Spurs Banter Archive March 14 2014

14 Mar 2014 13:52:06
Lamela? Injured? or just being left out? Get him playing in Final games and against Benfica away and give him a chance to at least play. I for one hope he is as good as we heard he was. Play him at no.10 or up from as wide isn't working for him.
Coulibaly. Can he do any worse. He needs his chance in the first team.
Ryan Fredricks sent out on loan but should have been given more firs team chances ahead of Naughton to push Walker. I rate Fredricks.

If Lamela was fit surely he'd be on the bench and would have got 30 mins last night at least - the kind of substitution that could have changed the flow of that game. So one has to assume that he has an injury either physical or mental perhaps?

Lots of speculation about him not settling - lonely, depressed, who knows it's all speculation until the club actually makes a statement.

14 Mar 2014 09:53:55
Well that was awful. Sherwood comes out and says they were a class above us; a good side yes, technically decent and with a bit of bite (and spite) about them that you'd expect from a Portuguese team but, a class above?! Only in the sense of us losing the plot and looking shot to bits, added to a baffling team selection. Kane? Was out of his depth and cost us the second goal, what was he doing there and what was he trying to do? Might as well have played Chadli or Sigurdsson on the left and Eriksen at 10, too obvious? Left back, left back, left back, left back, how many years? Comes to something when we're making Ekotto (the ultimate loose cannon) look good.

We could get spanked Sunday, what a joy that will be.

Kane played well, give him a break

Kane ran round like a headless chicken, which is what Sherwood likes from his players! Championship class = Harry Kane

Kane should not of been picked. Try though he did. Should have been Eriksen in at no. 10 then yeah either Townsend or Siggy out wide. Freyers should have been at LB because he is better than Naughton. Soldado should have played ahead of Ade. But the high defensive line caught us out again and made it easy for them to counter us.

Kane ahead of Soldado is a major mistake by TS, it shows total lack of faith in Soldado. Actions speak louder than words Tim, you should know this by now.

Naughton on the left with Eriksen to protect him, another major mistake. Eriksen needs to be free to create. Naughton should stay as backup on the right. Fryers and Rose on the bench, both LB's. Wonder what was going on in Timmy's head when he did that.

TottenhamOxspur

Kane cost us that second goal with a ridiculous attempt to walk the ball past a player outside his own box when he wasn't under pressure.

In my opinion he shouldn't have been on the pitch at all but, he certainly shouldn't have been back there a that time anyway. Sherwood has to carry some of the can as well as the boy for a very silly and very costly error.

Naughton is poor, Rose is not a good defender and Fryers was abject against Cardiff, not sure it would matter which one played.

We are currently in big trouble. We don't have an obvious first XI, we have no go-to system to get the best out of our players and, even if we had both, the players are in woeful form, very inept showings on the pitch and look extremely negative and lacklustre. Vertonghen might as well come out with 'please buy me Barca' on his shirt, he's not happy. Ade has put it in but is starting to wonder why he bothers. Paulinho must be sedated before each game.

Simmo, sad but true . if I wasn't a supporter I'd laugh at us . instead I get to suffer everyone else laughing at us.

14 Mar 2014 04:15:03
Are benfica that good or are we that bad?
Either way they look so solid at the back with the other 6 players going forward showing skill, drive and speed.
Apart from the obvious 3-4 players we have I'd buy the whole benfica team!
How funny is there manager what a clown buy saying that he knows how to manage a team he got them spot on tonight.
Not only did he out class Tim he even wound him up that's experience for you.
Benfica are a selling club to survive. How do they get it so right. We dnt need to look at Milan Madrid etc this club has the know how to know when to sell and how to bring in the right players!
We have one cup final left this season on Sunday and our season is finished.
Come on we all need cheating up.
Can't honestly believe we are playing this bad

No doubt Benfica are good. Even in a league that is not a top tier one in Europe their record is excellent. But this is not a team that are better than us on paper when you look overall at the players.

For me there are some key and telling points:


1. The experimentation continues. I'm all for getting the players riled up and trying harder but Sherwood seems to value grittiness over talent. My biggest issue with English football and especially English managers is that they are all about running around. As far as I could see it Kane was brought in to the number 10 role because he would be good at running around.

