Spurs v Stoke - Official match thread

[nelto]

 

[Daisuk]

Another dire performance. It's odd how we've managed to be so brick in-between a game in which we were quite good (against City). I can't seem to understand exactly why we're bricker, except it seems our players just aren't up for it. So it seems to be a case of missing motivation or something, which is very odd. We really have been playing a lot of incredibly poor games this season. Games where I fail to see what it is we are trying to do exactly (or where we fail horribly to do what it is I was expecting us to try to do under Poch). There just hasn't been much consistent progress in this respect this season. Why aren't we playing a consistent pressing game? Why are we so slow in our transitional game? Why are we so incredibly static while in possession? I just don't get it. I thought these were all areas we'd see improve massively this season - but there has been little progress. Why is that our players only seem to understand these ideas for certain games? I just can't comprehend it. I realize we have a squad of very young players, and that we are going to see a variety of performances, but the seemingly lack of motivation or guts or even will to try in so many games, it baffles me.

Disappointed to see another toilet of a game. And to me it does seem to be a case of motivation or a lack of team spirit. Why we suddenly have it in certain games is a mystery however ...

 

[Rorschach]

Could have picked up his injury after traveling and we didn't bring any youngsters to have on the bench because of youth games?

Could have been fit enough to be used as an impact player towards the end if we wanted to. But Pochettino might not have thought it worth the risk at 2-0 down with 10 men against Charlie Adam and Stoke?

I guess he could have been declared unfit just before the match, because I can't see any other reason why an unfit player is on the bench. Players carry knocks all the time but unless something is aggravated in the run up to the match there is little excuse to make a player travel knowing he can't play. Strange situtation if you ask me but I guess overall our fitness and injury record has improved remarkably under Poch so we can't moan too much.

 

[Rorschach]

Still annoyed....

Ha. This made me laugh out loud.

Sorry. Just catching up with this thread after the Age of Ultron (solid 7 I'd say..more than any Spurs player today incidentally)

 

[monkeybarry]

We have made a 21 million pound profit in the market over the last five seasons, and have the record largest ever profit by an English club as per our latest accounts -

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/29/premier-league-finances-club-by-club



http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/nov/13/tottenham-eric-dier-withdraws-england-under-21s

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/410067/Tottenham-Eric-Dier-centre-back

No. He wanted to be a centre-back. He disliked playing as a full-back. Gareth Southgate agreed with him, and implicitly told Poch to stop using him as a full-back. I cannot believe that he would have agreed to be the long-term Portugal RB when he didn't even want to be the temporary RB for the England Under-21s. He cannot develop if he explicitly decides to train his CB attributes while being pushed out to the RB slot.

He wasn't RB cover. Yedlin, however, was bought as RB cover, with our only real reserve RB sold on the presumption that Yedlin would play. Yedlin has played some eight minutes, and we have suffered as a result of selling our only reserve RB with no one to cover for that spot (given Poch evidently distrusts Yedlin's ability to an extreme degree). This was horrible, horrible transfer strategy. Don't try and paint it as 'youth development', or anything other than a deliberate decision to trade squad strength for a bigger profit that won't be reinvested- this was Levy taking the quick buck and letting the team suffer for it. And while I respect your wish not to discuss this further, I can only point out that it is that behaviour that displays warning signs about our immediate future under our chairman.

Yedlin will be RB competition next season after we give him time to settle

But it is very common for young CBs to start as RB cover - pretty sure LEDs and Judas cut their teeth there and only got CB chances due to injury.
Diet has played a decent amount at CB for this season. Although I do want him there more regule next season. Certainly should be CB ahead of chiriches

 

[DubaiSpur]

as much as we can afford I said, not as much as is available, I could go and blow my bank balance on booze and hookers right now but then I wouldn't be able to make the rent next week

Odd way to describe new signings.

and...

what else do you expect from ENIC, they are a business who buy others and sell them for a profit

to make that profit they need the business to be succesful, our interests are parallel

Only up to a point, gale. Our interests are parallel as long as the club doesn't need that little financial push to jump into the elite (January 2012, for instance) or ease a new manager's transition - at that point, our interests radically diverge. The club's interests are to achieve success and win trophies, which necessitates the financial injection/ risk-taking - ENIC's interests are preserving their own piles of money by any means necessary, which necessitates telling the club to f*ck off and instead sacking managers when their poor squads lead to bad performances that tinkle off the paying customers.

