Swansea Vs Tottenham: Match Thread

[Jamturk]

I wish people would judge Lamela on a level playing field like any other player.

The problem is that he is being judged by his price tag.

If like Mason (is older) he had come up from the youths people would be raving about his potential etc.

He is at the moment a victim of expectation.

 

[iluvsteffenfreund]

Listen. We should all be buzzing that we have won that football match. And considering we have been poor this season we are still
In a fantastic position to actually compete on all 4 fronts this season. That's a huge plus going into Xmas. However we have to build on that. January needs to be successful in terms of what we need being brought in. This is vital. Poch still has no idea who his best team is and we struggle to put good performances on back to back and we seem lacklustre in from of goal. If these things are addressed then I believe we will go on to do well. Fail... and we will AGAIN !

 

[millsey]

To get three points!
To climb higher up the table!
Cause burnley is a must win!
To please spurs fans!
What the heck you mean "Why."
Liverpool play against arsenal, which could be a draw or go either way. We need points.
What the heck?

But that's the same with every game we play?!

 

[philip]

Our main problem is how slowly we turn defence into attack. We take six touches and pass it sideways in order to keep possession buy then by the time we do work the ball into the final third the opposition is back in numbers.
Imo that's also largely to blame for Soldado's failure to score and therefore his subsequent loss of confidence. He's used to playing on the shoulder of the last defender and would rely on quick through balls. Our slow patient build up is disastrous for his game.

 

[Metalhead]

Listen. We should all be buzzing that we have won that football match. And considering we have been poor this season we are still
In a fantastic position to actually compete on all 4 fronts this season. That's a huge plus going into Xmas. However we have to build on that. January needs to be successful in terms of what we need being brought in. This is vital. Poch still has no idea who his best team is and we struggle to put good performances on back to back and we seem lacklustre in from of goal. If these things are addressed then I believe we will go on to do well. Fail... and we will AGAIN !

January is definitely important. My only worry about placing too much faith in that window is that it is usually not very productive.

 

[Spurger King]

Odd. It's nice to win, especially after the relentless barrage of miserable bullshit in this thread today.

Based on today's performance, we won a battle but look way off winning the war. You could put a tin of beans in charge of this lot and we'd still manage to collect points every now and then due to individual skill.

I was hoping for an improved performance, and once again it was absent.

 

[thinktank]

January is definitely important. My only worry about placing too much faith in that window is that it is usually not very productive.

The main thing is to sell as much of the undesirables as possible. Got youngsters we can blood if the market is ridiculous.

 

[iluvsteffenfreund]

January is definitely important. My only worry about placing too much faith in that window is that it is usually not very productive.

How many times have we felt shortchanged InJanuary? and it's killed us ! I hope to god they have a plan

 

[DEFchenkOE]

The thing is chadli has put in some soldado performances like today

Still scores more though, just lost all faith in Bobby. He can barely poach a goal.

 

[millsey]

I kept it better than most.
Don't see you naming the worst offenders, wonder why?
We won the game and Lamela worked his arse off along with Kane up front.
Not great going forward, but no one was.
When the other top teams win ugly it's a wining mentality, when we do It we just slag our players off and say lucky.

He's a fucking 30 million pound player! If I want someone to work there ass off for the team we can go pick up a million pound player from the championship. He's miles and
Miles off dominating and scoring in games.
Making a difference.

 

[iluvsteffenfreund]

The main thing is to sell as much of the undesirables as possible. Got youngsters we can blood if the market is ridiculous.

If we added a schniederlin a bony and possibly another c half is fancy us to win something.

 

[DEFchenkOE]

How many times have we felt shortchanged InJanuary? and it's killed us ! I hope to god they have a plan

Can't think when was the last Jan window when I felt that we've sorted out the imbalances in our squad. Love to be proved wrong but can't see it being any different.

 

[iluvsteffenfreund]

He's a fucking 30 million pound player! If I want someone to work there ass off for the team we can go pick up a million poynf player from the championship. He's miles and
Miles of dominating and scoring in games.
Making a difference.

Mate don't bother he's blind to it!!!

 

[millsey]

How many times have we felt shortchanged InJanuary? and it's killed us ! I hope to god they have a plan

Bony or Benteke. That's it

 

[DEFchenkOE]

If we added a schniederlin a bony and possibly another c half is fancy us to win something.

That would be something in the region of £50m, not going to happen.

 

[sly1]

...

Lamela is gradually working through his shortcomings as a player in English fooball, but two of them seem to be intransigent, resistant to improvement. He's addressed the body-strength issue and improved his closing-down enormously.

Unfortunately, the first hasn't been effective because he still lacks the judgment to know when to pass - he will reliably try to beat one too many opponents - often trying to dribble through a crowd of three opponents - and that is why he loses possession so often and thus ruins so many promising attacking moves.

And the second isn't effective because his tackling, while enthusiastic, is too often wild and reckless. He was fortunate to avoid a couple of yellow cards today.

