Spurs fans still getting moist at the memory of a coach who started 2 DM's at home to Norwich with a single isolated poacher up front; but going mental when another coach plays away with no DM's, 2 strikers, has 20 attempts on goal, missing at least 4 sitters and a penalty while at the same time managing 68% possession and 3 goals from open play.
You'd think this was a Palace or Stoke forum ffs.
You can play well and lose, play badly and win, and many combinations in between. The black/white analsyis of today's game - "Duh, we conceded 3 against relegation fodder therefore we're sh1t" - is pretty lame. There's important things to look at today and unimportant things.
Important
1. What was the one problem everyone agreed on at the start of the season? No matter your opinions on Harry or AVB or Levy or Sherwood or 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1, we all agreed on it.
Answer: That LB was a big problem. That was how we started the season, and that, fittingly, is what has ended our season today. We've coughed up the difference between CL and no CL because of that one position IMO, and everyone saw it coming. We walked right into it.
I don't need exotic theories about the competence or otherwise of coaches to explain where we fell short this season when Levy, Baldini, AVB, Sherwood and every poster on this board knew the problem 8 months ago. And here we are tearing the coach to pieces and asking why the sky is falling in. Not having a Plan B when Coantrao fell through is probably the crux of it.
2. West Brom had 6 shots all day, 5 on target, and they scored 3. Some people are saying they flew at us in attack...eh, the stats say they didn't. Or, if they did, we snuffed them out pretty handily. They just lucked onto an 83% strike accuracy rate today probably for the first time this century. Another freakish set of stats in this freakish season of stuff like this happening.
3. I saw someone say earlier: "Our shape was awful, we left huge spaces all over the pitch".
Eh, so what? Who cares? Apart from their 3 goals, they had 3 shots all game! So why the hell would we care about leaving empty spaces against a shower of sh1te that can't use space? People want us wasting players filling holes where there's no danger?
The correct tactical game was to attack SCBC, Sunderland and West Brom and assume we have trace defensive competence to win out. Mssrs. Rose, Kaboul and Chiriches meant we missed out on 3/3 today.
4. It is abundantly clear that the players have been instructed to play 1-touch pass and move. You could see that against SCBC and Sunderland and you could see it throughout the match today. In the end, this tactic produced 3 goals from open play against a team parking the bus. Of our 20 shots in total, 10 of those were inside the area (in other words, not speculative Hail Mary shots, but decent chances):
http://www.fourfourtwo.com/statszon...9/team-stats/6/0_SHOT_055#tabs-wrapper-anchor.
Our second half was really excellent, with fast passing, movement, mixing up short balls and long balls, channel balls, crosses, wingers coming inside and pretty triangles all around the D. On my commentary Trevor Francis kept having to change his mind about where Chdali, Eriksen, Kane and Lennon were playing because they were so fluid. There are real signs of progress and coherence in our attacking play here.
5. Starting so badly. This is huge, huge, huge. I don't understand the problem, but it looks like some kind of mental preparation issue. So weird and needs sorting. Games against Liverpool and West Brom totally distorted and bent out of shape by this same mistake. Again, we'd be CL if games started in the 15th minute. Huge.
Unimportant Stuff
1. What screwed it up today?
Two nothing, nonsense crosses from the right that 99/100 come to nothing. Against us though, they score 2 goals from them inside 2 minutes because we are cursed and our LB is a liability.
But most of the time those crosses don't lead to goals. Wasn't someone on here just last week mocking the crossing game because it's so ineffective? Well, exactly. They lucked out big time.
Most of the time, on the first goal, our LB clears, or their winger botches the cross, or Hugo catches/clears the ball, or the rebound goes to a defender who clears it, or it goes to the striker who misses or miscontrols or has his shot blocked/saved.
All those things went wrong there (cross ref with Liverpool's first, which was the exact same.) Ditto the second goal: all the same things, except at the end you can add Brunt hitting his best goal in years.
Statistically, the goals today should not have happened. They are meaningless, assuming you have a LB who can defend (and we all agree we don't have that) and 2 CB's who can head the ball clear (again, a shaky proposition with Vlad and Kaboul today, but generally true of Top 5 defenders).
Unless your specific concern about your team is "ZOMG don't under any circumstances let their winger have the ball in our LB position" and see that as the root of all evil, it's really silly to despair just because we let in two goals from that position.
....
In my opinion van Gaal is the only coach who should block Sherwood getting a shot next season. LvG is uniquely special and too good to turn down. But everyone else is a punt, and no better or worse a punt than Sherwood. If we appoint someone like Prandelli or Pochittino ahead of him that would be a mistake.
