*** OMT Tottenham Hotspur v Wolverhampton Wanderers ***

[Gilzeantoscore]

This has nothing to with Ange and everything to do with a perfect storm of players being out of form, short of match sharpness/fitness. It happens and will take a while to to pass through the squad, as players get more game time.

 

[Bishop]

I said something similar a few weeks ago, that our forwards weren’t elite and that the top teams have better forwards than us and I stand by it. I get Johnson is young and it’s his first season with us but he’s the same age as Saka, he’s actually a few months younger. Werner is quick but he’s not going to get many goals. I hope it’s the first area we address in the summer along with another creative player.

Bro we've been saying it all season but I don't get it. Fans have this primordial desire to only see the best in their players and team but it stop us from thinking critically far too often. It's patently obvious this is not a top attacking trio but so many fans just want to deny the truth. You hear "but we've scored every game" or "we aren't far off the goals scored of victims" despite it not being about how many goals are scored but more about when.

 

[harr1984]

The “Ange has been found out” narrative is a bit overblown in my opinion. Yeah he needs to find some solutions, but this is a problem we’ve faced more or less since Harry Redknapp. The majority of teams will come to Spurs and sit deep, defend in numbers and look to counter. The past few years, where we’ve played like Wolves did has maybe changed the perception but I remember many frustrating matches under Poch, AVB and Redknapp where we just could not break a team down. Matches that stick out like Fulham 0-1 in 2013 where Berbatov scored in the 52nd minute. Hull when Giovani scored that screamer of a free kick. West Brom have done it a few times. It’s nothing new, but it’s up to Ange to find a way through it.

And it’s up to us to give him more than 9 months to do it.

It depends on your definition of 'found out' but he has been found out in terms of how teams can setup how to stifle us and counter us at ease, there is a blueprint for it now. That's no slant on Ange, it happens to every manager but the best coaches find a solution.

This has been an issue for a while against average opposition, which is why I found your bravado 5-1 prediction odd. Ange doesn't have a plan B, just throw on fresh legs in the hope that does it but we have been on thin ice for a while now so he really does have to think about this properly - I have no doubt he will find a way, but right now it is fair criticism to level at him and if he really is the top coach many believe he is then he will come up with the answers.

This is exactly why all this 'we can challenge for the title' talk at the early part of the season was utter gonads. We were having the same new manager bounce that most clubs get, and now we are reverting to mean which is about 5th/6th and that's absolutely fine - not many expected us to be bettering that when Ange was appointed and all in all it has been a good season to date....

 

[Bedfordspurs]

It depends on your definition of 'found out' but he has been found out in terms of how teams can setup how to stifle us and counter us at ease, there is a blueprint for it now. That's no slant on Ange, it happens to every manager but the best coaches find a solution.

This has been an issue for a while against average opposition, which is why I found your bravado 5-1 prediction odd. Ange doesn't have a plan B, just throw on fresh legs in the hope that does it but we have been on thin ice for a while now so he really does have to think about this properly - I have no doubt he will find a way, but right now it is fair criticism to level at him and if he really is the top coach many believe he is then he will come up with the answers.

This is exactly why all this 'we can challenge for the title' talk at the early part of the season was utter gonads. We were having the same new manager bounce that most clubs get, and now we are reverting to mean which is about 5th/6th and that's absolutely fine - not many expected us to be bettering that when Ange was appointed and all in all it has been a good season to date....

He does have some alternative plans
He has played 3 at the back some times with us
And we have also gone with no full backs and all out attack
It’s to the same set up
Sometimes its prevails and gets results and we have seen it … no one recognises it as Plan B because it works
When it doesn’t work … he has no plan…

 

[Junior19]

I was at the game yesterday, wasn't asked to play, unfortunately. It was fascinating to observe Angeball live, and get the unfiltered perspective, not the tv-lens perspective.

First half was not good enough. We started off fair enough, but (as usual) they managed to rough us up a bit, and we more or less fell into their gameplan, not ours. Their central midfield were excellent, ours seemed to have forgot to set the alarm clock. Passes were slow, underhit, and sloppy at times.

As before we struggle as soon as they drop down to very compact lines, and I noticed that not only did we compact them lengthwise, we compacted them from the sides as well. And when we combined slow passes, with compact sideways, just about every pass to the wingers ended up with them turning back as they either were too close to the defender or had no space to challenge into. If you compress sideways like that, I would expect a double overload to exploit the space on the outside, and a cross. We never really did that. Otherwise, the opposite is to stay wide (as I suspect was the plan), open up halfspaces by pulling defenders across. We didn't really do that either.

