metalgear
Andy Thompson
denial and deflection - saw a lot of that in my grandpa when i was younger
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Welcome Ange: To Dare is to Didgeridoo
- Thread starter tommysvr
- Start date
Danishfurniturelover
the prettiest spice girl
I see it in a lot of people.
When you sit back and people watch you see it lots. Dont understand the mindset but see it in a lot of people.
Mrs Vert
Tim Sherwood
Well his Obi- Wan Jedi mind trick ain't working over here.
"Nothing to see here ... move along... move along."
I SEE ANGE. I SEE
Bullet
Chris Jones
Just bumping my post from 25Aug24 on page 188, where I was mentioning that we need to rotate the squad fully to avoid injuries.
thfcsteff
Tony Galvin
I am not sure what you're looking at. When I go back through the teams and subs from August 25th onwards (two games into the season) I see midfield swaps and subs and defensive swaps and subs in several games. Brentford, man U and Brighton were minimal sub games, and I think everyone agrees the second 45 at Brighton was pathetic from players to manager. Go back through the records; the facts don't really support what you're saying in my interpretation.
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tommysvr
Edgar Davids
Do you keep a scrapbook listing all of the times you were right on the internet?
thfcsteff
Tony Galvin
He actually isn't in this case (suppose it depends on things like context and details) but I agree with your point!
Muttley
Alan Hutton
I remember my post on those "minimal sub" games. Someone else proved my point with facts about Ange's reticence to make subs when we're in losing or drawing positions. The only time he only fully utilised his bench was those good wins. One root cause of that was the Odobert / Richi injuries but I still think he was still too cautious, even with Werner. Sonny isn't designed for that much football at this stage of his career. Ange's use of subs will be part of the fatigue equation.
Your point about the midfield was also why I was a little confused about the Skipp / Hojbjerg comment. I remember early season 1-2 midfields of Bents, Madds and Kulu as our most attacking option. Other days it was Sarr in the 2-1. Where Ange perhaps went wrong was not exploring the Biss-Bents combo with either Kulu or Madds ahead. I've seen plenty of midfield rotation especially with the emergence of Bergval.
Moving to the middle third of the season was when Gray had to step back into centre half. That removed him from full-back duties and a bunch of midfield sub cameos. That coincided with the Bentancur ban. That was the only time I felt the midfield was a little stretched. Ironically, so different from last season where it always seemed to be stretched. Biss malaris, Bents injuries etc.
When there's accusations of talking in hindsight being thrown around it's not surprising to see posters digging up old posts in response
thfcsteff
Tony Galvin
Against Everton Aug 24th (4-0) he made his first sub on72 mins.
Against Man U on Sept 29th (3-0) he made his first sub on 76 mins.
Against Brentford on Sept 21st (3-1) he made his first sub a little earlier on 63 mins.
Against West Ham on Oct 19th (4-1) he made his first sub on 70 mins.
Most of the subs after those first ones were in the last 10 mins.
I think if you want to beat him with a stick, you could point to these matches as times where he could've maybe subbed much earlier, especially as we were 2 up in (I think) all of them.
There are many factors, and yes, subs and injuries are a part of that (injuries far more for me).
Bissouma lost the manager's trust IMO. My point (well, in fairness it was a guess as to something I felt Ange might've been hinting at) was about having a battler you can trust in that rotation. FWIW I don't think PEH wanted to stay, but what cannot be denied is that for all his limitations, he was reliable and knew how to close a game out. Given how shaky both Biss and Bents have been, as well as injury stuff, I was wondering whether he was saying the summer business could've been a lttle smarter in terms of experience in the squad.
Yet we ended up having to overwork -and gamble- on Bergvall as our main man quite often. I am delighted with the progress but hope he does not have a 'rebound' year now, because he has got through an awful lot of football for such a young talent. And young players sometimes have a period of regression tied to their physical development. Look at Udogie, who it's fair to say has struggled compared to last season when he was breakout.
thfcsteff
Tony Galvin
Credit to Liew, this is a well-wrtitten, thoughtful and interesting piece.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/apr/03/premier-league-tottenham-ange-postecoglou-feature
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/apr/03/premier-league-tottenham-ange-postecoglou-feature
Grays_1890
Les Howe
Tone of his interviews have changed this week, I sense he knows he is on his way sooner or later
Muttley
Alan Hutton
Why do I want to beat him with a stick? Again your words mate, not mine.
