Mentality and Excuses

[Gaz_Gammon]

One win in ten would suggest that confidence is at the moment lower than a snakes belly.

Inexperience and lack of quality in depth is plain for all to see with Poch going back to Groundhog Day in flogging Kane (to name one) to bits. Poch keeps on talking about being mentally fit but i do not agree with that, i think that we simply do not carry sufficient experience in this squad. A couple of old heads who have won something and played at the highest level is what we are in desperate need of.

We almost buy the right players, but seem to get second or third best, yet we do have the money as the Sissoko transfer fee showed. I just hope upon hope that we can keep this team together (most have signed new contracts) and add some much needed players who are the finished article.

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

Look at the benches yesterday:

Tottenham’s six outfield substitutes had three goals and six assists in 78 Premier League games between them; Chelsea’s sextet had 100 goals and 148 assists in 794 games.

How are we supposed to compete with that?

It doesn't help that every time we have a player start to settle into the club and the league, we sell him.

I'm sick to death of the endless turnover in our squad which never seems to result in any actual improvement in either depth or the quality of the first eleven.

By not spunking 47 million on a useless Championship player with suspect attitude and a fucking clog maker from Amsterdam. It really isn't that difficult, though this club with or without a Director Of Football couldn't find one half decent addition (Wanyama aside) for every five ten they end up buying.

The list is embarrassing, Paulinho, Sandro, Soldado, Capoue, Janssen, Sissoko, I mean those transfer fees alone make up the GDP of a small African country. Therein lies the issue with this club.

 

[Mustard]

Should have bought Austin when we had the chance.

I remember a lot of people sneering and laughing when I suggested it.

 

[muppetman]

I think that lots of people confuse mentality and winning. I would argue that we showed a very strong mentality when we played against West Ham and went to the very end.

In fact one of Poch's greatest achievements has been to improve this almost beyond recognition. I believe we have a very good mentality when you factor in the age of the squad. They were obviously daunted by the CL experience at Wembley but that's one of the downside of having such a young squad.

The game against Chelsea also showed a very strong, mature outlook as we played well for the most part and didn't descend to a repeat of last seasons violence which it would have been easy to do.

I think most people are just unhappy because we aren't winning and quite a few posts complaining at a variety of things are indicative of that.

 

[jimmy-jojo]

By not spunking 47 million on a useless Championship player with suspect attitude and a fucking clog maker from Amsterdam. It really isn't that difficult, though this club with or without a Director Of Football couldn't find one half decent addition (Wanyama aside) for every five ten they end up buying.

The list is embarrassing, Paulinho, Sandro, Soldado, Capoue, Janssen, Sissoko, I mean those transfer fees alone make up the GDP of a small African country. Therein lies the issue with this club.

Sorry, you need to take Sandro off that list. He was an awesome player for us before his injuries.

 

[Bobbins]

By not spunking 47 million on a useless Championship player with suspect attitude and a fucking clog maker from Amsterdam. It really isn't that difficult, though this club with or without a Director Of Football couldn't find one half decent addition (Wanyama aside) for every five ten they end up buying.

The list is embarrassing, Paulinho, Sandro, Soldado, Capoue, Janssen, Sissoko, I mean those transfer fees alone make up the GDP of a small African country. Therein lies the issue with this club.

Sandro was hardly a waste of money, he was a top quality DM until his injury and cost a pittance. Isn't Capoue doing really rather well now? My point was that we give up on players far too quickly and just replace them with players of the same quality. We rarely buy real genuine top quality but when we do find decent players we let them go after no time at all.

 

[Joeyboey]

One win in ten would suggest that confidence is at the moment lower than a snakes belly.

Inexperience and lack of quality in depth is plain for all to see with Poch going back to Groundhog Day in flogging Kane (to name one) to bits. Poch keeps on talking about being mentally fit but i do not agree with that, i think that we simply do not carry sufficient experience in this squad. A couple of old heads who have won something and played at the highest level is what we are in desperate need of.

