Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester City

Many, many , many of us thought a new keeper was needed last season to put real pressure on Lloris... Hart was not the answer. That is on JM for me

 

This is why I don’t think Dele is as special a talent as you may think though. A special talent should be able to showcase their ability regardless of who they’re surrounded by. Stick Kane in Sheffield’s team and he’d still look great, same as AVB’s Bale but Dele on the other hand needs to be in the perfect fit for him to thrive. To me that’s not a great player, just a player that can play great when surrounded by better ones.

If we had the opportunity right now to switch Dele with any of the other attacking mids I mentioned in the other post, we’d likely be a better team for it in my opinion. He just isn’t really up to it anymore. I’ll still like to see him get some game time this season but he should be a player we should cash in on come the summer window, though there’s about 10 others before him, mind.

 

Watching the second goal back...1.34 - 1.48 I have no clue what the hell Sissoko thinks he's doing. Might as well walk off the pitch and sit down behind the goal for all the use he is in this sequence. Hugo will rightly take the flak for poor goalkeeping but I have rarely seen a player so blatantly avoid any sort of actual involvement as Sissoko in this sequence. Appalling.

 

Here's the counter argument I used already: you could stick prime Baresi and Cannavaro in the heart of our defence and we'd still have problems - not because either of them were only good when they had their respective teams surrounding them, but to be blunt you can't just drop a player into a disorganised team and expect them to perform at the same standard, for example with our surrendering midfield every game it will be a matter of time before one of them starts making costly errors as they try and overcompensate for issues further up the pitch

For the perfect example of what I'm talking about, look at Edgar Davids' stint at Milan in the mid 90s: in his first season he failed to establish himself in the team, looked lost when he did play, to the point where the following summer when Juve made a pretty small bid Milan snapped their hand off - and then Davids established himself as one of the best DMs in Europe, not because Juve were great (even though their mid-to-late 90s team were a killing machine) but because Milan were in such disarray at the time they finished in the bottom half of the table for in the 1996-7 and 1997-8 seasons, which would be unheard of for a Premier League team of a similar standing and status

 

Hojbjerg was also in a bizarre position throughout that. Standing next to Dier instead of looking to actually do something

 

Yes you're right. He seems to be half marking Jesus while also encouraging Davies to abandon the LB position and move more centrally. Bizarre.

It only reinforces my opinion that while Hojbjerg is definitely an upgrade on Winks/Sissoko, he isn't the Wanyama replacement we've needed since 2018.

 

I think he’s a different kind of player. Would work best in a double pivot I think which isn’t what we’re asking him to do. He needs a partner with similar attributes and to play behind a 10 who will come for the ball sometimes, which Gio could do but Dele doesn’t so well. Tanguy isn’t a 10, where he fits in there I can’t work out.

Højbjerg could work as a Henderson type in a 4-3-3 but that requires a more traditional DM to screen behind him. That would make the most of his energy and the fact he has the eye for a good pass while allowing him to go and press in the middle third which is his real strength. Playing him with Winks or Sissoko behind him just doesn’t work because they’re not DMs. Tanguy or Gio can play the more advanced, free member of the midfield 3 in that system. But we’d need a Wanyama type of DM behind them all to screen.

 

I still think it’s a penalty, clumsy by Hojbjerg.

Tim Sherwood can’t even pronounce Gundogan’s name properly

 

Being clumsy isn't sufficient for a penalty. Which offence did he commit? Gundogan definitely kicked him.

 

It was 100% a Spursy penalty, in that it shouldn`t have been awarded if the VAR mug did his job properly. How many times does this happen to us, freakish accidental, unlucky fouls or handballs given as penalties. We may play shiete football, but these kind of decisions just rub our noses in it, especially when we regularly see our rivals benefiting from these type of decisions.

 

Doing my schadenfreude reading here but i didnt think it was a penalty. Firstly gundogan loses the ball and is still in posession (can still foul him) but secondly from what i can remember about the replays gundogans momentum takes him into hodbjergs leg which is why his legs are in front.

Edit i take it back hojbjergs runs into gundogans knee first Penalty

 

I recon you should all petition Levy to change your kit to red, you would walk the league then

 

I recon we should consider runnin' you out a town you nasty little red y'all.

 

Just to remind you all, until today we had the second meanest defence in the league. Now we're third behind Villa who have a game in hand and could be beaten 3-0 to make us second meanest again.

The problem isn't the defence. It's the criminal negligence of utilising our strength which is attack. There's seemingly no bespoke plan of attack based on analysis of the opponent, other than the Kane/Son counterattack.

We need a manager that can get a team that can get more than the sum of its parts, as Poch did for a good while.

That's why Mourinho was always the wrong choice.

 

He knocked Gundogan over because of his clumsiness, that’s why the ref gave it and that’s why I think it was a penalty

 

I take it we're working on 35 yard thunderbastards in training?

...right?

 

That’s a damning stat.

 

This would somewhat imply Dele’s only been bad under Mourinho in his sporadic appearances this season though. Yet his issues date back to roughly late 2018/ early 2019. First two seasons brilliant, third season solid, fourth season poor, fifth season poor, sixth season woeful and out the side. He’s just not the player he was for us in his first couple of seasons and he likely won’t ever be based on what we see nowadays. He’s never really done it for England either.

As I said to Spurf, I don’t think he can be called a special talent like Bale, he hasn’t done anywhere near enough to keep such title. A decent player who can thrive with the perfect players around him but he’s not someone who’s capable of raising the team around him with his own quality. There’s now plenty of players better than him in the Prem, just as there for a number of our players and it’s partly why we’re now currently sitting in 9th position.

 

I doubt Hart was Mourinho`s first choice, he will have been a Levy special, cheap wages, homegrown and free, ideal for Levy`s budget and the grand scheme of things.