Andre Villas-Boas - Head Coach

[Leeds Spur]

Knew the ****s would be out in force. We play 442 we get murdered. And Defoe in a situation where we need to hold play up after being on the rack is just the wrong decision. At the game everyone agreed it was the right decision.

 

[NaijaSpurs]

Thats precisely it. I dont get why people want to have that extra midfielder 'to give us a chance' when in reality its serving us no benefit whatsoever. We are getting hammered by teams maybe not in terms of results but in terms of performances, we are not creating enough and conceding a number of goals. Nothing about the existing tactics, formation or application seems right and more pertinently seems natural or suitable to our current players.

A number of these players look like theyre playing to a rigid game plan when in reality they need the shackles loosened. I may well be overreacting here but it doesnt seem right.

By having that extra striker or forward (Dempsey no Sig no) then it would give the opposition something to think about giving Ade more space to work his magic and spreading play a bit to the likes of Bale and Lennon which means the opposition would have more defending to do and less attacking.

Its a small change admittedly but in the grand scheme of things the knock on effect by making that small change is massive to the 'dimensions' (no pun) of the team

Agree totally.

 

[braineclipse]

No, I do not think he is an idiot but I do think he is prone to occasionally making the wrong decision. He so on occasion when he was at Chelsea. I also think he made a mistake taking off Defoe instead of Dempsey Wigan. I also think he is making a mistake Gallas captain and starting with him in the league every week.

On the whole I am well behind AVB but that will not stop me from pointing out things I think he has got wrong.

Sure, but we're not talking about making the wrong decision where it's a close decision between one option and another. The claim was that Dempsey offered "nothing offensively and nothing defensively". Surely if that was the case AVB would have picked up on it?

 

[Leeds Spur]

got to disagree, it was the perfect game to go in with Defoe and Ade behind him. Ade tends to drift around anyway so it really is no big deal. City are not playing well and a team that dared go toe to toe with them might have profited. We will never know now and that is uber frustrating

City haven't lost at home in the league for nearly 3 years. Go toe to toe?

Clueless

 

[DHSF]

Yeah. We got completely outplayed in that first half today.... City were just creating chance after chance...

</sarcasm>

I get the sarcasm but whats funny is the attempt at sarcasm was quite poor. Just because they didnt create doesnt mean they didnt dominate. and wow dude - are we really going to judge our performances based constantly on what the opposition do rather than WHAT WE DO? We need to start thinking about what we do from now on - play to our strengths and fudge the opposition because at present us worrying too much about the opposition is not workin for us.

Jesus. That seems to be AVBs school of thought. As long as we restrict the opposition it doesnt matter what we do.

We seem to have forgotten about ourselves and have worried too much about the opposition. Im actually frustrated by that. Its kinda infuriating. Im not saying we forget who we are playing but if it dominates the mind then the players are just going to go out thinking about 'lets not concede' rather than 'lets score and win it'

Im not really talking just about todays game

 

[indianspur]

He made several solid runs tracking back, there is a big difference between that and consistently getting back right side of the ball and doing a job the other players and the manager can trust defensively. I have never seen Ade do the kind of defensive job you want from the attacking midfielder/deeper forward in a game like this.

We saw Ade alongside Saha last season away to Arsenal and we got overrun.

are we never going to hear the end of this.....always, this game is brought up as a reason why we shouldnt go with 2 up front and its getting annoying now

can you give me another 10, ok il give you a chance another 5, examples where away from home we were overrun by playing Ade alongside another striker?

il tell you why we were overrun against Arse, its because we were unable to pass the ball from a to b, our passing and ball retention was shocking and all this despite having Modric (so lets not use Dembele's absence today a reason why our passing was shocking) Arse upped the pace and we fell apart.

what Redknapp failed to address was our passing when under pressure. Yes when teams let us play and gave us space we looked good, but any kind of concerted pressure and we simply fell apart

well, under AVB i see no change in this whatsoever.

