Match Ratings Ratings vs Burnley

[walton]

I was bemoaning Davies' performance last night as another attack fizzled out after he fluffed his lines; however, you have to remember that primarily he's a defender and he did that job pretty well (and we're not exactly blessed with many clean sheets nowadays). I guess it raises the question of how we play when he's at LB, and maybe we need to be more clever with other players making use of the LW where they can do more damage than Davies.

 

[SlotBadger]

Would also like to add that Mourinho giving Lamela the chance before players like Bale was really important. His aggression on the ball made a difference against a defending Burnley team. Genious.

B--but Gabriel Agbonlahor just said on Sky Sports News that Mourinho should have put on Bale instead...

 

[SirHarryHotspur]

See Moussa is getting his usual level of criticism. Looks like Jose has given him the job of sitting deeper than PEH , we know his passing ability is not great so maybe has been told to keep it simple hence the safe passing . Only seem to remember one surging run forward last night so another change from Poch days when he would have a shot at goal with the ball often ending up somewhere near Bruce Grove. Number 17 on the average positions map.

 

[Thenewcat]

Davies for me. That block in the second half ?.

What about the poor delivery all night and the pass 10 yards behind Tanguy that almost landed us in it?

 

[The Apprentice]

After blowing two games that we deserved to win, it's fairly heartening to scab a game that we certainly didn't deserve. The footballing Gods can't be totally against us.

Kane and Son are in a streak that is other worldly. We really need the wider squad to chip in with a bit more offensively.

We struggled for large portions of last night to play much front foot football, but much of this can be put down to only having Tanguy in the middle who can create anything. Sissoko continues to have a poor season and surely we need to be phasing him out if we want to achieve anything. We looked much better with Lamela and Lo Celso in the fray.

Doherty is massively underwhelming. I can't believe I've reached the point where I miss Aurier when he doesn't play.

Take the win, get out of town and move on to the next one.

 

[Thenewcat]

I was bemoaning Davies' performance last night as another attack fizzled out after he fluffed his lines; however, you have to remember that primarily he's a defender and he did that job pretty well (and we're not exactly blessed with many clean sheets nowadays). I guess it raises the question of how we play when he's at LB, and maybe we need to be more clever with other players making use of the LW where they can do more damage than Davies.

It’s a tough one. The full backs were the ones getting space last night and the delivery wasn’t good enough. It’s not good enough for a modern full back to just defend. It’s gone too far the other way in a lot of cases and they can’t defend, but I’d give Davies a 6/10 last night

 

[Hotspur88]

Saw this posted and it made me chuckle.....

Time for the player ratings that you never knew you needed, but now you have them, you wonder how you ever lived without them.

Hugo - handled everything with care thus making himself a safer pair of hands than 99% of courier services 7/10

Doherty - kept McNeil quiet which was vital for our long awaited clean sheet 7/10

Davies - loses a point for that sloppy inside pass behind Sissoko that could've cost us. Otherwise very steady 6/10

Toby - Barnes & Wood are a couple of handfuls but he copes with more than two handfuls every time he goes for a piss 7/10

Dier - like Toby it's like trying to wrap your hands around the leaning tower of Piza. Big boys performance 7/10

Højbjerg - appeared to actually enjoy the midfield scrap with Burnley. Crazy bastard. 6/10

Sissoko - quiet first half but made a couple of telling contributions in the 2nd 6/10

Ndombele - that burst at the beginning set the tone for another solid step on his road to much improvement. 7/10

Lucas - going to have to use the dad from American Pie on this one "you know, Jim. Running around like a headless chicken can be fun but it's not going to help you influence the game. Do you want to influence the game, Jim?" 5/10

Son - going to call the RSPCA for the amount of monkeys I've spanked because of him this season 8/10

Kane - assister, goalscorer, captain, leader, legend, one of our own, husband, father, rightful ruler of these lands 8/10

Subs

Hart - spent the entire game talking to their subs thus robbing them of their focus. What a team player. 7/10

Reguilón - anyone new to these shores who can maintain a smile through 90 minutes at Turf Moor deserves maximum respect for their politeness 7/10

Bale - he warms up & so does the front portion of my undergarments 7/10

Vinicius - stood ready to come on & in doing so carried more menace than any of Burnley's forwards managed throughout the game 7/10

Lamela - we scored from his corner allowing us to beat the set-piece masters at their own game. Type of shithousery he lives for 7/10

Lo Celso - always feel we control a game better when he's on the pitch 7/10

Rodon - Man of the match. It took Spurs 6 games to register a PL clean sheet. It took Rodon 30 seconds ? 10/10

 

[Mr Pink]

Just rewatched the full game, Doherty was solid enough I thought.

 

[Mark_147]

After blowing two games that we deserved to win, it's fairly heartening to scab a game that we certainly didn't deserve. The footballing Gods can't be totally against us.

Kane and Son are in a streak that is other worldly. We really need the wider squad to chip in with a bit more offensively.

We struggled for large portions of last night to play much front foot football, but much of this can be put down to only having Tanguy in the middle who can create anything. Sissoko continues to have a poor season and surely we need to be phasing him out if we want to achieve anything. We looked much better with Lamela and Lo Celso in the fray.

Doherty is massively underwhelming. I can't believe I've reached the point where I miss Aurier when he doesn't play.

Take the win, get out of town and move on to the next one.

Tbf we've created bucket loads of chances in previous games against West ham, Newcastle and man utd with only Ndombele in the middle to create. The difference is the full backs were getting in behind defences and creating chances unlike last night.