Precision was off, concentration was off, and we were playing a team that were 100% ON.

I thought at the time that our substitutions were late. I thought Madders faded, Bissouma was not 100% there, and Royal was exposed. Richarlison had a tough job, bless him, but was taken off when Werner came on and could have provided some more crossing. However, I defer to Ange's decisions, I'm sure he had other conciderations in mind as well. I don't particularly long for visible acts of desperation, such as throwing a centreback up front as target man or something, but sometimes the only tool that can break down the castle gate is a battering ram.

It was great to be back at the stadium, still is the greatest venue in the land. Looking forward to the next time.

 

[DubSpur]

So much bed-wetting in here. We've some of our most important players just back from long-term injuries (Maddison and Bentancur) and they have not yet got back to the levels they were at pre-injury. It's going to take a few games to get that back. There are also players just back from international tournaments that need to settle back in. All these injuries and suspensions means we've not had a settled side since the early part of the season when we played well.

The two-week break has probably come at a good time for us. It'll allow time to work on fitness and to work on the patterns of play that we seen early in the season that worked so well.

As for Ange-ball being found out, that's a load of crap. Every team is well scouted now and they know how each other is going to play. It's not like Ange has never seen games like yesterday. The issue is players coming back from injury and not being up to speed and not having a full squad capable of playing the way Ange wants, with backup FBs being an obvious issue yesterday.

Give Ange and the recruitment team a bit of time to get the squad right and to work on the training ground to get Anges system fully implemented. FFS, Pep and Klopp needed a couple of years before they started to look anything like the teams that they wanted, but we have some writing off Ange and his system already.

 

[Jurgen the German]

So much bed-wetting in here. We've some of our most important players just back from long-term injuries (Maddison and Bentancur) and they have not yet got back to the levels they were at pre-injury. It's going to take a few games to get that back. There are also players just back from international tournaments that need to settle back in. All these injuries and suspensions means we've not had a settled side since the early part of the season when we played well.

The two-week break has probably come at a good time for us. It'll allow time to work on fitness and to work on the patterns of play that we seen early in the season that worked so well.

As for Ange-ball being found out, that's a load of crap. Every team is well scouted now and they know how each other is going to play. It's not like Ange has never seen games like yesterday. The issue is players coming back from injury and not being up to speed and not having a full squad capable of playing the way Ange wants, with backup FBs being an obvious issue yesterday.

Give Ange and the recruitment team a bit of time to get the squad right and to work on the training ground to get Anges system fully implemented. FFS, Pep and Klopp needed a couple of years before they started to look anything like the teams that they wanted, but we have some writing off Ange and his system already.

I haven’t read the entire thread, but I haven’t seen anyone say Ange ball won’t work, just that talk of beating Wolves 5-1 was fanciful at best. We’ve been scraping wins for the last few weeks, I posted after the Brighton game that Brighton were good value for a point and got slated as some only want to see the good things and take it personally when you say anything that’s not saying everything is great. I don’t think we played terrible yesterday, but Wolves were bang on it and tbf they always give us problems, even we we do beat them it’s never ever 5-1. The best we usually get is a 1-0 against them

 

[DeanoAustin]

So much bed-wetting in here. We've some of our most important players just back from long-term injuries (Maddison and Bentancur) and they have not yet got back to the levels they were at pre-injury. It's going to take a few games to get that back. There are also players just back from international tournaments that need to settle back in. All these injuries and suspensions means we've not had a settled side since the early part of the season when we played well.

The two-week break has probably come at a good time for us. It'll allow time to work on fitness and to work on the patterns of play that we seen early in the season that worked so well.

As for Ange-ball being found out, that's a load of crap. Every team is well scouted now and they know how each other is going to play. It's not like Ange has never seen games like yesterday. The issue is players coming back from injury and not being up to speed and not having a full squad capable of playing the way Ange wants, with backup FBs being an obvious issue yesterday.

Give Ange and the recruitment team a bit of time to get the squad right and to work on the training ground to get Anges system fully implemented. FFS, Pep and Klopp needed a couple of years before they started to look anything like the teams that they wanted, but we have some writing off Ange and his system already.