 

[NaijaSpurs]

Knew the ****s would be out in force. We play 442 we get murdered. And Defoe in a situation where we need to hold play up after being on the rack is just the wrong decision. At the game everyone agreed it was the right decision.

And there I disagree.

We played 5 in midfield and David Silva still managed to slice us open time after time. We were lucky their two strikers got caught offside so many times although the replays showed some of them were bad decisions, add to that Aguero falling over and miscontrolling the ball on other occasions we were lucky they did not make us pay. The important thing is 5 in midfield did not not stop us from being carved open although special credit should be given to Sandro.

My concern is that Ade had a great game but the fact is apart from Huddlestone's free kicks we never really caused them any problems in open play, we did not look like scoring in open play which is a bitch for us when they score two goals.

This season Emirates Marketing Project have shown they have shipped goals but we caused them no problems

 

[braineclipse]

I get the sarcasm but whats funny is the attempt at sarcasm was quite poor. Just because they didnt create doesnt mean they didnt dominate. and wow dude - are we really going to judge our performances based constantly on what the opposition do rather than WHAT WE DO? We need to start thinking about what we do from now on - play to our strengths and fudge the opposition because at present us worrying too much about the opposition is not workin for us.

Jesus. That seems to be AVBs school of thought. As long as we restrict the opposition it doesnt matter what we do.

We seem to have forgotten about ourselves and have worried too much about the opposition. Im actually frustrated by that. Its kinda infuriating. Im not saying we forget who we are playing but if it dominates the mind then the players are just going to go out thinking about 'lets not concede' rather than 'lets score and win it'

Im not really talking just about todays game

When away from home against one of the best teams in the league and the reigning champions with some key players out injured and not in the best form ourselves I think going for a solid first approach where keeping the opponent at bay is a good idea.

 

[indianspur]

I get the sarcasm but whats funny is the attempt at sarcasm was quite poor. Just because they didnt create doesnt mean they didnt dominate. and wow dude - are we really going to judge our performances based constantly on what the opposition do rather than WHAT WE DO? We need to start thinking about what we do from now on - play to our strengths and fudge the opposition because at present us worrying too much about the opposition is not workin for us.

Jesus. That seems to be AVBs school of thought. As long as we restrict the opposition it doesnt matter what we do.

We seem to have forgotten about ourselves and have worried too much about the opposition. Im actually frustrated by that. Its kinda infuriating. Im not saying we forget who we are playing but if it dominates the mind then the players are just going to go out thinking about 'lets not concede' rather than 'lets score and win it'

precisely.

show us some ginger cojones AVB !!

 

[NaijaSpurs]

Knew the ****s would be out in force. We play 442 we get murdered. And Defoe in a situation where we need to hold play up after being on the rack is just the wrong decision. At the game everyone agreed it was the right decision.

People were actually debating without being rude to today

 

[Golfball]

No, I do not think he is an idiot but I do think he is prone to occasionally making the wrong decision. He so on occasion when he was at Chelsea. I also think he made a mistake taking off Defoe instead of Dempsey Wigan. I also think he is making a mistake Gallas captain and starting with him in the league every week.

On the whole I am well behind AVB but that will not stop me from pointing out things I think he has got wrong.






This is the same Harry that against Villa when we needed a win to guarantee 3rd place second to last game of the season took of VDV and brought on Parker ahead of Defoe. Sorry mate, I do not care what Harry said last season after that horrendous management decision.

That Villa decision, it really is a non issue so stop trying to make it one. Do you think just because you've said that it makes it true?

For your statement to be correct, it would have to have been the last game of the season with Chelsea already having the CL wrapped up. But as you know, it wasn't. There was still one game left with a very real chance of coming 5th had we lost. A point could have been vital in getting 3rd. We were down to 10 men and Parker is the sort of player you want on the pitch.

Now in hindsight we know a win at Villa would have been great, but at the time it wasn't a MUST win game, there was plenty of other scenarios to think about. And in any case, it was one decision amongst many great things Harry did, it's irrelevant.