 

[midoNdefoe]

I’m continually surprised that so many here still haven’t understood what sissoko does for the team. He battled all game long, breaking up attacks and covering Doherty.
Mourinho is recognised as one of the best managers around. He picked sissoko and then praised what he did During the game. Yet some here can’t get their head around this and just want to spout the same old nonsense of ‘he’s shit’, ‘so disappointing’, ‘can’t play football’.
It wouldn’t make any sense for Poch and Mourinho to keep deploying him and rating his performances if he was such an utter turd-bucket...

edit: also, the moment that elbow went in on Toby, Barnes was a marked man and sissoko was at him every time he got the ball, mostly ending in Barnes being on the floor having taken a knock. I loved every moment of it!

 

[midoNdefoe]

What about the poor delivery all night and the pass 10 yards behind Tanguy that almost landed us in it?

Sissoko, not tanguy. Racist ?

 

[Thenewcat]

Sissoko, not tanguy. Racist ?

My bad. It was 20 yards behind Tanguy...

 

[DJS]

I’m continually surprised that so many here still haven’t understood what sissoko does for the team. He battled all game long, breaking up attacks and covering Doherty.
Mourinho is recognised as one of the best managers around. He picked sissoko and then praised what he did During the game. Yet some here can’t get their head around this and just want to spout the same old nonsense of ‘he’s shit’, ‘so disappointing’, ‘can’t play football’.
It wouldn’t make any sense for Poch and Mourinho to keep deploying him and rating his performances if he was such an utter turd-bucket...

edit: also, the moment that elbow went in on Toby, Barnes was a marked man and sissoko was at him every time he got the ball, mostly ending in Barnes being on the floor having taken a knock. I loved every moment of it!

Yeah i noticed Sissoko was giving Barnes some extra loving attention after the Toby incident! ??

 

[Shanks]

Who the hell are Peter and Pamela.

Holjbjerg and lamela

tbh I type Pierre and just went with Peter, lamela autocorrects to Pamela on the ol’blower

 

[Shanks]

Gotta say though, rather refreshing that with Mourinho, he sets up for his opponents, yesterday was perfect tbh

 

[Hotspur88]

Gotta say though, rather refreshing that with Mourinho, he sets up for his opponents, yesterday was perfect tbh

Agree 100%

Players have come out and said there is a different plan for each opponent. Jose is a tactical genius and I feel far more confident going up against teams that will park the bus. I loved Poch but one of his failings was his inability to change his gameplan dependent on the opposition. Too often we came unstuck against a team that sat back. It was the same approach to each game.

 

[G Ron]

What about the poor delivery all night and the pass 10 yards behind Tanguy that almost landed us in it?

Agree 100% - careful though, you’ll have the neg reppers out in force for dissing gentle Ben!

 

[Pistols At Dawn]

Agree 100%

Players have come out and said there is a different plan for each opponent. Jose is a tactical genius and I feel far more confident going up against teams that will park the bus. I loved Poch but one of his failings was his inability to change his gameplan dependent on the opposition. Too often we came unstuck against a team that sat back. It was the same approach to each game.

I also think Mo is quicker and more proactive with tactical switches and subs, usually to great effect. He has changed things up at halftime more than once this season and suddenly we've gone on scoring runs in the 2nd half.

(Worked against us vs. West Ham, tbf, but then again, not sure that was entirely Jose's fault...)

 

[ohtottenham!]

I think saying "we played badly and won" is a really simplistic way of seeing the game.

If Burnley aren't on it they're fucking shite as they lack quality. That's how we beat them 5-0 last season. But today Burnley were very fucking on it. Dyche had them fighting for every ball and they were seriously out there to prove a point. They had 1 point in 4 and we were their first big game of the season - they wanted to put down a marker and would've caused most teams serious problems playing like they did tonight. Thankfully we matched them in intensity throughout, which really impressed me. They would've bullied plenty of previous Spurs teams into submission today.

The problem for me was simply the lineup. We played against a narrow, physical team with 2 fullbacks who aren't quick and prefer to come inside. This shrunk the pitch and allowed Burnley to keep things tight. We really needed at least one of Reguilon or Aurier to provide genuine pace and width to create space for the rest of the team.

Overall I thought the CBs did very well (although Dier got lucky with that Woods handball), Hojbjerg was excellent and both Sissoko and Ndombele had solid games. Kane and Son tried admirably but were harried and closed down constantly but obviously deserve huge credit for that one moment of inspiration. The weak links were clearly the fullbacks but for me that was more down to their selection rather than their actual performances which were fairly typical of them. Oh and Lucas was Lucas.

I think Jose rode a very fine line today and overall I think he got the selection wrong and got away with it. However he also deserves credit for motivating the team as if we'd been complacent or not up for it tonight Burnley would've ruined us. Regardless that's a fucking huge 3 points and one of the hardest games we'll have all season.

Great, insightful and balanced post! Plenty of things that Jose had to consider re his lineup and setup against a difficult Burnley team along with our own related weaknesses. I liked his post match interview, acknowledging his struggles re approach, and think he would have used Reguilon at some point if he could have a do-over despite Davies' height advantage in defence.

Burnley...low, narrow block, and there were so many opportunities for a Reguilon to stretch that defence with his pace and attacking threat, and open up space for others, and he also has great, defensive recovery pace for any counters.

I do think we made it hard for ourselves and that we got lucky. But, Jose ground out the win and obviously knows what he's doing. He managed to do all that and keep our rotation fresh with players coming back to fitness, some from injuries, new signings integrating... Great job, Jose!

 

[Ionman34]

B--but Gabriel Agbonlahor just said on Sky Sports News that Mourinho should have put on Bale instead...

There’s a valid reason why Agbonlahor has that opinion...

He’s an idiot.