Tottenham returned to Premier League action after the three-month lay off with a 1-1 draw against Jose Mourinho’s former club Manchester United.
Steven Bergwijn fired us into a half-time lead following a burst through the United defence, only for the visitors to equalise through a contentious 81st-minute penalty, bought by Paul Pogba and stuck away by Bruno Fernandes.
For an hour we looked compact and difficult to break down while carrying half a threat in attack. Not anything to write home about, but it was a decent comeback performance until the final half an hour when we sat back and invited on the inevitable United pressure which eventually told.
Had we hung on, I’m sure the narrative would be very different but these fans were not happy that Mourinho fell back into his pre-lockdown tactics when he now has most of the squad available to pick from again.
Nothing’s changed. Mourinho still playing negative football with all our players fit shows that ‘injuries’ were just an excuse. It was laughable to try to defend a 1-0 lead with a back four that contains Dier and Aurier. It’s going to be a long end to this season. #bbcfootball
— Tom McQuillin (@tommcquillin1) June 19, 2020
No change, still playing side to side, no imagination, no runs into space, too scared to take the game to United, thank fuck there’s only 8 games left, hardest football team to watch in the league
— Kelvin Fletcher (@KelvinFletche12) June 19, 2020
What’s the point of parking the bus at 50mins ?
— Ellis Buckley (@ellisbucks) June 19, 2020
We literally let them run at us for the entire second half. If it wasn’t that penalty decision it would have been something else.
— Miles Taylor (@milesvtaylor) June 19, 2020
We should never of sat back
— George (@georgethelegend) June 19, 2020
We need to find another way of seeing-out games. That park the bus stuff ain’t working for us. I’m not saying it couldn’t, but it isn’t right now.
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A back four of Aurier, Sanchez, Dier and Davies is not top tier level. There is a mistake in everyone of those players. Sissoko and Winks as DM are also average. So if you sit back and allow teams onto you like we did it was inevitable that a defensive slip up would lead to an equaliser and Dier is always ready to oblige. You need Toby in the back line for his experience and the expression on his face last night sitting on the touch line indicated he was less than pleased to not have been selected. He needs to play against the pikeys next week. I think CL football is a forlorn hope unless City’s disqualification is upheld. That makes this season an absolute cluster f**k and now with the Pandemic Levy will be locking down his wallet even further and justifying it for seasons to come. We have slipped back so far from a few seasons ago. Mourinho just has not got the quality in the squad.
For Mourinho’s system to work he needs more quality. This Levy experiment won’t get off the ground unless Levy buys quality players. And the only justification for playing this type of football is winning. If we’re not winning the gamble Levy has made is bust.
He’s still hacked off with Mourinho for calling him fat 😂
So Luke Shaw reckons they were fitter than us – how/why?
Defensively so much better. We’ll be much better with Kane up to full speed (he still looks fat at the moment to me) and Gio fit and firing. Lots to like about that first 60m. We came out again after they equalised which was also encouraging. Lamela was great too – just needed that final pass.
Sadly we needed to win that to qualify for CL but it was always a long shot.
I think Mourinho was right about late in the game. With Kane, Son and Berg all absolutely puffed we had no press at that end of the pitch and just invited United in. Kane was anonymous y’day – does he have a clause in his contract that says he has to play if fit? It did us in the champions league final and definitely didn’t help last night.