OMT - Tottenham Hotspur LTD vs Southampton

[harr1984]

I think you're ignoring some very good substitutions too. Especially Winks, who really helped us drive forward with consistency. We were brave second-half and pushed a higher line/pressed more. Might also be worth considering what these players have been through in the last 96 hours, from Mourinho to being blindsided to wondering if their international careers were toast to working with a new manager who was also a team-mate. That's a lot for anyone to deal with. I'd say you might want to focus on the second-half and enjoy the glass as half-full. BTW I enjoy greatly our discussions; we may not agree too much, but they are fun and certainly keep me onside with other perspectives!

Agree about the Winks sub, and I’m glad to see he got some game time. Beginning to worry about him leaving, he still has something to offer and is homegrown so would rather he stayed...

 

[Mr Gogolak]

Do we lack players with that kind of influence?

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To be perfectly honest, I was quite unhappy with Lloris and Bale (I guess you could add Alderweireld to that list) at half-time: considering the circumstances and their trophy cabinets, they should have been a lot more vocal on the pitch. Soton were all over us and I felt we needed someone to shake us up on the pitch. From where I was standing, it really did look like they were happy to carry on and take anoter loss.

45 minutes later, you could say Lloris and Bale won the game for us. There's some substance to that but, at the same time, I don't know if individual performances (no matter how good) should be considered enough from a World champion and a multiple Champions League winner. Again, it's a matter of perspective but I'm curious to see how we'll fare against better opposition (though City is coming too soon, I'm afraid).

On an individual note, I think Lo Celso is having a torrid time since coming back from injury. His work-rate is ok but it looks like he's lost his eye for the penultimate pass. Some his passing was shocking, yesterday.

 

[glasgowspur]

To be perfectly honest, I was quite unhappy with Lloris and Bale (I guess you could add Alderweireld to that list) at half-time: considering the circumstances and their trophy cabinets, they should have been a lot more vocal on the pitch. Soton were all over us and I felt we needed someone to shake us up on the pitch. From where I was standing, it really did look like they were happy to carry on and take anoter loss.

45 minutes later, you could say Lloris and Bale won the game for us. There's some substance to that but, at the same time, I don't know if individual performances (no matter how good) should be considered enough from a World champion and a multiple Champions League winner. Again, it's a matter of perspective but I'm curious to see how we'll fare against better opposition (though City is coming too soon, I'm afraid).

On an individual note, I think Lo Celso is having a torrid time since coming back from injury. His work-rate is ok but it looks like he's lost his eye for the penultimate pass. Some his passing was shocking, yesterday.

Without Hugo we lose that game, bales goal would be a consultation goal.
We could easily have been three down at half time and have no complaints.

 

[glasgowspur]

That double-save in the first few minutes was a game-changer.

One of them goes in and its Brighton all over again.

 

[Legohamster]

No Hugo for motm?
Won it by a country mile imo.

Absolutely

Double save at the start
Saved one on one

Would have been 2-0 down without him.

 

[Baleforce]

The double save was only a double save because he didn’t hold the first one.

 

[SpurMeUp]

The most positive thing was seeing us play quick passes and start to feel our touch and creativity. You get the impression we were so consumed by Mourinho's detailed defensive instructions always and we were off the leash last night. It took a while to 1. break through Southampton's press as their tired and 2. for us to find out touch and confidence.

Mason made simple positive subs to refresh the players. Nothing too clever, just logical subs that gave us fresh legs. We lack some coordination and shape still. There were times we didn't press the ball effectively in midfield which allowed them time to play balls in. This needs work still. We haven't got our team shape and coordination quite right for about 2 years!

 

[K.D.D.D.D.Soc]

The most positive thing was seeing us play quick passes and start to feel our touch and creativity. You get the impression we were so consumed by Mourinho's detailed defensive instructions always and we were off the leash last night. It took a while to 1. break through Southampton's press as their tired and 2. for us to find out touch and confidence.

Mason made simple positive subs to refresh the players. Nothing too clever, just logical subs that gave us fresh legs. We lack some coordination and shape still. There were times we didn't press the ball effectively in midfield which allowed them time to play balls in. This needs work still. We haven't got our team shape and coordination quite right for about 2 years!

I agree about team shape and coordination, hopefully we we see some continuity in the selection and and end to rotation policy which is a nightmare for defenders.

 

[Raziel]

Hard game to truly judge for the whole set of reasons everyone went over, for what it's worth, my observations

- Southampton will never learn, another variant of the crazy press like Leeds
- We were slow to start, rode out the press then conceded silly from corner
- First half we didn't look a whole lot different from Jose era
- The ref was awful, the amount of little fouls on Lo Celso and Lucas in particular that went unpunished
- Mason's choice of lineup, i.e. not choosing Son/Bale as central striker indicates to me Kane plays Sunday (rest of team kept same shape)
- that said, we should never play with an AM as striker (it rarely looks good), we need a pivot point
- Not a fan of including Winks .. if the feeling was Winks or Sissoko, ok, but fudge we need an upgrade option there.
- Ndombele seems to have a hit a flat point in form at the worst time for us.

Ok, so what was different?

- Hugo came off his line more, instructions or just co-incidence?
- We pushed up as game went on, instead of falling back, again might just be scoreline influenced
- won after going behind for first time in the season.

 

[braineclipse]

A worry for the City game is that our pressing looked really poor at times yesterday. If we press like that against City we'll be in loads of trouble as they will play through us with relative ease and have the option of going in behind from the goalie.

Think we will either choose a low or medium block or be forced into it. Hopefully we can sort our pressing out well enough to press effectively for short bursts at least.

