Andre Villas-Boas - Head Coach

[lurker of old]

Suarez....odious little goblin

Made me chuckle! He is exactly the kind of player we need unfortunately.

 

[indianspur]

Surprised at that actually. I thought he was doing well this year but obviously not.

he is doing well, extremely well, 16 goals should tell you that

im sick of stats, i mean 20 years ago if Gary Lineker had 16 goals at this stage no-one would know or even care from how many shots he got those 16 goals. All that mattered was the goals

back to Suarez, he has single handedly carried Liverpool's attack this season, many times creating chances for himself by his own brilliance. People simply need to get back to watching games and seeing with their own eyes what influence players are having than having to bring up w*nk stats to show a player's worth

 

[Spursalot]

he is doing well, extremely well, 16 goals should tell you that

im sick of stats, i mean 20 years ago if Gary Lineker had 16 goals at this stage no-one would know or even care from how many shots he got those 16 goals. All that mattered was the goals

back to Suarez, he has single handedly carried Liverpool's attack this season, many times creating chances for himself by his own brilliance. People simply need to get back to watching games and seeing with their own eyes what influence players are having than having to bring up w*nk stats to show a player's worth

Partially, maybe you should go back and watch the games.


He has created chances, and then wasted them more often then not, a lot of the time when there is someone who is in a far better position to have taken advantage of his 'brilliance'.


He has 16 goals, if he was a less selfish player then liverpool would have easily have 25+.

 

[parklane1]

he is doing well, extremely well, 16 goals should tell you that

im sick of stats, i mean 20 years ago if Gary Lineker had 16 goals at this stage no-one would know or even care from how many shots he got those 16 goals. All that mattered was the goals

Stats are all right in their way but are the not the full story, some fans get blinded by them ( to much belief in FIFA and X-Box games) and think its the same in the real world.

 

[metalgear]

Partially, maybe you should go back and watch the games.


He has created chances, and then wasted them more often then not, a lot of the time when there is someone who is in a far better position to have taken advantage of his 'brilliance'.


He has 16 goals, if he was a less selfish player then liverpool would have easily have 25+.

suarez he tries to do too much as the sole attacking outlet.
now with sturridge to take the pressure and the defenders off him he's going to get more goals and assists.

 

[ArcspacE]

Surprised at that actually. I thought he was doing well this year but obviously not.

These stats mean bugger all, I'm afraid - he's a top class player and anyone who's been following actual games (not Opta Joe's Twitter page) would tell you that.

 

[Spursalot]

suarez he tries to do too much as the sole attacking outlet.
now with sturridge to take the pressure and the defenders off him he's going to get more goals and assists.

True, it should go better, just if held his head up and tried to play for the team more than himself he'd be a far greater asset.

 

[Rorschach]

These stats mean bugger all, I'm afraid - he's a top class player and anyone who's been following actual games (not Opta Joe's Twitter page) would tell you that.

I meant I thought his chance conversion rates were higher. Nothing more.

 

[ArcspacE]

I meant I thought his chance conversion rates were higher. Nothing more.

Do you consider shot conversion rate stats improtant, personally?

I think it's all dependant on the 'type' of players. Someone like Bent or Gomez would only take a few touches each game but finish rather well (clinical) as opposed to Ronaldo (for example) who is far more explosive and takes shots at most opportunities.

 

[Rorschach]

]Do you consider shot conversion rate stats improtant, personally?[/B]

I think it's all dependant on the 'type' of players. Someone like Bent or Gomez would only take a few touches each game but finish rather well (clinical) as opposed to Ronaldo (for example) who is far more explosive and takes shots at most opportunities.

I don't loose a whole lot of sleep over it no. In fact I couldn't give a brick about the numbers. Someone else brought it up and I just made an observation on it. It seemed to me Suarez was scoring a higher number of his chances this year compared to last, but I was corrected on that.

 

[Naughton16]

My biggest fear with AVB is that he would be a perfect replacement for a certain French whinger.

 

[Jammy]

Do you consider shot conversion rate stats improtant, personally?

I think it's all dependant on the 'type' of players. Someone like Bent or Gomez would only take a few touches each game but finish rather well (clinical) as opposed to Ronaldo (for example) who is far more explosive and takes shots at most opportunities.

not shot conversion no, but chance conversion. We should be burying teams but we're not quite clinical enough yet. RvP had one chance and took it, and Man Utd were within a whisker of 3 points despite being under the cosh for a lot of that game.