Never assume the club's interests and ENIC's are completely parallel - whenever the club aims for glory, ENIC will 1000% shoot it down if it risks costing them even a cent. The club has a storied history of cups, titles, bold proclamations of aiming for glory, and finishing above bloody Arsenal - ENIC have won us one League Cup in 2008, in an otherwise barren 15-year spell in full control of THFC. However, ENIC themselves will mint sky-high profits without investing much (if anything) in the club, riding on the wave of the ever expanding TV deals to keep us floating around the top six/eight and making some at most adequate decisions to use the club's own money in a considered manner. What is that but divergent interests? ENIC don't need us to be successful, they need us to be self-sufficient. That's all, and that's where the contest lies. A contest that will hopefully end with the new stadium and them gleefully selling up to someone more prepared to put their financial and personal interests into the football club they own.

Yedlin will be RB competition next season after we give him time to settle

But it is very common for young CBs to start as RB cover - pretty sure LEDs and Judas cut their teeth there and only got CB chances due to injury.
Diet has played a decent amount at CB for this season. Although I do want him there more regule next season. Certainly should be CB ahead of chiriches

Again, Dier himself does not want to do that - he has mentioned quite a few times that he doesn't even want to be considered a filler RB unless there's a real need (which is why he withdrew from the Under-21s). We are doing him no favors by making him play there while he actually trains for a different role.

And as for Yedlin, the consensus seems to be that he's a 'Bongani/Mabizela' type marketing signing. I don't know if he'll even be at the club next season - he could very conceivably go out on loan, and be replaced by, say, Ryan Fredericks, without much net loss/gain, imo. But that doesn't answer the question of why we signed him as RB cover if we had no intention of playing him when the main RB is unavailable - clearly, it wasn't for 'youth development' purposes, as he never gets a goddamn game.

 

[Baleforce]

Odd way to describe new signings.




Only up to a point, gale. Our interests are parallel as long as the club doesn't need that little financial push to jump into the elite (January 2012, for instance) or ease a new manager's transition - at that point, our interests radically diverge. The club's interests are to achieve success and win trophies, which necessitates the financial injection/ risk-taking - ENIC's interests are preserving their own piles of money by any means necessary, which necessitates telling the club to f*ck off and instead sacking managers when their poor squads lead to bad performances that tinkle off the paying customers.

Never assume the club's interests and ENIC's are completely parallel - whenever the club aims for glory, ENIC will 1000% shoot it down if it risks costing them even a cent. The club has a storied history of cups, titles, bold proclamations of aiming for glory, and finishing above bloody Arsenal - ENIC have won us one League Cup in 2008, in an otherwise barren 15-year spell in full control of THFC. However, ENIC themselves will mint sky-high profits without investing much (if anything) in the club, riding on the wave of the ever expanding TV deals to keep us floating around the top six/eight and making some at most adequate decisions to use the club's own money in a considered manner. What is that but divergent interests? ENIC don't need us to be successful, they need us to be self-sufficient. That's all, and that's where the contest lies. A contest that will hopefully end with the new stadium and them gleefully selling up to someone more prepared to put their financial and personal interests into the football club they own.



Again, Dier himself does not want to do that - he has mentioned quite a few times that he doesn't even want to be considered a filler RB unless there's a real need (which is why he withdrew from the Under-21s). We are doing him no favors by making him play there while he actually trains for a different role.

And as for Yedlin, the consensus seems to be that he's a 'Bongani/Mabizela' type marketing signing. I don't know if he'll even be at the club next season - he could very conceivably go out on loan, and be replaced by, say, Ryan Fredericks, without much net loss/gain, imo. But that doesn't answer the question of why we signed him as RB cover if we had no intention of playing him when the main RB is unavailable - clearly, it wasn't for 'youth development' purposes, as he never gets a goddamn game.

well some of them appear to be drunk or syphilltic on occassion

 

[elltrev]

Odd way to describe new signings.




Only up to a point, gale. Our interests are parallel as long as the club doesn't need that little financial push to jump into the elite (January 2012, for instance) or ease a new manager's transition - at that point, our interests radically diverge. The club's interests are to achieve success and win trophies, which necessitates the financial injection/ risk-taking - ENIC's interests are preserving their own piles of money by any means necessary, which necessitates telling the club to f*ck off and instead sacking managers when their poor squads lead to bad performances that tinkle off the paying customers.