2. It is hard to criticise the 'back 4' because it looks like we're not playing 4 at the back. The full backs are starting too far ahead and the CBs are miles apart. The difference was telling - Benfica and Chelseaboth kept themselves tight at the back, not super defensive just solid and tight. We play with our CBs far apart and get opened up by simple forward balls. I'd say it looked more like we were playing a 1950's 2-3-3-2 style formation.

3. Even beyond that our players are just standing too far apart. Benfica constantly had 6 people within 20m of the ball, and we were getting isolated and crowded. This leads to tempo killing passes backwards or turnovers in dangerous positions as well as a lack of penetration because the guy on the ball doesn't have time to get his head up and look for others. Same against Chelsea, we got forward, got isolated, passed the ball back or lost it. Players need to get closer to each other.

4. We're not even doing the basics right. Luisao was unmarked for both of his goals. Completely unmarked. It's not like he's hard to miss, he's about the biggest player on the pitch.

5. In a previous post I said keep Naughton as backup as he's not that bad. I was wrong. He was torrid all night.

6. With 30 minutes to go that plan was not working. A good manager knows how to make a change to influence the game for the better. We saw Mourinho do it last week. Sherwood does not have that ability, at all. Despite things not working all of his substitutions were like-for-like:

a) We're not creating enough so why bring on a player who needs others to create for him? Soldado is a great finisher but we've ruined him this year by not getting him into good positions. If we were all over Benfica but not able to apply a finish then sure bring on a finisher. If the guys up front are not getting the service then you need to bring on a player that can help do that.

b) Sandro and Kyle it seems were injury replacements, so hard to be too critical here. However why take off Sandro and bring on another sitting midfielder?

7. Eriksen is wasted on the left, and actually doesn't play there that much as he drifts in to get to the danger areas. This exposes our LB meaning he cannot push up, but Naughton did this all night. If he cannot see that himself it is up to the manager to get that message across. For me we had to take Paulinho off, move Eriksen central, and bring on a left winger to stretch their defence and invalidate their pressing. At the very least this would tire them out.


But being a spurs fan I live in eternal hope. Win the NLD and we do, somehow and I have no idea how, still got a chance of 4th. It's the hope that kills you.

That's absolutely bang on Wulf. I feel we need another playmaker who will bring the best out in Soldado & Eriksen, but like you said we need to be closer together on the pitch,

Or is that playmaker Lamela.?

Maybe put your CV in to Mr Levy.

Good post.

Spot on Wulf. Though this Benfica team has proven to be better than us, finalists in this tournament last year and serious contenders this. I think they are a better team than you give them credit for.And we have to many players that are not good enough currently at this level.

14 Mar 2014 17:34:50
Bang on apart from eriksen and Musa at times we dnt have any one who can take a player on
A lot of people said it so did Jamie rednapp at the start of the season we have too many same kinda players
Bentimleb
Sandro
Paulinho
Siggs
Dumbele
All the same kinda player that want to play centre mid

For me the problem is not so much that they all want to play the same is that under the AVB system they were forced to play the same when actually they are quite different players.

4-2-3-1 can be dire when the '2' are quite static or both defensively minded. It splits attack from defence slowing everything down. We saw the dutch in 2012 play like strangers because of the gap between the attacking and defensive parts of the team.


We're effectively playing our ACM and CM the wrong way around, and we need a central passing midfielder. These guys were all the rage in the early 2000's, but by the middle of the decade had gone out of fashion. Teams had moved away from 3 in the middle (not counting teams that went 5 in the middle to dig out a draw against superior teams), but this left them very static and wing focused. However 3 years later (in part due to emulation of Barcelona) teams had gone back to 3 central and it features a very basic and simple format. Regardless of the specific brand (4--3-1 or 4-3-3) you have 3 types of central midfielder: Destroyer, Passer, Creator.


