Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[fallenangle]

Yes, really good game - best I've seen England's Women play in a long time. After France scored it was indeed very nervy but all the more satisfying when they did not give away another.

Hell of a lot better entertainment than their previous match and the mens' game at the weekend.

[EJG1980]

A shame to see that James Maddison has missed out on the England squad for the Euros. Good honest response from him though, where he said he was really disappointed to miss out but his form after he came back from his injury wasn't great, so he could understand why Southgate made the decision to leave him out (and it was exactly what I was thinking too).

It's the first tournament since the 2014 World Cup where there have been no Spurs players included in the squad, which I will admit does slightly dampen my enthusiasm a little bit. The best we can do is Kane, Walker, and Tripper as ex-Spurs to support! At least Maddison gets the summer off and so he should be fresh and raring to go at the start of next season, and with a point to prove.

[fallenangle]

I think it was a dubious decision leaving out Maddison particularly when he was one of the three players who came on against Bosnia H and clearly involved in improving England's lack lustre performance from that in the first half.

It will be interesting to see if Southgate throws him a bone and he starts against Iceland later today. Jack Grealish likewise. Another mistake leaving him out of the Euro squad too I think.

There are some other Spurs players likely to make the squads for other countries like Porro and Van De Ven that might add interest to some of the other matches they no doubt will be covering. But I agree not having any current Spurs players in the England squad is a bit disappointing.

[EJG1980]

No Porro for Spain unfortunately, he was very surprisingly left out of their squad. I read that even the Spanish press were pretty surprised he was left out after a very good season for us.

We actually only have four players at the Euros: Vicario for Italy, Hojbjerg for Denmark, VDV for The Netherlands, and Dragusin for Romania. There’s the Copa America too though, where we’ll have Romero and Lo Celso for Argentina, and Bentancur for Uruguay. On the plus side a big chunk of the squad will be getting a full rest this summer.

This England vs Iceland friendly is another excitement fest And they were lucky not to go 2-0 down just now.

[fallenangle]

Yes it was a pretty dire performance but if HK had converted that, for him, pretty easy chance rather than shinning it over the bar the result might have been respectable.

Where were they missing something? Answer: the midfield creatives left out of the Euro squad and who were not even on the subs' bench as I suspected would be the case. When HK went off, with his habit of filling in that supply role when he's not getting service, they looked even less likely to score and in the second half Iceland strung some pretty good counter-attacking passages of play together rather than just defending in depth.

Very disappointing in every respect and how Southgate will select his starting team who knows. By announcing his final squad early he's made a significant error and whether he can cobble together something coherent and effective from the set he's chosen only time will tell.

Sunday Edit

Watched the Soccer Aid game on ITV earlier, quite good fun, plenty of goals and some decent play too at times. Good to see that even at 41 years old Jermaine Defoe still has his striker instinct in front of goal. What I did not know is that he is the under 18s' coach at Spurs now.

[EJG1980]

Sunday Edit

Watched the Soccer Aid game on ITV earlier, quite good fun, plenty of goals and some decent play too at times. Good to see that even at 41 years old Jermaine Defoe still has his striker instinct in front of goal. What I did not know is that he is the under 18s' coach at Spurs now.

There could be another old player coming back in a coaching role. Spurs' assistant manager just left to become manager at Birmingham City, and at the same time Robbie Keane left his job as manager of Maccabi Tel Aviv. So it may just be because it's such an easy story to come up with, but there are a few tentative reports linking Robbie with the vacant position at Spurs.

Looks like he did a good job with Maccabi Tel Aviv, as Maccabi Haifa had won the last three titles in a row but Keane guided Tel Aviv to the title. He also won the Israeli equivalent of the League Cup, won his group in the Europa Conference and was knocked out in the round of 16 by eventual winners Olympiakos.

[fallenangle]

^ Interesting, thanks.

Don't know if this will interest you or anyone else here but last night I found what turned out to be a fascinating documentary on BBC4 about the long forgotten unofficial and controversial at the time womens "World Cup" of 1971 in Mexico: COPA '71: The Lost Lionesses.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0020541/storyville-copa-71-the-lost-lionesses-storyville

Amazing story and even though I remember the mens World Cup of 1970 very well until this programme I'd never heard about this follow up tournament, which included an England team, at all.

Hidden footballing history and very well told through film of the games and interviews with some of the players who took part and must now be mostly in their 70s.

