Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[fallenangle]

Some fairly useful results for us today (Saturday) with Everton losing in particular. A win against BHA will only put us one position up above West Ham but, more importantly, keeps us in touch with the top four and a game in hand against MU. We could be only two points behind them if we win that one too, which would be nice.

[EJG1980]

Oof, that was really poor, and very disappointing when you're hoping for a reaction after playing poorly against Liverpool. Extra disappointing too with the majority of the results prior to the match going in our favour.

We looked completely devoid of ideas this evening, I don't think we had a meaningful shot that tested the keeper until about the 75th minute with a nice effort from Carlos Vinicius. Brighton were the better team throughout, more inventive, and if they had decent strikers it'd have been more than one nil. It looked far more likely that they were going to increase their lead than us get an equaliser.

Going to need a massive improvement if we're to get anything out of Chelsea next week.

[fallenangle]

Just watched it on MotD after listening to most of the second half on the BBC - indeed not good. Its as though Spurs have gone into a funk because HK is not playing.

In the past when he has been injured, at just this sort of time of year too, somebody steps up to the plate (Eriksen) and they often end up playing well and scoring goals without him. But I couldn't see anyone doing that today. The midfield was mediocre and there was no significant formation change applied to accommodate HK's absence.

I would have liked to see Bale given a full game and a proper number 10 type roving play-maker role just to see whether he was up to it. Son and Vinicius at the front from the start as well.

Thursday Edit

Game sounded poor and Spurs played poorly barely making any serious goal scoring attempts until late in the second half. Why Bale wasn't bought on for the lack lustre Vinicius I can't imagine.

Lamela coming on as sub and added some spark to the attack but too little too late. It should have been clear that the tactics, whatever they were, were not going to bear fruit much earlier and the changes made then.

Disappointing; another Premiership season likely now destined to be a yet another struggle to get into and stay in top six Europa place. I'll still think positive though: maybe we'll win both the League and FA Cup.

[Mayhem]

Just watched it on MotD after listening to most of the second half on the BBC - indeed not good. Its as though Spurs have gone into a funk because HK is not playing.

Ditto last nights game?

[EJG1980]

Thursday Edit

Game sounded poor and Spurs played poorly barely making any serious goal scoring attempts until late in the second half. Why Bale wasn't bought on for the lack lustre Vinicius I can't imagine.

Lamela coming on as sub and added some spark to the attack but too little too late. It should have been clear that the tactics, whatever they were, were not going to bear fruit much earlier and the changes made then.

Disappointing; another Premiership season likely now destined to be a yet another struggle to get into and stay in top six Europa place. I'll still think positive though: maybe we'll win both the League and FA Cup.

Yup, really poor first half and comical penalty giveaway by Dier. A bit of improvement in the second half but it didn't lead to an increase in chances until very late on. Lamela did make a bit of difference, probably the only player who you could say had an overall good appearance.

I don't think bringing on Bale for Vinicius would have made much difference, as the main problem was that we never got the ball to him or created any chances for him, so anyone you subbed on for him would have had the same problem. No clear cut chance for him until the 89th minute, which he should have done better with, but maybe if he'd actually had a few chances before that to "warm up" with, he'd have put it away.

In the same vein I think he should have got more minutes throughout the season (and the same applies to Bale too, but for different reasons). Recently we were 3-0 up against Leeds after 50 minutes, 3-1 up against Sheffield Utd after 60 minutes, why not bring him on for the final 20 minutes of those matches to give him a chance to get used to the Premier League? Instead he comes on in the 87th and 89th minute and is lucky if he even touches the ball.

Big test for Mourinho and the players to turn it around. Even now a top four place in the league is not a million miles away but they have to start picking up results asap. Our form over the first 11 matches of the season = 1st. Our form over the last 10 matches = 15th.

As you say though, gotta be positive. We may even do better than two cups, you left out the Europa League. The cup treble is still on!

At least Kane should be back next week, Jose said he expected him to be available for either the Everton cup match or Man City in the league. Really need Reguilon back too, we miss the extra attacking impetus he gives us bombing down the wing.

[fallenangle]

Oh yes, I was forgetting about the Europa League. To dream a new dream: we could still do a (unique?) treble.

[EJG1980]

Oh yes, I was forgetting about the Europa League. To dream a new dream: we could still do a (unique?) treble.

Liverpool did it in 2001 or 2002, iirc... yeah, quick google, 2001. It's the Europa League instead of UEFA Cup now though, so does that count as a different treble?

[fallenangle]

Yes, and I've decided Spurs are definitely going to do it.

[EJG1980]

Good win, much better performance, with the caveat of it not being the greatest of opposition, but we needed a win and better performance no matter who it was we were playing. Could have scored an extra couple of goals with the chances we had but all that mattered was getting back on track.

Nice to see Kane back quickly after his injury, missed a couple of early chances but great finish for the opener. Lovely counter attack for the Son goal, and good to see him back among the goals after his little barren run.

Another good performance from Lamela after his Chelsea appearance, it's such a shame he's so fragile injury wise. Lucas was good too today; while quite a few things he tried didn't come off, he was always trying to go forwards and make something happen rather than playing safe, which we need more of (and he got his reward with his big part in the second goal).

Two much tougher tests coming up against Everton and Man City, but at least we're going into the Everton match on a win. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going and get through to the next round of the cup. Not expecting us to get a result against Man City, but if we can at least put in a good performance that should be enough to keep the confidence up.

Edit: just realised (as I missed the commentators saying it as someone knocked on the door just before Kane scored!) that Kane has now drawn level with Bobby Smith in our all time scoring charts. Funnily enough he got the goals in the exact same number of games too:

[fallenangle]

I'd forgotten it was an early kick off.