Never assume the club's interests and ENIC's are completely parallel - whenever the club aims for glory, ENIC will 1000% shoot it down if it risks costing them even a cent. The club has a storied history of cups, titles, bold proclamations of aiming for glory, and finishing above bloody Arsenal - ENIC have won us one League Cup in 2008, in an otherwise barren 15-year spell in full control of THFC. However, ENIC themselves will mint sky-high profits without investing much (if anything) in the club, riding on the wave of the ever expanding TV deals to keep us floating around the top six/eight and making some at most adequate decisions to use the club's own money in a considered manner. What is that but divergent interests? ENIC don't need us to be successful, they need us to be self-sufficient. That's all, and that's where the contest lies. A contest that will hopefully end with the new stadium and them gleefully selling up to someone more prepared to put their financial and personal interests into the football club they own.



Again, Dier himself does not want to do that - he has mentioned quite a few times that he doesn't even want to be considered a filler RB unless there's a real need (which is why he withdrew from the Under-21s). We are doing him no favors by making him play there while he actually trains for a different role.

And as for Yedlin, the consensus seems to be that he's a 'Bongani/Mabizela' type marketing signing. I don't know if he'll even be at the club next season - he could very conceivably go out on loan, and be replaced by, say, Ryan Fredericks, without much net loss/gain, imo. But that doesn't answer the question of why we signed him as RB cover if we had no intention of playing him when the main RB is unavailable - clearly, it wasn't for 'youth development' purposes, as he never gets a goddamn game.

It's an interesting debate. But in your paradigm surely jumping into the elite would massively benefit ENIC (as doing so provides the biggest jump in revenue a football club can get). Given how close we came to doing that between 2010 and 2012, why do you think ENIC would have purposefully limited net spend on players during that period? An oversight on their part, thinking that we were going to achieve it without needing to spend more? Just being risk-averse, and focusing on building the stadium instead?

 

[mudshark]

Buying players fit for the CL would be guaranteed not only to be expensive initially, but to increase wage costs right across the board. On the other hand, there'd be absolutely no guarantee of finishing in one of the two CL spots still available for competition as a result. What would a computer program designed to maximize Joe Lewis's return on his investment do?

 

[mudshark]

I guess he could have been declared unfit just before the match, because I can't see any other reason why an unfit player is on the bench. Players carry knocks all the time but unless something is aggravated in the run up to the match there is little excuse to make a player travel knowing he can't play. Strange situtation if you ask me but I guess overall our fitness and injury record has improved remarkably under Poch so we can't moan too much.

Perhaps there's been a serious offer in. I'd imagine he'd be one of only a handful of our players likely to achieve a fee that would meet with approval as matters stand.

 

[Spurs7891]

Very disappointed with the performance and result but not at all surprised ! We are in such a shyte form that any team can beat us now. All the players no longer seems motivated for the remaining matches of this season. So, it is hardly surprising that we got humiliated by a shyte team like Stoke. It is really unacceptable to lose home and away to Stoke in the same season for the first time in our history. This was also our worst defeat to Stoke in 80 years ! After the early promises, Pochettino no longer looks like improving the team. In fact, it feels like the players are no longer playing to his instructions.

There are more doubts about Pochettino's abilities as manager now. All our key players seems to be badly off form now. Kane no longer looks like Ronaldo and Messi rolled into one. He looks more like the Rasiak type now. Not sure what happened to him since playing for England. Is he going to be Paul Robinson Mark 2 ? Remember how England destroyed the career of Robinson ? Kane has now scored only once in 6 matches since the England debut. Importantly, he no longer as influential in matches as before. He hardly had any impact against Stoke. Eriksen too had another poor game but did improve in the 2nd half. But disappointingly, Eriksen wasted a good chance to score from the freekick in the 2nd half. With Chadli also being poor, it is not surprising that we hardly looked like scoring a goal.

Midfield is where Pochettino has failed badly this season. He seems incapable of dropping the useless partnership of Mason-Bentaleb in midfield. It is really annoying to see us playing the same soft and error-prone midfield despite getting outplayed all the time. We should have given chance to Dembele-Stambouli partnership more. We got duly outplayed by the Stoke midfield and were lucky not to concede more. Lamela had a decent game by creating a few goal scoring chances. But other than that, he hardly had much impact.

Our defence have really gone bad under Pochettino. We could have saved all the 3 goals. Vertonghen was at fault for their first goal as his wild header created the chance but Dier should have been quick to cover the Stoke player. Dier was at blame for their second goal as he mistakenly blocked Lloris from collecting the cross which enabled the Stoke player to score unchallenged. Lloris should have done better for their 3rd goal as she should not have been beaten from that angle. Chiriches was really stupid to get the 2nd yellow card to get send off. He should have known better being already on yellow card. Our defence are so error-prone that not sure how Pochettino is going to improve our defending if he is still the manager next season.

