Match Thread - West Bromwich Albion vs. Tottenham Hotspur - PL | Page 13 | Vital Football

Match Thread - West Bromwich Albion vs. Tottenham Hotspur - PL

Result?

  • Win

    Votes: 7 87.5%

  • Draw

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Lose

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Total voters
    8
  • Poll closed .
Opinions, opinions on what and how we should have done/played, horse n barn door here comes to mind, though all good reasonable views.

Now my thinking....how long ago was it? when we played like we did today v so called lesser teams, that we would have lost 1-0 or drawn, but we have won 3 ugly/scrappy games, that says improvement, some of you will disagree of course.

If our team wins games ugly playing poorly, and is still in the mix, what will we be like when we start playing well, esp v footballing sides, because it will happen, I believe we are still learning, getting fit/fitter and with no injuries as such, there is a long season ahead.

For me it is only the beginning of a great adventure as a Spurs fan.
 
Top of the table if only for a while, boring football seems to be the way forward. None of Burnley, Ludgorets or WBA represent much of a goal threat, but in fairness Lloris, Alderweireld and Dier looked in complete control today, whilst Doherty had his best game for us yet. Our fixtures over the next month will undoubtedly establish how genuine our current league position is. A difficult run of games but I reckon we'll start them with a win over City, which should set things up nicely.
 
7 of our next 8 PL games are tough to say the least. If we could get 5 wins and a couple of draws that would be a decent return, yes...8 wins would be better. But we need to start playing with higher Intensity, move off the ball more, faster and better passing (and control). Hoping that the players will focus more when opposition are better, I still think many have an arrogance of 'we can beat this lot' when we play the lesser teams!
 
Nick Real Deal said:
The two players I would not have started both under performed. Sissoko and Bale. Both played significant minutes in Bulgaria and were questionable as to what we needed to dominate the game and score freely.
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Meanwhile, the suggestion in your previous posts that three years under performing Alli should play instead of Sissoko reeks of hypocrisy. Alli dominating football matches are as rare as Davies scoring a goal.
 
Must admit, for all the game I wondered what the point of Doherty was...as an attacking wing-back he doesn’t attack, just plays the ball backwards, he can’t defend one on one and 99.9% of his crosses are meh, but for one exceptional moment he played the perfect pitching wedge of a lob on to Harry’s head for thr goal..sod’s law...
But still not good enough for us.

I wondered the same about Sissoko...he was just taking up a space on the pitch, looks scared stiff when he has the ball and really stifled attacking moves by his indecision and negative play...no redeeming features for him at all.
 
Littlest Hobo said:
Am I the only person who thinks Son has been very poor in last few games. I would have had him Off at half time
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I think there is an element of the opposition wising up to the the Son and Kane chemistry. Given the choice, it would be easier to mark (crowd) out Son from the game as he generally plays in a defined area. Kane must be a nightmare to play against!. One minute defending, another creating from midfield and pop up in the penalty area to head in the net!

Son has pace, often not good control and cuts a frustrating figure if things don't go to plan. Just needs to adapt. Too early to be critical!
 
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Gary Onedaysoon said:
If Ndombele hadn't been injured I wonder if he would have been subbed anyway or was Jose planning to bring Lo Celso alongside him?

Put the Sissoko/PEH pairing up against De Bruyne and company in a couple of weeks time and we'll be destroyed.
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Is it not time that Lo Celso is good enough to be included in the De Bruyne and co to give us more than just hope, of not being destroyed in a couple of weeks by citeh?
 
Gary Onedaysoon said:
If Ndombele hadn't been injured I wonder if he would have been subbed anyway or was Jose planning to bring Lo Celso alongside him?

Put the Sissoko/PEH pairing up against De Bruyne and company in a couple of weeks time and we'll be destroyed.
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Our line up last year against Man City was Lloris, Aurier, Toby, Sanchez, Tanganga, Lo Celso, Winks, Alli, Bergwijn, Son, Moura. We won 2-0.
Football makes no sense but our line up this year will surely be stronger than the above provided the international break doesn't completely screw us over.
 
RichmondSpur said:
Is it not time that Lo Celso is good enough to be included in the De Bruyne and co to give us more than just hope, of not being destroyed in a couple of weeks by citeh?
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There's no guarantee pairing Lo Celso with Ndombele will take us up a level. But there is at least realistic hope.

