afsoc4life
Dean Richards
Poch, keep ya head up!!
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Mauricio Pochettino - Sacked
- Thread starter DubaiSpur
- Start date
Modric THFC
Jimmy McCormick
As long as Pochettino continues to frontload a ridiculous amount of fitness work (compared to the rest of the league), we will continue to start the season like this.
I believe we still do fitness work right up until the international break.
The start to every season is always like this.
It has nothing to do with signings. These 11 or 12 were the ones trashing every team at the end of last season. We didn't get better personnel last season after N'Koudou and Sissoko came in at the end of the transfer window. Son didn't make much difference coming in late the season before.
Here's our games before the international break the last 3 seasons:
3 points from 12
Sat 08/08/15 PRL Manchester United 1 - 0 Tottenham Hotspur
Sat 15/08/15 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 2 - 2 Stoke City
Sat 22/08/15 PRL Leicester City 1 - 1 Tottenham Hotspur
Sat 29/08/15 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 0 - 0 Everton
5 points from 9
Sat 13/08/16 PRL Everton 1 - 1 Tottenham Hotspur
Sat 20/08/16 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 0 Crystal Palace
Sat 27/08/16 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 1 Liverpool
4 points from 9
Sun 13/08/17 PRL Saudi Sportswashing Machine 0 - 2 Tottenham Hotspur
Sun 20/08/17 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 2 Chelsea
Sun 27/08/17 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 1 Burnley
I believe we still do fitness work right up until the international break.
The start to every season is always like this.
It has nothing to do with signings. These 11 or 12 were the ones trashing every team at the end of last season. We didn't get better personnel last season after N'Koudou and Sissoko came in at the end of the transfer window. Son didn't make much difference coming in late the season before.
Here's our games before the international break the last 3 seasons:
3 points from 12
Sat 08/08/15 PRL Manchester United 1 - 0 Tottenham Hotspur
Sat 15/08/15 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 2 - 2 Stoke City
Sat 22/08/15 PRL Leicester City 1 - 1 Tottenham Hotspur
Sat 29/08/15 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 0 - 0 Everton
5 points from 9
Sat 13/08/16 PRL Everton 1 - 1 Tottenham Hotspur
Sat 20/08/16 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 0 Crystal Palace
Sat 27/08/16 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 1 Liverpool
4 points from 9
Sun 13/08/17 PRL Saudi Sportswashing Machine 0 - 2 Tottenham Hotspur
Sun 20/08/17 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 2 Chelsea
Sun 27/08/17 PRL Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 1 Burnley
Bullet
Colin Calderwood
I understand that Modders, but if we are going to tire we should (a) bring on subs earlier (b) take off certain players that can't last 90 (c) be more cute to waste time and kill the game when we're in the lead (d) not turn it into a basketball game (e) keep the ball into the corners, Alli was tackled twice and Kane tried a tricky reverse pass to put Winks in... we could have just held onto it and gone down to win the freekick, that is what any TOP team would do.
We don't have much more than a first 11, especially when carrying injuries to multiple potential first choice players (Rose, Lamela, Wanyama) and Winks/Trippier just off injury.
We play such a specific system, it is almost a rhythm thing, when we are playing lots of games, and have been so for a while, we look like a machine, start of season tends to be intermittent, good, but almost never for the full 90 mins.
BrainOfLevy
Michael Carrick
Good bit of perspective there - we were terrible in the 1-1 at home against Liverpool last year too and Klopp does his pre season to make fast starts. Can't believe we mugged them for a point in that game.
We probably will improve, but it is a fair point in wondering why we were so blatantly poor at game management against Burnley. I get being tired leads to a lack of concentration, but we were fundementally making the wrong decisions constantly. It was a mental problem.
BrainOfLevy
Michael Carrick
It does for sure, but there is only a maximum that we can extract out of players, who are only human. It's almost like a bit of game theory too. If every club didn't bother with peaking at different times and played for an average level of performance throughout the season, that would be that. But we have some managers that play to make fast starts (Mourinho, Klopp) and others that look to peak from Christmas and beyond (Poch, and I'd say Wenger falls into this too).
This may be personal preference, or it may be a recognition of where their squad is in relation to everyone else. Klopp prefers getting a lead and managing that. Mourinho likes being a leader. Poch likes to make a late dash. It may also play into their media strategies, the personality make up of the squads they built etc etc. Every point does count, but if you can potentially sacrifice some points earlier to increase your chances of getting more points later on, it is worth the bet. Similarly if you think you can get more points earlier by sacrificing your chances later in the season when you already have a lead, that would also make sense.