We are now officially out of the top 4 race as we cannot catch ManU now. It is annoying how we threw away all the chances we had to finish in top 4. Now not very sure Pochettino can bring us to the next level.

 

[Daisuk]

I find it difficult to fault Kane for his performance yesterday, we barely managed to get the ball to our midfield men, who did nothing with it for the entire game. Not exactly the type of game where you want to be a lone striker.

 

[paxtonwolf]

Ha. This made me laugh out loud.

Sorry. Just catching up with this thread after the Age of Ultron (solid 7 I'd say..more than any Spurs player today incidentally)

I've calmed down now, but it took a while. Waste of a good seat on Row 1. It was that bad, the highlights of the day were the pitch invader at the start of the 2nd half, and the moment after a load of young schoolkids started singing we were sh#t and the Yid army replied with 'He's coming for you, he's coming for you. Arsene Wenger he's coming for you'

 

[indianspur]

Very pedestrian today, but it is clear that Poch is making sure summer business is done fast. Some of those players know they won't be regulars (or even here) next season and it shows. Regarding our lack of pace, without Rose and Walker it simply disappears. I think half the squad is in the manager's last chance saloon, and frankly, it won't be enough to aave half of them! Thought Clattenberg was crap!!!!! Poor decision re: red card.

i never thought id see my beloved Spurs rely so heavily on two full backs for all our attacking play..............sigh

 

[mephitis]

I've calmed down now, but it took a while. Waste of a good seat on Row 1. It was that bad, the highlights of the day were the pitch invader at the start of the 2nd half, and the moment after a load of young schoolkids started singing we were sh#t and the Yid army replied with 'He's coming for you, he's coming for you. Arsene Wenger he's coming for you'

Travelled from Leeds. M62 closed. Listened to the whole of Everton V Sunderland in a traffic jam (The Woodhead Pass is genuinely English scenery at its most spectacular but not when you're trying to get to the match). Listened to the first half on the M6. Arrived at the arse end of half-time (free parking was a plus). Queued for a beer (by that I mean stood next to a guy who was being served by a woman who spent 5 minutes flirting with him) only to be told by the "Lady" who was serving that they were now closed! Joined the queue for a hot chocolate, they turned the lights out (and what's with all those grills have we gone back to the 80s?). Asked the guy on the now closed doors if I can nip out to the burger van outside and get a coffee, "You can but you can't come back in". "you've got to be joking I've only been here 10 fecking minutes!!!!!!". To be fair to the guy he got the girl behind the counter to get me a hot chocolate. Got onto the terracing to watch Chiriches disappearing down the tunnel to be boos from our supporters!?!?!? Watched precisely 35 minutes of the match.

Currently tinkled of with the team, tinkled off with the scummy brick hole that is Stoke (seriously considering never going there again, it's not often the most welcoming people in the place are the coppers :-/) but mainly tinkled off with our own fans who seem to have forgotten the meaning of the word support.

 

[Maltese Falcon]

Travelled from Leeds. M62 closed. Listened to the whole of Everton V Sunderland in a traffic jam (The Woodhead Pass is genuinely English scenery at its most spectacular but not when you're trying to get to the match). Listened to the first half on the M6. Arrived at the arse end of half-time (free parking was a plus). Queued for a beer (by that I mean stood next to a guy who was being served by a woman who spent 5 minutes flirting with him) only to be told by the "Lady" who was serving that they were now closed! Joined the queue for a hot chocolate, they turned the lights out (and what's with all those grills have we gone back to the 80s?). Asked the guy on the now closed doors if I can nip out to the burger van outside and get a coffee, "You can but you can't come back in". "you've got to be joking I've only been here 10 fecking minutes!!!!!!". To be fair to the guy he got the girl behind the counter to get me a hot chocolate. Got onto the terracing to watch Chiriches disappearing down the tunnel to be boos from our supporters!?!?!? Watched precisely 35 minutes of the match.

Currently tinkleed of with the team, tinkleed off with the scummy crud hole that is Stoke (seriously considering never going there again, it's not often the most welcoming people in the place are the coppers :-/) but mainly tinkleed off with our own fans who seem to have forgotten the meaning of the word support.

Feel for you mate. People like you don't deserve to get the crap the team served up yesterday!

