Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United

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Tuesday 2nd April 8.15pm
Premier League
London Stadium​

Sessegnon, Forster and Solomon are still out. Edson Alvarez is suspended for the hosts.

Lineups for each side's last league game:

Spurs: Vicario; Porro, Romero, Dragusin, Udogie; Bissouma, Sarr; Kulusevski, Maddison, Werner; Son.
Subs: Austin, Emerson, van de Ven, Davies, Hojbjerg, Bentancur, Lo Celso, Johnson, Richarlison.
League form: WLWWLW.

West Ham: Areola; Coufal, Mavropanos, Zouma, Emerson; Ward-Prowse, Soucek; Bowen, Paqueta, Kudus; Antonio.
Subs: Fabianski, Johnson, Ogbonna, Cresswell, Phillips, Earthy, Cornet, Mubama, Ings.
League form: LWWDDL.

Ref: John Brooks. VAR: Andy Madley.

TV: TNT Sports 1.

How would you like to line up for this one and how do you think we actually will line up?

 

Weird kick off time for a cup final.

 

The Spanners hadn't had this "cup final" fixture
being of such importance to Spurs since 2016-17
(T-shirt print preorders in progress - tea Ern to confirm) .

 

Starting XI :

- Hojbjerg for Bissouma
- Johnson for Kulu
- VDV in, if he is TRULY starting XI fit

 

Think we’ll shake it up a bit from Saturday.

Vic
Porro Romero VdV Udogie
Sarr Bentancur Maddison
Johnson Son Werner

Kulu didn’t have his best game at the weekend but this might be a better game for him to start as I doubt West Ham will offer Johnson the space that Luton did. But Brennan deserves a start off the back of the weekend. Could go either way.

Maybe we’ll do something a little different and play Kulu or Gio instead of Sarr in midfield too, just to add a bit more in terms of breaking down a block. If that happens we might see Hojbjerg as the 6. Bissouma and Bentancur are better than the Dane under pressure but I don’t know how much West Ham will come out and press. They’re sitting in a lot based on what I’ve heard about them recently but they’re always bang up for this game so maybe there will be a different approach.

 

Wot he said!

 

Van de Ven, Bentancur, Lo Celso and Johnson in for Dragusin, Bissouma, Maddison and Kulusevski/ Werner would be my changes.

Johnson’s our most in-form winger right now, one of the few in-form players in general in fact, be odd if he don’t start.

 

DH calls for Lo Celso to start

The end is nigh!

 

DH is clearly in far too good a mood, perhaps now is a good time for me to suggest we sign this England international ball playing 6 who would also count as club grown. He’s in his prime age-wise and is tearing it up for the team who are top of the championship

 

The 'Hemel Pirlo', I hear they call him.

 

If we're insisting on playing Kulu, it has to be as a 10 imo, especially as Maddison doesn't look 100% and picked up a knock at the weekend. I'd go a step further and say that I can sooner see Kulu growing into a top class 10 than a wide attacker.

Gigi
Porro Romero VDV Udogie
Sarr Hojbjerg
Johnson Kulu Son
Richarlison

For me.

 

Kulu is in an odd place right now. I remember talking at the start of the season about being unsure if he was an Ange winger or not. The issue is that he struggles to get that yard when he’s squared up to a defender, he’s a much better transitional ball carrier than he is a 1v1 dribbler. That’s true of most of our wingers but especially him. I also think that while he has more variation to his game than some give him credit for, he is too predictable with his actions too much of the time, which is why Ange hooked him at halftime on Saturday.

With all that said, he has something like the most chances created of any player in the PL this season IIRC, so he’s clearly creating some sort of good output. But his stats aren’t matching the strong underlying numbers, some of that is on him, some of that on others.

The plus side to his game, aside from his excellent workrate, is that he fills a role as almost a wide playmaker, and really helps our progression of the ball, and I do think that hints to perhaps where his best position would be - more centrally. He’s a very different player to Maddison, as a 10, but his physicality in that role does lend itself to him being a unique profile there. He will need to better understand the movements he needs to make there though, especially playing with inverted fullbacks, if he wants to stake a claim for the position. I also wonder if it’s a bit of a rebalance if he was to play in midfield - playing the 10 on the right of the 3 rather than the left, and what that means for the rest of the midfield combination. I’m not totally sold on him as a midfielder but that’s obviously something that could be worked on in preseason, and he might have more opportunities to play there if we have less need for him on the right (if we sign another winger, and a FB who can actually play the Porro role).

Good player but Kulu needs to find his role in this team.

 

His strengths are his physicality, ability to hold on to possession, shoot, and an eye for a pass/cross. That's most boxes ticked for a player who you'd nominally expect to see in a more central position (albeit not as a classic 10, granted).

I'm also concerned that he hasn't quite clicked with Porro, despite being in the same team for well over a year now. Brennan appears to have done twice as well in half the time, in this regard.

 

I think they kind of get in each other’s way. Kulu really helps in the buildup sometimes because he’s so physical but that’s usually involving him coming inside which is sort of where Porro wants to be in that role. The balance with Johnson is much better but Brennan isn’t as good of an out ball in terms of being able to hold it up against physical opponents who will get tight. Sarr might also be able to do more for us there than he is now. He’s developing nicely but needs to learn how to problem-solve on the pitch, as well as working on his use of the ball a bit.

 

On the right the issue is that both Deki and Porro both look to cut inside, Porro as that's how Ange sets up his FBs while in Deki's case his preferred move is to get into the box at a 45 degree angle to the keeper to shoot/pass/cross/dribble, which means they run the risk of literally tripping over one another - while Johnson stays wide longer as his preferred move is the low drilled cross across the face of goal from the edge (or close enough to it) of the 18 yard box, which is a space nobody else tends to occupy

This is why I think that, if we're in the market for a couple of FBs this summer, we need to look at a couple of Trippier-like wing-huggers not only so there's a tactical tweak on the bench, but also so there's less risk of our wingers and FBs occupying the same space at times

 

Coys

 

There is definitely a really blatant imbalance between the flanks when it comes to crossing. We don't really have anyone on the left with a good delivery. Son can to an extent, but you'd rather see him on the end of crosses than floating them in.

Udogie, Werner, Solomon and pretty much whoever plays out there are good for getting to the byline and pulling it back into the box, but since Perisic left/got injured there is a distinct lack of real crossing ability on the left, whereas on the right all of Johnson, Kulu and Porro have shown themselves to have above average deliveries.

 

The thing is that Ange's system doesn't really rely on crosses but on the low, drilled deliveries that Johnson uses

Part of this is because Richy is about he only reliable header of the ball in the entire team so it makes little sense to use crosses especially if he's not starting, but also because his Plan B at Celtic where he'd bring on somebody who could drill a header into the net and start raining in crosses - and we don't have the personnel for that, as Veliz is on loan while Richy may be good for 6-8 headed goals a season we'd need someone in the Les Ferdinand mold who is a borderline cheat code for crosses at the near post to truly make that tactic viable

 

It's on TNT, yay! Finally a match where I won't be complaining about the streams. TNT is the channel they gave me for free when I threatened to leave Virgin.

I just want whoever plays to put in a good performance. The thing is that all the players mentioned, even the ones that people want to drop for this game, are capable of a good performance. Overall, I'm so much more positive about the team this season. COYS!

 

Looks like the team's wearing all white again.