We almost buy the right players, but seem to get second or third best, yet we do have the money as the Sissoko transfer fee showed. I just hope upon hope that we can keep this team together (most have signed new contracts) and add some much needed players who are the finished article.

This is 100% the issue. We have a lot of players out of form and lacking confidence at the same time. Last season the odd player had the odd bad game or two, but yesterday we had Dier, Dembele, Alli, Erikson and Walker who are all shadows of the players they were last season. I think a lack of confidence is also having a demotivating effect on the pressing of the opponent which destroyed teams last year, the players heads are down and that's inevitably going to have a change energy levels.

I'm also starting to question quite how important Lamela is to our system in terms of his rampant & non stop pressing and running & how his movement on and off the ball creates room for others.

 

[Always Offside]

It's not a bad time to start bringing Edwards through. We could do with another RM at the moment. Poch should start throwing him on for 10-15 minutes at the end of games because we can't do much worse at the minute.

I think Onomah is also very promising but Poch wastes him on the right. He's terrible there for me and always looks much more comfortable playing at 10 or deeper.

Similarly Harrison could now be a bench option if we are playing a 2 striker formation and Son is having one of those days again.

Winks also needs to start every week for me, I think he's good enough.

So what you're saying is we should drop the 9 of the first XI and start the youth team ??

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

Sandro was hardly a waste of money, he was a top quality DM until his injury and cost a pittance. Isn't Capoue doing really rather well now? My point was that we give up on players far too quickly and just replace them with players of the same quality. We rarely buy real genuine top quality but when we do find decent players we let them go after no time at all.

Couldn't agree more, and i could have picked half a dozen members in here (aside from @yankspurs) who could have blown forty seven million on two better players than Sissfukingsodo and The Clog Maker of Amsterdam.

 

[Metalhead]

Utter bollocks...... Games that mattered once we came into title race Leicester home, West Ham away, Arsenal home, Liverpool away, WBA home & Chelsea away we failed to win any of them when we had a chance to go top/cut points gap/put pressure on Leicester. Even after that we needed 1 point to finish above AFC from 2 games with 1 of them to a already relegated team we bottled.

This season again WBA away, they were on a shocking run and we coming off beating city. Win and we go top, you know the rest. 1 win in 10, and that was a fluke too, since City but the happy clapper idiots amongst our support are making excuses for it and our continual bottle jobs. Do carry on making excuses though.....

Does this divided board (arseholes v happy clappers) reflect our divided nation?

 

[mightyspur]

Completely disagree with the "bottling" narrative. It simply comes down to fine margins at this level.

Let's face it, since Toby's injury and Dier covering in defence we have looked pretty average and sometimes poor, excluding the 1st half against Chelsea. He makes a massive difference to how we play. Kane being out for so long didn't help. Rose missing against Chelsea, Dembele at the start of the season due to his suspension, Lamela injured. The list goes on.

Add in the other injuries it becomes an uphill battle.

We have no right to think we can just turn up and win ever and supporters thinking we should are deluding themselves. Teams set up to play us and sometimes that stifles our tactics. Sometimes the reason we are playing poorly is because the other team are doing such a good job at negating our tactics. Sometimes we work it out, but more often than not we don't and people throw around labels or say we simply bottled it.

I get frustrated, but we're still very much in touching distance of the top. As others have said we have a very winnable set of fixtures coming up and hopefully Toby will be back soon. We could go on a run, which will build confidence and things start to improve.

Just remember people, it could be a hell of a lot worse. I'd much rather be fighting for top 4 or an outside shot at the title, than be in a relegation scrap.

 

[Gassin's finest]

We're talking about the mentality of a team that only lost it's first game of the season... to a team that last season demonstrated the very definition of a shit mentality and attitude.

FFS.

 

[Shadydan]

Kin'hell not this again, people use the word legends way too much and dont even know the real meaning behind it.

