Manager Watch: Ange Postecoglou

[bubble07]

This reminds me of peps first season. But in his 2nd season he spent 300m on defenders

 

[Hercules]

This reminds me of peps first season. But in his 2nd season he spent 300m on defenders

We will spend £30

 

[chas vs dave]

Was disappointed they didn't come out in the second half looking like they had the bollocking I thought they deserved but at some point they have to stop being carried by Ange and do the hard work themselves.

We were not at the races in the 2nd half. We just seem to just lose momentum when on top. It's really annoying to watch. West Ham were shocking, but a lucky ricochet gets them back in the game.

 

[Trent Crimm]

We will spend £30

In installments

 

[bomberH]

Overall it’s pretty obvious that we have to be happy with the job he’s done turning the football from turgid shit to exciting-but-far-too-open and we’re enjoying games (in the main) now. But I don’t understand why he continuously takes off Lo Celso, our only creative player, far too early every time and also he takes off Maddison when he was fit too much too early too. I assume he’s trying to close the games down at this point but tonight Lo Celso came off after around 66 mins at 1-1. I just got in so don’t know if he was injured or not but even so, he does this a lot. I like Skipp, but Lo Celso was playing well and didn’t need to come off.

Can’t complain too much though. Yes we’ve had a shit 5 games but we all knew our squad depth is dogshit and after the Chelsea game it was always gonna be downhill from there. Roll on Jan and hopefully Ange will be backed in the transfer window. Hopefully…..

A January with no Maddison, vDV, Bentancur, Sarr, Son, Bissouma, Peresic, Solomon etc could be pretty awful.

 

[beats1]

He got the selection wrong, he shouldn't have started Hojberg, he should have gone with Gil. There was no quick play in the middle with Bissouma and Hojberg

Also I maintain the front 3 including Son haven't played well all season and don't know what they're supposed to do yet. With a low block, Son, Johnson(majority of the time), Richarlison and Kulusevski, All look lost when they are hugging the touchline and run in to bodies

They work hard and play well because they are great players but I don't think any of these players suit the system

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

This reminds me of peps first season. But in his 2nd season he spent 300m on defenders

Or Klopps first 2 until he signed Allison & VVD.

We need the equivalent signings but in attack + 1 back-up CB.

 

[E17yid]

I bet Ange will be regretting his “I’ll let the fans judge whether we’ve been successful or not at the end of the season” comment soon enough.

 

[Bluto Blutarsky]

I bet Ange will be regretting his “I’ll let the fans judge whether we’ve been successful or not at the end of the season” comment soon enough.

I doubt he has many regrets.

And fans will judge him, rightly or wrongly, even if he never said it.

As much as the results pain me - the club is moving in the right direction. We knew since last season, that this would be a process that was not solved overnight. We are still a full summer's worth of transfers away from having the players in place to play the style that Ange wants, and that we enjoy, on a consistent basis. It may be harsh, but its true.

We have seen glimpses of what we can do - we don't abandon ship because of a few setbacks.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

I doubt he has many regrets.

And fans will judge him, rightly or wrongly, even if he never said it.

As much as the results pain me - the club is moving in the right direction. We knew since last season, that this would be a process that was not solved overnight. We are still a full summer's worth of transfers away from having the players in place to play the style that Ange wants, and that we enjoy, on a consistent basis. It may be harsh, but its true.

We have seen glimpses of what we can do - we don't abandon ship because of a few setbacks.

 

[Kirito]

I really think it's gone under the radar how big of a blow the injury to Perisic was and how that ripped up Ange's pan for our forward line.

Perisic is a genuine world class player, maybe only for 30 minutes a game but he would have given us so much this season and showed that for the brief time he was available. It’s so frustrating as we wasted his time here under Conte, and now he’ll never play for us again.

 

[dannyo]

Tonight was a shit result against an awful team but Ange had enough credit in the bank by September as far as I was concerned. Infinitely more enjoyable than the last few years and you can see that we’re building towards something. Annoying it had to be them and Chelsea but long-term is bright for us

 

[EireYid]

In installments

After the loan to buy option.

 

[GetKaned]

I think the hardest fact about Ange's team is that its strengths are its weaknesses too. But I believe yesterday we had no creativity or inventiveness in the team and probably did not have the instructions to change things up either. I believe once again it comes down to personnel. Maddison instead of Lo Celso and we probably win that match comfortably.

 

[Ghost Hardware]

I think it's pretty obvious a lot of our early dominance was down to Maddison being the best chance creator in the league. Now that he's out, Lo Celso is OK, but he's not anywhere near the level Maddison was playing at.

We're struggling to find new methods of creating chances without Maddison, which is very worrying.

For me missing Maddison is only one part of the issue. The big one for me is the front line. Don’t get me wrong Maddison is a big loss but his excellence has papered over a lot of the cracks, the primary one is how lacking our front line is especially our WF. This isn’t a slight on Kulu or Johnson or even Solomon. They are solid players who have potential but they just haven’t put up the goals/assist that are required for our attack to be effective. We shouldn’t be a team that relies on a superstar to get us out of jail.

