Player Watch - Tanguy Ndombele

olliec · Mar 8, 2020

mrlilywhite said:
Because that plan has worked so well in the other matches eh? I mean let's just soak up wave after wave attack, concede possession and just sit deeper and deeper until Burnley are camped on the edge of the box and hope that when Lo Celso & Moura come on that we can actually score goals, which if has been missed lately is becoming harder as each game goes by. There really isn't any positives from playing a game of chance, more so with a defence that looks like it is always on the brink of shipping a hatful.

But our team is completely shot and running on empty so what other choice do we have? Any more injuries and we are super fucked.

0-Tibsy-0 · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
Is this really acceptable for a 65m player? Jose has every right.

You realise we played Burnley today and not Wolves?

double0 · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
Is this really acceptable for a 65m player? Jose has every right.

So do you think Mourinho waited to start him for 45 mins and publicly slate him for that clip?

olliec · Mar 8, 2020

0-Tibsy-0 said:
You realise we played Burnley today and not Wolves?

My point is he doesn’t track back.

fuzzylogic · Mar 8, 2020

double0 said:
It was all about the tactics let's not kid ourselves. First half Jose did what his been doing of late containment. Ndombele was also plugging gaps and tackling along with Skipp. Lloris failed to push the shot away and the 5 CB's he picked weren't quick enough to clear.... Buts let's blame Ndombele.

Second half he was forced to charge tactics because we were losing the game he made positive changes moved Dier into midfield and put another attacking player on plus he played Aurier further up that opened the game more.

What he went on to say in the interview was unnecessary.

right let’s be honest. His effort and dedication are simply lacking. Do you understand football at all? There’s this thing called a team. There will be fit players and injured players. I’m sorry but we actually play with 5 centre half’s? Course we didn’t, and the shot should never have been spilled in the first place. We once again stuffed this fuckin team out because we are so threadbare.

0-Tibsy-0 · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
My example is he doesn’t track back.

I didn’t see any glaring examples in the first 45 today.. other than when Skipp and him were supposed to be marking 4 players due to our shape.

olliec · Mar 8, 2020

0-Tibsy-0 said:
I didn’t see any glaring examples in the first 45 today.. other than when Skipp and him were supposed to be marking 4 players due to our shape.

I’m talking overall performances.

Ionman34 · Mar 8, 2020

double0 said:
If you can't acknowledge there was a tactical change at half time and further tactical changes later on in the second half... What else is there to say.

Lo Celso has adapted that's great for us I'm truly happy about.

My take is Mourinho he did simliar when Alli was subbed took him off changed tactics and went on to say Alli knows he had a bad game due to being asked about Alli reaction... dropped him the following game then played him.

Mourinho purposely called out Ndombele for the first half for me that's the sort of things he did at other clubs I personally didn't agree with.

To be honest I can't see a way back for Ndombele he is pretty much doomed under Mourinho his card been marked.

So what was the tactical change, other than what I’ve previously posted that is? You seem to be implying that he did more than swap out like for like midfielders and put a forward on in place of a defender. I’m intrigued to know how this changed our midfield from abject to dominant.

Timberwolf · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
I just can’t understand why you or many others can’t see what he is doing. He said after the Norwich game we either go all in on the PL or CL. It looks like he’s trying to balance between the two. The plan was obviously 5 at the back and hold them out until around the 60th min before we let the big guns like Lo celso and Moura on. This way our best players get to conserve energy and will be ready for the CL. The plan failed because our terrible defence can’t keep anything out, but Hugo was also at fault. But you can see why we can’t play this intensity for 90mins right? So please stop slaughtering our manager and let him work! He’s having to work absolute miracles with what’s happening at the moment. If you and others want to rant then rant at anyone it should be our board.

I keep reading this "the gameplan was obviously to conserve energy then kill them in the last 20/30 minutes" thing on here.

No offense but it's patently bollocks.

What kind of gameplan invites pressure onto a flaky defense and effectively hands the initiative - and almost always a goal or two - to the opposition?

A bad one.

Liverpool won about 6000 games on the trot with less rotation than we're exhibiting, yet apparently our poor little lambs are cripplingly tired and we have no choice but to play with a back line deeper than the marianas trench and pray we can hold on for dear life.

Jose is lowering our expectations to get away with bad performances and results.

Yes, he deserves some slack given our injuries and complete lack of strikers, but the idea that he's working miracles is just pure nonsense.

0-Tibsy-0 · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
I’m talking overall performances.

Ok, so you agree that the criticism of him based on today isn’t founded?

olliec · Mar 8, 2020

Timberwolf said:
I keep reading this "the gameplan was obviously to conserve energy then kill them in the last 20/30 minutes" thing on here.

No offense but it's patently bollocks.

What kind of gameplan invites pressure onto a flaky defense and effectively hands the initiative - and almost always a goal or two - to the opposition?

A bad one.

Liverpool won about 6000 games on the trot with less rotation than we're exhibiting, yet apparently our poor little lambs are cripplingly tired and we have no choice but to play with a back line deeper than the marianas trench and pray we can hold on for dear life.

