thfcsteff
Garth Crooks
I think this is a fantastic point and reminder. Well said!
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The Limp Struggle to Sneak into the top 4 2021/22
- Thread starter Jordinho
- Start date
I think this is a fantastic point and reminder. Well said!
Spur of the moment
Frederic Kanoute
Poch said he fumed all summer about that one. It's why we won our last two away games the following season 6-1 and 7-1.- I remember that game too well - utter disaster
Shows the power and role of motivation in getting a performance.
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
Very good post. Definitely agree. A lot can still happen. If they win their last two there's nothing more we can do, but let's at least put them to the test. We've seen much bigger upsets. We've seen teams be safe from relegation go out of their shell and play much better, we've seen teams crumble and put in awful performances with everything to play for.
One game at a time. Now for the NLD.
I think the likelihood of a draw being enough in the NLD is very small, tiny. Usually reserve my "must win" attitudes until it's truly must win, this feels like a must win.
ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
With a pragmatic head on CL will give us extra money. Even if we don't feel (although we might with a good transfer summer) we can be competitive in the CL next year, its important as a building block. And of course its a double whammy as it prevents Arsenal tapping into that money for another season.
EL is no disaster as the group game stage will help us with squad intergration and getting everyone up to speed (as we will still be in that phase post the summer). Contes attitude to it will be revealed in due course. Hopefully if we finish 5th Conte and Kane stay (i dont want a summer of gonads going on)
The emotional side is the harder to deal with. If it wasn't a race with them, i think the reconciling of the situation would be much easier and as above, pragmatic.
EL is no disaster as the group game stage will help us with squad intergration and getting everyone up to speed (as we will still be in that phase post the summer). Contes attitude to it will be revealed in due course. Hopefully if we finish 5th Conte and Kane stay (i dont want a summer of gonads going on)
The emotional side is the harder to deal with. If it wasn't a race with them, i think the reconciling of the situation would be much easier and as above, pragmatic.
mephitis
Niko Kranjcar
Champions League to expand from 32 to 36 teams from 2024 as Uefa approves changes
The number of teams in the Champions League will rise from 32 to 36 from the 2024-25 season under changes approved by Uefa.
Under the new format, each team will play eight games over 10 match weeks.
Two of the additional four places will be awarded on the basis of the highest performing countries in each individual season of Uefa club competition.
This has been changed from awarding those places based on a club's coefficient.
More to follow.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/61388244
Am I right in thinking this is not good for us?
The number of teams in the Champions League will rise from 32 to 36 from the 2024-25 season under changes approved by Uefa.
Under the new format, each team will play eight games over 10 match weeks.
Two of the additional four places will be awarded on the basis of the highest performing countries in each individual season of Uefa club competition.
This has been changed from awarding those places based on a club's coefficient.
More to follow.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/61388244
Am I right in thinking this is not good for us?
Bedfordspurs
Chris Waddle
?
We would get in this year in 5th as the English teams have done the best in Europe
No. If it was this season it would be an english and spanish team added. If we finish 5th we're in.
At the moment, because it goes back 5 years and we get a boost from english teams doing well. Who knows what it will be in 2024?
The new approach will also see two places determined by coefficient, but that of the country as a whole, and only over the past year. If the new rules were applied this season, the two extra places would go to clubs from England and the Netherlands.
The numbers are based on points obtained by all a country’s clubs in a given season in the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League.
In four of the past five seasons – and six of the past 10 – England would have got one of the places.
parklane1
Tony Galvin
Do not tell Dubai that.
spurspinter1
Pat van den Hauwe
Bringing Utd and “Lestah” of four years ago in to this debate...Really? Neither are related to the current situation mate
I know a number of factors come in to play, but the table will not lie come the end of it. You’ve been banging the drum about teams peaking at certain times for a while but you must know that come the end of it, the time a team accumulates points doesn’t mean brick apart from at the end when those points mean something.
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tommysvr
Vedran Corluka
We gave them a 3-month head start and 3 points in a pathetic performance at the Emirates under Nuno. We've done pretty well to get here, albeit if we don't get 4th we will lament Soton, Wolves, and Brighton at home as games we should have won.
El Guepardo
Rafael Van Der Vaart
I don’t think we should lament any specific matches if we miss out. We should look to improve as a team, to be better and to be so more often. You can say we lost against each of those sides, but equally we picked up a full six points against Emirates Marketing Project. So really it’s about improvement still needed and consistency.
Learn from those matches, of course, we should always be seeking to learn win, lose, or draw, there are always lessons to be learned. But we shouldn’t blame individual matches when it’s the collective results over the course of a full season that are what really matter.
spurspinter1
Pat van den Hauwe
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said outrightly but think @El Guepardo has put it in to better words than I could - That said the points @Bedfordspurs stated are still bewildering unimportant in the grand scheme of things (without intending any disrespect to his post / thoughts on the matter)
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
Spot on. This will not be easy at all, but all we can do is hope for this game and others to go our way.
Another spot on post. These games happen, just like the City games. At the end if we don't get top 4 we may have been unlucky, we may blame Nuno. But ultimately the only thing that can be done is improve, and improve to a point where a poor game or two doesn't make the difference between 4th and 5th.
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
The lesson from both of those are (imo) you need players all over the pitch and in the squad that fit together to a cohesive unit, that fit the style of play and system the manager wants.
There's room for a "can do a job" decent player in terms of overall quality as long as he's a very good fit in the team and system. There shouldn't be room for players that are good enough in terms of overall quality, but without being a good fit.
Obviously we should try to sign the best players possible that fit, a better player is a better player. But the consequences of having a player that isn't a good fit are very difficult to work around.
We have too many players in our squad that are good players, I'd argue that we don't have any players now that aren't good players in the right circumstances. But we have too many players that aren't a good fit with what Conte seemingly wants. Particularly in the squad.
Bedfordspurs
Chris Waddle
Of course
But they haven’t peaked
There limping over the line
Even the biggest goon fan would agree that the results they have had lately have been exceptionally in their nature because of how bad the opposition have been defensively
They played better at Southampton and lost than they have in their subsequent wins. Difference was Southampton did all the basics right
The arsenal team mentioned above is missing some of there best players who are out injured. They aren’t coming to us with a strong team
ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
Consistency is the key. Liverpool and City are the evidence of thar, and set the bar.
FatBloke
Niko Kranjcar
I started to write a post in agreement with that, but then I got thinking. Is it really? Or is it just a lazy cliché that all of us use?
I mean, the current Liverpool and Emirates Marketing Project teams have a very high bar. Let's say that their top-level performance is a 10. At that level, they're destroying most teams and, to be honest, capable of beating any team in world football. But sometimes they drop to 8. They'll still beat most teams but, against better opponents (or ones that have a particularly inspired day), they might drop points. Consistency for those two teams means hitting a 9 every week.
On that scale, I'm going to put Spurs at 8 on a decent week. We drop down to 7, sometimes 6 (Brighton, Burnley). Sometimes we hit a 9, and I feel that's our current ceiling. A few years ago it was clearly a 10 -- on form, we could (and did!) beat anyone.
So consistency for the current Spurs team is hitting that 8 (or better) every game. That cuts out most of the annoying defeats and probably gets us top 4, just. To become title challengers, we have to raise our ceiling too. Become an 8-10 team rather than a 6-9 one.
Of course, it's more complicated than that -- there are two teams on every pitch, and sometimes one just won't let the other play. At Anfield last week, were Spurs and Liverpool both at 8? Or 9, with us getting marked up for executing a gameplan and the Scousers matching it? Were we that bad against Brighton, or did they play well?
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