Tbh this isn’t really a new issue, I’ve felt all season our wide forwards weren’t quite doing enough. This doesn’t mean to say there aren’t other issues but when everyone is fit I’d say our front line is the weakest part of the squad. Maybe in time Johnson and Deki will be of the required level but for now it’s not quite good enough imo.

 

[rossdapep]

This reminds me of peps first season. But in his 2nd season he spent 300m on defenders

Came in here to post the same with some evidence to back that up.

I mentioned in the match thread that Pep flew out of the traps winning all 6 games. Then we beat them 2-0.

They then went on an inconsistent run of form with some poor results thrown in.

7 wins (mostly against poor teams) - 4 draws and 5 defeats agasint any team that had something about them attack wise.

We showed the rest of the league how to beat City by putting loads of pressure on the likes of Bravo, Kolarov and making sure to stay compact.

Pep had a few problems.
- His defensive players were not very effective when building out from the back.
- Players like Navas, Zabaltea, Aguero and Toure couldn't really press effectively makign them easier to play through.
- He had too many players that lacked the dynamism he likes (inverted full-backs).
- Even Aguero was struggling with the system at first as he liked to play in behind mostly rather than move all along the frontline and rotate positions.

City were dominating possesion for the most part but struggling to really be ruthless because they were trying to walk it in at times. Players like Silva and Sterling like to get really clsoe to goal, whereas De Bruyne hadn't really found the role he has bene so good at.

That all meant they had to be really good at playing out because they weren't making dominance count.

And led to games like this



The following week they absolutely battered us BUT they didn't kill the game and we managed to snatch a draw.

As you say the follwing summer Pep corrected a lot of this.

He got;
- FBs who could play his system and one really rapid one so that hsi team stopped getting caught out by a high line.
- A GK who has superb distribution meaning they can play out from the back.
- A more effective winger in Bernardo.
- Found a role that De Bruyne excelled at.

This meant City could limit the chances of losing the ball poorly from playing out, getting caught in a high line and also attack more dynamically.

We actually started the season with a lot of components in order.
- GK capable of playing out from the back.
- CBs who can recover in a high line.
- FBs who can invert and play.
- A midfield three that can progress the ball under pressure, play with energy and create (Maddison).

I'd say we didn't really have the wingers to match.

We have lost some of these components and now it is showing up the wingers that Ange needs. We have lost the assurance of playing out from the back slightly although we nearly have it back - just not the rapid speed to recover (VdV).

The midfield has been an issue as Hojbjerg simply isn't an Ange player, we are having to patch up and it is effecting the others (Bissouma).

I also don;t think Lo Celso is a PL player in the way that he drags you through games and scores/assists with regularity. He looks great in patches but the physicality is a problem.

This has put more expectation and reliability on our attacking players. We weren't passing up as many chances when we had the stability there, and we were creating far more.

But now some parts of the foundation are a little broken, the goals are drying up. We don't have the legs or creativity to bombard teams for 90 mins and our attackers may have lost a little belief too.

Perhaps they know we are patched up a bit and that plays on their mind when taking shots or passing up shots?

But back to your original point.

Pep needed A LOT OF WORK because ultimately he needed HIS players.

It's the same for Ange.

 

[rossdapep]

Also, look at Ange's start at Celtic.

How many of these games did Celtic fail to take chances or be effective in the final third and get caught out by poor defensive errors?

 

[glacierSpurs]

Losing the lead 5 games in the row

He has to take some responsibility, not this 'we are what we are'" mantra that he keep spouting

Or do you prefer the Conte stats of having not shots on targets in the first half?

 

[glacierSpurs]

He got the selection wrong, he shouldn't have started Hojberg, he should have gone with Gil. There was no quick play in the middle with Bissouma and Hojberg

Also I maintain the front 3 including Son haven't played well all season and don't know what they're supposed to do yet. With a low block, Son, Johnson(majority of the time), Richarlison and Kulusevski, All look lost when they are hugging the touchline and run in to bodies

They work hard and play well because they are great players but I don't think any of these players suit the system

I really rather Ange starts Donley and perhaps another youngster forward already. Both Gil and Hojbjerg bring very limited effect to the team set up. Not to mention Skipp. Hope Ange has evaluate enough of the fringe players and truly give the minutes to the youngsters now.

As much as I applaud the current playing out from the back, there were many times a simple long ball forward could release Son to chase because teams didn't really sit so deep in the beginning. Playing the ball around them with full of possession was definitely nice, but I hope we can mix it up a little and not having an obsession of walking the balls into the goals every single time.

 

[mano-obe]

It's a frustrating time to be a fan but some of it is out of his control. Losing Solomon, Perisic, Bentancur, VDV, Sarr, Maddison and Romero and Udogies suspensions. I think if you had told any Spurs fan we would be 3 points behind Man City after 15 games we would have taken it.

I can honestly say that if we had defended for 90 minutes like the old days we would still have lost to West Ham.

We have to work on our finishing in training across the middle of the park. We need goals from everywhere. On another day we piss all over Villa and West Ham with goals, but lo and behold we scratch our heads instead.

That second half was the most miserable I've seen since Ange took over, Im sure he will turn it around.