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What happened after the Arsenal win?

Raziel said:
If you want something other than a snide answer

- How many of those 13 did we have Reguilon & Aurier available for?
- How many did we use Winks/Sissoko alongside PEH & Ndombele (vs. Lamela/Lo Celso)
- How many were Lo Celso available for?

Spurs at it's best for the last 6 years probably is build around
- Two FBS that can attack
- A decent sitting midfielder
- A CM that can push forward

This side without Reguilon/Aurier is like Poch's team without Walker/Rose, can work occasionally but nowhere near the threat.

Add in how much Winks/Sissoko kill the tempo of the game, it's not that hard to understand if you don't have the above two and you play either of these two, we struggle.
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Reguilon was available for 7 of those games - picked up injury Jan 26
Aurier was available for 10 of those games - picked up injury Feb 7
Lo Celso was available for 2 of those games - picked up injury Dec 20
 
Bedfordspurs said:
West Ham play it
So do Everton
Both have got very high conversion rates too currently despite having inferior attacking players
What they also do is keep clean sheets and make minimal errors
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We have a better defensive record than both. Considerably better than Everton in fact.
 
Son and Kane we scoring/assisting at numbers that are unsustainable.

The manager tried make us harder to beat as it doesn't how many we score when the opposition will score just as many, and at the same time teams attacked us and realised we can't defend.

We realised we can't defend and got more and more cautious. The last few games where we've played better but go no results highlight the issue we have of trying to play on the front foot, one cleared punt the opposition is likely to result in a goal scoring chance.

Having only 1 forward passing fit midfielder in a squad of 22+ players.
 
Bedfordspurs said:
Currently but that’s skewed by the way we were playing, not how we are now

Now we’re playing the more attacking way the defensive record has dropped off a cliff
And
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If my calculations are correct, since Arsenal, we've conceded 18 in 13 which is 1.38 goals per game.
West Ham have conceded 29 in 25 which is 1.16 goals a game.
Everton have conceded 33 in 24 which is 1.38 goals per game.

So our defensive record in the time when we've collapsed is the same as Everton's this season and they've streaked away from us over the last two months. West Ham, over the course of a season, would conceded one goal less than us every 5 games based on the above.

The difference between us and them isn't about mistakes and clean sheets. Since Arsenal, we've scored 14 goals in 13 games or 1.07 goals per game.
Everton have scored 37 in 24 this season or 1.55 goals per game.
West Ham have scored 39 goals in 25 games or 1.56 goals per game.

That's around a goal every second game more they're scoring than us.

We have Kane, Son, Bale, Moura, Bergwijn, Lamela, Vinicius and Alli. While there are some misfits in there, I'd rather our attackers than the best that West Ham and Everton have to offer.
 
DeanoAustin said:
If my calculations are correct, since Arsenal, we've conceded 18 in 13 which is 1.38 goals per game.
West Ham have conceded 29 in 25 which is 1.16 goals a game.
Everton have conceded 33 in 24 which is 1.38 goals per game.

So our defensive record in the time when we've collapsed is the same as Everton's this season and they've streaked away from us over the last two months. West Ham, over the course of a season, would conceded one goal less than us every 5 games based on the above.

The difference between us and them isn't about mistakes and clean sheets. Since Arsenal, we've scored 14 goals in 13 games or 1.07 goals per game.
Everton have scored 37 in 24 this season or 1.55 goals per game.
West Ham have scored 39 goals in 25 games or 1.56 goals per game.

That's around a goal every second game more they're scoring than us.

We have Kane, Son, Bale, Moura, Bergwijn, Lamela, Vinicius and Alli. While there are some misfits in there, I'd rather our attackers than the best that West Ham and Everton have to offer.
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Yeah
All or that may be correct but I was referring to the issue being we can’t defend since we started attacking. They (wet spam and Everton) play counter attacking and get results. It’s the unsustainable way people referred too
And IMO we literally only moved away from the counter attacking system when we played Sheffield United and went 3-4-3 which has changed again. Before that we were playing the low block and struggling to score
So to get the team scoring we have gone more attacking but that’s exposed the defence for the bag of brick it is
 
i don't remember counter attacking as a style of play being called unsustainable.