 

[braineclipse]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/nov/13/tottenham-eric-dier-withdraws-england-under-21s

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/410067/Tottenham-Eric-Dier-centre-back

No. He wanted to be a centre-back. He disliked playing as a full-back. Gareth Southgate agreed with him, and implicitly told Poch to stop using him as a full-back. I cannot believe that he would have agreed to be the long-term Portugal RB when he didn't even want to be the temporary RB for the England Under-21s. He cannot develop if he explicitly decides to train his CB attributes while being pushed out to the RB slot.

He wasn't RB cover. Yedlin, however, was bought as RB cover, with our only real reserve RB sold on the presumption that Yedlin would play. Yedlin has played some eight minutes, and we have suffered as a result of selling our only reserve RB with no one to cover for that spot (given Poch evidently distrusts Yedlin's ability to an extreme degree). This was horrible, horrible transfer strategy. Don't try and paint it as 'youth development', or anything other than a deliberate decision to trade squad strength for a bigger profit that won't be reinvested- this was Levy taking the quick buck and letting the team suffer for it. And while I respect your wish not to discuss this further, I can only point out that it is that behaviour that displays warning signs about our immediate future under our chairman.

He pulled out of the U21 squad for the chance to train and possibly get games for our first team. I wish that was much more common, the international u21 teams should be focused on helping the clubs develop players instead of on winning games.

He has been RB cover. He's started 15 league games there this season, that makes him RB cover. He was even preferred to Naughton as RB cover early on in the season.

Mate, I get that you always like to be ultra postive and patient, but a limp 3-0 defeat to Stoke is as bad as gets this season. I seem to remember you said something similar when we drew to Burnley. Point taken, the criticism can go too far, but I think people have a right to expect a little bit more than what we have seen over the past few weeks, it's not an aberration.

Then we agree.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Travelled from Leeds. M62 closed. Listened to the whole of Everton V Sunderland in a traffic jam (The Woodhead Pass is genuinely English scenery at its most spectacular but not when you're trying to get to the match). Listened to the first half on the M6. Arrived at the arse end of half-time (free parking was a plus). Queued for a beer (by that I mean stood next to a guy who was being served by a woman who spent 5 minutes flirting with him) only to be told by the "Lady" who was serving that they were now closed! Joined the queue for a hot chocolate, they turned the lights out (and what's with all those grills have we gone back to the 80s?). Asked the guy on the now closed doors if I can nip out to the burger van outside and get a coffee, "You can but you can't come back in". "you've got to be joking I've only been here 10 fecking minutes!!!!!!". To be fair to the guy he got the girl behind the counter to get me a hot chocolate. Got onto the terracing to watch Chiriches disappearing down the tunnel to be boos from our supporters!?!?!? Watched precisely 35 minutes of the match.

Currently tinkleed of with the team, tinkleed off with the scummy crud hole that is Stoke (seriously considering never going there again, it's not often the most welcoming people in the place are the coppers :-/) but mainly tinkleed off with our own fans who seem to have forgotten the meaning of the word support.

Mate - you had an absolute touch there.... You were lucky enough to sit in your comfortable car and manage to avoid 55 minutes of what was an absolutely dire performance. Unfortunately I was not nearly as lucky and had to sit through the whole lot.

Is there anyone on here who actually goes home and away that thinks we have gone forward since the latter half of last season? We are probably the easiest team to play against in the league. All our opponent has to do is pack the middle defensively and then use a long diagonal out ball to get on the attack.

On another note - Nacer Chadli.... His name was announced as playing for us before the match but I didn't actually see him - did he injure himself in the warm up or something? It was an absolutely brilliant impersonation of the invisible man that he gave on Saturday.

 

[a spur from swansea]

Mate - you had an absolute touch there.... You were lucky enough to sit in your comfortable car and manage to avoid 55 minutes of what was an absolutely dire performance. Unfortunately I was not nearly as lucky and had to sit through the whole lot.

Is there anyone on here who actually goes home and away that thinks we have gone forward since the latter half of last season? We are probably the easiest team to play against in the league. All our opponent has to do is pack the middle defensively and then use a long diagonal out ball to get on the attack.

On another note - Nacer Chadli.... His name was announced as playing for us before the match but I didn't actually see him - did he injure himself in the warm up or something? It was an absolutely brilliant impersonation of the invisible man that he gave on Saturday.

He headed the ball on for Diuof for him to cross the ball....the sunday mirror stats says Lloris ran more than him,lol.

 

[a spur from swansea]

Wasn't it a couple of years ago when 'Arry was in charge we went up to Liverpool in similar circumstances where our season was coming to the end and we won 2-1 after being one nil down.....seems like last century that level of performance now..