Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[EJG1980]

Just when things seem to be rolling along nicely, a little bit of momentum building, fate has to throw a massive spanner in the works:

BBC Sport: Tottenham return 13 positive Covid-19 tests - with eight players included

Could end up with a weak team playing against Rennes tomorrow and then both the Brighton and Leicester league matches are likely to be postponed. Outside chance that the Liverpool match gets postponed too, but if it doesn't, we'll be going into it with a lot of players who have been isolating for ten days and haven't been able to train.

I watched the Conte press conference on Youtube, he was clearly very upset about it, worried about the safety of players, staff, their families, etc..

It would make much more sense that when you have that first outbreak, you get special dispensation to automatically potentially postpone your upcoming matches so you can stop any of the players coming into training and ensure there is no more mixing at the club. As Conte said, UEFA say we have to play our match, so the players need to train, and so now we've had new positive tests from players who have been mixing together for training sessions... not a good recipe.

Whatever, it looks like our chances of staying in the Europa Conference League will be reduced. A weakened team will have a tough time beating Rennes, and you'd expect Vitesse to beat Mura, so that'd be us out.

Edit: starting to see reports on Twitter that there’s a bit of a COVID outbreak at Leicester too. Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of teams are affected by this over the winter.

[EJG1980]

Tomorrow’s match has now been postponed:

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Gotta think we’ll get an announcement about the Brighton and Leicester matches too soon.

Edit: yup, Brighton game now officially off too.

https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2021/december/club-statement-brighton-hove-albion/

[EJG1980]

Maybe the Premier League authorities are waiting for the Spurs fans to travel to Leicester before calling the match off, like they've done for the poor Watford fans who've spent the day travelling up to Burnley. Very strange not to postpone when both clubs have requested it.

[EJG1980]

Leicester vs Spurs set to be postponed

Well there's a huge shock, couldn't have predicted that! Very silly that the PL didn't just cancel it yesterday when both clubs requested it.

Leicester is only an hour from London by train, so hopefully not too many Spurs fan will have already travelled up there for no reason.

We're probably going to have quite a while now where our league position will be a bit weird, gonna have three matches in hand on nearly all the teams ahead of us. Lots of "If we win our games in hand we'd be in such and such position," type calculations to come!

Edit: I agree with Thomas Frank https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59679767

Loads of teams are being hit, carrying on playing at the moment will just spread it to even more teams. Have some kind of break now, one or two weeks, let every team get all their players isolated and healthy and then start back up in a very cautious fashion with as many precautions in place as possible.

If we carry on as we are now we're just going to call off loads of matches anyway, but without the benefits of the players being able to isolate for a while. There was going to be a winter-break in late January / early February, have a break now and play matches then instead.

Edit edit: official conformation that the match has been called off.

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We're going to be three games behind in the Premiership plus the European CL one to play just as we're going into the Christmas period when it gets busy anyway.

I think there are going to have to be some new flexible rules bought in to cover this sort of thing because its not fair on the players/clubs concerned if they're forced to play all these fixtures by a certain date. Your solution to take the winter break now instead sounds good but come Jan/Feb if the weather is bad then there could be even more postponements. The season might have to extended to accommodate all of this.

With the World Cup next year that could have caused problems with players involved not having much of a recovery period before restarting training for that after a hard season. It seems strangely fortuitous, for the first time, the WC is not in the summer.

[EJG1980]

And now, another five matches for this weekend called off:

Man Utd v Brighton
Southampton v Brentford
Watford v Crystal Palace
West Ham v Norwich
Everton v Leicester

That's 50% of this weekend's matches off already. Liverpool have also announced that they've got three players who will miss the Newcastle match tonight due to positive Covid tests, so I wouldn't be surprised if that number goes up and our match against them on Sunday gets called off too!

I think they definitely need to do a quick one or two week break right now, if just to give all the clubs time to sit down and make a plan. Carrying on in the current ad-hoc manner isn't working and won't be fair on the teams who wrack up big fixture backlogs.

I think your idea of extending the season is probably the best one, I didn't think about weather postponements affecting things if they played extra in late Jan/early Feb. Maybe a bit of both: break now, play matches in what would have been the Jan/Feb break, extend the end of the season by a month.

Edit: add Villa vs Burnley to the matches called off, two hours before kick-off. That's five out of today's six matches called off. The only one left right now is Leeds vs Arsenal... I think I'll check what Italian matches are on

[EJG1980]

Mixed emotions at the end of the match today. Excellent performance, a real sign of progress, but should have won with the number of clear cut chances we created but failed to convert. Conte summed it up well when he said he was feeling a bit “50/50” after the match.

The finishing was the only real downside though, loads to build on and be positive about, and before the match I’d have seen a draw as a good result.

Some very good performances from players who wouldn’t normally play. Winks was superb, Dele was very good, as was Sessegnon. Ndombele had the standout moment with his superb pass to set up the Kane goal, but I felt he faded a bit after that and overall wasn’t up to the standard of the other backups.

Emerson was the only regular starter I thought slightly below the level of the rest, but he was still pretty decent, just a few iffy moments. The three central defenders of Davies, Dier and Sanchez had good matches (brilliant tackle at the end from Sanchez to prevent Liverpool the chance of snatching the win).

Son and Kane had very good games, barring the chances Kane missed that a fully on form Kane would have scored. Still encouraging though as it was his best display of the season, he did get back on the scoresheet, and he was consistently getting into scoring positions. I think the goals will start flowing if he keeps putting in the same kind of performances.

Great match too, one of the best (if not THE best) so far this season. Keep it up Spurs!

[fallenangle]

Yes, looked like a great match on MotD, really enjoyed it except the Spurs misses. Actually I think it was a fair result even if the scoreline did not reflect the game. 4 - 4 would have done that with both teams down to 10 men at the end too.

