coaching staff have sat Sissoko down and asked him to play in the fashion we saw today. They understand his limitations and are okay with him playing the role that he does. We can slam and criticize Sissoko but Poch keeps picking him and starting him in games. For whatever reason Mauricio believes that Sissoko is either a safer bet or truly feels that no youth players can stand in and perform the duties he does.

 

[TheChosenOne]

Woke up in a good mood as it’s Friday and then I remembered the football, ages to wait until our next Premier League game to set it right as well!

its Everton & BFS at Wembley.. Sameish

 

[WexfordTownSpur]

City do have better quality players, that makes a lot of difference, but I go back to attacking structures and patterns of play..... They also do this better, quite a lot better. If player A is dropping off for instance then player B is running in behind, or if one has come inside the other takes the space vacated on the outside etc etc.

That's a tactical thing and down to coaching and drilling the awareness and pattern play into the players. They just have better structures to fall back on. This is definitely where, in my opinion, we need to evolve our game.

I actually think it’s both. Good tactics but also having a good football brain, being able to execute the mangers direction in the heat of the game and making little tweaks as required during the game. I’m am sure Poch puts his game plan out there each half but are players like Dier Sissoko Davies etc able to execute as well?

 

[iddebu52]

What did sissoko say ? Was he disappointed ?

well yeh with your comment mostly........

 

[WexfordTownSpur]

Poch always takes the moral high ground with refs etc but Fergie and other top managers would have bee putting pressure on match officials weeks ago for never giving Ali any fouls or particularly penalties. It is possible to still show respect and get the message across.

We also one last week on a clear bad off side decision I think it’s the luck of the draw and I’m not sure those decisions were nailed on to be fair.

 

[WexfordTownSpur]

Mate we didn't need two ball winners to win the ball when we had 75 per cent possession lol, that's the whole point.

Poch made a mistake by playing both of them, and after seeing West Ham's team he could of tinkered, which was exceptionally defensive looking.

I'm not blaming Dier and Sissoko but Poch should of at least addressed the mistake at HT and taken Sissoko off, dropped Eriksen back and brought Lamela on.

The point is that would of increased our chances of breaking them down more cleanly.

The chances you're referring to where not that great in truth as we never had enough time and Space in and around their box.

What we needed was more guile to create better quality chances and disrupt their shape more.

They were happy to let us have the ball so why on earth reduce your quality on the ball by having two defensive minded midfielders when we're not having to compete that hard in the middle to win the dam thing.

Tactically we were flawed tonight and what made it worse was Poch just sittIng there failing to address it and not playing the percentages to increase our chances of winning the game.

Then they score and then he reacts, simply way too late.

And thats coming from.a Poch disciple!!

Love him, but definitely got that wrong tonight, big time.

As guess it’s obvious that Poch thinks in the center he thinks Sissoko can drive forward take on players and create space by attracting others to him, problem is he doesn’t. Sissoko must be brilliant at this in training and Poch has blind faith he is gonna make something happen.

 

[stevenurse]

Not in ANY way a contributing factor of why we didn't win last night, but it struck me that there were so few ballboys/girls.

The distance between the pitch and the crowd is massive and therefore takes an age to get the ball back in play. I noticed a few times that we seemed to be waiting much longer to receive the ball, and often gives the opposition a chance to waste even a few more seconds. You'd think we would flood the surrounding area of the pitch in order to allow us to keep any momentum we had built

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Oh man, just saw Son interview by SpursTV and he really sounded so sad and disappointed for only getting one point despite scoring the screamer. Almost wanna cry. What a player.

If he didn't bang on about this being on Poch, **** off Sissoko, slag off the starting line up and substitutions then he was faking it

 

[spursfan77]

After that Arsenal game he shouldn’t have touched another one of our games this season, he was trying so hard to prove he wasn’t favourable towards us that he ended up being favourable to the other team and gifted them a goal which changed the entire game.

He's the Alli penalty claim. It's a foul anywhere on a football pitch.

https://twitter.com/t_c71/status/949057416070545408

The refs don't seem to know what a penalty is now. They need to be sat down and shown all the incidents over the Christmas period and be told what is a pen and what isn't. If they still can't work it out by the end of January then bring VAR in from February until the end of the season because they aren't up to the job.

(They aren't helped by the players of all clubs either, who seem to be cheating more than ever before this season).

 

[Kiedis]

Points dropped at home against Swansea, Burnley, WBA and West Ham. All under the same circumstances, pretty much. You'd say that based on chances created, we win all of those games 8/10 times.

I had no trouble brushing the three first games off as "football, fucking hell", but this game was so frustrating, since it took Pochettino 70 minutes and a goal for West Ham to change the things he should have done at half time, or after 60 minutes at the latest.

 

[dagraham]

Sissoko and Dier were not the reason we didn't win. Poch is culpable for playing them in the first place, and even so he should have substituted them way before he did. I am angry at Poch, not Sissoko or Dier. They didn't pick themselves.

Agree, although to be fair I can understand why he picked them to start. Wanyama isn't ready to start, Dembele is made of glass, Winks has been lacking confidence and West Ham are a very physical team which probably influenced his decision to pick Sissoko.

What I can't understand is why Poch couldn't see early on that it wasn't working. Without doubt his in game management and use of substitutions are his biggest weakness. Almost all his subs are pre conceived predictable changes and are made too late. Very rarely do his substitutions change the game in our favour.

West Ham's tactics were anti football, but this is football now. There is too much at stake to stay in the PL and you have to say they defended well. As we've seen if you play open style against us you get spanked like Southampton so we have to except more and more teams to do it. Starting next game when Allardyce comes to town.

It's up to us to find answers. We don't move the ball quickly enough and haven't got enough creative players in CM. This is also where our lack of pace and a player who can beat players is also evident. I know at this point I'm going to get lots of replies saying "pace ain't no good against bus parkers if there's no space in behind", but it's not that simple. It's not all about the ball over the top, it's about breaking through the lines and disturbing the organisation of the defence. Taking players on creates space for others.

Having said that, even though we lack a couple of players I've described, we still should have won. We controlled the game, but the quality was lacking, especially out wide where we barely hit a decent cross all game. Poch also needs to take more risks with his line up. We don't have that many creative players but we need to fit the ones we have into our line up in all of these type of games.

 

[Mullers]

We all knew before the game, what west ham were going to do, a point isn't ideal, but its still 10 points out of 12, I'll take that.