Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

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Arghhh - I kept an eye on the score of the game against Roma and it was going OK from all reports. Plenty of chances both ways but Spurs only have to keep them out for the last couple of minutes of extra time to get the win..............................and they blow it.

So frustrating. Not disastrous but it puts us in danger of being in the play off zone and an extra game we could well do without. More pressure now to get good results in the remaining games so that doesn't happen.

[EJG1980]

Yup, frustrating sums it up. We weren't watertight at the back but Roma scoring a couple was just about right, but we missed so many great chances when it was 2-1 to us to extend our lead and put the game to bed. Just needed our finishing to be slightly better (or a few times where someone could have passed to someone else in a great position but decided to shoot instead) and we'd have got four our five no problem. Alas, it was a rare time when I got a prediction right as I said to my brother on about 70 minutes that it'd either finish 3-1 or would be a late and annoying 2-2.

Makes the match with Rangers a very big one as we're now level on points with them in the table, us in 9th and them in 8th. Really need to go up there and win that one. As you said though it's not a disaster or anything, we are still only 3 points behind 1st place. Those two extra points would have been very nice though!

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You learn something new every day - watched the Wealdstone v. High Wycombe FA Cup game early on Saturday. Decent but unremarkable win for HW but I thought the ITV background lead up to the game was, for once, very interesting. They bought on Stuart Pearce who was well worth whatever fee they were paying him. He started his football career at Wealdstone whilst he was still working as an electrician, something I had no idea about. Apparently he once fixed Brian Clough's iron when he was at Nottingham Forest.

There was a lot of other stuff about the history of both the clubs too that was worth hearing too. One of the HW guys, can't recall his name, had played as a youngster for Spurs Boys/U21 and under Poch had even been in the squad for one of the European games.

Watched the England v USA womens' 'friendly' yesterday too was a bit of a let down TBH but it made history by being Wembley's biggest ever crowd for a womens' football game at over 78,000.

[EJG1980]

I actually almost went to the Wealdstone match on a whim as their ground is only a twenty minute walk from me, expecting the ticket prices to be a fiver or a tenner, but when I saw they were £25 my urge to whim disappeared

I haven't seen Stuart Pearce working as a pundit for a while, but I remember always enjoying listening to him talk whenever he did.

I didn't pay too much attention to the football yesterday, but I did see that young Spurs goalkeeper Josh Keeley who is on loan at Leyton Orient, scored a 90+9 equaliser for them when he came up for a corner against Oldham in the cup. Orient then went on to win the match in extra time with another last minute goal, not a double for Josh though!

Post Fulham edit: not a great performance today, and on the basis of the whole 90 minutes we should be happy with the draw as I thought Fulham were the better side for most of the match. I did expect a tough one today after seeing the starting lineup, with a lot of first choice players missing right down the spine of the team, and players who could come in to give others a rest (Richarlison, Odobert, Moore) being injured as well.

They seemed to be in and around our box much more often than we were in theirs and Forster had to make some very good saves, and a look at the stats after the match confirmed it: they had 36 touches in our box vs us having 16 in theirs, and we needed 5 saves from Forster to only 2 saves from their keeper.

Our goal was well against the run of play, but unfortunately it didn't change the momentum at all, Fulham straight back on the front foot and and equaliser always felt like it was coming. Had it not been for the (correct) sending off, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd found a winner.

The players looked a bit knackered fairly early in the match, and with our injuries it's tough to rotate certain players to keep them fresh, so I think we're going to be in for a tough December with a Sunday / Thursday / Sunday / Thursday schedule for the whole month.

I think we'll need to grind and gut our way through matches and drag ourselves over the line if we wanna pick up results. Not expecting too many sparkling performances until we can get a few players back from injury. Solanke should probably be back on Thursday as he was just ill today, not injured, hopefully it's not something that lays him low all week.

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From the highlights on MotD it looked as if Fulham well deserved their point. Just gutting to think about the what ifs for this game and the others already mentioned. With wins in all three instead of two losses and a draw we'd be in second place only a couple more wins and a draw behind Liverpool.

Not to be.