 

[gerishep]

When it comes to playing chelsea we are a bunch of losers. 26 years of shit, I don't think anyone expects us to beat them and they just continually laugh at us and mock us. We should void playing them.

 

[yido_number1]

Once we get Toby back we will be back on song, push Dier back into Midfield and rest Wanyama. Only criticism of Wanyama is the passing element. We are definitely slower to transition and he passes backwards too often. We seem to have broken the partnerships that worked well last year. On the plus side we haven't been firing but we are still in touch.

 

[mattie g]

By not spunking 47 million on a useless Championship player with suspect attitude and a fucking clog maker from Amsterdam. It really isn't that difficult, though this club with or without a Director Of Football couldn't find one half decent addition (Wanyama aside) for every five ten they end up buying.

The list is embarrassing, Paulinho, Sandro, Soldado, Capoue, Janssen, Sissoko, I mean those transfer fees alone make up the GDP of a small African country. Therein lies the issue with this club.

You could make a similar (if not much larger) list of poor signings for every team - it's not just a Spurs trait.

And putting on that list two players we only just bought (one a very young player from a different country) is indicative of a shit mentality among so many fans in general.

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

Sandro was hardly a waste of money, he was a top quality DM until his injury and cost a pittance. Isn't Capoue doing really rather well now? My point was that we give up on players far too quickly and just replace them with players of the same quality. We rarely buy real genuine top quality but when we do find decent players we let them go after no time at all.

And so influential he stayed at the Club for how long? Posting YouTube karate videos is all well and done, but he not unlike his mate Paulinho they both had an extremely short shelf life.

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

You could make a similar (if not much larger) list of poor signings for every team - it's not just a Spurs trait.

And putting on that list two players we only just bought (one a very young player from a different country) is indicative of a shit mentality among so many fans in general.

I don't think i am alone in thinking that Janssen and Sissoko are ever going to be anything other than a drain on our limited financial resources. If according to you i have a "shit mentality" regarding two of our signings then what does that say about our manager who has just called one of those very players out to the press?

Finally i am not concerned about other clubs spend on busted flushes, the only thing i would say is that other clubs have found better players than those i have stated at a fraction of the cost. Spending thirty million on a player with a known poor attitude has come back to haunt Poch in less than three months.

Sissoko may change, but then again many on here said the same about Ade, and look how that one turned out under Poch.

 

[Bobbins]

And so influential he stayed at the Club for how long? Posting YouTube karate videos is all well and done, but he not unlike his mate Paulinho they both had an extremely short shelf life.

I'm pretty sure he'd have been at the club longer if he hadn't suffered a knee injury which almost ended his career... at the time he had the best stats of any DM in Europe.

 

[glacierSpurs]

We're talking about the mentality of a team that only lost it's first game of the season... to a team that last season demonstrated the very definition of a shit mentality and attitude.

FFS.

I would love to have that optimism. But how many games after the man city one did we really see the team had a very convincing game? We can omit games in the CL, or against the gooners (which we actually did better), for people may say we are not expected to beat anyone 3 goals or more, much less the better team.. But against WBA, Bournemouth, even Leicester who had not gotten an away point gotten one from us, these are the teams we should have some wary, but not to the extend we were so uninspiring against them.

Having the mentality to not lose games is good, but not having the mentality to push on and win against clubs we should be winning, especially games after games of draws, will always see us being the outsider to crash the top-4. It always will be. Some may say a drop in form happens. But man city recovers sooner than later, while we only had one win in 10 games, does this not say something about our mentality?

Having an unbeaten record IMO was a good excuse for Poch and the team to keep saying they will carrying on to fight, but we see no good results. Good performance can only sustain the spirit and morale for so long until the results cannot justify the good performance anymore, the good performance will drop altogether. And that happened on Saturday, losing the shell of unbeaten record they so like to hark on.

I really hope being just having a "first lost of the season" is not another excuse Poch and the team use to deflect away next wave of criticisms if performance do not pick up...