Stellini questions the mentality of the Spurs squad “something has to change”

[fridgemagnet]

It is mentality, one mistake and they are fragile as hell for the remainder of the game. Been saying it for years now, if they make an error early doors expect more because they can't shake it off and get on with the game.

There's another part to the mentality thing like; the number of years where we'll put in a good performance against e.g City then the next game comes against a team fighting at the wrong end of the table or lower league in a cup or a "small" club if we're in Europe and our players go out there and play for at least the first half expecting those teams to roll over for us.

I remember a game under Poch and we'd been playing really well but was still early season and for the first time publicly one of our players broke the "we're taking it one game at a time, concentrating on ourselves etc.etc." script when asked post match and if memory serves it was Kane.
I remember thinking Poch isn't going to like that, so next game was Wolves away (the Foyth game) and we imploded yet Poch didn't do anything to at least hold on for a draw, you could visibly see it unravelling yet Poch changed nothing and it was almost as if he was deliberately throwing the team under the bus for breaking protocol.

I realise this sounds very conspiracy nonsense but honestly the way that whole spell played out you could just see it. Now I've no proof that was Poch's motive at all.

As you say though one defensive bit of clumsiness okay it happens but how everything unravelled in that game and knowing how many players are still here from that time I can well believe that there are scars, frailties and mistrust that runs deep.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

It is mentality, one mistake and they are fragile as hell for the remainder of the game. Been saying it for years now, if they make an error early doors expect more because they can't shake it off and get on with the game.

True but the similar tactics of the last 3 managers don’t help the player’s confidence.

 

[Trix]

True but the similar tactics of the last 3 managers don’t help the player’s confidence.

Exactly the same tactics second half of last season when we were running over teams. The difference? Those players had nothing to lose and the confidence was higher. I went Saturday and I can tell you it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference what formation and tactics we played, Dier(for example) would have been awful. He made error after error after error, and I knew it would be like that after watching him in the first 10 minutes as I've seen it so many times now.

Getting your individual defensive fundamentals wrong, are nothing to do with tactics, nothing at all.

 

[mmidgers]

A defence of Forster, Tanganga, Dier and Davies is pretty much championship level. They wouldn’t look out of place in the West Brom line up.

And that's the biggest problem. It's the defense that's needed upgrading more than any other position and the club has failed in this regard, especially after having so long to identify realistic and attainable targets.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

Exactly the same tactics second half of last season when we were running over teams. The difference? Those players had nothing to lose and the confidence was higher. I went Saturday and I can tell you it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference what formation and tactics we played, Dier(for example) would have been awful. He made error after error after error, and I knew it would be like that after watching him in the first 10 minutes as I've seen it so many times now.

Getting your individual defensive fundamentals wrong, are nothing to do with tactics, nothing at all.

This is true confidence played a big part end of last season, injuries has also been a big issue this season as end of last season our best XI stayed fit, also we'd not been play 2 games a week it was just one game a week and full focus on that game, new manager bounce also.

However now those factors aren't positively influencing the players I think it would make some difference if the tactics meant that we kept more of the ball and the players had more passing options and played closer together and we had more numbers in midfield so we could control games better and create more chances and therefore take more pressure off these error-prone lacking in confidence defenders.

That is not to say that Dier and others wouldn't continue to make mistakes but I said the same thing under Jose and Nuno both who play similar styles to Conte that their tactics and style of play means the defence has more to do and has more pressure on them, take some of that pressure away by keeping the ball better, controlling the game better and attacking more and sustaining possession down the other end of the pitch rather than relying mainly on transitions and long passes and it would help a bit.

I'm not saying it would fix things entirely and ultimately the likes of Dier, Sanchez, Tanganga, Davies etc need to be upgraded and have done for a few years now but 3 managers in a row have all played very similar styles all of which put more pressure on the defence.

We have a big problem now Bentancur and Bissouma are injured but until recent injuries we could've played a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 and tried to control games with more possession:
Lloris

Emerson
Romero
Lenglet
Davies

Bissouma
PEH
Bentancur

Kulu

Kane
Son/Richy

That midfield 3 would've bossed teams and controlled games and before someone says oh but we tried it in a 3-5-2, that is irrelevant because it is still a 3atb formation whereby you can get pushed back into a defensive 5-3-2 with few passing out options.

Anyway now we have all of the injuries that we do there really now aren't many line-ups we can field without being weak and exposed so going to be a fun 2nd half of the season lol.

