Tottenham Hotspur - Official thread

[TonyDA]

I wouldn't mind if we were the ****e Spurs of old, but last year was the same with the BBC - quite simply, not taken seriously. I realise we've still got a way to go to be a consistent threat to the top four, but we're getting there, we have a team with a lot of promising young English players, and yet Sky and BBC would rather give teams like Newcastle and West Ham more screen time than us.

Anyway, enough about that lot:

Tottenham 2 (Dawson 25, Lennon 52) - Chelsea 1 (Makelele 15)

Sorry, but with a Chelsea supporting older brother, you can imagine the stick I've had to put up with over the past few - sorry, 16 - bloody years! Just seeing it in print makes it oh so real.....

Next up, Reading and Blackburn away. Neither easy, but if Jol sticks to the same 11, four points should be achievable.

[TonyDA]

BTW if you think the BBC/Sky coverage is bad, read this match report on the Chavski official site:

http://www.chelseafc.com/article.asp?hlid=426788&title=Match+report:+Tottenham+Hotspur+2+Chelsea+1&nav=news

You've got to laugh at it though - only Chelsea's OFFICIAL web site could print a match report which sounds like it was dictated by some chav down the Kings Road. Must admit, I smiled at "Three Point Lane...."

[son_of_bael]

Neither Reading nor Blackburn are playing well right now. Reading have had a few tough fixtures, and Blackburn have really missed Bellamy it seems, and Gamst Pederson looks out of form. 6 points should be acheivable. I would like to see Mido & hopefully Malbranque get some playing time in over the next couple of weeks. Malbranque is playing for the reserves on Monday.

[EJG1980]

Carling Cup tonight, gonna be freezing my arse off but hopefully a few goals from Spurs can warm me up I expect we'll see a few changes for this game, I'd expect Defoe and Mido to be recalled up front for this one and I reckon Huddleston will get a start too. My brother said he saw a report that Steed Malbranque is definitely going to play but it wasn't clear if it was starting eleven or coming on as a sub.

[EJG1980]

Didn't get back until about 20 minutes before 1AM yesterday (or should that technically be today?) thanks to extra time and then having to wait in the nice long queue of people at White Hart Lane station. Still, it made my ticket good value for money, ?20 for two hours of football

And what a frustrating two hours they were, for the most part! It's very hard to pinpoint exactly what went wrong, other than the fact that a lot of players simply didn't seem up for it. Not enough pressuring of the Port Vale players when they had the ball, loads of misplaced passes and flicks. As a team we seemed quite lethargic and there was no urgency about our play, most of the time.

It still should never have got to extra time though. If it wasn't for a combination of terrible finishing and their goalkeeper making some amazing saves, we would have won 4-1 or 5-1 in normal time. Defoe was guilty of quite a few misses until he got his goal in extra time.

Like I said, it was a weird performance to assess. Even though it looked like most of our moves were breaking down with misplaced passes, we still managed 25 shots on goal over the two hours. I think that was more down to the natural gulf in class between the two sides though, rather than because of our great play cutting through them. Had we played that sloppily against a better side we wouldn't have had 25 shots!

Steed Malbranque did okay on his debut, a few nice touches here and there but not amazing. Can't expect him to be instantly great after an injury lay off though. Dervite looked a bit nervous at the back, and Phil Ifil was quite sloppy on the ball at times. Barcham didn't make much impression up front, but he was at the other end of the ground most of the time he was on, so he could have done stuff I didn't notice.

I thought Murphy had a bad game, but Ghaly was worse when he came on to replace him! They both had a habit of running into players and losing the ball, or hitting really bad passes in the middle of a promising move. Davids was a bundle of energy though, and Huddleston scored twice and wasn't to bad with his general play. If Defoe's finishing was as good as his movement it would have been goals galore, but it was not to be.

So, weird night, but glad we made it through in the end. No disrespect to Port Vale, but they didn't really do anything apart from their goal and maybe two or three other good chances. I think it was much more a case of us making it really hard for ourselves, rather than PV raising their game.

[son_of_bael]

We have had a problem finishing all season. Thought Steed did ok, especially since he hasn't played for 6+ months. Barcham seemed anonymous. I hope Pekhart, Dixon or Dag Olsen get a chance towards the end of the season, I think they are all rated higher than Barcham (and Barnard). I can't make up my mind about Ghaly. He was certainly our worst player against Chelsea, incredibly wasteful in possession. I think Thudd will develop into an incredible player, and I'm glad Jol is giving him a chance this season.

[EJG1980]

I was surprised after the Chelsea match because in one interview I saw Jol said that he though Ghaly had a great game. Couldn't see it myself To me he looks a bit like a player who's either going to have a fantastic game or a crap game, with not too much in-between.