There is merit in what you say about lads coming back from injury and tournaments and the team not being settled. And we do sometimes get caught in the trap of binary viewpoints like “Ange is gonna win us the league” or “Ange has been found out.”

But, for me, there are concerns with how we play and I’ve had them for months and it’s particularly around the usage of the full backs. We have been coughing up a lot of great chances and we haven’t been managing games very well when we have got a lead. Yes, against defensive teams, we are always susceptible to a counter but the usage of the full backs, IMO, makes us more susceptible than we should be.

It’s not the time to panic. It would have been a miracle if we didnt have these bumps and it’ll be a miracle if we don’t have some more. And it’ll be interesting to see how we play as some of the players get up to match fitness and settle back in.

We’re still very much on track for a good season and Ange has still managed to unite the club in a way I didn’t think was possible 12 months ago. But he is fair game for scrutiny.

 

[Mosquito_Coasting]

Yesterday was really disappointing but all teams have dips in forms and being found out is often mistaken for that. Arsenal fans were saying that when they had that awful December and now look at them. Man U are in form now but doubt that will last the season. Villa have had some poor results recently despite winning yesterday. Still think we have a decent shot at Top 4 but do need to become more cohesive. The defence are the opposite of defending as a unit, maybe doing so is impossible in Angeball.

 

[Jurgen the German]

There is merit in what you say about lads coming back from injury and tournaments and the team not being settled. And we do sometimes get caught in the trap of binary viewpoints like “Ange is gonna win us the league” or “Ange has been found out.”

But, for me, there are concerns with how we play and I’ve had them for months and it’s particularly around the usage of the full backs. We have been coughing up a lot of great chances and we haven’t been managing games very well when we have got a lead. Yes, against defensive teams, we are always susceptible to a counter but the usage of the full backs, IMO, makes us more susceptible than we should be.

It’s not the time to panic. It would have been a miracle if we didnt have these bumps and it’ll be a miracle if we don’t have some more. And it’ll be interesting to see how we play as some of the players get up to match fitness and settle back in.

We’re still very much on track for a good season and Ange has still managed to unite the club in a way I didn’t think was possible 12 months ago. But he is fair game for scrutiny.

Very well-reasoned and logical post. I think the part about managing games is key. We’ve been hanging on for most of the wins even at home against the likes of Everton and Brentford which is why talk of us smashing teams is nonsense. It could happen when we play Palace but hammerings are hard to predict unless you’re talking about Emirates Marketing Project. Also agree top 6 is a reasonable aim. Like you though, I do think expectations have been raised as a result of the great start we had so 6th would be seen as somewhat of a disappointment after being top of the league in November.

 

[harr1984]

So much bed-wetting in here. We've some of our most important players just back from long-term injuries (Maddison and Bentancur) and they have not yet got back to the levels they were at pre-injury. It's going to take a few games to get that back. There are also players just back from international tournaments that need to settle back in. All these injuries and suspensions means we've not had a settled side since the early part of the season when we played well.

The two-week break has probably come at a good time for us. It'll allow time to work on fitness and to work on the patterns of play that we seen early in the season that worked so well.

As for Ange-ball being found out, that's a load of crap. Every team is well scouted now and they know how each other is going to play. It's not like Ange has never seen games like yesterday. The issue is players coming back from injury and not being up to speed and not having a full squad capable of playing the way Ange wants, with backup FBs being an obvious issue yesterday.

Give Ange and the recruitment team a bit of time to get the squad right and to work on the training ground to get Anges system fully implemented. FFS, Pep and Klopp needed a couple of years before they started to look anything like the teams that they wanted, but we have some writing off Ange and his system already.

Haven't seen anyone bed wetting - is suggestions oppositions have worked out how to play Anges primary system unfair? Have only seen posters say he needs to find alternative ways of playing which as you allude to Pep and Klopp did. It seems to be approaching the Poch era here where any criticism of the coach is just not allowed.

You are absolutely right regarding rustiness of players, but Maddison wasn't particularly poor because of his fitness. He looked poor because of the movement in front of him, and why was that? It's not because all of a sudden our forwards have decided they can't be bothered to move, it's because the opposition is better setup to negate us defensively. So Ange has his work cut out, and agree the mini break has come at a good time for a few reasons. I'm pretty sure most if not all here have faith in Ange to get it right, we knew it wasn't going to happen overnight - just too much of a good thing at the start perhaps....

