Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[EJG1980]

OMG....................I need to lie down in a dark room................again. Short of a miracle Spurs have lost it in every sense.

I thought we were bad in this fixture last season but today’s first half made that display look like prime Barcelona. Awful stuff.

Time to watch the second half… must be a masochist!

Edit: the only slight silver lining I can find is that thanks to kickoff being 16:30 on a Sunday, at least that match didn’t ruin my WHOLE weekend!

[fallenangle]

Judging from MotD to be fair to Spurs they were better in the second half but that was not difficult.

If HK had been a bit sharper and one of our other half chances had gone in we could even have scraped a draw. But there's some psychological problem going on in the team; they're just not gelling and the midfield creativity is sorely lacking with only Lucas Moura putting in a decent shift. Its why HK is, wrongly, dropping back into that number ten role to often.

The pundits were so right on MotD about Ndobele and Alli not moving fast enough into or making the space and, worse, being slack in their defensive duties. They were seen on several occasions seeming oblivious to the developing Arsenal attacking threat and casually trotting back rather than busting a gut to get into a useful defensive position.

New guy Emerson was also guilty again of that on several occasions, including one of their goals. Clearly not up to Premiership fitness level yet.

[EJG1980]

I didn't see the MOTD analysis (couldn't bring myself to watch it after seeing the whole match live!) but I did eventually get around to seeing this analysis by Jamie Carragher yesterday.

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Pretty grim viewing! I can't excuse the Ndombele and Alli being slack with the defensive side of the game, but those tactics of having them pushed so far up the pitch, giving acres of space to the Arsenal midfield with basically only Hojbjerg for company... so weird. And then sticking with it for the whole half when it was exposed repeatedly in just the first ten minutes.

And whatever you think of Ndombele (and my hopes of him finally coming good are dwindling each week) he's a creative midfielder with an eye for a pass. So I dunno why you bring that type of player in, only to play long ball where the ball will be sailing over their head most of the time.

Hopefully we can turn it around, but even with the positive results at the start of the season, you can't help but hear alarm bells ringing when you lose 3-0 3-0 3-1 in consecutive matches.

[fallenangle]

Very good win against Mura in the ECL this week.

Just watched the highlights on YT and Lo Celso's goal, his contribution in general and to at least two of HK's goals was very pleasing.

More of that please.

Spurs currently 1 - 0 up against Aston Villa.

Oh-oh 1-1. Yay! Quick reply and now 2-1 - getting interesting.

Excellent win - crisis, what crisis?

[EJG1980]

Very good win against Mura in the ECL this week.

Just watched the highlights on YT and Lo Celso's goal, his contribution in general and to at least two of HK's goals was very pleasing.

More of that please.

Spurs currently 1 - 0 up against Aston Villa.

Oh-oh 1-1. Yay! Quick reply and now 2-1 - getting interesting.

Yup, I went to the NS Mura match and it was a fun evening. Not the greatest of opposition but nice to see us play decent football and score a few goals. I thought Lo Celso's performance might have earned him a start today, but to be fair Ndombele put in a decent performance today to justify his selection.

Speaking of, a good win against Villa, and it goes without saying that it was a far better performance than in the last few league matches. Definitely our best in the league aside from the win against Man City. We created lots more chances and played better football than we did in the wins against Wolves and Watford.

Started a little slow in the first ten minutes, but then were in charge for the next half an hour, before Villa had another five minute spell before the break. A little annoying in the second as we were again in charge and had some good chances to go 2-0 up, and then Villa equalised with their first attack for a while. Great response to go back into the lead almost straight away though, and we had a few good chances after that to make it 3-1; thankfully those misses didn't come back to bite us.

It was nice to see us actually passing the ball and having some good movement off of it, as opposed to the aimless hoofing we saw last week against Arsenal. Hopefully it gives the players a bit more confidence to keep playing that way and is something we can build on. Deserved the win, let's hope we keep it going.

[fallenangle]

A MotD game to look forward too for a change.

[EJG1980]

A MotD game to look forward too for a change.

Son was superb today so I wouldn’t be surprised if they did one of those little highlights package analysing his game.

I don’t know if it’ll come across in the highlights, but Emerson Royal was much improved today. Like you I’ve thought he was a bit iffy and off the pace in his first few appearances, but he was very good today, did well in his match up with Matt Target and did well going forwards too.

[fallenangle]

You were right about Son on MotD they gave him a well deserved talk up. He was my Spurs player of the day and would have been my player of the day if it hadn't been for an extraordinary dribbling sequence by MC's Bernado Silva against Liverpool:-



So deserved a goal.

Liverpool Salah's goal in the same game was none too shabby either.



Good to hear ER is getting better too.

[EJG1980]

You were right about Son on MotD they gave him a well deserved talk up. He was my Spurs player of the day and would have been my player of the day if it hadn't been for an extraordinary dribbling sequence by MC's Bernado Silva against Liverpool:-

So deserved a goal.

Liverpool Salah's goal in the same game was none too shabby either.

Ahhhhhh, Foden should have hit it first time and not taken that touch! Bernardo Silva will be giving him the cold shoulder in the dressing room for a while, denied him 'assist of the season' there

I remember Salah scoring a similar goal against us a few years ago, in a 2-2 draw at Anfield, but the one against Man City was even better.

