Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Royal Antwerp

Against Royal Antwerp's 2nd XI, he doesn't need his first pick strikers. It's why he didn't play Hugo, Toby, Airier, Dier, Hojbjerg, etc.

We were winning the game when he brought on his best players. I just don't see why he'd do that. If we'd been losing? Maybe.

I'm unimpressed.

 

Harry Kane tends to need to play, a few weeks off and he loses that edge. See goals in August. Match fitness is very important to his game. Others, Dier, Davies, even Winks, a rest tends to do them good. I think I will judge Jose at the end of the season. He sees the players every day, talks to them every day and his track record suggests that he tends to get the balance right more often than not.

 

Some players need match time more than others. Some, a rest does them good.

 

True, but I doubt that Dele needs more rest than Son or Kane.

If our frontline players make it through the Christmas and New Year without picking up injuries, then he'll have got it right. Currently, I'm worried that we'll pick up injuries and have squad members who haven't had enough football. We shall see...

 

Just remember one thing. Not all injuries are caused by over playing.

Jose does need to apply common sense and he did that by resting players yesterday. They only played for 30 minutes. I read that Jose has not been doing intensive training sessions due to the frequency of games. He's managing the stress on their bodies. A 30 minute match is part of this process.

When the subs were made, spurs only just scored the one goal. Jose wanted to win the game and the midfield wasn't coping. He had to make the changes.

However, I do agree that he could perhaps have left winks on and bring on Dele. Perhaps he's saving winks for Palace?

As for playing Dele, why? He hasn't done anything to warrant a game!

 

Trying to judge whether players are being under or overplayed is not easy if you are just seeing the game and a few snippets of training. In any given week players spend far more time training than playing competitive games. They can get injured in training as well and as deedub93 says we can't judge that. Jose made it a priority to get a backup striker as he did with other positions in the team. One of the skills a manager needs is to judge the level of training required. You can just as easily overdo it as under do it and it's that balance with individual players, because they are all different, that's very difficult to get right.

We now have one of the most successful managers in the history of the game making changes that appear to be working well. Kane or Son getting injured is always a possibility but it won't change the record of Mourinho and make him a bad manager.

 

Mourinho sees Dele in training so we have to trust he is not impressing there. Otherwise I'm not sure how he do anything to warrant a call up without playing. Last time I saw him he looked better than he had in some time.

Lucas was playing in a No 10 role. Liked to have seen Dele replacing him.

 

I think it’s a trust thing, ultimately. Defending is more than a DM and a back 4, and Jose trusts Lucas, Kane, Sonny , Bergwijn, Gio and Tanguy to be intelligent and hardworking to help us protect (and increase) a lead in a game he clearly really wanted to win. Bale and Vinny clearly aren’t quite there yet, the former likely because of fitness, and the latter still picking up what is required of him in this system.

Dele is clearly seen as a luxury player by Jose at this point and if there’s one thing Jose doesn’t seem to like, it’s a luxury player. Even the flashy wingers and star striker are expected to put in the dog work. But that’s how he gets results.

 

I find it weird that almost if not all of the posters recognise that Dele has been poor yet he should have had minutes?

I think the issue is mindset..too many people are romantics...it got us nowhere and now we have someone ruthless who doesn’t do sentiment and many personalities are struggling to cope because they seem to have become accustomed to everything being about being nice, trying and that’s enough...at least we got there at least we tried levels of thinking...which is fine but it’s not fine for someone like Jose and his track record justifies his thinking.

back the manager...forget the players if they cant give it everything and kill themselves on the pitch...weird how the class players graft harder than anyone in our team

btw Dele seems to be doing a great job of promoting his Electronic sports company...it’s no coincidence he’s a shambles on the pitch..too much romance...this guy is not a winner he’s a young man who has made a lot of money and enjoys the fame and popularity. Yet he thinks and some fans think he deserves the same kind of treatment as those that leave it all on the pitch.

If he’s pandering for favouritism and hugs then he needs to hold out until Poch gets another job. Thing is and it’s proven that Jose gave him lots of love. His first job seemed to be to get this guy’s head right. Jose knows what a players limits are...Dele doesn’t have the minerals...he’s a showboater.

Jose knows more than Dele and his fan base...simple really.