Jose is lowering our standards to get away with bad performances and results. Yes, he deserves some slack given our injuries and complete lack of strikers, but the idea that he's working miracles is just pure nonsense.

Our little lambs lost a CL final and their moral
Is massively down. Liverpool won so theirs si

is up and they can run on Adrenalin alone. We have none after what happened. I think not having a CF and still being in contention for top 4 is pretty much a miracle.

double0 · Mar 8, 2020

fuzzylogic said:
right let’s be honest. His effort and dedication are simply lacking. Do you understand football at all? There’s this thing called a team. There will be fit players and injured players. I’m sorry but we actually play with 5 centre half’s? Course we didn’t, and the shot should never have been spilled in the first place. We once again stuffed this fuckin team out because we are so threadbare.

Obviously as you've pointed out I don't understand football.

Agreed football is a team game and one player got blamed publicly. Why not saying privately? If he felt so strongly about it.

southlondonyiddo · Mar 8, 2020

0-Tibsy-0 said:
Watch the first half again.

Genuinely wasn’t a ‘bad’ performance by him individually. Fucking awful performance collectively, obviously.

Point out the examples when you don’t think he looked like he cared.

Ask why the two cms were the ones considered to be losing us the match and substituted, when we set up with 5cbs offering poor options when we were in possession and we had two cms who were basically playing against a Burnley midfield 4.

really think Mourinho has played a personal blinder here.

I think the introduction of Lo Celso and Moura had a lot more to do with our performance in the 2nd half than any perceived change in formation

While watching the first half I saw a 3 at the back on numerous occasions with Tanganga and Jan playing much higher up as wing backs.

The energy and effort the 2 subs gave us plus Diers added quality to do the job required in the middle was the key to a huge turnaround in performance

Tanguy reminds me a bit of Ross Barkley in that he’s got massive ability but quite often just doesn’t want to put in the required effort that will then let his talent shine

Timberwolf · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
Our little lambs lost a CL final and their moral
Is massively down. Liverpool won so theirs si

is up and they can run on Adrenalin alone. We have none after what happened. I think not having a CF and still being in contention for top 4 is pretty much a miracle.

That's so reductive, though.

I know losing the CL final must've been a massive blow but life moves on. Liverpool lost a CL final and went on to get like 97 points and win the CL the following year. It's all about how you react to that loss.

Lo Celso, Ndombele, Skipp, Bergwijn and Tanganga weren't even involved in the CL run anyway.

This whole thing goes far, far deeper than that.

mrlilywhite · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
But our team is completely shot and running on empty so what other choice do we have? Any more injuries and we are super fucked.

No, I see a team that is bereft of ideas and understanding of what they are being asked to do - yeah sure they are exhausted, but have you any idea what a system like Jose's current one does to fitness levels? I mean you are chasing down the ball, closing attacking play from the opposition, concentration levels to play a defensive shield like this need to be at the highest & guess what? Concentration is impacted greatly when fitness levels are low, so if that's the argument, then it's flawed. Jose would be served better pushing the defensive line up more and looking to control possession and play a patient game, which is a system that most of the first-teamers have a lot of experience with. Granted, it's not pretty, but it's less exertion than what we are currently doing. Honestly, when you get to this stage of the season, you don't sit back and try and invite pressure.

punkisback · Mar 8, 2020

DanielJohnCosta said:
I've just watched the game back before I made this post, I wanted to make sure I was correct from the first time I watched the match as it was 4:30 am Aus time and you know how the brain works at that time.

Before I post this I want to say that I'm 100% a big Ndombele fan and that I don't want my bias towards him to influence the post, I'll try not to include it but I'm seething at the moment.

Now I might understand there are external things happening around the club in relation to Mourinho and Ndombele that we have no idea about but I'm going to stay strictly to this game we just played, the player, and the quotes post-match by Mourinho.

Ndombele

in short, I think he played a very decent game. I believe it was once he got caught in possession but other than that he was able to dribble past and beat a player or two on a few occasions. His passing was also solid. One of the very few players who actually had the nerve to play a forward pass. When he was pressured he almost 100% was able to one-touch to an open player, rarely giving cheap possession over. Now the big thing is his fitness level in the game and this is why I wanted to watch it back to make sure I was correct the first time. I DID NOT see a drop off of his level of fitness during the game, watching back it was also evident his defensive and offensive contribution in the 37 towards the end of the half was better than when he started the match. He was moving just as well as anyone and I could honestly not question that aspect of his game. I'm more than happy for anyone to call me out on that but I stand 100% confident.

