GStar said:
Damocles said:
Errr..don't they actually play against teams that bring players from various clubs, playing various formations, with players playing out of position though? Hence it's a level playing field. You cannot compare the two, unless Spurs played three debutants yesterday that met two days ago.
Err... of course i can compare the two. Forget the opposition and look at the teams set up, build up, passing, move ment etc.
How am I supposed to examine the setup but ignore the opposition? Each team is setup to play a particular opposition, surely?
Tevez wouldn't have played up front on his own if we were playing Arsenal, for example, as we don't have to pack the midfield against them and can get stuck in/play around them. If we were playing Stoke, we would have put 3 up front and played a far wider game to exploit their narrowness.
The team was setup entirely around Spurs' team, which is what all good managers do. We played two defensive wide midfielders in Barry and SWP to help out our fullbacks against their wingers. We put four mids in the centre in De Jong, Toure, Silva and Tevez with the hope that they would cancel any threat from Modric and Huddlestone, then possibly use the pace of the team to break.
We did a good job of cancelling out their centre mids, and it was unfortunate that Richards had such a poor game as most of their threat was coming from Bale. At the start, we had Silva on the left but he wasn't doing enough to help Kolarov and Lennon was breaking through far too much. Due to this, we first tried swapping him to the right and bringing the far better SWP to the left. This didn't work as then Bale was doing us consistently.
In the second half, Barry moved across to the left, SWP went on the right and Silva was left to roam the centre, and advance past Tevez to sort of play up front. This succeeded in greatly reducing their threat from the wings, and we already had them in the centre.
The midfield was pretty packed and as they had blew themselves out a bit in the first half and not scored, we started to control the game and put a little bit of fluidity together. Slow paced, possession football was the name of the game and that's what we did to force Spurs to drop their tempo. When the tempo did drop, we picked it up a little to exploit their tiredness and they looked completely fucked up front until they made the double sub.
Zab came on and did a very good job, and when Ade came on it was a clear sign that we were happy to then try and nick a goal using his aerial threat rather than packing the midfield. This was actually quite clever when you think about it. They knackered themselves playing top paced football for the first half an hour whilst we sat back and absorbed the pressure (I'm not saying us absorbing it was a deliberate ploy). Once we started to contol the game, we played possession football and took advantage of the fact that they were pressing us, to further tire them out whilst we nicely passed the ball around ourselves, especially between our packed midfield. At the end of the game, we could open up a bit because they were fucked and we'd been taking 5 seconds for each pass. Thus, Adebayor came on as a target man (and earlier AJ to exploit the now tired Assou Ekotto who had been frantically charging up and down the pitch after Bale half of the game) as Tevez's midfield skills were no longer needed, Silva dropped in behind him, and the fullbacks started to advance down the wings more.
When you have a team that's unfit like ours, playing slow paced football whilst the other team frantically charges around will level the playing field and Mancini obviously thought that we were ready with ten minutes to go. He wanted us to then go out and nick a goal.
My point in all of this, is that platitudes don't work in football and this is a trap that journalists have introduced to the game. We didn't particularly play to not get beat, we set out to counter their threat in the midfield (particularly in the centre against two top players who tore us last time) whilst leaving us a few attacking options in Silva's creativity, Yaya's drive forward and Tevez's ability to bring other players into the game, such as SWP and Barry.
I do see your point, that we setup to stop their threats rather than concentrating on our own, but some teams you have to do this against. Our threats come from our wings mainly, and there's just no way that a brand new Silva could be trusted to instantly create against a very good right back in Corluka who hasn't had the World Cup that he has. You could have played Johnson there, but then you are putting the entire pressure of Lennon on Kolarov who is another who is used to a far slower league as Johnson isn't great defensively). Putting him against one of the Prem's fastest players on his own is asking for trouble.
You can't just ignore the other team when you setup your formation and layout, even if you're Barcelona and you are playing Wolves. You have to balance the realities of your team on the day versus the realities of their and weigh this up against the result overall. To say "well, we should have setup to win the game" is wrong simply because we did setup to win the game by countering their threats and exploiting our own. It's the balance of these two things that you seem to disagree with.
That's fair enough, some people enjoy Hughes' gung-ho type of football that he played on occasion. I'd prefer us to win every game 1-0 than lose every game 4-3. In fact, I'd prefer us to draw every game 0-0 than lose 4-3. Points on the board is what matters at this stage, and the realities of the two squads on the day meant that they were stronger so we must first stop their threat before presenting ours.
