Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[EJG1980]

At this time (18') still 0 - 0.

1-1 at half time but Southampton down to ten men! Gotta say we were a bit lucky in that first half, Southampton were the better side and deserved the lead, but hopefully it's all changed with the penalty and red card. Gotta take full advantage in the second half now.

Edit: finishes 1-1, disappointing and gotta see that as two points dropped.

We did get a bit unlucky though as Kane's goal was offside by what must be a sliver of a toenail, and I thought they said in the summer they weren't going to check the ultra-tight offsides anymore and give the benefit of the doubt to the attacker... not today though, for some reason!

And there was nothing wrong at all with what should have been an own goal by their keeper. He and Doherty both jump for it, Doherty doesn't impede or even touch the keeper at all, the keeper messes up his catch and drops it onto his own foot and it bobbles into the goal... foul on the keeper! Crazy decision.

Having said that, we had 45 minutes against ten men and should have made lots more chances than we did. So, we were unlucky with those two above moments, but we should have been forcing that keeper into loads of saves all half and we didn't, so we have to blame ourselves in the end for not getting three points.

And it could have been worse as Dier dropped a clanger in injury time to let a Saints forward through one on one, but luckily Sanchez somehow made it back in time to slide in and block the shot. Real brown trousers moment, that one

Not an end of the world result (Southampton have a great home record this season) but in the circumstances, disappointing. Still, at least it's seven unbeaten in the league since Conte arrived, the first ever Spurs manager to stay undefeated for his first seven matches. Hopefully we can get back to winning ways against Watford on new year's day, can't afford too many slip ups with such a big battle for top four.

[fallenangle]

That is an annoying result, particularly against a 10 man team for so long.

Better than losing but 2 points dropped I'd say - puts more pressure on us to get wins with our games in hand.

Saturday Edit

Happy New year..................................the game is not over but it looks like Spurs are going to start the year off with another two dropped points again.

Judging by the stats they've dominated the game too - disappointing.

Wait........................no VAR yay! Bloody late, damned lucky but that's improved my day greatly.

[EJG1980]

Saturday Edit

Happy New year..................................the game is not over but it looks like Spurs are going to start the year off with another two dropped points again.

Judging by the stats they've dominated the game too - disappointing.

Wait........................no VAR yay! Bloody late, damned lucky but that's improved my day greatly.

Blooooooodly helllllllll

It was a typical away performance from us against a team that sits deep: tons of possession, but really struggling to break their mass of players down to create clear cut chances.

I thought it was going to be one of those days with the bonus of Arsenal losing in the last minute, and us having to play a team that had lost about five in a row, hadn't kept a clean sheet all season, had about ten players out injured or with Covid... that's got "Spurs fail to take advantage" written all over it Thankfully we JUST managed to scrape home and get all three points. Thank you, thank you, thank you Davinson Sanchez!

It took a while, but it did turn out to be a happy New Year's Day after all

We definitely need to up our game away from home, but hopefully the nature of those three points will give us a bit of a boost. We're now two points behind Arsenal in fourth with two games in hand... and our next league match is against... guess who? That's gonna be a huge match! Three cup matches to get through before that though.

[EJG1980]

Gah, not a good night. Although after the horror show of the first half, coming away with only a two goal loss seems like a little bit of a victory! A real shame that both goals were big mistakes from us, not a very good night for poor Tanganga.

I'm not sure we can overcome a two goal disadvantage in the second leg, but you never know. We'll need to be a hell of a lot better than we were tonight, to put it mildly.

[fallenangle]

Agreed, not a good result tonight against Chelsea in the EFL Cup but keeping it down to 2 - 0 means it is not out of reach in the second leg.

From the sound of it and what you've just said Spurs will have to play a lot better.

The R5Live pundits were saying we're short of a consistently creative play maker to feed our world class forwards who, against this level of opposition, need more goal scoring chances which, at present, they're often not getting.

Can't disagree.

[EJG1980]

Agreed, not a good result tonight against Chelsea in the EFL Cup but keeping it down to 2 - 0 means it is not out of reach in the second leg.

From the sound of it and what you've just said Spurs will have to play a lot better.

The R5Live pundits were saying we're short of a consistently creative play maker to feed our world class forwards who, against this level of opposition, need more goal scoring chances which, at present, they're often not getting.

Can't disagree.