Huddleston probably did better last night that I gave him credit for, "wasn't too bad" would probably be selling him short (due to being disappointed with most of the other players). Thinking about it I can't ever remember him giving the ball away, being sloppy, etc., so I upgrade my "wasn't too bad" to "very good"

I still think Davids was our best player (aside from the always fantastic Dawson) last night though, he was running, putting pressure on opposing players and getting stuck in when most of the team didn't seem up for it. He's definitely improved on last season, I reckon not being in the team every week is giving him a real boost performance wise.

[Fireproofradiator]

Everything I've seen of Davids supports what you're saying HumanEnergy. Kudos for putting the effort into a mid-week game against Port Vale too - bet he didn't even bother with gloves! Read in the Guardian that a couple of Vale's technical staff asked to have their photo taken with him before the game...

...


He accepted!!

[son_of_bael]

I think Davids has benefited from not playing every week, he just doesn't have the legs anymore. He is a good squad player, and a great option to have on the bench.

Chimbonda is out Sunday against Reading. Hope he won't be out for long, he's been a star so far this season (fat frankie has a lot to answer for). Mido is also out with another mysterious "injury" .

I'd play 4-5-1 with Keane on the left again, and Jenas-Thudd-Zokora across the middle, Lennon on the right. Lee at RB ahead of Stalteri.

Le Tiss predicted a 3-1 loss to us on Sky Sports It will be a tricky game but it's one of those games we should be expect to win.

[NW2013]

Arrogance and laziness has cost us big time in that half. When we should have killed Reading off after the penalty we just sat back. Jol looked, rightly, furious when the second goal went in as both were avoidable. You have to give Reading credit though because they've worked unbelievably hard. They deserve the lead at the moment.

The game could go either way at the moment. Reading could stretch their lead because we'll have to chase or we'll apply too much pressure and roll them over. I'd be tempted to bring on Defoe for Dimitar as he'd love the kind of balls that Keano has been playing so far.

Le Tiss might be right!

[EJG1980]

Looks like Le Tiss is almost right at the moment! 2-1 to Reading at half time, can't believe it after we took the lead and looked in control. But since they got that long range equaliser we've looked quite dodgy and you could almost see the goal to make it 2-1 coming. Hopefully we can turn things around in the second half, but I can't understand why we always seem to have trouble away from home in the Premiership!

[EJG1980]

Crap. I'm just gonna put that down as a one off bad performance and hopefully we can respond to this with another run of ten matches without losing. Once again though, we could have got more out of the game if it wasn't for some horrible finishing. The miss by Defoe right before their 3rd goal... swear words aplenty in front of our telly!

According to the bloke on Sky that was the first time in 36 matches where we've taken the lead and ended up losing.

The really frustrating thing is that after our poor start to the season, that good run had really done a lot of repair work. A win today would have put us right among the UEFA cup places and only four or five points behind a Champions League spot. Now it just feels like a lot of that good work has been chucked away in a very very bad performance.

It wouldn't be so bad if Reading had just played a blinder (although they did play very well, and more importantly, WORKED REALLY HARD!!!) but we helped them out a hell of a lot with our misplaced passes, not pressing their players, and so on.

[NW2013]

Disappointing from us, we didn't show much effort at all. Well done to Reading, they really deserved the win. I can't feel any animosity towards them because they gave a great performance.

Assou-Ekotto, Zokora and Berbatov have all got to take a good look at themselves after that, they were shocking. Assou-Ekotto is like Lee Mk.2. He gives us a good attacking option but is all over the place defensively. He gave the ball away, unforced, at least three times in our third of the pitch and his positioning was dire. Zokora also played a host of poor balls and he never uses the pace he has, instead he breaks our rhythm more often than not. I'd like to see Keane (our best player by miles today) and Defoe be given 90 minutes. I think we're doing things the wrong way round up front; lofting in long balls from the start and then using pace in the last 15 minutes if it's not going our way. It would be better the other way around!

[NW2013]

The miss by Defoe right before their 3rd goal... swear words aplenty in front of our telly!

It was frustrating but I don't blame him. Berbatov's miss from 6 yards at the end was much worse and he had quite a few chances he didn't take. I'd be suprised if Defoe has played much more than 90 minutes in total for us. We've got 4 strikers. If one is consistently not scoring give the other ones a chance until they stop scoring too and then switch again. It's not rocket science.

[Fireproofradiator]

Textbook Tottenham. Was anyone suprised to see Spurs fall to a cheap loss straight after a battling win? From listening to the Radio 5 commentary even Lennon was quiet today. If I was Jol I'd be tempted to give some of the players he gave a chance to in the Carling midweek game another go - rattle the cages of some of the more complacent players...