Weird that the now second choice midfielders should put in such a good performance just as there is talk of loaning out DA to Newcastle , selling Ndombele to an EU side and Winks to another Premiership club in January. If they put in performances like that every time they played that sort of talk would not have been happening.

Talking of the January window I'm wondering if Spurs might be thinking again about MU's out of favour (again) Martial or, my preference, R.Sterling who there is talk about wanting to leave MC. An attack consisting of HK + Son + Sterling + Moura or a sub-set of those four would scare the living daylights out of most defenders.

[EJG1980]

Yes! Into the League Cup semi-finals! A little bit nerve jangling in the final fifteen minutes as we started sitting far too deep but aside from a deflected shot that went just over the bar, no massive scares.

Still, no good for the heart when we sit off like that Conte did say though that our level dropped as the second half wore on because a lot of players were still not near their peak fitness after having Covid, which is why he made a lot of subs. It worked too, as we needed to grind it out a bit at the end and Conte's subs at the right moments helped us do that.

Always nice to see a backup player come in and do well, and Bergwijn did just that tonight. Scored one, set up the other, and was pretty dangerous during his whole time on the pitch.

No easy teams waiting in the semis though: Arsenal, Chelsea, and depending on who wins the penalties, Liverpool or Leicester. Two very tough matches no matter who we get.

Edit:

Chelsea vs Spurs
Arsenal vs Liverpool

Well, if we can win it this season, we'll definitely have earned it!

Our January fixture list looks fun now, Chelsea every other match:

Watford (h) PL
Chelsea (a) LC
Morecambe (h) FAC
Chelsea (h) LC
Arsenal (h) PL
Chelsea (a) PL

And the match after that Chelsea match in the Premier League? FA Cup fourth round... if we both get through I wouldn't bet against a fourth match against them

[fallenangle]

Watched the highlights of the West Ham match on Quest - another enjoyable performance and result even if WH were unlucky not to get an equaliser. Lloris was on goal keeping god form.................most of the time.

WH put us under great pressure in the second half and we didn't buckle which was very pleasing.

Sorry for Leicester; they threw it away but that was great watch too.

Tough to proceed from now on but without the EU Conference League games to worry about, the physical strain on the players will be lessened. We can beat Chelsea and either of the others in the final but it is a big ask. I just wish HK was on better form and, of course, hope he is not snaffled up by MC or whoever in the January transfer window.

Boxing Day Edit

Season's greetings.

Very good result against CP today and with WH losing (thanks Southampton) we go 5th above them with three games in hand over Arsenal in 4th, although they are six points ahead. Starting to look much better now for Spurs than it did a few months ago.

[EJG1980]

A nice straightforward win today, and even though it would have been nice to rack up the goals, I think we made the sensible decision to see out the match professionally once Zaha was sent off. We have another match in less than 48 hours so being able to conserve energy was more important.

Two league matches in a row with a Kane goal now, maybe, finally, he might be clicking into goalscoring form, which would be a massive boost. Fingers crossed. Bonus that we got to take him off after an hour to keep him fresh.

Brilliant match from Lucas, he really does seem to be thriving under Conte. Scored one and set up the other two. The leap on him for his header was fantastic, it was my favourite moment of the match! Skipp was excellent again too though, so it was a toss up between him and Lucas for man of the match.

Really good performance from Emerson today too, lovely pass to Lucas in the build up for the first goal and a perfect cross to Lucas for the second goal. Did well the whole match. Now he needs to keep up that level of crossing and passing on a consistent basis.

And we finally have a positive goal difference!!

Boxing Day Edit

Season's greetings.

Very good result against CP today and with WH losing (thanks Southampton) we go 5th above them with three games in hand over Arsenal in 4th, although they are six points ahead. Starting to look much better now for Spurs than it did a few months ago.

Yup, the table is starting to look much nicer. Let's hope we can fit those games in hand in at times that don't disrupt us too much, although hopefully that will be easier with European football in the second half of the season. I am a little miffed to go out of Europe without playing, but it may end up being a positive if it helps us finish in the top four. Still, there's a long way to go yet, but things do look like they're heading in the right direction at the club.

[fallenangle]

Watching the game on MotD that Lucas goal was really enjoyable and indeed he had a great match in general. Good too that he's at last re-found his goal scoring ability and is not limiting himself to assists.

You could say much the same about HK but I still don't think he is entirely happy and whilst we might keep him until the end of the season unless Spurs end up winning something and get into the CL too there's still a good chance he'll leave in the summer.

[EJG1980]

Watching the game on MotD that Lucas goal was really enjoyable and indeed he had a great match in general. Good too that he's at last re-found his goal scoring ability and is not limiting himself to assists.

You could say much the same about HK but I still don't think he is entirely happy and whilst we might keep him until the end of the season unless Spurs end up winning something and get into the CL too there's still a good chance he'll leave in the summer.

I can see just about anything happening with Kane (he still wants to go, he decides to sign a new contract, he'll stay but only if we get top four, etc.) so I'm not gonna worry about it too much.

Until reality conspires to prove otherwise, I'm gonna firmly believe that he'll score 20 goals between now and the end of the season, we'll finish in the top four, win one of the cups, and he'll announce a new contract to see him stay at Spurs for the rest of his career

Big match against Southampton this afternoon, made bigger by Arsenal's match against Wolves being postponed (so this effectively becomes one of our games in hand on them) and by Man Utd dropping points against Newcastle last night. Three points today would be massive.

[fallenangle]

Yes, that MU result against Newcastle was unexpected and very helpful for us.

Spurs tend to be pretty good against Southampton whatever their/our current form - I'm certainly not counting our chickens but 3 points is very doable and could be very important as you say.

[fallenangle]

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