Here we go again. Nigh on a decade of bad buying leaves any Tottenham manager with a tipping point. Variate your best XI and what one gets is a tangible experience of being short-changed.
Sure, it sounds churlish, but we’re now all too familiar with the names that hinder what any coach might be able to do. Sell, sell, sell. Churn, churn, churn!
HUGO 6 With so much disarray in front of him, the World Cup winner looked troubled and tested on far too many occasions
SANCHEZ 6 defensively okay, but all his offensive involvements were cringe-worthy
DIER 6.01 this was another episode in the day of a man having an off day – an imposter. Must go.
BEN DAVIES 7 not too shabby, but will be lamenting Dele Alli causing his goal to be offside.
EMERSON ROYAL 5 minus the attacking threat, we were subject to far too many minutes of ‘antics’ and substandard stuff.
HARRY WINKS 5 sadly another huff and puff performance where Oliver Skipp would have undoubtedly produced less irritation.
SERGIO 5 another substandard showing if we are honest with ourselves.
HOJBJERG 7 surrounded by children, but great passing, and that included long balls.
DELE ALLI 2 a wall-to-wall waste of a shirt. Please make it stop.
SONNY 7 desperately brighter than most.
KANE 6.13 Conte’s decision to make.
I don’t think Winks has stunk the place out as he did pre-Conte, in fact the opposite. He’s not the only one who’s responded either…
At least we’ve got a manager who will get them fit as butcher’s dogs and give them nowhere to hide now. No way that Zagreb 2nd leg happens under Conte.
There is this overriding expression amongst these posters that anything Winks does is never good enough. I thought he was progressive. His job was to protect the back 4 just like PEH and Skipp and that was accomplished. Maybe he should be our box to box mid as it seems that is where fans are having issues. What a saw was a genuine attempt by Winks to be on the front foot. More game time will help.
Agreed and the interview I saw recently with Tim Howard didn’t suggest a man desperate to get away.
It’s not just this site that have given him a bad review. The stats bare out he’s improving. That clearly doesn’t sit well with some
No, being critical won’t get you binned, being a prize pilchard will.
Please do not seek to excuse your own failings by projecting at me.
Have a yellow.
We didn’t lose both games we went to Zagreb 2 up.
We didn’t lose the first Zagreb game we won it. I notice that whenever we lost a game under Poch you were always able to lay the blame at the managers door however in this game it was down to the players surely the manager was accountable?
Today Conte had to rotate his thin squad and it showed our shortcomings. Dele was piss poor but I thought Winks played ok his pass for the disallowed goal the only quality pass we played all game and proof Harry still has it.
Dier, Sanchez, Davies, Winks Dele were all starters in both Zagreb games we lost.. 3 nil and 2 nil.. Croker is spot on. We can’t trust these guys to be our second string, never mind the first team. Forced to rotate at this time of year though.
Harry Winks is $hite,
Squawka Football
@Squawka
Harry Winks for Spurs vs. Southampton:
92% pass accuracy
92 touches (most)
34 final third passes (most)
7 ball recoveries
6 crosses (most)
3 chances created (=most)
2 interceptions (=most)
2 duels won
1 big chance created
Was very impressive today. https://abs-0.twimg.com/emoji/v2/svg/1f4aa.svg
I’m sort of hoping that Conte is giving game time to some players with the intention of being able to say they are first team players in the EPL (“….. looka, I even am playing him inna da first team lasta weeka“). I hope the intent, probably Levy-inspired attempt, is to up the price, or ensure a not so scrupulous eye gets cast over the wages currently
earnedpaid to some of the less committed and/or gifted who we hope are being lined up behind the block.Leaving aside the fast emerging realisation that the fallacy called VAR would fix human pedantry (which was neatly badged as fixing the problems in the game) and various other changes such as obstruction and the utter nonsense that goalkeepers be protected more than a virgin at an after-match rugby dinner, we simply did/could not adapt to the changing conditions.
Maybe a pretty flat midfield of two donkeys and a fairy (Hojlberg/Winks & Dele) seemed a good shot with our competitive edge being to pretty much bypass these guys and attack on the break. But after the sending off we needed a better option that we had, with no-one being able to take responsibility and simply have a go.
Our whole game plan was to cross the ball into a defence set up to resist crosses and with a giant keeper: there was no Plan B. With so many players in the box, the defence simply stood their ground and let us run 20+ yards across the face of goal or head on into them – AVB anyone?
We had:
Doherty: right footed but did not cut in once to have a shot.
Winks: always plays the way he’s facing, but too often facing the wrong way. Winks will not DO anything unless there is absolutely no option at all to pass the responsibility on to someone else.
Holjberg: not sure what is happening with the viking, but he has simply not thrived under Conte and showed little appetite to position himself ready for a shot.
Alli: who knows what he was doing?
Davinson: If you gave him the penalty, he’d play it back or square for someone else to take the shot.
Royal: in fairness too wide to do aught else but cross, however would like to occasionally see him cutting in even as a runner without possession.
Gil: no real change to what was already proving unsuccessful and really how much did we pay for this kid?
Basically we kept (for the most part) the group of players least capable of creating an opening, any prospect of a genius moment to open them up and zero likelihood to try to score by shooting (through a melee of player with ricochet’s etc always a possibility) – I mean it didn’t work for them did it?
Perhaps Conte has other reasons, rotating the squad to ease fatigue, putting players we want rid of in the shop window and/or enhancing their value, resting players who might have (for all we know) been Covid effected.
Given what we know of Levy, Conte may be demonstrating the lack of depth in the squad and allowing the serial incompetence in the transfer market to be more self-revealing, with a view to getting more influence in the coming and goings of his squad.