 

[newbie]

Well Conte and his team have had enough time with the players now to assess the players' mentality and improve it or remove those with the weak mentality from the squad and if they haven't what are they getting paid for?

TBH yesterday we looked like we were playing for Tuesday and didn't want to get injured (How'd that work out?) pulling out off things and not committing.

come one our transfers have been for years and FP and Conte have been trying to fix it

Jose, Conte are both wrong ?

We clearly need better CBs if we had Prime Toby and Jan i think we would look a dam good side!

 

[theShiznit]

Exactly the same tactics second half of last season when we were running over teams. The difference? Those players had nothing to lose and the confidence was higher. I went Saturday and I can tell you it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference what formation and tactics we played, Dier(for example) would have been awful. He made error after error after error, and I knew it would be like that after watching him in the first 10 minutes as I've seen it so many times now.

Getting your individual defensive fundamentals wrong, are nothing to do with tactics, nothing at all.

So why is Dier (and the others that constantly make mistakes or lack in mentality) still here?

It's been pretty obvious that most of our defenders are not fit for purpose, but rather than fix it we get managers/coach's that work around it, either like Jose and have basically a back 8 or like Conte, just stick with the same system/players and pray something clicks in their tiny brains.

When all of your CB's have glaring flaws (some more so than others) how can you expect better?

Here are some of the flaws as i see them:

Slow as Shit: Dier, Davies, Langlet.

Ball watchers: Dier, Davies.

Passive defenders: Dier, Langlet.

Error prone: Sanchez, + See above.

Rash, Sanchez, Romero, Davies.

For all the top coaches we've had over the last few (with a brief interlude) I haven't seen any improvement in those defenders. We have seen brief spells where we defended better as a unit, but even within those spells the glaring flaws reared their head on numerous occasions.

Hell Conte and Jose both CHOSE to build a defence around Dier FFS, a man so bereft of defensive ability, but he can point and occasionally hit a good long ball. Dier, is supposed to organize and lead the defence, but he is a ball watcher in the extreme, has been and always will be AFAIAC, constantly caught blindside with players running off him, backs off to the extreme, due to being shit scared of being beaten and has the turning circle of a shark on the back of a truck that has no wheels!

People will say "well you can't change an entire defence." or "Player A is a good guy to have around the squad"
Why can't you change the entire defence, if they are all so mentally scarred and have such glaring flaws? and The keeping players around the squad because they have a good attitude or personality argument, how is that working for us?

Maybe all we are missing is one key organizer in the CCB role, but unless we can find that one magic (Thiago Silva) player what is the point in just patching up the shit that's here?

 

[Cinemattis]

Anyone remember that Austrian defender we had - Kevin Wimmer? Super-Jan was out with injury for months, and Wimmer looked like he had partnered with Toby for years in the PL. Our stats where even better with him than with Jan IIRC. Same story with Sanches when he partnered with Jan during the months Toby was in the doghouse for refusing to renew his contract (or whatever his and Poch´s beef was): he looked every bit like the record breaking fee defender we all (most of us at least) thought we had bought. Sanches also looked, for a clear majority of the time, super solid when playing in a 3 between our two Belgians.

Hell, even Dier looked like a real talent when together with these two - usually dropping down from the DM position.

There´s two points I´m trying to make here:

Firstly: with the right quality player in defence - more or less anyone could be good enough playing next to them. Say if we had a Ledley King (without knee problems) in the back line these days: I´m pretty sure both Sanches and Dier would be highly rated as a top class defenders playing together with him. And Romero would probably not get booked every 5 minutes either.

Just like Liverpool sorted their defensive problems by signing van Dijk, I would argue that with one top class defender to boss the backline, we would look totally different. That won´t be a signing like Joe Rodon, though.

Secondly: our midfield is being run through constantly. All the time, every game. PEH is perceived by many as a warrior, but he cheats. A lot. Not Lamela shithousery kind of cheating, but cheating on his return runs and defensive duties. To some extent Bentacour too, but our Danish friend is the main culprit in the machine room. We had a perfect duo for one season in Wanyama and Dembélé. They protected and shielded our backline and probably (in fact?) made them look far better than they actually were. When Wanyama broke, we never replaced him. And when Dembélé slowly declined and ran out of steam we never replaced him neither (I don´t know if it would be possible, but we didn´t even try). Back in the Modric days we had a few seasons with Scott Parker who also did a lot of the hard work. We have no such players today. The point is: we don´t have any midfielders that are capable of shielding our defence properly. Personally I hoped Skipp could´ve become this player, but he´s either been out injured or not being played.