 

[The Moonlit Knight]

The bits I have in bold is the sort of stuff that sounds nice but just not really true. There's no magical mystery strategy going on that AVB has been slowly implementing, if anything it seems clear he tried a few things earlier and they didnt work, so he has had to change it around a bit. I think its pretty much common knowledge that a meeting was held with the players to discuss the poor performances and late goals - after realising the players werent happy with certain things this was changed. As nice as your theory sounds, difficult to see a case for it when the "ideas" we have now are not the same "ideas" we had at the start. We are playing reasonable well now, but it is compared with how we started the season rather than last season.

As for more intelligent / this n that better etc, again it sounds nice but the players aren't playing better than they did under HR, we dominated so many games last season (win or lose) limiting our opponents. Last week at QPR their target was a draw and they did this by blocking us out as they know we struggle to break teams down. Today Man Utd got the lead in the first 30 mins and then tried to shut us out as they know we struggle to score, had we gone 1 nil up then you know Man Utd are ending the game with 20 shots on goal ! But i'd expect teams to have less chances against us this season as Modric/Parker had become Dembele/Sandro - a lot tougher to get through.

AVB started slowly, no doubt about that (unless you be really precious about it) but credit should go to him for not being stubborn and realising how to get the best out of these players - we started off too cautious and strict in the way we play and it didnt have great results, we seem to be playing a lot more like last season now when you look at positions players take up and their movement. Im glad he has realised you dont invite pressure onto Kyle Walker!

Now we are back playing at a reasonable standard and he understands what the players can/cant do, it is now onward we might see him build on this and coach new ideas / do something intelligent so that he raises us above where you'd expect this squad to be.

I agree with all of this. AVB is doing a great job, but I can certainly see no revolution in the way we're playing. Not even evolution. That happened at the beginning of the season, but we've reverted back to the style and formation that we played successfully last year.

 

[Rossi22]

I didn't see the high line, hard pressing game under HR.

 

[The Moonlit Knight]

I didn't see the high line, hard pressing game under HR.

I don't see it much with us now either. We certainly played a high line earlier in the season, but now? No. Maybe that is because of Dawson being back in the side. The pressing game has been a myth so far this year. I've seen instances of it three or four times this season, but it's not a consistant strategy. Again maybe that is because we aren't playing AVB's preferred 5 man midfield formation yet and he isn't confident with the side doing it with a bank of four in the midfield.

 

[thfcsteff]

I think that once the season is over, it should be immortalized as a 'classic' thread...like modern football and media itself, the highs and lows here have been astounding.

 

[Jordinho]

I don't see it much with us now either. We certainly played a high line earlier in the season, but now? No. Maybe that is because of Dawson being back in the side. The pressing game has been a myth so far this year. I've seen instances of it three or four times this season, but it's not a consistant strategy. Again maybe that is because we aren't playing AVB's preferred 5 man midfield formation yet and he isn't confident with the side doing it with a bank of four in the midfield.

No cure for selective vision I guess.

I see a very clear plan when we have the ball to push up the full backs and have the centre backs go wide. We play with a higher line than we did last season, but then again, admitting that would make it harder to include Redknapp whenever you give praise to AVB.

 

[thfcsteff]

No cure for selective vision I guess.

I see a very clear plan when we have the ball to push up the full backs and have the centre backs go wide. We play with a higher line than we did last season, but then again, admitting that would make it harder to include Redknapp whenever you give praise to AVB.

So much to say, so little time...in short=D>

 

[BrainOfLevy]

I don't see it much with us now either. We certainly played a high line earlier in the season, but now? No. Maybe that is because of Dawson being back in the side. The pressing game has been a myth so far this year. I've seen instances of it three or four times this season, but it's not a consistant strategy. Again maybe that is because we aren't playing AVB's preferred 5 man midfield formation yet and he isn't confident with the side doing it with a bank of four in the midfield.

We didn't play a high line earlier in the season. Stop saying we did!!!!

 

[Mumorn]

Thought I'd go through the first 10 pages of the thread and re-live some early joy..

damn.
Oh well good lucK AVB and i hope you prove the doubters (me being the biggest one) wrong.

Has he proved you wrong yet KD?

Piers Morgan ‏@piersmorgan
Congratulations to Andre Villas-Boas & Spurs - a match made in mediocre non-entity heaven. #MindTheEvenBiggerGap

How's that working out for ya Piers?

Gary Lineker ‏@GaryLineker
AVB it is then. Very important at this stage to be positive about that decision, so I'll shut up.

Nice positivity from Lineker early on.

-------------Adebayor--------------
Bale------------------------Sturridge
-------Moutinho----Sigurdsson------
-------------Sandro----------------
Benny--Vertonghen--Kaboul--Walker
-------------Friedel----------------

Subs; Lloris, Naughton, Caulker, Parker, Rafa, Lennon, Defoe

A man can dream....

Quite interesting that you had Lloris on our bench almost 2 months before a deal was even struck for him... REAL ITK!!??