The original conversation on here was about what Ange was thinking in his chosen words in the recent interview. Early season workload is surely at the heart of his comments right? Multiple root causes and I think subs are in that equation. I will caveat again that he couldn't have factored in the Odobert / Richi injuries happening so early in the season and for so long. That definitely impacted the way he may have used subs.
Current stats look like this (club and country)
Bents 2284 mins across 45 appearances
Biss 1820 across 38
Sarr 2189 across 48
Bergval 1785 across 41
Maddison 2149 across 40
Kulu 3473 across 52
I didn't include Gray as I'm not sure he's been in the engine room so much. Kulu's numbers show the impact of being Sweden's talisman.
Mostly though, the engine room distribution is quite evenly spread.
You might be right about Bergval but he's only actually completed 90 mins on 10 occasions which is about a quarter of this current season. 5 of those came in a cluster in the injury period, and as we came out of that period he has come down to normal levels again. I think he's doing OK actually but the rebound could be equally mental I guess. Gray might be the one to watch. He joined us after a 50 game season and has 2959 mins across 38 appearances. He's really been in the pressure cooker situations. I hope we find a squad full of these type of lads. Love em both.
Muttley
Alan Hutton
Could that be that the pressure valve has been relieved due to the international break? In normal times, those pressers were coming thick and fast against a set of results that weren't so favourable. That would have explained the change in tone perhaps?
tommysvr
Edgar Davids
No, pre-season workload:
Re: subs, here's what I shared with you latest time. Various reports you can run: https://thfcdb.com/people/ange-postecoglou/reports
Here you can see all of the subs he's made by match: https://thfcdb.com/people/ange-postecoglou/matches?selectedView=subs
Muttley
Alan Hutton
Thanks for that.
Perhaps I'm still not getting it on the pre-season thing. We had a 9 day gap between our last pre-season (BM) and the Monday night Leicester PL game. We had 6 pre-season games of which 3 were in the far east. It all felt quite normal to me from a games perspective especially based on the minutes per player load. Subs everywhere from what I remember and provisions made for the players in the Euro's. Do you think Ange is therefore talking about the intensity of training from Jul 1st through to that season opener on 19 Aug? Was it that part of the 7 weeks preparation that took its toll?
tommysvr
Edgar Davids
I mentioned in that other thread that I think it's the post-season trip to Perth ("they don't get a traditional break") and then an extended tour of Asia. 3 games out there, on the back of 1 in Perth, is a lot for a tour. Plus the heat. I was in Tokyo and Seoul for all 3 matches and it was insanely hot the whole time. You don't get a break from the heat in Asia -- it's 24/7, so even training at night absolutely drains you.
Add to that, one of the games in Korea was v Bayern Munich and then straight back to London to play them again. You'd like a 'big team' towards the end of the season but that felt like a bit too much for me at the time.
I'm sure his comments do include part of the early season...but one of the recurring narratives is the lack of rotation before the injuries. The injuries started piling up in November. There's not a whole lot of time for rotation before that. That's not to say they couldn't have done more or made subs earlier (I definitely agree with that) but my take from Ange's comments is that he thinks the damage was mostly from May - September.
I could very well be wrong...that's just how I read it.
Muttley
Alan Hutton
Yeah, makes sense.
As for rotation, I really think we need to break it into the 3 parts of the team
Defence - Could have been slightly more rotation, but not much. Only 4 trusted centre halves and 3 full-backs. Destiny just about making the start of the season after injury. Ange's neglect of Reggie never felt right to me.
Midfield - looked all quite normal to me from a numbers and rotation perspective. I'd question the tactical system with the 6 position more than the rotation.
Forwards - had to manage Odo 17 Sep, Richi 27 Aug major injuries. Hands were tied from early season. Rotating on Solanke, Johnson, Werner and Son with some use of Kulu wide. Those 2 injuries were MASSIVE. We even lost Moore for a couple of months as well.
So if I'm playing captain hindsight, I'd probably go back to one other factor not discussed so far. I was convinced Spurs would land a hybrid LCB/LB last summer. I think Ange did as well and it would have been a huge addition to his plans based on what we've seen.
tommysvr
Edgar Davids
Agree with that and your last point is probably key too. With what he knows now, would Ange have allowed players like Sessegnon, Skipp, Hjobjerg etc to leave? I think that's also part of what he was talking about.