[EJG1980]

Yup, a lot of what ifs so far this season. I think we've shown with our best results that when our current style of play clicks it's good enough to beat anyone, but we need the starting eleven to be fired up and energised for it to work. Once the starting eleven is a bit tired and jaded it really affects Ange's gameplan and makes it tough to pull off.

I saw an interesting stat that we've only won once in the five Premier League matches following a midweek European match:

3-2 loss vs Brighton
1-0 loss vs Palace
2-1 loss vs Ipswich
1-1 draw vs Fulham

All against teams with no European football so they had a full week off before playing us. Our one win was the 3-0 win against Man Utd, who are also in Europe so didn't have the freshness advantage that those other teams had. It could just be coincidence of course, but it might be something.

[EJG1980]

I believe that fits the cliché of a "proper FA Cup tie"

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Damn right. When I was watching the Tamworth game penalty shoot out against Burton Albion and thinking they deserve to get a really good third round draw with a big club and they have.

Just hope we don't field a complete B team although it might be the game to try out one of our other squad goalies. In any case I want to see a proper professional job on them like we did against Marine (0 - 5) a few seasons ago.

06.12.24 EDIT

Well last night went well against Bournemouth....................................... ........

I know there are excuses but we're seeing Spurs pretty much torpedoing any chance of seriously challenging for the Premiership and putting even their chances of a top four finish in question. It is not even the end of the year and we've all ready lost as many or more games than any of the top three have done in total for the whole of the last two seasons.

[EJG1980]

Yup, it wasn't a good performance at all against Bournemouth. Honestly they should have won by a larger margin, they missed three or four very big chances in the second half to put the game to bed.

I do feel for Ange though as he's been dealt a very tough hand with the injuries, and now we can add Ben Davies to that ever growing list! Both first choice central defenders injured and the very experienced senior backup centre back now injured. Our central defensive partnership ended up being a reserve central defender and an 18 year old kid making his first ever PL start, who is primarily a midfielder or right back, playing out of position. And there's a good chance that will be the partnership against Chelsea too.

I think attack was actually a bigger problem than the defence last night, as you expect a makeshift defence to be less than perfect. However the attack had loads of the ball but didn't really create anything at all. Our biggest chance was in the first half that came from a Bournemouth defender having a poor touch. Very little that we actually made from our own good play though.

Alan Shearer made what I feel might be a good point on commentary, where he said that the most players have comparable ability levels but the best players performance 9 matches out of 10, whereas decent players perform 5 matches out of 10, and he thinks Spurs have too many players who fit into the latter category.

He thinks that's the main problem Spurs have above anything else like approach or tactics, and the biggest thing that Spurs can do to improve is sign more players in the former category, and you'll see performances like the ones against Man City, Man Utd, Villa, much more often. Which I suppose is almost stating the obvious of "sign better players and you'll be better" but I know what he means

Sunday edit: Both first choice defenders surprisingly returning from injury, 2-0 up after 11 minutes, and by the end of the match you've lost 3-4 and both returning defenders have gone off injured again....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Really disappointing in all respects.

I would have been OK with a draw against Chelsea on their current form and when I saw we were 2 - 1 ahead at half-time I thought we were on track for at least that draw. But those penalties............................totally unnecessary. I cant understand what defenders are thinking when they do those sorts of 'challenges' in the penalty box; it is just madness.

[EJG1980]

But those penalties............................totally unnecessary. I cant understand what defenders are thinking when they do those sorts of 'challenges' in the penalty box; it is just madness.

Yeah, both players lost their heads in different ways.

Bissouma's one, at least the Chelsea player was in a dangerous position and about to turn to either have a shot or put a dangerous cross across the box, but the challenge was horribly timed, over the top, and reckless. Extra annoying as we had been under the kosh since the start of the second half but had survived those 15 minutes and were perhaps on the verge of riding it out until we gave them that gift.

The Sarr one was possibly worse, as they were actually doing the right thing as he and Gray has blocked Palmer's path to goal and forced him to head towards the corner flag... and then Sarr challenges him anyway and kicks right into his leg, just as I was saying "well done!" for forcing Palmer away from goal! Without that maybe Son's late goal could have been an equaliser instead of a consolation.

