OMT - Spurs v Leicester

[Bullet]

Mourinho has since said this:

"I knew that for them to play with this back five is not a very comfortable situation. It's easy to analyse that to play without Ricardo Pereira, Caglar Soyuncu and Ben Chilwell destroys a backline. So we decided to take away from them where they can hurt us, which is basically behind us. We took away from them our defensive depth by making our defensive block a little bit lower than we normally do. Then we gave the ball to them, to their back three because we wanted them to bring the ball and we wanted them to feel quite comfortable leaving their comfort zone, which is where they are not playing many matches. Bennett and Morgan, we wanted to take them away from their comfort zone to try to explore the counter-attack and fast transitions. So when we scored three goals in the first half, I think the game is over."

So he deliberately chose to remove the chance for Vardy to run into space behind our defence and deliberately allowed them to keep the ball with their players who had played fewer games and were also more likely to be exploited as they advanced up the pitch.
Not a tactical plan to be deployed every game, but reassuringly situational.

Yes, this is typical Mourinho.
It works so well to let a team have the ball, suck them in, entice them out a bit, THEN pounce.
Rather than keep headbutting the brick wall over and over and over i.e. dribble into 4 defenders centrally, or swing crosses onto the head of the big centre backs over and over and over like previous managers have done.

 

[Spur of the moment]

Yes, this is typical Mourinho.
It works so well to let a team have the ball, suck them in, entice them out a bit, THEN pounce.
Rather than keep headbutting the brick wall over and over and over i.e. dribble into 4 defenders centrally, or swing crosses onto the head of the big centre backs over and over and over like previous managers have done.

Indeed. The same way that Brian Clough suckered opponents on thhe way to big trophies in the late 70s, and the same way Leicester gatecrashed the PL title a few years back - aided in their case by an overdose of cynical thuggery of course.

 

[Spurs7891]

Good to get this comfortable win. Thought Leicester would give us trouble but they went down tamely. But we cannot get carried away as Leicester are poor away, being winless in their last 8 away matches. We started well and deserved to score 3 goals in the first half. But we got complacent in the second half and failed to score. Credit to Son for forcing the own goal and Kane for his 2 goals but too bad Kane couldn't score more in the second half. Let's hope Kane will score more against Palace next.