However Occam’s razor suggests that he simply got it a bit wrong this time, but I’d guess he learned a thing or two especially about the combinations you can and can’t play with given the current group of players.
I don’t see Harry playing at 50% certainly since Conte turned up. He’s scored in his last three games could have scored the winner today and had four against Liverpool. The problem for him is the lack of quality we have in supplying him. He’s shown in the last three games if you get the ball to him in the right area he’s as good as ever. The solution to the Harry suituation is to get better players around him
Given our glorious scouting network there’s no guarantee what quality replacement we’d get
The Zagreb loser is no longer with the club….
The combination of the Zagreb losers are costly to the club. Conte knows.
Very telling the comments on Dele from Conte, we huffed and puffed but I keep noticing the poor first touch of too many players which slows play and wastes attacks.
They are never letting Sterling go on current form
£70m plus player(s) to be exact, though for some reason that fact is always left out.
It’s all good mate. Everyone sees the game differently that’s what makes the discourse interesting. Maybe the stats paint a different picture of Winky (although they’ll be missing the through ball to Harry).
I agree fully there aren’t many (any?) options on the bench. Conte’s no idiot- I’m sure he wouldn’t have left a knackered Sonny out there if he had any viable alternatives.
I can’t explain why Gil played on the right and Doherty on the left though.
A very ambitious suggestion of a loan plus player.Didn’t Sterling say in the summer when the idea was mooted he was not interested.I wouldn’t want him anyway and Levy wouldn’t pay his wages..And Laporte would give the same answer I suspect.
The truth is Kane does seem to have improved his attitude under Conte,but is still not at his best.Moving him on next month is orobably unlikely,but next summer will be crucial for him to realise his ambition.
I think City, whilst scoring for fun without a recognised CF would be ideally
placed to sign him for the final push for the league and to bolster their CL ambitions.
I’d look for a player plus cash deal. Sterling or Laporte plus £60- 70 million.
It’s easy to say “cash in” but who’s going to pay serious money for him in January?
City only offered £70m last time around and I can’t see why they or anyone else would pay more now.
A holiday poem.
Had we kept KWP
Instead of Doherty
We’d now be filled with glee.
I’m currenyly available for weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and other festivities virus permitting.
Think you may have been a bit generous where PEH is concerned, but otherwise fair.
Statement of the bleeding obvious, but to get rid of the dead wood, someone has to want to buy them, so it’s going to take more than the upcoming window to make a serious dent in the time-wasters.
Realistically, I reckon two or three In and two or three out is the best we can hope for.
Surely keeping a player that clearly wants out is the wrong thing to do. We’ve seen already HK is playing at less than 50% Cash in … move on. He’s due his annual 8 week injury lay off. Let it be someone else’s problem.
What does Contes decision to make in reference to Kane mean? Are you advocating selling the guy who is the clubs second highest scorer of all time?
He wasn’t brilliant today in truth no one was but the way he took his disallowed goal was quite brilliant forward play. We are a limited side with perhaps only one or two top class players. Selling one of them seems to me a quite foolhardy decision.
It’s like watching FIFA such movement of the players
When Harry is stuck in his view, he bend his words and weird comparison to deride a performance. But it is his show and being critical will get you kick off the site. And what makes it so bad of a comment Skipp has been piling up the minutes and was due a rest. The bench is so bad it is unbelievable. I think we are going to destroy whatever little confidence Gil has who clearly cannot kick a ball with his right foot, yet he is ask to play there. Saka is a better and more accomplished player, it took him almost 2 seasons to put in the kinds of performances he is doing now. So it is not easy. Pepe is not even making subs these days a brilliant player with the ball at his feet and now Saka took his spot Pierre who was suppose to play through the middle find himself playing out wide left. My point is managers and systems do destroy players, but it is always the players fault for not adapting.
This.
Conte is a top manager and coach but he is not a miracle worker.
Over to you Mr Levy, you know what needs doing.
Yup. They are awful broadcasters
Agree very disappointing.
Lowest score of the day has to go to Amazon. The stream is such poor quality, add to that the dull commentary. Sport coverage isn’t their forte.
Footballing wise. Did we learn anything new ? No, did AC learn anything new ? Probably not. I’d say those out the door have had their notices a while now.
Besides the one muff which he recovered from Winks was our best player, played several great balls, his pass to Harry was perfect despite the VAR ruling.
It’s odd but I thought we had a better chance of scoring against the full Soton high press team than against the 10-man pack the box team and that essentially is our problem.
Sonny got a very good view of Ward-prowsee executed shot. Just wondering if it was another player ball watching… but I digress. We are going to run into this dilemma of not having a creative midfielder. In times like likes these we have Sanchez of all people up making final pass decisions. I know Conte has been good tactically, but why he did not switch Gil to the leftside and moving Matt over to the right. We did not need Davies in a 3, he could cover and Hojberg drop in a little deeper. I do not get Alli starting. Ratings was very generous, but I do not get the Winks comment.
I love Sonny
My. Favourite player, but what did he do today?
Both the pen and offside .? Kane goal came from counter attacking…outside of that we struggled to break Soton’s 10 men down..
Kane & Son first touch largely forgettable compared to last year…I thought Winks was ok, & if Docherty had a left foot would have scored…. we actually could of done with Tanguy…. when Reguillon went off we’d of been better off with Japhet on & Davies being pushed further up…at least on occasions he can cross a ball. For the system Conte plays, the wing backs are the weakest link
Wasted opportunity
I thought Sanchez, Winks and Harry were our standout players. Davies and PEH solid, Lloris not too bothered and the rest mostly not good.