Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Sheffield United

At least he is consitent. Consistently wrong

 

To be fair to Sky they didn't try to sell Kane until the 87th minute as far as I can remember tonight

 

The Sky team seemed to think that this image of GLC was hilarious, a studding where he could have received serious facial damage caused a lot ot hilarity by the commentators, Spurs should raise this and get apologies

 

This game IMHO epitomises the mismanagement of Bale all season by Mourinho.

Yes I would have loved the 2010-13 vintage to have been fronting up
in the games against the usual suspects, but his scoring stats show
that bottom half teams is where he could have been running riot.

An accurate "broad brush" pts / GD correlation for the PL tells me
that Spurs are 4 pts below where their GD suggests they should be.
I suspect that far more game time for Bale would have got them.

 

MOTD tried to play it off as Lo Celso drawing attention to himself, while laughing about it.
The post-match analysis of it was correct and Jenas was rightly disgusted by it, but that's just ****ing poor.

 

In terms of total goal contributions, Bale actually has a better goal contribution per game ratio than Son this season in all comps, yet the media, rival fans and even some of our own will try convincing you he’s washed up or only here for a holiday to get fit.

Kane - 31 goals, 16 assists in 3,622 mins. Goal or assist every 77 mins.

Son - 21 goals, 17 assists in 3,634 mins. Goal or assist every 95 mins.

Bale - 14 goals, 3 assists in 1,471 mins. Goal or assist every 85 mins.

I just wish we could’ve seen this front three a lot more often, Bale hasn’t even played half the amount of game time as the other two. I’ve said before a few times but of all the things Jose may have gotten wrong here during his spell, the one I can’t forgive him for is making it look like Bale wasn’t good enough to play. Criminal to leave a player like that out so often. The euphoria when he came back was absolutely crazy and Jose managed to ruin that for a lot of people. I just really hope we secure that second season loan, we’re not gonna go out and sign a better RW for £40m-£50m (we probably don’t even have the money too either), so it’s a no-brainer to get him back again providing Madrid are happy to sanction another deal, which I think they will be. Plus, to possibly have a full/ near full stadium next season chanting “he was born to play for Spurs” will be some sight.

 

How true is this , Gareth Bale has scored more goals for Tottenham since 2012 than his replacement Lamela

 

Yeah, lol.

He scored 26 goals in all comps for us in the 12/13 season and has 14 this season, so 40 combined so far.

In Lamela’s 7 and a half years, he has 37 goals for Spurs in all comps.

There’s also an outside chance that Bale could even match Lamela’s total league goal tally in just this season if he manages to score 8 goals in the final 4 games. Highly unlikely but not impossible. He’s scored 9 in the league this season, Lamela has 17 in the league overall.

 

The same Sky team who spent years thinking Paul Scholes scything people down was hilarious

has anyone checked to see if their pundits used to torture small animals as children?

 

Not true at all, for two reasons
i.) Lamela replaced Aaron Lennon, not Bale
ii.) Sonny is Bale's replacement

Don't believe everyanything that Sky pundits say

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Bale#Club

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Lamela#Club

Objectively you can see that :

1. both players took about the same number of seasons before
they produced a decent full season contribution

2. the Lamela 2015-16 season in terms of goal scoring productivity
(no assists data) is comparable to Bale 2010-11 / 2011-12
(which is when Bale really got busy) .


That Lamela has not gone on to consolidate or go stellar as Bale did
as a Spurs player, is IMHO the biggest indictment against him.

 

Lamela is levels below Bale and always has been.

Scored a couple of nice rabonas and tries hard, but for me it’s a crime he’s been allowed to linger around Spurs for so long without actually contributing much at all.

 

It’s worth pointing out for about the first three years of Bale’s Spurs career he was primarily a left back. So his goal stats especially wouldn’t have kicked in ‘til afterwards.

If you’re looking for assist data though, Transfermarkt has it.

For what it’s worth I don’t think Lamela’s been a bad player overall for us but he’s been nowhere near as good as what our initial expectations would’ve been when spending £30m back then on a supposed wonderkid. We thought we were signing a glamorous and glitzy inside forward/ winger that’ll go on to be somewhat in the Bale mould but instead we ended up with an attacking player who has developed a reputation for being aggressive and good for defensive traits... Not what we really wanted.

The fitness/ injury issues certainly haven’t helped either and realistically we probably shouldn’t have given him a new contract back in 2018.

 

On the other hand

Bitching out Jack Wheelchair
Lamela: 1
Bale: 0

Stamps on Cesc Fabregas
Lamela: 1
Bale: 0

 

Fair comment.

I'm not sure that a full "moneyball" approach can be applied to football.
However I do believe that a set of KPIs can be devised for squad members
playing particular roles (defence, MF, attack etc) , baseline values set
and failure to meet them per season means a manager can objectively
decide that player has to go.

 

Here he is on one of his days off

 

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The obvious thing which sticks out for me is how both members of the pivot are available for passes out from the back, as opposed to what we saw all too frequently this season where Hojbjerg is available but there's no passes to whichever of Ndombele/Los Celso/Winks/Sissoko is alongside him

And here's something else that compares with this season: clearly we're set up the exact same way down the right, as that map is identical to how it usually looks - but the obvious difference is that Aurier is finding Lo Celso so regularly that it's practically obliterating that part of the map while Bale pushing on had actual end product to it, as opposed to the Bermuda triangle we saw down the right all too often in the past eighteen months

While I'm under no impression that a lot of this has to do with Sheffield United being about as motivated as someone who is stuck in a lift with Elon Musk for half an hour, the amount of passes being pinged about by our midfield is certainly something that is refreshing to see, with both Hojbjerg and Lo Celso pinging it about to anyone and everyone and Dele receiving plenty of the ball, because realistically that's the sort of thing which is going to see confidence creep back into our players as they're getting the ball, moving it around, and making something out of the possession they have

 

I think someone may have missed the point...

 

I was wondering why Lo Celso was on the right of the two in the pivot, despite being left-footed and that explains it.
Mason has decided to protect Aurier from the midfield, much like our two previous managers did, but he's taken a very different route to doing it.
Rather than adding a defensive body like Sissoko, he's given him an easy out ball and invited him to attack more. Interesting.

 

It has to be said that, as Hojbjerg's played on the left of the pivot all season and developed a good chemistry with both Reguilon and Davies, switching Lo Celso to the left of the pivot would be a bad tactical choice as it nullifies one of our most frequent combinations

I'm wondering if playing Bale in a freer role might also play into it, as that would mean Kane, Son and Dele would drift out to the left, meaning that Lo Celso would be coming onto his stronger left foot to pass to them

...oh no, The Pathetic just tweeted me saying I sound vaguely knowledgeable about football and tactical plans, and they want me to be their new Editor in Chief