If you make mistakes every week like AVB is, that's when you should have issues...

 

[indianspur]

When away from home against one of the best teams in the league and the reigning champions with some key players out injured and not in the best form ourselves I think going for a solid first approach where keeping the opponent at bay is a good idea.

if the players go into games with this attitude then we are in trouble in the long term. You are already setting yourself up for failure.

 

[NaijaSpurs]

Playing Defoe and Ade would not have guaranteed a win but if we had lost and we had given it a go I would have felt much better this evening.

 

[braineclipse]

are we never going to hear the end of this.....always, this game is brought up as a reason why we shouldnt go with 2 up front and its getting annoying now

can you give me another 10, ok il give you a chance another 5, examples where away from home we were overrun by playing Ade alongside another striker?

il tell you why we were overrun against Arse, its because we were unable to pass the ball from a to b, our passing and ball retention was shocking and all this despite having Modric (so lets not use Dembele's absence today a reason why our passing was shocking) Arse upped the pace and we fell apart.

what Redknapp failed to address was our passing when under pressure. Yes when teams let us play and gave us space we looked good, but any kind of concerted pressure and we simply fell apart

well, under AVB i see no change in this whatsoever.

Well, people say that we could play Ade and Defoe together in a 4-4-2 away from home against a top team without getting overrun in midfield. How about some evidence for that?

I can't really give you 5 examples of it not working because we didn't really play Ade alongside another striker away from home against top sides any more times than the one. Just like most teams in the world i might add, very few teams regularly play two strikers away from home when neither is solid and hard working defensively. Actually I struggle to think of examples at all.

 

[indianspur]

City haven't lost at home in the league for nearly 3 years. Go toe to toe?

Clueless

fcuk off...living up norf has turned you soft

A load of Ajax kids managed to get a CL point up there....we walked away with nada. Gutless

 

[NaijaSpurs]

When away from home against one of the best teams in the league and the reigning champions with some key players out injured and not in the best form ourselves I think going for a solid first approach where keeping the opponent at bay is a good idea.

I understand your reasoning however as it failed to keep them at bay and at the same time we failed to cause them problems in open play it just did not for me

 

[glorygloryeze]

if the players go into games with this attitude then we are in trouble in the long term. You are already setting yourself up for failure.

No going into games AWAY against the CURRENT LEAGUE CHAMPIONS in a solid way is what most teams who are not stupid would try and do. Only those who are actually challenging them at the time might feel able to do this. Hell, Manure last season didn't exactly storm them in their game near the end of the season,

I don't see how approaching the game in a solid fashion is automatically 'setting yourself up for failure'

 

[glorygloryeze]

fcuk off...living up norf has turned you soft

A load of Ajax kids managed to get a CL point up there....we walked away with nada. Gutless

You're comparing Tottenham Hotspur to Ajax champions of Holland? Who have played how many CL games? Who have how many CL trophies compared to us??

I think you might need to have a lie down...

 

[NaijaSpurs]

Well, people say that we could play Ade and Defoe together in a 4-4-2 away from home against a top team without getting overrun in midfield. How about some evidence for that?

I think the point of many people (me included) is that we played 5 in midfield and did get overrun so we might as well have gone with 2 strikers and caused them problems. And I am not saying this after the event I thought this before the match, especially after seeing Defoe looking lively on Thursday. Defoe seems to be our form striker so I would have played him alongside Ade

 

[braineclipse]

if the players go into games with this attitude then we are in trouble in the long term. You are already setting yourself up for failure.

A lot of successful and very good teams adjust their style/formation/team selection when up against better teams, especially away from home. Are they too setting themselves up for failure?

Playing Defoe and Ade would not have guaranteed a win but if we had lost and we had given it a go I would have felt much better this evening.

I think AVB should pick his team based on what he thinks gives us the best chance of getting the points, not based on what gives a warm fuzzy feeling in the evening.