Spurs (H) - Post-Match Thread

Okay.. just going with the supply and demand angle, surely the bookies would have the dippers as odds on favourites seeing as there’s probably been millions of giddy deluded Liverpool fans lumping on their team since the final whistle at the Etihad?
True but many of these bets would be small and as the post suggested clever pro gamblers may decide that the resulting improvement in our odds is worth a large strategic bet.

Remember most of these guys are totally focused on the probabilities/ return angle and are not fretting about Walker brain farts, Dias starting to look clumbsy, Silva playing out of position or the bald fellow overthinking again.

Now if we drop points over the next few games, which may happen if we play like yesterday, we could potentially drift enough in the market to perhaps entice speculative punts.

The excellent post above tells us a lot about the science,which is an art in itself, and probably trumps luck most days.
 
All it looked like on tv was half the team having an off day, us allowing Kane to do whatever he wanted for 90 minutes and schoolboy defending for all three goals

not sure lack of decent chances was the problem today
The fact Dias especially just stood off Kane all game was a major issue.
 
Could have written a long script on that, but in summary

Looked very leggy
Persevering for 90 minutes with hopeful punts into our 5 and a bit foot false centre forward suggests mental fatigue as well as physical
We need a real number 9
 
I don't agree with you, we were slow and gave the ball away way too easily.
Terrible performance, lacking urgency.
Thought Mahrez should've replaced ineffective Foden at HT.

Stones Ruben Please Pep

We created more vs Spurs than vs Sporting. But we were far luckier vs Sporting than vs Spurs.

I didn't imply that we played great football last night. Remember Pep wasn't very happy with our performance vs Sporting.

My point was that people's opinions and comments are heavily influenced by the final result. Take our performance vs PSG at home in May. It wasn't great, the first half was even poor. PSG were the better team, better than Chelsea were in Porto. But because we won many fans wanted the same team in the final and thought we were almost guaranteed to win with that team, which was naive. Pep saw vs PSG that Ferna isn't good enough at that level any more, fans couldn't because of the result.
 
People's opinions and comments are heavily influenced by the final result.

Truth is that we din't play worse in attack than vs Sporting, but we were extremely clinical vs Sporting (and very lucky), whereas we were less lucky with our shots vs Spurs. Both Gundogan and Cancelo were close to scoring worldlies several times last night. Those shots would have been goals vs Sporting.

Defending was poor, but Spurs were extremely clinical with their final passes like we were with our finishing in Lisbon. That's football, such things happen. But in their comments many people don't take into account the role of luck, the probabalistic nature of the game, the urge is to explain the loss in terms of the weaknesses of some players or the manager or the team as a whole.

In 9 out of 10 times we don't lose that game. Last night was the 1/10 outcome. But note Liverpool had such games as well, their loss vs Leicester was shocking, as were surprising their draws vs Brentford and Brighton. Things like that happen and will happen till the end of the season. This isn't a repeat of the 18/19 league season, the latter was one off.
So very true, we have been in cruise control and second gear for the last couple of months, it's now time to get in top gear and foot to the floor until the season ends.

December was an incredibly tough month, lots of games but we came through magnificently but since the turn of the year we have become a little sloppy.
 
People's opinions and comments are heavily influenced by the final result.

Truth is that we din't play worse in attack than vs Sporting, but we were extremely clinical vs Sporting (and very lucky), whereas we were less lucky with our shots vs Spurs. Both Gundogan and Cancelo were close to scoring worldlies several times last night. Those shots would have been goals vs Sporting.

Defending was poor, but Spurs were extremely clinical with their final passes like we were with our finishing in Lisbon. That's football, such things happen. But in their comments many people don't take into account the role of luck, the probabalistic nature of the game, the urge is to explain the loss in terms of the weaknesses of some players or the manager or the team as a whole.

In 9 out of 10 times we don't lose that game. Last night was the 1/10 outcome. But note Liverpool had such games as well, their loss vs Leicester was shocking, as were surprising their draws vs Brentford and Brighton. Things like that happen and will happen till the end of the season. This isn't a repeat of the 18/19 league season, the latter was one off.
How can you say "we didn't play worse in attack that vs Sporting but we were extremely clinical vs Sporting (and very lucky)." Our performance against Spurs missed the final ball and incisive finish that we had against Sporting.