I really hope we're going to really get going after the international break. So far Poch has dealt with problems, changes in personel and different bad runs and always got us back on track in some way, so hopefully this doesn't become a thing this season. The chances that we start to pick up and start doing really well are good. I just hope this isn't a 06/07 Jol time though, where although we lost Carrick in the summer, we barely ever played with the same consistency after he had gone. The good thing with Poch is that we always get back to that level of consistency, and hopefully we do so again.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
To be fair, United and Liverpool fall away at the end of the season - on the evidence of last season, we don't really do that anymore. It's just timing our arrival at full fitness to coincide with the November/December period, and our peak performances to occur around February-April. I agree with @BrainOfLevy in that respect - it is planned that way, I think.
However, that doesn't excuse Levy making it unnecessarily harder by waiting until mid-August before making his moves.
parklane1
Tony Galvin
BrainOfLevy
Michael Carrick
That's to increase our chances of getting the players we want. Letting other clubs spend their money and take up places in their squad so that when we come, we aren't entering a bidding war with a club with more finances and we can offer a genuine first team slot. i don't think it's about leaving it as late as possible, it's just about waiting until the right time to make our move, which is then aboit thinking through other clubs strategies and understanding how they can realistically respond.
tynesidespur
Terry Yorath
I also wonder if our performances are, to some extent, reflected in or influenced by the fitness and motivation of the opposition you are facing.
So - at the start of the season all clubs are pretty toned and fit. The Poch method of pressing/wearing down/war of attrition in possession seems to break teams very effectively from December onwards. Fixtures pile up - lesser teams squads are stretched thin and fitness (and to some extent certainly in March/April motivation reduces as teams become safe). We seem to run up cricket scores quite easily in this period.
Up until Xmas we seem to find it much more difficult where we often find we can't score more than 1 or 2 goals in a game and we drop many more points.
It looks like we're going to see a similar performance this season. The Burnley game reminded me of Stoke (2-2) a couple of years ago and to an extent the Leicester game last year (1-1). I have no doubt we'll get back on track and start winning again.
Spur of the moment
Frederic Kanoute
Excellent post, have been thinking about posting something similar.
milo
Jack L. Jones
I think that the opposition squads being a bit more stretched and tired could be a factor but I also think that we are a lot more fluid and press harder from winter onwards.
Lemonade Money
Dimitar Berbatov
I think it's 'a marathon, not a sprint' situation. Poch's first year with us, we overran other teams at the end of games (they couldn't live with our fitness in the last 15 minutes of a match), but we burnt out at the end of the season. I think he's looked at that, and now times us to come good in the second half of the season. Hence why lesser teams look good at the beginning of a season, as they come out all guns blazing, and struggle for points at the end. I know that on the training pitch when Poch came, they did double sessions of high intensity training; they still do double sessions, but only one will be high intensity.
BrainOfLevy
Michael Carrick
Yep, that Burnley game was very similar to that Stoke game, I remember it well. It's one of the things that gives me hope that we will get our act together this season soon. We were really bad in the last 20 mins of that Stoke game, again game management was the problem. We couldn't hold the ball and we were letting easy gaps appear. Maybe there is something in the idea that Poch works the players hard over pre-season and they get gassed a little easier at the start, and we need to think about how we can see games out in that way. But the benefit is we are giving ourselves a base level of fitness that sustains us through the season, and when other teams start tiring, that's when we over-run.
Also probably doesn't help that certain players have probably missed crucial fitness work in this period but have been forced into action. Wanyama and Trippier have looked like shells of their last season selves but both suffered injuries at the wrong times. Son also hasn't really hit the heights yet.
milo
Jack L. Jones
No team is 100% all season. The question is, if you can time peak form and fitness through the training regime, when is the best time to do this?
This .. had an interesting interview with an ex player once that said, every team has a run of bad/mediocre form in a season, and the worst time to have it is at end of season. Beginning or middle gives you time to recover, catch up when the other clubs go through their own bad run, late kills you and season.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Eh. I disagree with the closing days of the window being the 'right time' to make a move for a player, because a) we're always going to be left scrambling for the few half-decent stalks left in the crop, who may not necessarily be the players we targeted at the start of the window, b) other clubs are still spending like drunken yuppies even as the window winds down - see the new Barkley/Chelsea links, for instance, and c) it sets us back, in terms of squad preparation, because we will always be weaker with the loss of key players sold/squad players moved on for at least the first few games of the season, as we head into August with an incomplete squad, September with our incomings still settling into life in England, October with our incomings not fit enough by our standards, and November with them still working their way into the tempo and tactics of the side. We effectively handicap ourselves in that regard.
I'm not saying the approach has no logic behind it - it's pretty apparent that we do it because of the reasons you listed. But I don't think it's the right approach to take in every scenario, absolutely not.