You build a football team from the back, and right now, this is inarguably the root of all our problems. Mourinho’s mentality is that you defend as a team and so the responsibility falls not just to the back four but everyone. Under the Portuguese, we’ve frequently seen attacking players putting in that extra effort for the cause.
In truth, Tottenham’s backline has been in a slow state of decay since Kyle Walker left. The once feisty Danny Rose is now aged and exiled. Jan Vertonghen pensioned off and the newer recruits have failed to shine. Eric Dier’s new-found role as a centre back has failed to sparkle.
Last night, not one of the back-line had a good game – against a Fulham side that has been stumbling about in the relegation zone all season.
Under José there is a familiar pattern of going ahead in the first half, then coming out for the second and then Spurs slipping into neutral, waiting for a response, opposed to finishing the other lot off. The only exceptions to this of course is when we play incredibly poor sides, such as Austria’s 7th best side.
If you look through the SofaScore cards for the Fulham game, its wall-to-wall errors and misplaced passes. I really cannot emphasize enough how important the quality of the opposition when making these evaluations and Fulham really aren’t any good. If Spurs’ defence loses possession 49 times against a side in the relegation zone, how on earth you can keep a straight face whilst suggesting that we’re in for this, or that is beyond me. ‘Team in 8th’ pinches a 1-0 own goal win away to team in 17th’ is the truth.
What is José saying to them at half-time? Probably something along the lines of ‘don’t screw-up’. In the final analysis, this side is just about fit to play Martin Jol-ball, and serve up scorelines such as 5-4, and 7-3, and sadly those sides never win anything.
The fear of messing up is messing with their heads?
I think we’ll be moaning about any back 4 that comprises of Davies, Doherty, Dier, Aurier or Sanchez until the day they have all left.
Like I say. Poor player recruitment. Which yes, down to Levy. Our constant failings can predominantly find their way back to him.
The kept a clean sheet, so I don’t think you can say they had a bad game, I mean sure, you can maybe believe it was more luck than judgement, but the main stat that counts is the ‘nil’ on their side of the score.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I can usually tell within 10 minutes if the next 80 are going to be a difficult watch. It’s like sometimes they come out and are fantastic in the press, and other times they absolutely crumble under the opposition press.
Total mismatch, but let’s not forget that this ‘match made in heaven’ was masterminded by our commander in chief Daniel.
It seems his ‘one size fits all’ attitude to managers that has led him to hire and fire 13 in 22 years has never worked and never will.
Unless of course you’re talking about managing fan’s expectations and deliberate sabotage of anything that becomes coherent on the football side. Which is more of an irrelevant distraction to Levy.
No plan, no clue. No amount of ‘Mourinho’or ‘Bale’ type window dressing with big names from past times will ever fix it.
ENIC OUT.
Agree with all this, yet somehow we have the 3rd or 4th best defence according to goals conceded!
Agreed
This.
Defending actually starts at the front. The actual defenders are the last line of defence.
We have two issues.
1/ our midfielders and front players don’t do enough at times to retain possession. This, despite Jose giving them more defensive responsibility.
2/ our defenders generally aren’t very good. We went from having probably the best defence to one of the worst. Finger of blame pointed firmly at poor player recruitment. In the case of Dier we have a player who’s not very good in his natural midfield role and is even worse in the defensive role he seems to think he can play in.
Mourinho doesn’t have a magic wand. As the saying goes. You cannot make a silk purse out of a pigs ear. Whatever he says, whatever combination he uses will generally have the same result. Dier, Doherty, Sanchez and Davies in the same lineup will be the most catastrophic.
Get this season done. Get in players with a footballing brain. Players who actually understand their role in the team.
Compared to Hojbjerg who is switched on for the full 90 minutes
He can’t do what he does well over 90 minutes. He can last the 90 now, great – but you’re not getting 90 minutes of top grade stuff from him.
We desperately need another window and to purchase two more players of the standard of Hojbjerg – one a partner in the middle of the park for him (not Skipp, he’ll be either reserve or starting as well as the new signing) and a central defender.
We also need to keep Reggie and sign a right back, esp if Aurier is off. Just those three signings would change us massively and I think Jose’s tactics would look 10 times better with 90% less individual errors. They’re killing us right now, it’s brain fart central out there.
Same as when we played them at our gaff, Fulham’s tactics looked superior meaning that their players all looked superior too. We used to have the same issue under Poch whereby “lesser” managers would inexplicably out-think him and “lesser” squads would overrun us, I think we were all expecting José to be able to nullify oppo and I guess he’d point to his players he has as the issue but our midfield and attacking setup yesterday looked very good in my eyes. What has happened to Doherty is beyond all reasonable logic, can’t really blame José for that. Toby was spraying long ball passes to Fulham players from the first minute which never helps, an off day for him but those will become more common over the next few years. Time for ANOTHER rebuild in the summer, this time with an even tighter budget.
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He’s starting to remind me of Pogba, turns it on against poor oppo who give him time and space but goes missing more often than not. José isn’t complaining about him as much so at least he must be putting a shift in in training we can assume.
Points wise, on paper, top 4 is still very achievable. But with this Spurs side, I don’t feel too confident of them achieving that.
Agreed. He was losing a lot of the duels in the midfield, second half. Credit to Fulham, they did press and close us down well.
Hojbjerg did all the grunt work, whilst Ndombele the “baller” did feck all as per usual.
Fair point.
Having lost the battle of the midfield in the second half shall we say that Ndombele did not have one of his more productive matches!!
Fulham had only lost 1 game in their last 5 going into this game and were 8th in the form table. If they had scored against Palace they would only have been behind Man City in terms of points from their last 5.
They are good in most areas of the pitch except strikers, certainly they are a better team than us on recent form.
I don’t think Davis and Docherty work well in a back 4 for different reasons. Another good game for Sanchez though.
Also, with the attacking midfield we had on the pitch – if they can’t deliver more goals someone needs to come off earlier instead of waiting until the 60th minute. And Son shouldn’t be immune to being subbed either. He doesn’t always put in a great defensive shift and when he looks flat he doesn’t tend to improve late game. If they aren’t creating chances and they aren’t coming back enough to pick up the ball deep it puts our defense under pressure they really don’t handle very well.
Rather than focus on what Mourinho said or did not say at HT. That’s a smokescreen when the harsh reality of the situation is that had we killed the game off in the first half by not fluffing some presentable chances we would not have been hanging on for grim life at the end of the second half against a plucky Fulham side who fully deserved a share of the spoils!!
Just when you think we’re turning a corner we revert to type..score then try to hang on for grim life..
We did have the second string full backs which didn’t help..but it’s been a constant trend.