 

[Baleforce]

I think we’re all just frustrated because our form has fallen off a cliff, yes there are logical reasons for that, but it’s still bloody annoying.

I’m fed up with certain tactical mistakes being made every game and seemingly no effort being made to plug those gaps, I don’t think that’s an unreasonable complaint.

 

[harr1984]

I think we’re all just frustrated because our form has fallen off a cliff, yes there are logical reasons for that, but it’s still bloody annoying.

I’m fed up with certain tactical mistakes being made every game and seemingly no effort being made to plug those gaps, I don’t think that’s an unreasonable complaint.

I understand the rationale that Ange will want to play the same way to get the system drilled into the players. But, when the FBs at Royale and Davies you can't seriously expect them to replicate what Porro and Udogie do.

They are both decent FBs so if they have to play then play them there where they are comfortable and come up with another variant of Ange ball for attacks, expecting Davies and Royale to do bits in the same spaces Udogie and Porro do is asking for trouble....

 

[Jurgen the German]

I understand the rationale that Ange will want to play the same way to get the system drilled into the players. But, when the FBs at Royale and Davies you can't seriously expect them to replicate what Porro and Udogie do.

They are both decent FBs so if they have to play then play them there where they are comfortable and come up with another variant of Ange ball for attacks, expecting Davies and Royale to do bits in the same spaces Udogie and Porro do is asking for trouble....

Absolutely. Porro and Udogie are unique and we are lucky to have them. Davies and Royal excel at the other end of the pitch (defensively). Either find like for like ish players to them or develop another way to play when certain players are out.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

Very well-reasoned and logical post. I think the part about managing games is key. We’ve been hanging on for most of the wins even at home against the likes of Everton and Brentford which is why talk of us smashing teams is nonsense. It could happen when we play Palace but hammerings are hard to predict unless you’re talking about Emirates Marketing Project. Also agree top 6 is a reasonable aim. Like you though, I do think expectations have been raised as a result of the great start we had so 6th would be seen as somewhat of a disappointment after being top of the league in November.

Hanging on because we can’t keep clean sheets
We don’t keep clean sheets but let generally poor goals too
If we’re letting in worldies im fine with that
I’m fine with penalties too because they can and do happen (although we concede a stupid amount)
But we’re letting in poor goals now.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I was at the game yesterday, wasn't asked to play, unfortunately. It was fascinating to observe Angeball live, and get the unfiltered perspective, not the tv-lens perspective.

First half was not good enough. We started off fair enough, but (as usual) they managed to rough us up a bit, and we more or less fell into their gameplan, not ours. Their central midfield were excellent, ours seemed to have forgot to set the alarm clock. Passes were slow, underhit, and sloppy at times.

As before we struggle as soon as they drop down to very compact lines, and I noticed that not only did we compact them lengthwise, we compacted them from the sides as well. And when we combined slow passes, with compact sideways, just about every pass to the wingers ended up with them turning back as they either were too close to the defender or had no space to challenge into. If you compress sideways like that, I would expect a double overload to exploit the space on the outside, and a cross. We never really did that. Otherwise, the opposite is to stay wide (as I suspect was the plan), open up halfspaces by pulling defenders across. We didn't really do that either.

Precision was off, concentration was off, and we were playing a team that were 100% ON.

I thought at the time that our substitutions were late. I thought Madders faded, Bissouma was not 100% there, and Royal was exposed. Richarlison had a tough job, bless him, but was taken off when Werner came on and could have provided some more crossing. However, I defer to Ange's decisions, I'm sure he had other conciderations in mind as well. I don't particularly long for visible acts of desperation, such as throwing a centreback up front as target man or something, but sometimes the only tool that can break down the castle gate is a battering ram.

It was great to be back at the stadium, still is the greatest venue in the land. Looking forward to the next time.

The battering ram is on loan in Spain
You break down low blocks by moving them a little
You do that by passing with pace or shorting from range
Two things we have struggled or stopped doing for some reason

 

[DeanoAustin]

Very well-reasoned and logical post. I think the part about managing games is key. We’ve been hanging on for most of the wins even at home against the likes of Everton and Brentford which is why talk of us smashing teams is nonsense. It could happen when we play Palace but hammerings are hard to predict unless you’re talking about Emirates Marketing Project. Also agree top 6 is a reasonable aim. Like you though, I do think expectations have been raised as a result of the great start we had so 6th would be seen as somewhat of a disappointment after being top of the league in November.

