Tottenham Hotspur FC 2013/14

[EJG1980]

Just watched Spurs Women put in a mediocre performance beating Leicester 1 - 0 thanks to an early OG.

In short poor football and just lucky Leicester were not much better.

I didn't realise it was on and noticed the final score on the BBC, clicked through to look at the match stats, 3 shots to Spurs and 4 to Leicester in the whole match, so yeah, didn't exactly sound like it was a thrill-a-minute match!

I was forgetting the match today was an early start and now wish I hadn't come here and checked on the score. Really, really bad whatever the final result.

Ended up only losing 3-2, but it wasn't a stirring fightback that fell just short. Pretty much as bad in the second half as we were in the first, Everton wasting a few chances to go further ahead, and then we pulled one back out of nowhere. It was a lovely finish by Kulusevski though. Did we then bombard their goal after that? Not really, match just petered out until we got another one late in injury time. Excellent cross from Mikey Moore that led to that goal though.

So at least we made the scoreline look more respectable, but I don't think we can take too much positive from it, it was not a good match at all. Difficult to think that the axe isn't going to fall on Ange after that result.

(Not talking about whether he should be or not, just that if you look at the managers sacked under the current Spurs ownership, virtually all of them were sacked when in much better positions than Ange has the team right now, so him surviving would be a surprise historically)

Edit: a bit of cheery news for a change - Dele Alli went to train with Serie A side Como in December, initially just to keep his fitness up, but it appears that he must have impressed during training as he's now signed a 1.5 year contract with them.

Few things in football would make me happier than seeing Dele get back to something like the player he used to be and having a good career at a high level. As a regular watcher of Serie A I'll definitely be catching a few Como matches to see how he does.

[fallenangle]

Yes, I saw that about DA - I thought after his long term problems he might just disappear into obscurity, so good to hear he is still trying to get back on track.

[EJG1980]

A much needed three points today, puts us back into the top eight and our destiny in our own hands. No slip ups against Elfsborg next week and we can avoid the two extra playoff round matches.

We played well for the first half an hour and deserved the 2-0 lead (and could have had a couple more) but a lot of the players are clearly pushing themselves through the fatigue barrier so it wasn’t a a surprise that Hoffenheim were able to get back into it. Thankfully Son popped up with that moment of class for the third goal to help us grind our way over the line.

I think the players deserve a hand for the effort they put in to make sure we came away with the three points, quite a few of them are being run into the ground with all the players we have out injured. Top notch effort from them today.

[fallenangle]

Yep, pity about giving away two goals but otherwise a good and very welcome result.

If we we can give Leicester a damned good thrashing on Sunday I might start to believe we can turn this season around. But without Solanke for six weeks and Richarlison and Johnson also sidelined with injuries it is still going to be a hard job to get the result we need against almost any team in the Premiership.

[EJG1980]

I think Richarlison is okay, last I heard, he came off after 56 mins against Hoffenheim but I think that was just down to lack of match fitness and not a new injury. He wasn't mentioned as a doubt by Ange in the latest press conference. Although he did mentioned that Spence is now a doubt for the Leicester match; the number of players in the squad who haven't had any kind of injury this season is gonna be tiny!

I've seen many a rumour about what we'll be doing, so it'll be interesting to see what we actually do, especially with Ange being very vocal in press conferences that "we need help" with regards to squad numbers with all the injuries. Even Son mentioned in an interview about how he hoped the club would be able to sign a few players in January.

Whatever they do the main thing is they need to do it quickly, no haggling and leaving deals until the last minute to try and squeeze down the price a tiny bit more. We've got 8 matches in January before the transfer window closes, it'll be no good if we've played 6 or 7 of them before the signings have come through the door.

Got to say that I'm not very impressed with the club's efforts in the January transfer window. Repeated calls from the manager throughout the month that the squad needs help yet here we are with not a single outfield player signed. Ange has been very diplomatic with the way he's spoken, but yesterday he said we were "playing with fire" by not bringing in any new players, which is the closest he's come to saying what the club has done isn't good enough.

They didn't need to be world beating signings, just two or three half decent pros on 6 month loans would have helped, so you could at least give players who had been run into the ground a rest and made them fresher for the matches they did play. A lot of our problems have been that player X and Y are injured, so player Z has to play every match, but then player Z gets injured too because he's been playing non-stop. I've no doubt that Solanke's injury, for example, would have been less likely to happen if we'd loaned in some cover that could allow him to sit out an extra match or get subbed off here and there.

[fallenangle]

I agree, the January window Spurs' transfer/loan activity has been strangely minimal to non-existent.

It probably would not have happened because MC wouldn't have wanted to do it but, as I suggested as a possible loan target in an earlier post, I think Spurs missed a great opportunity to get Kyle Walker from MC. He's now been loaned out to AC Milan for the rest of the season so the opportunity to at least try to get him was there. But there was not the slightest whiff of Spurs' interest mentioned anywhere that I saw.

There's still six days left so maybe there is something in the transfer/loan deal pipeline for other players that can be finalised before then but I'm not holding my breath.

[EJG1980]

We're right in the you know what. Eight points above the drop zone and we've lost back to back games against two of the teams below us (the latter having lost seven games in a row before facing us). Yeesh.