 

All true. However there is a great player in there. I hope Mourinho gets it out of him again. I'm clinging to the hope that there is a long term plan with Dele and isn't just being discarded

 

There must be room in football for the creative players they can't all base their game on work rate. Steve Davis or Jimmy White? who would you rather watch. Greaves was accused of not working hard. Alf Ramsey had the work ethic as have lots of England managers and any number of creative players have been underused as a result Le Tissier, Ian Hutchinson, Charlie George, RACIST DELETED come to mind. I'm sure there are many others people will remember. The magic moments from players like Gazza are what stay in the mind, Son's goal against Arsenal for example. I think you have to be more patient with players like Dele and if you are you will be rewarded with those moments you will never forget. Right now for Spurs he is a luxury player because Jose has the mindset to win something but as SD says let's hope we don't bin him just yet and have to watch those magic moments with him in another clubs shirt.

EDIT THANKS TO RCL INFORMATION

 

When it comes to Dele I definitely think his ship has sailed at Spurs. I don’t see a place in the XI for him anymore and he’s a player who’ll want to be first choice. He’s not better than Ndombele or Lo Celso for the way Jose plays and even under Poch, Dele’s football fell off a cliff for quite some time. I’d say at this current point he’s now had more bad spells than good at the club and if we as a fanbase and a club in general want to reach that next step of winning things, then we need players who are going to be giving us consistently good performances. We need a team/ squad of Kane’s/ Son’s/ Hojbjerg’s etc. There’s no doubting that with Dele there’s definitely a top player in there somewhere, his first two seasons showed that but I think varying factors have taken his mind partially off of football, he no longer commits 100% to the game and his form has suffered for it.

I do as others have said though think he should’ve got some game time last night. Football is a squad game at the end of the day and whilst players are part of that squad you need them to be as ready as possible because a team is always one or two injuries away from heavily relying on their depth.

 

He made the midfield weaker, which is why he had to correct it shortly afterwards and bring on Sissoko.

Has he been poor? He's barely had any minutes this season and he's not done badly in most of the games that he has played.
It seems that he's been sacrificed as a result of the Everton game, which also may have done for Winks.

Started against Ludogorets at home, played well and we battered them, then got banished again for no apparent reason.
Played 8 minutes against LASK and scored a penalty. What's he supposed to do to prove himself, if he's not given time and he does well when he is?
I don't like to see players blamed for poor managerial decisions and that's what this looks like to me.

 

Oooof

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If that was real

 

Mourinho's right about the pressing by the front three.
You expect it from Moura, but it was nice to see that Bale's capable of it and Vinicius was happy to do his bit.

Doherty interviews well, doesn't he?

 

Pass map time

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Okay, well that's a mess, not least because it makes it look like we're playing Marcelo Bielsa's famed 3331 formation he deployed when he was Chile coach, while also revealing how poor the starting formation was as Winks is supposed to be the out ball for the defence yet instead they're either pinging it to Doherty or Lucas, for example Sanchez had the most passes but they're mainly to Tanganga or Doherty with a few pinged to Lo Celso

On the subject of Lucas, his positioning is really poor as not only is he so central that he's encroaching on both Vicinius and Gio, but when you look at Antwerp's map you see that their most successful combinations were on their right flank, aka our left flanks, where Lucas wasn't

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On the other hand...****ing hell, and I called our pass map a mess, what the hell is that? Their CBs are standing on each other's toes as they fight to pass the ball back to Beiranvand, and the fact their most successful passer was one of these CBs says just how often they were passing back to the keeper (or how **** the rest of their team's passing was) their CF is playing as a right winger, and the out ball for every single player is their RB - yes, even the players further up the pitch than him

 

Once we scored the second, the players were being very careful- especially Kane and Son. they weren't going into tackles if they thought it was dodgy. They started to treat the game as a training friendly.

 

Strange game really.

Antwerp pressed/passed/retained well in the melee for
so much of the game, yet had little scoring threat.

Spurs were the converse, yet easily had the best scoring chances.

The overall squad problem though in being able to pass/retain
the ball in CM/attack when under pressure, is not going away.
If it could, then perhaps the result would have been done and
dusted so Jose did not have to tempt the god of <standard>
injuries with the Kane/Son subs.

Top of the group achieved, and no walking wounded reported yet
as a result of this game.

 

Moura moved centrally to accommodate Reguilon's runs in the first half and then Bergwijn after the break.
Lo Celso's map is also distorted because he shifted onto the right wing for the late part of the game.
Davies is much further left than he played in the first half too, as he shifted to left-back.
One of the issues with these pass maps is that a position change screws the whole thing, unfortunately.

The map does highlight how isolated Winks was. It was defence - Winks - attack for a lot of the game.
Very strange tactical decision by Mourinho.