The result is that he remains a net liability in our squad. We usually play better when he leaves the pitch. He is being played regularly despite this and the reason is unlikely to be because he was expensive, it's because he is talented and young.

...

My problem with this analysis is that when broken down to the unit of individual touches you can argue that Lamela's play has a number of good features and a number of bad features which more or less balance each other out. However, if you consider any phase of play, his contribution is almost invariably negative.

It's not as if he loses possession with five ambitious passes in a row, and then finally squeezes through a beautiful through ball with the sixth. It's that on the rare occasions when he takes the ball well and beats a man, he always runs into trouble, or miscontrols the ball, or plays a horribly inaccurate pass. It's that, whether or not you think he has potential, playing him in the league is purely an exercise in helping him improve his play, rather than an actual contribution to the team.

I'd really like him to turn out well, but at the moment he contributes almost nothing to our league games. And in a team that is struggling as it is, I don't think he can keep on being played.

 

[jezz]

Ok so you admit he's in bad form ?

I've stated this quite a few times.
My team selection for this game was the same 11 against Chelsea.
As it was for the crystal palace game.
But he gets picked and if he isn't scoring and assisting then he needs to press high up the pitch, track back and tackle.
He did all these things and suspect thats why Poch is playing him.
The whole team did this (Kane and Lamela especially) and it worked and we got the goal it deserved.
Second half Swansea got the equaliser and piled on the pressure, they were unlucky to lose.
Do I care? NOPE
Did Lamela play badly, offensively yes, did he run his socks off and work tirelessly yes.

 

[Metalhead]

How many times have we felt shortchanged InJanuary? and it's killed us ! I hope to god they have a plan

Me too. Hopefully Paul Mitchell has been working away at something!

 

[newbie]

There's not really a great deal of point in having 8+ posts that announce that Lamela is shit and then ... don't say why. Indeed, they don't say anything else at all, just 8+ ways of wording a sentence that Lamela is crap and loses the ball too much. Seriously, guys, we don't give a shit what you think unless you tell us why you think it. It's just spam. Or perhaps the modern word for spam is 'opinion'.

Lamela is gradually working through his shortcomings as a player in English fooball, but two of them seem to be intransigent, resistant to improvement. He's addressed the body-strength issue and improved his closing-down enormously.

Unfortunately, the first hasn't been effective because he still lacks the judgment to know when to pass - he will reliably try to beat one too many opponents - often trying to dribble through a crowd of three opponents - and that is why he loses possession so often and thus ruins so many promising attacking moves.

And the second isn't effective because his tackling, while enthusiastic, is too often wild and reckless. He was fortunate to avoid a couple of yellow cards today.

The result is that he remains a net liability in our squad. We usually play better when he leaves the pitch. He is being played regularly despite this and the reason is unlikely to be because he was expensive, it's because he is talented and young. There's a post some pages back on this thread that recommends giving up on Soldado and Lamela as a pair of expensive mistakes, as if they were comparable. They aren't: Soldado is nearly 30 and Lamela is only 22. Even if Soldado does overcome his brain-block and recover his finishing ability, he's still never going to be a long-term success in England, because he hasn't got enough upside, enough future. I wouldn't be upset if we cut our losses on Soldado, but we have to persevere with Lamela because of his age and visible talent. Most of what's wrong with his game is in his head: bad decisions.

I disagree I am going to get flamed but I don't think Lamela was that bad he fought hard and showed so great touches I honestly believe it will happen, we were not great but we battled hard and fought for a victory a few weeks back we all were pissed at the lack of heart in our team. Recently there's been lots of fight and heart. We need time to build up understandings and we lack a striker to play in front of Kane.

We lack balence playing Kane, eriksen and Lamela all like to be the number ten, playing Lennon does add balence and having walker back might help add width.

Personally I think first 25 minutes we were really good but Fazio and Verts still need time to create a pairing and Fazio is still adjusting to the EPL. We have to focus on the good points we are moving forward our academy has more talent to add to Kane, mason, Bentalab we need to back poch. I honestly think though if we had a striker like bony it would make life a lot easier Kane and bony with eriksen on the left you would score a tonne of goals.

RS it just won't happen for him we do lack pace upfront / out wide I do like RS and hope he comes good but if we had Benteke or bony I would be a very happy man if we have a player who can bully the opposition and a winger to make the pitch bigger we would not have to play though a needle all the time. I started this post to defend RS and Lamela my heart says they will come good my head says if we could swap the pair for a bony/Benteke and sign a pacey wide man who can create we would be better balenced.

Defence I think time will tell if Fazio steps up to become a rock our back 4 might become good otherwise we need to sign a defensive monster.

I really believe with so many changes it's time we need we have way to many players to integrate look at Sigs how well he is doing now his at Swansea ( don't think he has as much talent as Kane or eriksen) but players need time to settle and so do managers.

 

[thinktank]

That would be something in the region of £50m, not going to happen.

Depends who we can flog. Someone might also come in for verts and we can fleece them.