Good result and very welcome.

Bobby Smith - even before my time.

HK has a long way to go before he beats Jimmy Greaves but I hope he does.

[EJG1980]

HK has a long way to go before he beats Jimmy Greaves but I hope he does.

The only two things I see stopping Kane beating Greaves' record are him leaving the club or some really bad luck injury wise. Avoid those two things and I'm 100% certain he becomes our all time top scorer.

Kane needs 59 to beat Greaves and he averages just over 30 goals per season for us (which he's easily on course to do again this season, touch wood, clad his ankles in armour, etc.). If he stays fit and has "normal" seasons you'd expect him to go past Greaves within the next two years.

Even in his injury disrupted past two seasons (his worst for us goalscoring wise) he still hit 24 goals each season, so even his reduced injury hit goalscoring rate is enough to get past Greaves in two and a half years.

I just hope we can get some team silverware to go alongside Kane's individual accolades.

[EJG1980]

Well it won't be this year's FA Cup

Four goals away against Everton and still end up losing the match! Our two big Achilles heels really bit us in this one: not being clinical with goalscoring when on top, individual mistakes costing us in defence.

With the ball we played really well, especially in the first 35 minutes where it was nearly all Spurs. The passing was fast one touch stuff, good movement off the ball, creating lots of chances, but only one goal to show for it. Then as Mourinho said "mistake, mistake, mistake, goal, goal, goal" and suddenly we're 3-1 down having been completely on top.

Very good to fight back from that to make it 3-3, then again to make It 4-4, but we suffered in extra time when Ndombele and Lamela went off as that was a big chunk of our creativity gone and we couldn't come back one more time after going 5-4 down.

Crazy match, can't fault the effort of the team, they never gave up, there was lots of good football played, but boy do we need to fix the individual errors / lapses in concentration. I can see why Mourinho often plays very deep because without the extra protection the defence is porous.

Doesn't get any easier as we've now go to go to Man City at the weekend with a lot of players having an extra half an hour in their legs. With the way they're playing it's hard to see us getting anything, but the last team they lost to was us so maybe we'll get one of those weird, unexpected results where their great run is bookended by defeats to the same team

[fallenangle]

Exceptionally disappointing last night. Listening to it on the BBC, one minute we're 1-0 up then suddenly its 3-1. WTF.

Then we come back and it goes to 4-4 and I thought right I'll leave it until MotD and hope. Being just highlights the moment after it reached 4-4 and the next sequence starts with Everton on the ball I just knew we'd blown it but I was willing someone, anyone to intercept the ball, run down the field and smash it into the back of their net instead.

Didn't happen.

Good game to watch but we lost again and, as said, that was mostly due to mistakes and not taking all our genuine goal scoring chances. All too familiar recently.

Weekend Edit

Not unexpected to lose against MC but 3-0 is just bad.

More mistakes too.

Only positives: good HK free kick that just missed and Bale did one beautiful little run dancing between three defenders before having to shoot first time with, unfortunately, their goalkeeper in the right position to save the shot.

[EJG1980]

Weekend Edit

Not unexpected to lose against MC but 3-0 is just bad.

More mistakes too.

Only positives: good HK free kick that just missed and Bale did one beautiful little run dancing between three defenders before having to shoot first time with, unfortunately, their goalkeeper in the right position to save the shot.

Aside from the penalty (which I'm not 100% convinced on, I thought the City player deliberately kicked their leg into Hojbjerg as much as Hojbjerg hit into them) I thought the first half display was pretty good, considering the form of the each team going into the match.

Their only shot on target was the penalty, none of the off target ones were great chances that should have been goals, and we have a few attacking situations where a better or quicker decision on the final ball could have resulted in something. Just needed to keep going the same but improve a bit in the final third, in the second half, and we could possibly have made a game of it.

Unfortunately the early goal in the second half killed us off and I think you could see the tiredness from playing two hours in the cup catch up with us at that point. No lack of effort, just too good an opponent, lack of confidence and form from ourselves, and tired legs from the cup; it was always going to be an uphill battle to get something from the game.

The Kane free kick was superb, very unlucky, but that's a rare event and I still think someone else needs to be given a run of free kicks to see if they can do better. One scored with a big deflection against Villa in 2014, one scored against Stoke with a big deflection in 2017, and that's it for Kane. He's one of the very best in the world at most things you can mention, but not free kicks

Lovely little reminder from Bale at the kind of skill he still has; if we could just unlock it on a regular basis for the final few months of the season it'd be a massive boost. Interesting comments from Mourinho on Bale and Alli where he's said (paraphrasing) that no coach does it on purpose, but they all make incorrect decisions, and he's done that with Bale and Alli at times this season.

Not often you hear Jose admitting mistakes so it gives a bit of hope that he and Bale and he and Alli can work together to get them contributing to the team again.

[EJG1980]

Good stuff today, especially the first half where we played very well. All three first half goals were excellent in their own way, hard to pick the best one but I’ll go with Bale’s; always enjoyable when a quick turn leaves the defender sliding off in the wrong direction.

A little bit disappointing that we dropped the intensity at the start of the second half and gifted them a goal back with the penalty. Preventable errors from individuals again, and while Sissoko miss-controlled it and fouled their player, I have a bit of sympathy for him as the ball was smashed into him with far too much power.

One lucky escape during our “off” period when they hit the bar, but no worries aside from that. Then from 70ish mins onwards we stepped it back up again and deservedly got the 4th, nice poachers instinct from Vinicius for the goal.

Not perfect, but a very good first half, encouraging displays from Dele and Bale, and we can now afford to again rest the likes of Kane and other big guns in the second leg. A good night’s work.