Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v PSV Eindhoven

A well balanced piece from The Guardian...

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/nov/07/empty-seats-tottenham-wembley-white-hart-lane

I heard some people saying that the attendance was capped at 51,000 but I don't think that was the case. Last night was a long, long way from the attendances at similar European nights against CSKA and Genk, although as The Guardian very fairly point out, the mood wasn't hostile in any way.

The club need to get out in front of this. Last night, Harry Kane was asking fans to come to the Inter game. I hope that more do and something can be done to see it happens. We need a leader, Daniel.

 

Anyone get the feeling he has these tweets pre-written so he can be a moaning **** at a moment's notice?

Of course, he brought a few friends...

 

Do you think the Inter game will be better attended? Now that we have finally won a CL game this season in what has been a very frustrating campaign so far.

 

I think the cold hard facts are spurs fans have had enough of Wembley and can't wait to get back home to the lane and the travelling to and from Wembley is a nightmare ,also if the fans were told at the start that we would be playing at Wembley until January it would have helped

 

Maybe but not by that much unless the club acknowledge where we are in terms of attendances at Wembley. I know a number of season ticket holders who are very upset with the club right now. Price rises, added to the game by game return of season ticket monies, pricing for Wembley tickets, no signings and scant information regarding the stadium have created an unfortunately down-beat mood.

A number of those people went to the Barcelona game but aren't interested in attending other games until we're in the new stadium, one of my brothers amongst them. He's going out to Barcelona but despite being in London for the Citeh game, he wouldn't go and that's really, really rare.

The club need to do something about it. I think that too much is left to Mauricio Pochettino and I think that Harry asking fans to turn up shouldn't be happening. Cut the prices or announce that we're going to do something to reward supporters, especially season ticket holders. The next few years are possibly the most important in the club's history and we need everyone pulling together. Over to you Mr Levy...

 

Taken me ages to work this out and finally have! Must have read it 5 times without working out how the Barca v PSV result has any bearing. Finally......good point.

 

Happy Belated Birthday, Smithy!

 

I love watching spurs as do my girls but CL apart neither want to go yo Wembley. They would go to any game against anyone st WHL but hate Wembley.
I go but gotta be honest...it is a real slog.
Wembly is s hole and I hate it personally!

 

Snap!

I went on my own last night as my daughter, who has also had flu, decided she didn't fancy it either. That's 2 members of my family who I would expect to go to pretty much any game, choosing not to go to a CL match.

As you say, Wembley is the cause and the remaining games there are going to be tough, there's no doubt of that. I'd encourage all fans to try and find it in themselves to put up for a little longer but I'm not going to criticise those who've had enough, especially season ticket holders who have every good reason to feel under appreciated.

Personally, I'm a stubborn ****er and I'll go sometimes because others won't. Especially now, because this manager and team deserve our support. They've stayed loyal when significantly underpaid compared to players at clubs below us. I have the money and time and enjoy watching us play a lot more than 15-20 years ago, so I'm not too bothered about Wembley or Stadium MK..

My main gripe is with Daniel Levy. He can't alter what Joe Lewis' plans are and that he has to work on restricted budgets. I get that. However, we need a leader right now to get everyone in line for one last 'push' but he remains silent. It's very poor, as it costs nothing to do it.

 

My cousin is another who’s ****ed Wembley off this season, he only came to the Barca game for obvious Messi-related reasons.

My other cousin (who isn’t a ST holder like us two) took my ticket for the City game as I was rough as **** that day and didn’t fancy the trek to Wembley, his immediate text after the game was along the lines of “knew I shouldn’t have come to this **** hole”.

The club could’ve done a lot more though for the fans after all these hiccups. There’s no need to charge ridiculous prices at a stadium none of us want to be at. Chelsea for instance, I bought my ticket the other day for that and it came to £52. £52 for me to trek to a stadium I absolutely hate, you can’t help but feel pissed off about it. And I think that then results in the dire atmosphere at Wembley, I won’t even deny I’ve not been as vocal as usual in recent games, I’ll sing along with all of the songs as per usual but it’s somewhat half-hearted attempts. I just want out of the place but I’d at least feel more appreciated by the club if I weren’t being stung to come and support them.

 

I think that the other thing about Wembley is that it feels like we're away, for some reason.
I expected it to be like playing at a neutral venue, but it's worse than that.
The colour scheme, the horrible acoustics, the complete lack of anything Spurs related and the dead atmosphere all drain the place.

Only getting one ****ing penalty there in 40 odd games doesn't help, either. ****ing ref chalked it off too, the ****.

 

It just shows that he can do a job for us and we can play to his strengths.
When teams defend deep like that and pack the box, then we've got someone that can still do some damage.
Allowing us to cross the ball all day and win endless corners isn't so appealing when we can add his aerial prowess.

 

I've got to a stage in my life where I'm becoming less and less able to tolerate watching us on tv or computer. I'd far rather go to the game, no matter where it's played, I feel that I can 'get into it' better.

I had an interesting experience at the Liverpool game this season. I went with 2 members of my wife's family, who are regular attendees at Anfield. I told them that they were welcome to sit away from me as I was vocal and LOUD. They declined and said very little afterwards. I thought no more about it.

Last night, Mrs B went out boozing with her sister, one of the plastic Mousers. She told me this morning that her sister had seen nothing like me at any previous match she'd been to and she's been going to Anfield for over 20 years. She was genuinely shocked at how loud and raucous I was......she should see me when we're winning.

 

It truly is amazing that if we play to Llorente's strengths he is actually very useful... Who'd have thought, eh?

 

To be fair, his most important touch last night was the deft lay off with his FOOT to Harry! Hasn’t exactly been one of his strengths in the games he has appeared to date

 

His holdup play and aerial ability are fine. We try to make him run about and play as part of a fluid, shifting attack.
We need to either use him sensibly or move him on in January.

 

what was great about Gazzaniga was straight after that dummy and turn he did a good pass to set up an attack and then bollocked Sanchez (who was on the half way line) for the back pass so loudly that Sanchez actually had to apologise to shut him up...

Good to see him being that dominant as a rookie keeper

 

He also wasn't afraid to kick it long when PSV pushed four men up on our defence and he had a goal kick.
Picked out his man and sent them scurrying back, desperately trying to get back into position.

Playing it out from the back most of the time is fine, but we need to have other options just to make the opposition think.
They can't press us so much if we can just take most of their team out with one ball.

 

Yeah but his touch was from the ball coming from an aerial position, in those instances he can control it as well as Messi but play the ball on the ground to Nando and his touch is worst than Lukaku on steroids.