In fact it seemed widely agreed that it was the correct way to play in certain situations and a good plan B - what was said to be unsustainable was that we didn't seem to have a plan A for the types of games that we would play the majority of the time where our opponents would be happy for us to have the lions share of the ball.
 
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Personally I think that getting 3 clean sheets and 7 points from 9 against City, Chelsea and Arsenal gave a false impression of us as a team. It was an exceptional trio of matches, in which we only got those results because of our superb finishing, and our opponents' poor finishing. But I think unfortunately it reinforced Mourinho' belief that we could continue to win games in that style - by being ultra clinical going forward, and/or ultra effective at defending deep to maintain our lead. And so in the matches since we've tried to play that way more frequently than we previously did, starting with the next four matches against Palace, Liverpool, Leicester and Wolves.

But in those four matches and since then:

- We haven't been as lucky with opponents' poor finishing.
- Our defending has reverted to type, because our defenders aren't actually very good. And the mistakes have got increasingly worse, presumably a) because they're cracking under the pressure of being relied on when they've recently been poor and don't have years of good performances to fall back on (psychologically), and b) because of the instability of our defensive lineup changing every match.
- Our finishing has regressed to the mean, because as good as Kane and Son are, they couldn't keep that insane level up across a whole season.
- Other teams have got wise to the Kane and Son partnership, which was so effective in the first third of the season.
- Presumably due to Mourinho increasingly focusing his coaching on defending and playing on the counter, and the point above, we've generally looked pretty clueless in possession.
- We lost Kane to injury when we'd just picked up 7 points from 9 again (vs Leeds, Fulham and Sheff Utd), which I think hurt our momentum (because we then looked even more clueless in possession without him).

It's always tough to turn around a period of poor form. But I think Mourinho needs to stick to a first choice CB pairing (Toby alongside Tanganga/Rodon IMO), continue to play more on the front foot (as we have done recently), and be pragmatic in doing whatever it takes to try and get the best out of Dele and (particularly) Bale - and I'm sure results will turn in our favour.
 
Finney Is Back said:
Other teams caught up with our higher level of fitness that our extra early Europa games gave us?
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I think that's definitely one factor (although, obviously, not the only one). Running after the ball and/or covering space is physically demanding. Our pre-season was very short, bordering on non-existant. My guess is, we reached our peak earlier than most teams, grabbed some great results along the way and now, we're experiencing a drastic dip in form. We played a lot of games and we hardly ever rested or top performers.

Tired players make more mistakes and we're making a lot of mistakes at the moment, at both ends of the pitch.

To his credit, Mourinho has been trying to tweak the team in response to some dire performances but with empty stadium, there isn't much to spur the players on, assuming they have the mentality to dig deep when things go against them (which remains to be seen). It's difficult to say whether the many changes he made, particularly in defense, are having a negative effect. Results suggest that's the case but not doing anything wouldn't be acceptable either...
 
Bishop said:
I remember this was discussed at the time. It was an incredibly one dimensional form of attack. Some of were saying it was worryingly easy to compensate and that's exactly what teams did.

I said at the time for me the counter attacking system can work but you need to be making more than 2 serious attacks a game because at that point we were relying genuinely world class creation from Kane and world class finishing from Son. That was not sustainable because there was nothing around then to support it.

I often mention Jose's Real Madrid side because I see them as a template for what he has tried to create here but in comparison they rampaged as a team across the pitch at least a good 5 or 6 times per match. So you always knew even if they missed chances or a pass for blocked the system had a variety of avenues of implementation with Spurs it's just been ball in Kane on the half turn then he's passes into space for Son to run unto. It's really not that difficult a tactic to block.

What has happened subsequently is Jose has no plan for an alternative. You can see it with yesterday where we end up just throwing more attackers on the pitch with the hope of overloading West Ham but no real plan.
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I agree with all your points save one. Yesterday against Wet Spam the vague plan was to throw more attacking players on the pitch and give Bale somewhat of a free role. And while I hate Jose, the plan would have worked if Lady Luck had smiled on us.
 
90291Spur said:
We make SO many errors that lead to goals.
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Got it in one, there are some reasons in this thread for the turn around but mistakes from our players are one of the main reasons. I know they are some who want to place ALL the blame on Jose but another reason is those mistakes by some of the same players who stunk the place out when Poch was here.

They started off playing better as first but are again showing that they are as bad as they were for Poch. We really do need to cut some of them lose.
 
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