I thought Conte's post match press conference last night was very good (can be found here if you want to read it), no sugar coating it, just being honest with that fans about where the club is at the moment.

When he said "I think honestly that in this moment and the last years the level of Tottenham has dropped, it has dropped a lot." he wasn't wrong. Clung onto 4th by our fingernails in 2019, 6th in 2020, 7th in 2021. You don't wave a magic wand to instantly turn a decline like that around, even with a world class manager like Conte.

I think Conte is doing a really good job to have us well in the mix for a top four finish at the moment, but if we want to get back to the level the team was at from 2015/16 to 2018/19 we need an upgrade in quality all over the squad. As he said "The resolution of our problems now is to work and improve all many aspects of our squad. I repeat there is a lot of job to do. If you think if you buy one or two players and you solve the situation, you are not right."

No magic bullets, Conte needs to be backed over a sustained period of time to improve the squad, and if that happens we've got a great chance of seeing a Tottenham that's up there challenging again.

We have a world class manager, who sounds like he's planning for the long term and is up for the challenge of turning Spurs around. The powers that be at the club need to take advantage of that and make sure they back him. I don't think he'd have agreed to come to Spurs if he didn't have assurances of a certain level of backing in the transfer market, to transform the squad, but now those assurances have to be met.

[fallenangle]

Just hope he stays and completes the job.

Totally agree we need far more depth to the squad than we have at the moment.

I was watching the extended highlights on Quest yesterday and the first half was painful but I would say that whilst we were lucky Chelsea didn't score more. the two they did were both own goals. The first one may be chalked down to the Chelsea player but it was the significant deflection off the Spurs defender that put it into the goal.

Sunday Edit:-

I was going to say that was almost embarrassing; that was embarrassing.

We give away a goal to Morecambe in the first half and have to wait until the last 15 minutes when they're knackered and start making mistakes. Spurs still needed to bring on HK and Lucas just to level the score and achieve a respectable looking result.

Pleased we're through but it certainly wasn't the way any Spurs' supporter would have imagined let alone expected the game to play out.

Well done Morecambe.

[EJG1980]

Sunday Edit:-

I was going to say that was almost embarrassing; that was embarrassing.

We give away a goal to Morecambe in the first half and have to wait until the last 15 minutes when they're knackered and start making mistakes. Spurs still needed to bring on HK and Lucas just to level the score and achieve a respectable looking result.

Pleased we're through but it certainly wasn't the way any Spurs' supporter would have imagined let alone expected the game to play out.

Well done Morecambe.

Yup, it was a poor display until the subs came on, underwhelming in the extreme. Very reminiscent of the away game against NS Mura in Europe, although thankfully we didn't lose this time! Once again Conte will have seen that the squad depth and quality needs an upgrade.

I had such high hopes when we signed Ndombele, such a talented player who was being touted for moves to all of Europe's big names and we got him, I thought he was going to be a great player for us. But it looks like he's going to be added to that list of players who have all the talent in the world but just didn't have the attitude or desire to put all that talent to use. I think my last remaining drop of optimism that he can still come good is gone now. Very tough to come back from a fan reaction like today.

It's not something I can bring myself to do, but I can understand why the fans got fed up and booed Ndombele when he was being subbed. Another underwhelming display, Spurs losing, Dele and Gil both getting off the pitch as quickly as possible when their numbers come up, and he's sauntering off as though we're 5-0 up in the 90th minute, not 1-0 down to a lower league team.

Still, at least we made it through to the next round! Brighton at home, won’t be easy as they’ve been very tough to beat this season (tons of draws iirc). Hopefully we can get in a couple of quality signings in January to help with the second half of the season, especially with Son missing for the rest of the month

[fallenangle]

There was talk before Christmas of selling Winks. I think of the players who have been out of favour he's done enough to show his value to the club. I'd be sorry to see him go but Ndombele just hasn't delivered and if Spurs can sell him on in this window and not take too much of a loss on his cost it would be the sensible thing to do.

Last thing we want is another Adebayor situation where Spurs are paying top wages to a player for months who does not want to be here and with inconsistent form is not going to be picked except in an emergency.

I'm surprised there has not been some serious talk about Anthony Martial again. Particularly with Son out he could be a worthy replacement if Spurs could get him at a decent price.

