Worst home game for a while?

[SugarRay]

At least AVB had the honesty to say it was the worst performance of the season,unlike Mr Wenger who thought his team had the better chances against UTD even though their first shot on target was in the 90th minute.

Wenger's team will finish 10 points + above us this season and have Campions League football again next term.

 

[dagraham]

I agree that this is part of it. The Lane is not a fortress at all this season - instead it's a pressure cooker atmosphere created by a frustrated crowd that understandably want to see why a team that last season were (at least for 2/3rds of it) playing exciting, successful football, has now been dismantled.

I think another part of it is that AVB simply doesn't know how to set up the team when we're at home. Away from home he's in his element as he can study the opposition and set us up to counter their tactics. He knows the emphasis is on the home team to play their own game and go on the attack, and that plays into AVB's hands. However when Spurs are the home team he doesn't seem to be as comfortable creating a style of play that is specifically ours. People talk about the importance of imposing 'our own game' on the opposition, but so far under AVB we don't seem to have our own way of playing. Instead we are set up to react to the opposition.

In many ways it's like the reverse of Harry's tactics. With Harry he generally set the team up one of two ways - wide players and one striker up top, or two strikers up top. He kept it simple and looked for us to play the same way every game. As we all know, this meant that on some occasions we dropped points due to failing to adapt to the opposition when our normal way of playing wasn't going to work. With AVB we seem to try and adapt to the opposition in every game. As I say - away from home this would work more often than not, but when we get back to the Lane we seem to lack any sort of tactical identity of our own.

This is the main problem for me too. It's not do much the results, it's the home performances. They have all been turgid, lacklustre and ponderous, apart from a couple of ten minutes spells.

Yes, we've had injuries but bar Chelsea we've faced no one of note.

Away from home we are set up to counter attack but the manager has to address the home performances because most teams will set up to frustrate us and not give bale and Lennon any space to run in behind and the top teams will just punish our slack defending.