There are times when you feel a team is going to give someone a hiding and it’s coming. I’ve not felt that with us probably since the Saudi Sportswashing Machine game. We looked more likely to do it against Villa or West Ham early on than any time recently.

But the point is well made by some others, Klopp and Pep had similar struggles early on. It’s a process and part of the process is brick like yesterday. Like you say, the start probably raised unrealistic expectations.

 

[tommysvr]

It depends on your definition of 'found out' but he has been found out in terms of how teams can setup how to stifle us and counter us at ease, there is a blueprint for it now. That's no slant on Ange, it happens to every manager but the best coaches find a solution.

This has been an issue for a while against average opposition, which is why I found your bravado 5-1 prediction odd. Ange doesn't have a plan B, just throw on fresh legs in the hope that does it but we have been on thin ice for a while now so he really does have to think about this properly - I have no doubt he will find a way, but right now it is fair criticism to level at him and if he really is the top coach many believe he is then he will come up with the answers.

This is exactly why all this 'we can challenge for the title' talk at the early part of the season was utter gonads. We were having the same new manager bounce that most clubs get, and now we are reverting to mean which is about 5th/6th and that's absolutely fine - not many expected us to be bettering that when Ange was appointed and all in all it has been a good season to date....

I absolutely stand by what I said before the game, though I’ve never known a prediction to wind so many people up! The performances are coming. The players we have are too good and Ange is too good a coach. I fully believe his way of playing will deliver more wins than the previous 3 managers.

We’ve played half the season as plan B in terms of personnel. Anyone who says Ange’s hasn’t adapted or adjusted hasn’t been watching the same team as me. But this is how Ange works. He doesn’t tinker with things just to pick up a point here or there, he’s working on a system for the long term. See his other teams

- Brisbane Roar started poorly and were mocked for picking up the bloke who had an argument on TV with Craig Foster
- when he took over Australia we lost all 3 group games at the World Cup but he was playing a system to win the Asian Cup, which he did 6 months later
- Yokohama F Marinos were nearly relegated in his first season, won the league the next
- he had a really rough start at Celtic but went on to win the League

I don’t think you can really judge what he’s doing properly for another year.

I do agree with @DeanoAustin that our fullbacks playing as CMs exposes us. Gary O’Neill mentioned it too. But I also think it’s individual performances which is the biggest contributor. The forwards and midfielders are not doing their jobs at the moment. Get that working again, get us playing with pace; Maddison dictating things and our wingers creating overloads with the fullbacks again; get the press working again…then teams won’t have the chance to counter us, as we saw (or didn’t see) at the beginning of the season.

 

[jrh]

I absolutely stand by what I said before the game, though I’ve never known a prediction to wind so many people up! The performances are coming. The players we have are too good and Ange is too good a coach. I fully believe his way of playing will deliver more wins than the previous 3 managers.

We’ve played half the season as plan B in terms of personnel. Anyone who says Ange’s hasn’t adapted hasn’t been watching the same team as me. But this is how Ange works. He doesn’t tinker with things just to pick up a point here or there, he’s working on a system for the long term. See his other teams

- Brisbane Roar started poorly and were mocked for picking up the bloke who had an argument on TV with Craig Foster
- when he took over Australia we lost all 3 group games at the World Cup but he was playing a system to win the Asian Cup, which he did 6 months later
- Yokohama F Marinos were nearly relegated in his first season, won the league the next
- he had a really rough start at Celtic but went on to win the League

I don’t think you can really judge what he’s doing properly for another year.

I do agree with @DeanoAustin that our fullbacks playing as CMs exposes us. Gary O’Neill mentioned it too. But I also think it’s individual performances which is the biggest contributor. The forwards and midfielders are not doing their jobs at the moment.

I'd agree with a lot of this but his 'really rough start' at Celtic was literally a draw and 2 losses.. After that it was all very solid.

 

[tommysvr]

I'd agree with a lot of this but his 'really rough start' at Celtic was literally a draw and 2 losses.. After that it was all very solid.

Sure — mostly referring to the Champions League exit and the fact that he was being openly mocked on radio etc. Winning the Scottish League isn’t really that significant for a Celtic manager either.