Spurs (H) - Post-Match Thread

[stan bowles]

Are we back to sanity or is everyone still losing their minds and saying the most ridiculous overreactions over having lost 3 points, despite, you know, getting 43 out of 45 before that?

Bad games happen, people. Even so we were the better team and created more chances.

Better team ? More possession does not equate to being the better team. They created far better chances than we did. They allowed us to have the ball for long periods but we created hardly anything.

 

[Marvin]

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.

Mentally we're very fragile? No we are not. We were jaded after midweek and not one player had a good game. When that happens you're vulnerable.

 

[alexmcity]

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.

That was the point: we created more vs Spurs than vs Sporting and on another day might have scored 4-5 goals. Then people would have been much more positive in their comments. A low-scoring game is a game of fine margins: sometimes everything goes your way (Sporting), sometimes it does for the opposition (Spurs).

The performance wasn't great, but many times the performances aren't great when we win, and fans don't care or even notice because of the result.

We don't need to be at our very best in February, because it's difficult to maintain top form for many months. Last season we were in top form in February, but couldn't maintain it in April/May. The loss vs United was the end of our best form last season. Let's hope we'll beat United this season and we'll be at our very, very best in April/May this season.

 

[baggy]

Thought Kane had a spinal injury?

 

[Ancient Citizen]

Well, what a pisser that was, and from a Spurs side that's average at best.
We looked slow yesterday, which never augers well, and the defence was shit.
Anyway, a 0-6 at the blue dippers will assuage the grief.

 

[blueabdi]

Guys one bad game does nt mean we are that poor, we will come back stronger, let us all support the team morally, we need to move on and think next game and learn from this game. We deserved at least a draw, but its football. Cityzen thro thick and thin.

 

[Marvin]

If we are going to station KDB outside the box, work some space for him to deliver cross after cross then we need a centre-forward. We normally play football on the ground, or mix it up. Our football became very predictable by the end.

We have used the extra midfield player in other games to our advantage. Lacking a centre-forward becomes a problem when you start to lose imagination, movement and all the incisive play that normally characterises our game. No one this season can really say we miss a centre-forward. The one thing it gives you though is the percentage game. You can throw a difficult KDB ball into the box and hope your centre-forward times his run to get their first. In that sense we missed a centre-forward. I think Pep should have put Delap on. Spurs were defending very deep. We had the freedom to play crosses in and we were doing that, so take a full back off and put Delap on.

 

[blueabdi]

Guys this is not right

 

[Burtonblue]

Sub standard performance all round yesterday.

Sterling was not effective on the right.
Dias and Laporte were unusually indecisive.
Walker and Cancelo were giving the ball away for fun.
I’ve never seen us miss so many easy passes in midfield in transition
Mahrez should not have been rested.

On the plus side we do seem to have a very confident penalty taker.

Hopefully Stones in for Laporte in the next game.
Onwards and upwards.

 

[Marvin]

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 was quite confident at 1-1 and at half-time. We had recovered well. They carried a counter-attacking threat with Kane, and Son/Moura and when the game went on it began to get desperate.