Sandro is the out and out Destroyer of the team. It's important to have that type of player present, a Makalele, or Keane, or Viera. For me Capoue is the only like for like player, and so we should pick one of them and not both. This is sensible - Sandro misses a lot of game time and last year with Parker we ended up losing our solidarity (and with that our counter-attacking as we were not fast enough in the transition). So far so sensible. But it is important to note 2 things - Bentaleb is not a destroyer, and neither is Paulinho.


Next comes the creator. This is a player who can make a difference. He can beat someone 1v1, or score from little space around the edge of the box, or has the creativity to create space for others. We have 2 players like this for sure, Dembele and Lamela. The creator is the furthest forward of the 3 midfielders, so it kills me when we see Dembele effectively misused for his strength as an auxiliary Destroyer. You don't pay £15m for a Destroyer! Lamela was my real hope for this year here, but sadly injuries / bad management have blighted it. He did play wide for Roma, but then you're never going to play the creator in Totti's team. Inside forward is a good audition for that role. If he stays then hopefully the second year is much better for him.


And then comes the passer. This guy's job is to just keep the tempo up. To get the ball quickly beyond the transition line. This is important; when a team loses the ball they often have players who have moved too far ahead and therefore out of their defensive position (as opposed to Naughton who is just simply always out of position), and typically no longer goal side. A quick passer can exploit this by getting the ball forward quickly to a dangerous area taking more of the opposition out of the game. These opposition players running back is the imaginary transition line and you need to keep the ball ahead of it. Remember when Parker ran in circles last year? Not just comically annoying but also allows the opposition to get back into position.

A great example of the danger here is Bale's goal against Manchester United last season. Sandro won the ball and played a little poke pass to Dembele. Now Dembele would have been unable to use his ability to beat a man to good effect from that far in his own half, but because the Manchester United players had pushed up so far he was beyond the transition line. He won his 1v1 against Scholes and played a strong forward pass to Bale, again keeping the ball ahead of the transition line. Bale then ran with it.

We have 1 player tailor made for this role in Eriksen. We used to have Modrat of course, and like him we need to get our Passer off the left flank and into the middle. Tom Carroll also plays this style. Maybe also Holtby. Bentaleb is not this sort of player - although he gets a lot of passes he does not actually pass that well. Neither was Huddlestone who was a great at passing but was not a Passer of this style (he was a quarterback style passer, a less mobile Carrick if you would). Maybe Bentaleb will be one day (he won't), but not yet.


So Sandro, Eriksen, Dembele could be this triplet (with Capoue, Holtby, and Lamela as alternatives). It's the Mascherano (Destroyer), Alonso (Passer), Gerrard (Creator) equivalent. But it is important that if we do play those 3 then Dembele has to play in front of Eriksen. Dembele's presence will suck in any opposition Destroyers giving Eriksen time on the ball, something he doesn't get enough of coming in from wide.



This is why Siggs and Paulinho don't fit. Siggs is a classic ACM of the Gordon Durie ilk, who really has just the job of being a deep lying striker. Paulinho is a Lampard-esque box to box midfielder. Neither fit the DPC style and I think that is one of the reasons why they both look like they struggle.

Actually whilst I'm at it, Kane was employed as a classic #10 in the game yesterday and it did not work. This is because that is a 90's tactic. Weirdly the only time a classic #10 seems to work now is when employed defensively (effectively a striker that has to drop back to pressure a quarterbacking midfielder, like Rooney should have done against Pirlo in 2012).


Sherwood used up one of his players trying to play a 90's tactic.

I suspect TS is in panic, maybe lost the dressing room also. Hence put "his" academy players ie Kane in and hope that running around like a headless chicken works. TS has lost 7 in 18, AVB lost less. You think TS will be in charge next season, not I.

Wulf, you got that perfectly right . That should be our middle 3, with Vert plus kaboom in centre defence, Walker at right back, Fryers ( best we have ) at left back . Then Lennon and Townsend ( teach Townsend to cross and not shoot all the time ) playing on their proper wings, and Soldado in the centre . Then play this team consistently, week in week out so they blend .
Subs ; goalkeeper, Chiriches, Capoue, Holtby, Ade, Lamela . - Capoue can cover CB, Verts can cover left back, Chiriches can cover right back, all positions covered