There is a guarantee however that the continued pairing of Sissoko/PEH ensures that what we are seeing now is as good as it gets.
 
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Gary Onedaysoon said:
There's no guarantee pairing Lo Celso with Ndombele will take us up a level. But there at least realistic hope.

There is a guarantee however that the continued pairing of Sissoko/PEH ensures that what we are seeing now is as good as it gets.
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That is more the case with Sissoko than PEH, for me the Dane is a common denominator. A few of us have observed and echo Jose's comments that Lo Celso needs to improve and be better until he shows that Sissoko gets the nod.
 
The game came on top of our europa game, posters don't like hearing it here but such short breaks and no decent pre-season drains legs and minds - yes they're fit lads but at these levels just dropping off a few percent in your head or your legs will affect your performance. That's what we saw yesterday, that and poor set-up from the get go.

We barely did enough and yes there was some utterly dreadful perfromances - Sissoko and Docherty both deserve a mention in this regards - I laughed my head off when towards the end of the first half, Sissoko ran with the ball but barely controlling it until he couldn't sort his feet out, tripped himself and gave the ball away, classic Sissoko.

Once again our problem was playing too deep a back line (why!?), disassociated ourselves from our midfield meaning that even when we pressed from the front they had more than enough space to play through us PEH and Sissoko as two holders is pretty poor, it kills our game as a unit. Sissoko is a headless chicken and contributes not much more than a body and PEH simply doesn't work with him at all as together they have little positional awareness and get caught in the same area leaving acres of space around them, Ndom moves the ball quickly from his feet but the fowards are standing static for much of it because no one is moving up behind them to give the oppositions back line and CMid any problem with runners or movement - that is until the last 10 mins when out of desperation Jose changed our set up and we worked as one unit all pushing up and pressing and killing their space to play. Docherrty in fairness mad one decent pass all game and it got us (thanks to Harry) out of jail.

It's so depressing to see these same mistakes/poor tactical set up happening game after game, but happy days !we scraped over the line.

So a win is a win and for ten mins we were top of the league!

It was good whilst it lasted..f78af605-4917-47fb-9da0-a490df446bcd.jpg
 
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How many times do you see our players hacked down and the ref waves play on, when a free kick in their third is always going to be a better advantage than trying to het through their packed defence by passing around them. You never see it the other way unless the opposition have superior numbers. Today their Furlong took Reggie ankles in a scything tackle as he received a pass from Ndombele. No booking, but play the advantage says the ref. Playing on is also their referring ruse to deflect from them having let a bad foul go unpunished. By the way Ndombele put the ball into Reggie before he was hacked after a sublime bit of skill where he mugged off two of their defenders. It was an "Oh my"! moment but the commentator greeted it with stoney silence and then merely offered "He managed to get out of a tight space space with some style". He then greeted the hacking down of Reggie with "But he couldn't make the pass" i.e. because Reggie was hacked down on receipt of a perfectly good pass from Ndombele. They all hate us.
 
Timbo1882 said:
How many times do you see our players hacked down and the ref waves play on, when a free kick in their third is always going to be a better advantage than trying to het through their packed defence by passing around them. You never see it the other way unless the opposition have superior numbers. Today their Furlong took Reggie ankles in a scything tackle as he received a pass from Ndombele. No booking, but play the advantage says the ref. Playing on is also their referring ruse to deflect from them having let a bad foul go unpunished. By the way Ndombele put the ball into Reggie before he was hacked after a sublime bit of skill where he mugged off two of their defenders. It was an "Oh my"! moment but the commentator greeted it with stoney silence and then merely offered "He managed to get out of a tight space space with some style". He then greeted the hacking down of Reggie with "But he couldn't make the pass" i.e. because Reggie was hacked down on receipt of a perfectly good pass from Ndombele. They all hate us.
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Totally agree with your point re. the advantage rule and I've raised it before. It seems these days you only have to retain possession and it's deemed an advantage. But it's very rarely an advantage when one of your attacking players is lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. And as you rightly point it, playing on releases the ref from making the tough decisions.

In these situations I wish our players would just kick the ball out out of play and point to our injured player on the ground.
 
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