Mourinho

this is where it gets ugly for me. firstly let's talk about the formation. This has been a problem for a while but the current Mourinho system DOES not facilitate for a player of the qualities that Ndombele possesses. I like to think of the midfield in our system as the centre of a sandwich where there is nothing within the sandwich. The back 3 essentially controls the possession, with the midfield dropping team but often covered by the opposition effectively running them out of the game hence the necessity of the defenders to play the ball up to the front 3 before we engage in the midfield who joins the attack. This system does not facilitate Ndombele and this is no knock on Winks but it's perfect for a no-frill midfielder who plays his back to the defense and is happy to one-touch and play a backward pass back to the CB. Ndombele is a forward passer, he is an acute dribbler who wants to beat his man and drive forward. it is totally everything what Mourinho is setting his midfield to do. His quotes today for me are not justified, and frankly rather appalling. He's totally taken no accountability of his tactics (or lack of) and instead shifted the blame on a young, very talented, but also vulnerable future star player for the club. This for me is why I'm so enraged.

feel free to not read this, or disagree with me. For me, this is the first instance I've seen of the toxicity that Mourinho brings to a football club and that United fans warned us about. I've seen a lot of people on twitter etc. say Mourinho is correct in his comments to Ndombele and like I said before he may be correct in his assessment as we don't see him outside of the football pitch but in this game, at that moment and with how everything was set up and he played it was 100% not justified.

Agree. The thing is the forum has perpetuated a myth about a bad attitude and this is now taken as fact. Also someone mentioned that he may earn £200k a week and as this has been repeated many times this is now fact according the forum. There are a lot worse players in our team. But because this thread is to it’s made him a scapegoat.

olliec · Mar 8, 2020

mrlilywhite said:
No, I see a team that is bereft of ideas and understanding of what they are being asked to do - yeah sure they are exhausted, but have you any idea what a system like Jose's current one does to fitness levels? I mean you are chasing down the ball, closing attacking play from the opposition, concentration levels to play a defensive shield like this need to be at the highest & guess what? Concentration is impacted greatly when fitness levels are low, so if that's the argument, then it's flawed. Jose would be served better pushing the defensive line up more and looking to control possession and play a patient game, which is a system that most of the first-teamers have a lot of experience with. Granted, it's not pretty, but it's less exertion than what we are currently doing. Honestly, when you get to this stage of the season, you don't sit back and try and invite pressure.

I see what you’re talking about. But I just don’t think we have any players in the central area that can keep hold of the ball under pressure. So if we push up we are Inviting the press onto us and I’ve seen us do so many poor misplaced passes at the the back.

Reece · Mar 8, 2020

Written in July 2019. Houston, we have a problem.

Nick-TopSpursMan · Mar 8, 2020

Ionman34 said:
So what were the tactical changes that led to us dominating the midfield for the vast majority of the second half?

Aurier is a straw man argument too, as he came on in the 78th minute.

You make it sound as though moving Dier into midfield bolstered it, when all he did was swap out like for like. The difference was that the replacements worked harder.
Actually that’s not fair on Skipp, he worked hard but was swamped.

I feel I need to caveat this post to say that I was one of the leading cheerleaders for Ndombele when we were looking to buy him. It’s obvious to anyone with an ounce of Football nous that this man oozes talent. But talent gets you nowhere in this league without the hard work to go with it.

I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt here, much as JM is and has said in his statement. He’s had an awful start with the injuries and it is a new league, the hardest league in the World to play in. But whilst I may give him a pass on not necessarily being as effective as I believe he can be, I’ll not give him a pass on his lack of effort. The contrast in effort between him and Lo Celso was stark.

I hope to high heaven that JM can motivate him, as I truly believe we will have one of the Worlds best midfielders if he plays to his potential.

I mean the tactical change was pretty clear. Instead of a back 5 we had a back 4, which in turn allowed us to push an extra man in to the attack, which gave the midfield an extra outlet, more width and Burnley another attacker to have to mark.

In the first half, when Skipp and Ndombele got the ball, they had 3 narrow options and 5 CBs behind them. They had absolutely no wide outlets and so we couldn’t progress the ball from a low/mid block up the pitch.

Not only that but from a defensive POV, when Burnley tucked in they had 4 players around them, very much like Chelsea outnumbered us at Stamford Bridge.

With Dier and Lo Celso, they had a block of 3 players spread across in front of them, with Dele higher, giving them more bodies to work with higher up the pitch and both retain and progress the ball.

Had we put Lo Celso on for one of the CBs and put him in the hole but kept Skipp and Ndombele in cm, we would almost have seen a similar upturn as they would have had an extra outlet in midfield to find and another body to assist them off the ball. Could have put Lucas on for Lamela for more pace on the right as this helped too.

mrlilywhite · Mar 8, 2020

olliec said:
I see what you’re talking about. But I just don’t think we have any players in the central area that can keep hold of the ball under pressure. So if we push up we are Inviting the press onto us and I’ve seen us do so many poor misplaced passes at the the back.

No, quite the contrary, if you push up the defensive line it allows the defence to work closer with the midfield and offer up a shorter passing game. Lo Celso, N'Dombele are two that can keep hold of the ball, though the latter has question marks over his determination/fitness whatever we perceive it to be. The point is we are already inviting the press onto us and not in midfield really as we are sitting so deep that the press is on our backline, so our midfield is even more confined and limited. If we moved away from a two in midfield and went with a 3, with one holding, then you have more options than what we have now. We could have gone with that today, but we played an abundance of central defenders, with two of them in unnatural positions and looked to them to provide a threat down the flanks, which let's be honest is bloody laughable.

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