[EJG1980]

Thanks, I'll add it to my ever growing list of things I need to watch

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Not quite as historic but Spurs have put up a nice little (40 minutes) documentary on YouTube about the Under-21's recent league winning season. It concentrates on the semi-final and final of the Premier League Cup, and the knockout playoff rounds for the league title itself.

Could have done with five minutes at the beginning showing us winning the 'normal' league part of the season too, but it just got a quick "Oh yeah, we finished 1st" bit of text near the start

They could have explained a couple of things too: we got two trophies as one was for coming 1st in the league and one for winning the end of season playoff. And we were at home in all the playoff matches as that was the reward for winning the league. So it could have been a little bit more in-depth but it was still a decent watch. Especially to see a Spurs team win something!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iaeP4VoHJQ

[EJG1980]

Oof, not the best start for Scotland at the Euros this evening. Hard to draw any conclusions from such a one sided match though; are Germany actually that good or did Scotland's poor performance make them look better than they really are? Big confidence boosting start for Germany either way. Combine that with playing a home tournament and they've definitely got a very good chance to go all the way.

[fallenangle]

Because of the hype the Scotland versus Germany match was receiving over the last few days I was going to post before the game that realistically Scotland would actually be lucky if the Germans put less than five goals past them. Their only chance would be if Germany scored two or three in the first half, took their foot off the gas in the second half and with a bit of luck maybe allowed the Scots a consolation goal.

No pleasure being so right and in the end they actually scored six if you count the own goal too.

I won't say what I'm thinking about the upcoming England game as I don't want to jinx that too.

[EJG1980]

Decent first (full) day of the Euros. No edge of your seat classics so far but watchable games with a good number of goals. Some of the goals were very nice too, the second goal scored by Switzerland, Spain, and Italy, were all top notch.

I thought we may have been in for a classic with the shocking early goal in the Albania vs Italy match, but Italy turned it around pretty quickly and didn't look like conceding until a couple of dodgy moments at the very end.

One thing that annoyed me though was ITV breaking up the excellent commentating partnership of Seb Hutchinson and Andros Townsend, who were very good together at the last World Cup. Put them back together, ITV!

[fallenangle]

Andros was being used on one game today (Saturday) as co-commentator but TBH I didn't really notice who he was paired with or even which channel it was on. I was switching between ITV, ITV+1, The Red Button and BBC iPlayer watching the footaball and tennis from the Nottingham Open (when the annoying weather hadn't stopped play) for most of the day.

I think I'm going to have to limit myself to one full football game a day and just watch the highlights of the others or I'll be all sported out by the end of the week.

Weirdly the Albania against Italy game was the best watch, at least the first half and the last ten minutes or so when Albania were thwarted from scoring what would have been a great goal by a lucky(?) deflection off the Italian goalkeepers rib cage. But there were indeed some top quality goals in all the games.

[EJG1980]

From your comment I'm guessing you're not going to be doing the marathon next Saturday, when there are Euro's matches at 2PM, 5PM, 8PM, then Copa America at 11PM and 1AM

Agree about the Italy match being the best one. Italy reminded me a little bit of Spurs at some points this season: let in a goal due to a mistake, played some lovely football and scored some good goals, but weren't clinical enough to kill off the match so remained vulnerable to being sucker punched.

[fallenangle]

OMG didn't know about that series of matches - I think the answer will be no. I'm no lightweight when it comes to watching some sports on the TV but there is a limit.

Spurs being like Italy or visa versa.........................I can see it.

It was Italy resorting to type I got from that match. With the Germans against Scotland, as I said earlier, the only hope the latter had of getting even a little joy was if the Germans were at least two goals ahead at the end of the first half and shut up shop in the second. But that's not the German way, particularly on home soil, unlike the Italians who, historically are the masters of hanging on to a one goal lead.

[fallenangle]

England game pretty much as I expected - started off good, very good in fact but they just switched off at some point and could have let the Serbs back into the game for at least a draw if it hadn't been for Pickford and the Serbs' own less than clinical finishing.

All very well, deservedly, praising Bellingham but take him out and England look very ordinary. Bowen came on and did what I think he's very good at, both winning the ball in the midfield and bringing it forward. The one chance HK had was all down to that and his particularly good cross. Only their goalkeeper stopped it from going in with an excellent reaction save.

We won, that's the main thing. But I still don't think Southgate knows what his best team is from the selection he's bought, as some of the pundits were saying as much too.

Watched most of the Denmark game beforehand with Christian Eriksen bossing much of the game in a way I haven't seen him do recently. Soon to be ex-Spurs, if the rumours are correct: Hojbjerg put in a good performance too.