I thought for the first hour we were OK, and then we began to feed KDB and play percentage crosses and that's no good if you don't have a Lukaku or Kane to hit.

I haven't watched the game back at all but I have the impression that we defended really badly too.
 
Having had time to stew and reflect, we're still in a decent position all things considered. Top of the league with a quarter of the season remaining is decent.

But given the position we were in a few weeks ago it's not great. We were flying, the league was settled according to a naive few but I remember posting back then it was far from done, and so it's come to pass. The Southampton and Spurs results have left us looking nervously over our shoulder and we need to shift once more into top gear before it's too late.

A few observations on the match - first and foremost, as has been repeated ad infinitum, a lack of a proper centre forward is hurting us. Kane toyed with us for the majority of the game. Irrespective of his individual stats this season, he's the type of player we're missing and if we persist with this "false 9" bullshit next season I'll tear my hair out. False 9 is given the term because it is exactly that, false. It's lunacy that as a club we seem content to hamstring ourselves in this position, just please God do what it takes to bring Little Alf to the club. Our football has to be tantamount to perfection most of the time because we don't have a 35+ goals player in the team, it makes things unnecessarily difficult for us. Alvarez could be the answer, let's wait and see.

- The whole defence were poor but Walker in particular was unspeakably bad. He'll need to learn to adapt his game as a player because once he loses his pace, his frailties will be all the more exposed.

- Mentally we're very fragile. We're an exceptional football team, that is, we play beautiful football and pass teams to death. But when the pressure gets turned on just a little we seem to wilt. As soon as Spurs scored their first yesterday the tone was set. When things aren't going all our own way we struggle and that's something Pep needs to address; quickly.

We're still in a charmed position, three points clear (yes I'm calling it three and not six) in the league and comfortably on our way to the quarters in the CL is fabulous all things considered. Pep will get the lads in next week and get their heads back in the game, at least he needs to, because the League and CL double is a dream that can very much be realised this season. CTID.
Well said, agree with all that. We'd lost that game when they scored after four minutes, I knew we wouldn't come back at that point
 
I like to write about football, it can be a game of real beauty when played properly, but it can also be a brutal game when anti-football wins the day.

Spurs consider themselves one of the great historic clubs, yet played like a team coached by Big Sam, nothing wrong in that because it worked, yet Spurs traditionalists brought up on the great push and run double winning side of 1961 would surely have been appalled at the catenaccio on show today. Spurs morphed into the Inter side of 1964 when catenaccio was King. They were ugly, they defended deeper than Russian submarines and employed all the dark arts of which Conte is a master of. 7-0-3 worked for them though so they have to be applauded. They dragged us in and mugged us on the counter. They are not the first team to do that but there has to be factors in there favour for it to work.

We had an off day, we lost the control that makes us such a great team and in our desperation they took advantage. We also looked jaded, maybe the midweek in Lisbon took more out of us than we realise, we still had chances but our end product was poor, too many players had poor days and they had there best performance of the season. Defensively they were superb and our usual overloads were nullified.

Football is a strange game, its why many of us love it as results are never cut and dried, on any given day it is possible to lose. Yesterday Kane who barely touched it made his touches count, Son always turns up against up and because we are Champions teams always give a little extra against us.

We are still in the driving seat, hopefully yesterday was a bump in the road and we regroup and go again. Its our title to lose and as much as the media big up Kane, he will not be winning a PL title. We may not win the PL title of course and the home game against Liverpool is now looking like a decider.

I fucking hate Spurs, i have since 1981, the cunts.
Some people seem to think we were unlucky. I don't. Their defence was on top throughout. I thought in the 1st half we reacted quite well to the goal and got on top. We had a good ten minutes to the start of the 2nd half but that was the high point of our game and we lacked our usual incisive football. We resorted to the KDB cross which wasn't very useful. It carries a small threat when you don't have a centre forward, but it's easy to set up.

Long way to go. I am not sure it will come down to the Liverpool game. That assumes both teams carry on as they are. Everton away looks difficult. They might be in the bottom 3 by kick-off.

Bring it on. Looking forward to a title-fight. If Liverpool had cracked first then it would have been a procession, now we have a fight on our hands
 
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