[Mayhem]

I'll admit, after Spurs' goal went in I was like "here we go again" despite Leicester playing well (they generally have since Ruud took over despite the losses) but start of the second half, the team talk must have been something. Need more of that against Everton and then the fun FA Cup fixture at Old Trafford, but Ruud must be fancying his chances given their form currently too.

[fallenangle]

Getting serious for Spurs now, maybe we'll do a Leicester-like good/bad thing, win the FA Cup, League Cup and Europa Cup but still get relegated.

TBH I don't think any of that will happen, we'll just sit somewhere in the bottom half of the Premier League out of the drop zone and have nothing at all to show for the season except that we didn't get relegated.

Depressing.

[EJG1980]

Getting serious for Spurs now, maybe we'll do a Leicester-like good/bad thing, win the FA Cup, League Cup and Europa Cup but still get relegated.

TBH I don't think any of that will happen, we'll just sit somewhere in the bottom half of the Premier League out of the drop zone and have nothing at all to show for the season except that we didn't get relegated.

Depressing.

I think Leicester went down a season or two after they won the FA Cup, but Wigan actually did win the FA Cup and go down in the same season back in 2013.

Although knowing our luck, we'd probably be more like Middlesbrough in 1997 who lost BOTH cup finals AND got relegated. They also had a three point deduction in the league, without which they would have stayed up. That has to be a contender for the most depressing possible season a club could have!

I agree though that it's pretty unlikely we'd go down; even a slight upturn in our form would see us to a comfortable gap to the relegation places, and you'd think we should get some kind of upturn when players come back from injury. And even if we didn't you'd still need multiple teams below us to have a drastic upturn in form for the rest of the season.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility though, especially when you consider that we lost to Everton and Leicester and our upcoming fixtures are full of much tougher opponents on paper, sometimes a team can get into a rut and simply not find their way out. Just the fact that we're even having to discuss it is a bit of a shock to the system. The past sixteen seasons we've only finished outside the top six three times, and the lowest of those finishes was 8th.

It would be very Spurs though to finally win a trophy again during our worst league season for 20 years, so I'm clinging to that forlorn hope

I'll admit, after Spurs' goal went in I was like "here we go again" despite Leicester playing well (they generally have since Ruud took over despite the losses) but start of the second half, the team talk must have been something.

Considering the number of times we've lost a match after taking the lead this season, I wouldn't rule out that us scoring first actually gave Leicester a boost

[fallenangle]

Yes, you're right is was seven years after Leicester won the Premiership that they were relegated, according to the wiki. We just don't want Spurs emulating that or Wigan or any other club (Leeds, Sunderland, Blackburn Rovers, Stoke, WBA etc etc) who have been contenders at the top but fallen from grace through inconsistency, lack of investment and bad luck with injuries.

I've been there with Spurs, I remember them been relegated in the late 70s and that was not a fun time to be a Spurs fan at all. Thankfully it didn't last that long and the core of the team who got them back into the top flight went on to win two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup too.....................good days.

[hudson]

You guys will bounce back up from the Championship after one season, I'm sure.

[EJG1980]

You guys will bounce back up from the Championship after one season, I'm sure.

If we did, we'd probably do it by finishing 2nd

[fallenangle]

Important game on Thursday in the Europa League - it'll be typical of our form this season if we ace it. Hope so.

Thursday Edit

Phew, great result, if not a convincing first half by the sound of it. Spurs 'youngsters' well worthy of the praise they were given turning the game into a very solid win. Just watched the highlights and the quality of the goals they scored was remarkable.

Only negative was Dragusin limping off, another setback for him and Spurs.

BTW in the WSL I was right about MC's Chloe Kelly wanting a loan out in January but, again, Spurs Women' recruiters missed their chance of getting a player who I think might have complimented the team very nicely. Where is she going? Answer: back to her old club......................................Arsenal

[EJG1980]

Yup, what was a not too bad performance but a little bit of a slog trying to get the breakthrough against lower level opposition, turned into one of my favourite matches I've ever been to.

Three different youngsters all getting their first ever goal for the club, one of them getting that debut goal on their debut appearance, and one of them breaking a 70 year old record to become the youngest ever English goalscorer in Europe. All three were great goals too, but I think the second is my favourite, loved the buildup with that brilliant little one-two between Scarlett and Ajayi.

It can never be perfect though, thus we got the injury to Dragusin. It's incredible that in the very match we finally get Micky van de Ven back from injury, we instantly get an injury to a different centre back instead

Securing that top eight spot was a big deal though, our threadbare squad avoiding those two extra playoff matches is a big boost.

A pity about missing out on a big name player for the women's team, although even if we had put in an offer you'd expect she'd probably have still chosen to go to Arsenal, what with them being her old club and one of the very top women's clubs. We have at least made a few signings to bolster the women's team in January, with Holdt, Kop, and Rybrink coming in. A shame we haven't done the same for the injury ravaged mens team!

Edit: didn't see this last night, great stuff. I suppose that when you're going through an injury crisis like ours you've gotta either laugh or cry, and he's gone for laugh

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