[EJG1980]

There was talk before Christmas of selling Winks. I think of the players who have been out of favour he's done enough to show his value to the club. I'd be sorry to see him go but Ndombele just hasn't delivered and if Spurs can sell him on in this window and not take too much of a loss on his cost it would be the sensible thing to do.

Completely agree. Of all the fringe players Winks has by far looked the one who is trying his hardest to show Conte that he's worth a place in the team, or at least the squad. Unless something dramatic happens I don't think Winks will be going anywhere, as Conte said this about him in his press conference a couple of weeks ago:

Q: Harry Winks is playing well though in the midfield?

A: Winksy is playing well and Winks has showed to be a reliable player. And for this reason, Winksy will stay here. I find players that are reliable, and then I can count on them and Winksy showed me that I can count on him.

A pretty unambiguous statement. His response to "Where does Ndombele fit into your plans?" was a very curt "He's a midfielder." which was also pretty telling, and that was well before all the stuff that happened on Sunday.

It's going to be tough to sell Ndombele with the wages he's on; top clubs won't want him because of his poor performances, and lesser clubs that might be willing to take a chance couldn't match his wages. I think we might have to end up subsidising them to get him out of the door.

Unless we've got another target lined up I wouldn't be against Martial coming in, although I think maybe the lack of talk is because he's been at Man Utd so long and is now seen as a bit "stale", rather than an exciting signing. A good deal would be to get him on a six month loan with an option to buy at the end of it, I'd definitely go for something like that.

[fallenangle]

I was thinking about that. I very much doubt it will happen but a loan swap with MU: Martial for Ndombele.

Apparently Sevilla who were interested in Martial have cooled their interest because of the wages issues.

MU may still be getting rid of Pogba so a replacement midfielder with more creative potential like Ndombele might interest them. His wages would undoubtedly be less than MU have apparently offered Pogba to stay.

[EJG1980]

Wasn't expecting too much tonight, not surprised we lost, we're just not up to the standard of the top teams at the moment. We did at least have a respectable showing in the second half and had quite a few shots, but I think at least some of that was down to Chelsea knowing that they had the tie well wrapped up and didn't could lower their levels to conserve energy.

Two penalties given, and both taken away by VAR, and a nice Kane goal ruled out for offside, but all three decisions were correct so I can't really say we were unlucky in those incidents.

Massive, massive, game on Sunday against Arsenal. A win and we move ahead of them and still have two games in hand, would be a real boost to our hopes of finishing fourth. Gotta get that win!

[EJG1980]

Get in Stevie B!!!

I was all set to write a post about what a frustrating match it was, as it was the best we'd played for a while yet were going to come away with nothing because of shoddy finishing (and good goalkeeping/defenders clearing it off the line) and then Bergwijn did what he did

So yeah, great win, and apart from the finishing and a few moments of defending it was a good performance. Both halves had a very similar pattern, Tottenham on top, missing lots of chances, then Leicester get their first chance for about twenty minutes and put the ball in the net.

Thankfully Kane finally found his shooting boots in the first half to equalise for 1-1, and when Bergwijn equalised for 2-2 I was still a bit miffed but happy we'd at least got a point. Everyone went nuts when we broke from their kickoff and got the winner, although I think we scared one of the cats half to death; sorry Spot

Any win tonight would have been great, but to get it in that manner, hopefully that's a big psychological boost for the players right before the big match on Sunday with Chelsea. COYS!

[Atticus]

That last couple of minutes was something else. What a treat for the fans.

[EJG1980]

That last couple of minutes was something else. What a treat for the fans.

Yup, fantastic, the kind of up moment that makes slogging through all the down moments worth it

The scenes at the end were very reminiscent of the away match against Villa in November 2014, early in Poch's tenure, when Harry Kane scored a last minute free kick to turn the match around.

It's still my favourite away match I've ever been to, as it was such a crap day (Spurs in 14th, got soaked by torrential rain on the walk to Villa Park, went behind early, playing poorly for most of the match) that was turned into a magical one in just a brief couple of moments at the end. You can't beat football for those crazy swings from despair to joy.

Almost as entertaining as the match were Lucas Moura's antics in the celebration of the winner: one moment where a fan leans in to hug the players and Lucas grabs the fans bobble hat and launches it into the crowd, and another where he climbs up on the back of a steward and starts celebrating up there! The steward looks up wondering what on earth is going on, sees it's Lucas Moura and lets him get on with it