Ange wasn't blameless, I think he needed to make a sub or formation tweak at 2-1 or 2-2 as Chelsea were in complete control at that point, but he didn't make any non-injury changes until we were 3-2 down. But at the same time, no manager can legislate for players giving away crazy penalties like that.

Edit: Christian Romero coming out in support of Ange while also going in a bit two footed against the higher ups at the club:





While it's probably happened after a player has left, I'm not sure I've ever seen a player having a go at the higher ups at a club when they're still there before.

[EJG1980]

Not a terrible result against Rangers, though a win would have been much nicer as that would have moved us up to 4th in the table. As Dejan Kulusevski honestly assessed after the match though, we didn't deserve the win because we didn't play well enough. It wasn't a great performance at all, especially the first half, and though the second half was a bit better it was still Rangers who had the better chances to win the match.

I'm probably jinxing him into a mistake at the weekend now, but Fraser Forster has done very well replacing Vicario, and against Rangers he once again pulled off a number of good saves (especially one right at the death where Rangers looked certain to score). One of the few players you can't level any criticism at during our recent poor run of results.

A win in both our final matches should almost certainly still get top 8, and a draw and win might just about do it too. Hopefully we have a few players back from injury and have found some better form by the time those matches come around at the end of January.

Bottom of the league Southampton with 12 losses from 15 games await at the weekend. The team really needs to step up and put on a performance because if we don't get all three points from that match, even with our depleted squad, it's going to be a bit worrying.

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I was listening to the Rangers match, of and on, on BBC5L and it did not sound good for us. They had far too many chance where, as you say, FF saved the game but also not enough attempts on their goal, particularly in the first half. That was concerning but a draw was OK, it puts us just outside the automatic qualifying positions. So a good results in the remaining games should be enough.
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If we can't get three points from Southampton then we don't really deserve a top four finish. But that could still happen whatever the result. If we can beat MC, even though not at their best, there's still good reason to believe we can get points from any game and crawl back up the Premiership to be serious contenders at the end of the season for that fourth spot.

[EJG1980]

If we can't get three points from Southampton then we don't really deserve a top four finish. But that could still happen whatever the result. If we can beat MC, even though not at their best, there's still good reason to believe we can get points from any game and crawl back up the Premiership to be serious contenders at the end of the season for that fourth spot.

Well we just about managed to scrape a win at Southampton Just about the perfect performance really, blow them away completely in the first half and then very sensibly don't go nuts in the second half so we can conserve energy for a very important cup quarter-final coming up in just a few days time.

I've very much aboard the Ange train but one of my criticisms has been that I think he could have given a few more chances to the likes of Bergvall and Spence in the league this season, so I was very happy to see both start last night. Even more happy when Spence produced that great run and excellent through ball to set up Maddison's opening goal in less than a minute! Spence continued to have a good game after that, even when swapped to his non-natural side after Udogie went off. Bergvall put in a good shift too, it was a good night for both of them.

Archie Gray has been getting more chances than the other two thanks to his versatility, another good showing from him too, especially considering he's an 18 year old playing out of position. It'd be nice to see him get some game time in his proper position of central midfield eventually; maybe once we get all our defenders back fit, if such a miracle ever occurs!

The bit I bolded in the quote of your post is why I said a month or two ago that I really want us to stick with Ange even if we have a very up and down season; when it clicks the ups are so good that if we can keep the faith and not panic during the downs, and eventually have those ups much more consistently, the rewards could be really really good. And because, quite frankly, giving a manager a long time to implement a plan and see it through is something we usually just don't do.

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I very much agree. Any talk of getting rid of Ange at this point or even thinking about it is just dumb. You have to give managers a chance to get the players they want/need and create a team that plays in the way they want. But that style, whatever it is, must also entertain a demanding crowd.

If it doesn't work out or look as though it is going to work out after at least two full seasons then talk about getting in a new manager is justified but not until then.

If, for example, we lost to Tamworth in the FA Cup then criticism would be justified but I still think it would be premature for the club to actually be seen to be considering a new manager. If my guess is right Ange is the type of guy could actually jump first and that would be a disaster halfway through the season.