When he first went to Liverpool and had that amazing debut season, I wondered if it'd be a one off as it was so much better than any season he'd had before, but he's kept those standards up the whole time he's been there. Phenomenal player, and massive credit to Klopp too as I doubt it was a coincidence that Salah suddenly jumped a few levels in performance once Klopp became his manager.

16th Oct Edit: and Salah has just scored an even better one against Watford (and a wonderful pass in the first half to set up a goal for Mane). Easily the best player in the league at the moment.

Edit 2: Brentford have been a real pleasure to watch this season, absolutely mind-boggling how they didn't manage to at least equalise against Chelsea earlier this evening; they pummelled the European champions for the final 25-30 minutes of that match.

I'd love to see Thomas Frank at Spurs and see what he could do with a bigger budget (and even if not Spurs, I'm sure he'll end up somewhere higher up the totem pole than Brentford within the next few seasons). Even when they lose, you can't be anything other than proud of your team when they play with that style, that commitment and work rate. Must be dreamland for Brentford fans right now.

[EJG1980]

Same starting eleven today that we had against Villa, hopefully we can get another positive result.

Newcastle haven't been great this season (in the bottom three, no wins, sixteen goals conceded) so this is a match we really should be winning, no excuses.

A win and we go level on points with fourth place, and four points off the top of the table. COYS!

Edit:

Yes, three points, up to fifth place!

Good performance as well apart from the first five minutes, turned it around well after the setback of the early goal.

The only downside was that we didn't add any more goals in the second half to put it completely out of sight, we completely dominated and should have added more to our tally.

Which of course left us vulnerable to the possibility of an iffy finish should something like Dier's weird own goal happen. Luckily it wasn't nervy after that, we saw the match out well with no more scares.

All three goals we scored we excellent: brilliant finish by Ndombele for the first, great through ball and excellent finish from Kane for the second, and a lovely passing move finished off by Son for the third.

I thought Skipp had an excellent game today, might be the best I’ve seen him play since returning from his Norwich loan. Ndombele was really good too, not everything he tried worked but he was a real creative hub for the team today. Kane looked much more like his normal self too, played very well all around in addition to his goal.

And the best news of the day, the person who was taken ill in the stands that the match was suspended for is stable and recovering in hospital.

Sergio Reguillon and Eric Dier may have saved their life, Sergio spotting what was going on and getting the ref to stop the match, and then Eric getting the Newcastle medical staff go over to help with their defib unit. That quick help may have made all the difference.

[fallenangle]

Yep, Eric Dier had a weird old time of it yesterday - helping save someone in the crowd and then scoring a really bizarre own goal. Looked as though he was going to head it away, suddenly mid-lunge realised it was too low and was caught between heading and kicking it and I think it went in off his knee.

Very useful win puts us right back up there even if with an embarrassing negative GD - the worst in the top half of the Premiership.

[EJG1980]

Very useful win puts us right back up there even if with an embarrassing negative GD - the worst in the top half of the Premiership.

It's a dangerous thing when I see something like this as I start thinking "Hmm, I wonder who HAS finished the highest with a negative goal difference?" and I end up going down a rabbit hole looking at old league tables!

I managed to limit myself to the Premier League era. In 2004/05 Everton finished in fourth place with a -1 goal difference:



Not quite as good as Norwich City though, who in 1992/93 managed to finish one place higher in third with an even worse -4 goal difference:



So while it might not be the first choice scenario, if we copied one of them and finished top four with a negative goal difference, I wouldn't complain!

Hopefully we can make the GD a bit more positive though. Next weekend's match away to West Ham will be a good test as Moyes has them playing very well last season and this, and they're always extra up for matches against us no matter what their form is like. Definitely a match that can be a momentum killer, so coming away from there with three points would be a very good sign.

[fallenangle]

We either tend to swat WH away without too much difficulty or struggle badly. It depends on whether good or bad Spurs are playing that week. Hopefully good.

[EJG1980]

Poor performance from the "reserves" in The Netherlands this evening. Aside from a superb Bryan Gill shot that unluckily hit the bar, we didn't really create anything of note while Gollini had number of saves to make. Deserved win for Vitesse.

In games like these with a mix of squad players and youngsters, you need the more senior players to take charge and get the rest of the team going with their own performances, but the likes of Lo Celso, Alli, Winks, Bergwijn just didn't get going at all. None of them will have done anything to help their chances of getting into the Premier League starting eleven.

With all eleven of the players who started against Newcastle not even travelling for this match, hopefully the ends will justify the means and the extra prep time will get us three points against West Ham at the weekend.

We didn't have the most shocking result of the evening though, Jose Mourinho's Roma somehow managed to lose 6-1 to little Bodo/Glimt in Norway!

[fallenangle]

I think Spurs are not treating the the Europa Conference League seriously sending what was essentially a Spurs B team. That's disappointing because I really believe that winning it, particularly in its inaugural year, would have some kudos attached.

We're in danger of not even being runners up and going out before the real play offs. Even as a runner up we'd have to deal with an additional play off against Europa League third placed teams and some of those could be big names. Currently those include: Fenerbahce, Leicester, PSV, Rangers and Celtic.

Chances of progressing further are currently not looking too good.