 

[braineclipse]

Hard game to truly judge for the whole set of reasons everyone went over, for what it's worth, my observations

- Southampton will never learn, another variant of the crazy press like Leeds
- We were slow to start, rode out the press then conceded silly from corner
- First half we didn't look a whole lot different from Jose era
- The ref was awful, the amount of little fouls on Lo Celso and Lucas in particular that went unpunished
- Mason's choice of lineup, i.e. not choosing Son/Bale as central striker indicates to me Kane plays Sunday (rest of team kept same shape)
- that said, we should never play with an AM as striker (it rarely looks good), we need a pivot point
- Not a fan of including Winks .. if the feeling was Winks or Sissoko, ok, but fudge we need an upgrade option there.
- Ndombele seems to have a hit a flat point in form at the worst time for us.

Ok, so what was different?

- Hugo came off his line more, instructions or just co-incidence?
- We pushed up as game went on, instead of falling back, again might just be scoreline influenced
- won after going behind for first time in the season.

Hard game to truly judge for the whole set of reasons everyone went over, for what it's worth, my observations

- Southampton will never learn, another variant of the crazy press like Leeds
- We were slow to start, rode out the press then conceded silly from corner
- First half we didn't look a whole lot different from Jose era
- The ref was awful, the amount of little fouls on Lo Celso and Lucas in particular that went unpunished
- Mason's choice of lineup, i.e. not choosing Son/Bale as central striker indicates to me Kane plays Sunday (rest of team kept same shape)
- that said, we should never play with an AM as striker (it rarely looks good), we need a pivot point
- Not a fan of including Winks .. if the feeling was Winks or Sissoko, ok, but fudge we need an upgrade option there.
- Ndombele seems to have a hit a flat point in form at the worst time for us.

Ok, so what was different?

- Hugo came off his line more, instructions or just co-incidence?
- We pushed up as game went on, instead of falling back, again might just be scoreline influenced
- won after going behind for first time in the season.

On the striker... I think we'll need a physical presence up front against City. My positive interpretation of yesterday is that if we thought Kane would miss out on Sunday we would have given Vinicius the Southampton game to get minutes and perhaps prove himself. We didn't, so Kane will start on Sunday. You heard it here first.

Winks was the right choice at the right time. Another option would be good, but he's a very good player in the right system. Will be interesting to see how he does for the rest of the season if given minutes. Looked better than in a long time yesterday.

We definitely kept pushing up instead of just sitting back after taking the lead. I'm not a bit fan of bombastic statements about hypothetical situations, but that wouldn't have happened with Mourinho in charge.

We improved rather than deflate in the second half. That probably is partly because of the scoreline, but it's good to see none the less.

The corner goal from them... Yes, we could have done better, but it was a brilliant finish from a difficult situation, those will happen. The defending from the early set piece was way worse.

 

[billyiddo]

On the striker... I think we'll need a physical presence up front against City. My positive interpretation of yesterday is that if we thought Kane would miss out on Sunday we would have given Vinicius the Southampton game to get minutes and perhaps prove himself. We didn't, so Kane will start on Sunday. You heard it here first.

I like your thinking

 

[Raziel]

On the striker... I think we'll need a physical presence up front against City. My positive interpretation of yesterday is that if we thought Kane would miss out on Sunday we would have given Vinicius the Southampton game to get minutes and perhaps prove himself. We didn't, so Kane will start on Sunday. You heard it here first.

I agree with that, either Vini would have got the nod, or we would have moved Son/Bale to center (we kept them in their "expected" positions)

 

[Kandi1977]

.

Good point

 

[AdamB]

First half we didn't look a whole lot different from Jose era

Surely not! After two days training?!? Scandalous!! Mason out!!

 

[scaramanga]

Good point

Derp

 

[Finney Is Back]

It’s not about Mourinho, it’s about the players. We don’t have a good enough squad to compete at the top, nothing tonight changed that. We were poor for long periods, with a few decent pieces of play within the 90 minutes and thankfully Soton tired massively....

Southampton tired massively as it was impossible to play that sort of high energy press for the whole game.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Very pleased for Ryan and also pleased for ourselves that we won.

Note the vast majority of the 'narrative' of that game was down to Soton - they were sprinting like crazy for the first 50 mins, we could hardly take a step without 4 players hunting us down

It's no wonder we couldn't string anything together

They they completely gassed out and we could play. The end.

Indeed that's what I saw as well.... From about 60 minutes Southampton had no energy left at all and there was only one team that was going to score from then on.

Typically when a team is pressing with that sort of intensity you can negate it by going long. However with Kane being out and Vini not being on the pitch we had no physical presence to be able to do that.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Funnily, the first half looked like Mason had called Mourinho the day before the game. 'So, if you were managing Spurs, what would you do...?' Same pedestrian performance, same awful mistakes at the back, same lack of ideas going forward. ANd that was against the worst Premier League team in 2021.

Fortunately, Southampton imploded almost as soon as Ings got injured and there was only one team looking like they could win this game, once Bale got the equaliser.

All in all, I have to say I'm not on the same wavelength as a lot of people on here. Rome wasn't built in a day but considering the opposition, that was an average performance at best. Also, I still don't understand how we could slip into the Top 4 with this squad of players, who were second-best to Soton for an hour or so. And we were supposed to play Real Madrid and Barça every other week? Give me a break! Still, a win's a win but we will have to up our game and change our attitude a fair bit against decent opposition if we want to put together a run of results.

On the other hand, the good news is that my first impressions are almost always wide off the mark (shows I much I know), so that bodes well for the future!

'Average at best' is about 3 steps up from a Mourinho performance so that's something

 

[Finney Is Back]

I thought it was refreshing to see us not immediately get 10 or 11 men behind the ball, most of which being permanently positioned in our back third of the pitch once we went ahead in the game.