***OMT TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR vs KAA Gent***

[scaramanga]

After yesterday? After all that talk about building a winning mentality and going for trophies and eradicating the losing culture at Tottenham, you think he went to the players and said 'right lads, get shown up by Belgian league skidmarks if you wish, but don't get injured for the Fulham game'?

If so, then he's either a patent liar or incredibly confused about where he wants to take us. And I don't think he's either.

I think he probably told them to do the minimum to make the home leg easy and not to stretch too much.

I think we've done that.

 

[Baleforce]

Maybe the manager told them not to get injured for the FA Cup match.

i'd definitely be questioning his judgement then

 

[DubaiSpur]

Of course its on Poch, changing formation every 20 minutes. Jenas just said everyone had to take an extra touch and look around and see where their teammates were. There was no tempo and pace because of how unfamiliar everything was. Complete joke trying Dembele at number 10 when he can only dribble the ball failing to spot Alli and Kane's runs. Moving Alli out the left and then deep in midfield. N Koudou as a wing back. It was a mess.

Play your best team in your best formation stick with it and win the thing.

This whole game was treated as if it didnt matter and the home leg will get up out of jail if needed.

And all that filtered down to the players as usual.

Look at the side he picked. Look at the players he picked. We were playing fudging *Gent*.

At some stage, these players, in between looking around for their team-mates like frightened babies crawling around Mall Of America, needed to look at themselves and think 'wow...we're being shown up by *Belgian league* players earning 1/100th of what we do'.

They can't all expectantly wait for Poch to tell them exactly what to do, and then blame him if it turns out sour. That isn't the way it works.

 

[Benny_Lad]

Appalling from top to bottom.

25 mins. That's how long Sissoko spent out on the left wing. A complete and utter waste of time. He has one option there, to cross on his right foot and all we have in the box is Kane and possibly Dele if we are lucky.

This shows me there was no plan to tonight's game. From the starting 11 (3 central midfielders + Sissoko), minimal creativity.

The most obvious sub to anyone was to get Son on for Sissoko but when there was eventually a change it was NKD. Sorry this guy isn't good enough.

What were Son and Eriksen being held for? Fulham? There was just no plan imo. We've gone with half a line up, and left out our key creative players. By then bringing in NKD in front of Son and Eriksen Poch is basically saying he doesn't fancy the comp much imo. Either go for a win with your best team or don't bother. If we had a key Pre over league game at the weekend I could half understand.

I'm just so confused as to what the plan was tonight - from start to finish.

PS how hard is it, when you finish 3rd, have adequate finance, and have champions league football, to find a player or 2 that can put the ball in the net? All I ever heard was when we qualify for the champions league we will attract stronger players. I'd say our additions this season have been some of our worst.

 

[paxtonwolf]

Two words

graham Roberts.

We could do worse than have him as manager one day

 

[Baleforce]

That's underselling it. These were a bunch of Belgian mid-table cloggers who couldn't beat some third-division side a couple of weeks ago. And we made them look like Brazil, what with their yellow shirts and their evident ability to make players earning 100 times what they do look useless.

this wasn't even their first team, they were sandbagging

 

[DubaiSpur]

I think he probably told them to do the minimum to make the home leg easy and not to stretch too much.

I think we've done that.

Again, how does that square with the whole 'oh, we have a losing mentality at Tottenham, I'm trying to change it, it takes time' stuff? It really ,really doesn't.

 

[DubaiSpur]

this wasn't even their first team, they were sandbagging

Great, even better. A bunch of Belgian mid-table *second-string* cloggers. What a proud day for Hugo Lloris, Toby Alderweireld, Harry Kane, Dele Alli and all the other great wonderkids and established stars of Tottenham Hotspur to look back on.

 

[afsoc4life]

this wasn't even their first team, they were sandbagging

LMAO!!! ROTFLMAO!!

 

[indianspur]

Bunch of jokers. All of them. The management team, the players.

Tottingham Hotspur, always good for a laugh

 

[paxtonwolf]

Appalling from top to bottom.

25 mins. That's how long Sissoko spent out on the left wing. A complete and utter waste of time. He has one option there, to cross on his right foot and all we have in the box is Kane and possibly Dele if we are lucky.

This shows me there was no plan to tonight's game. From the starting 11 (3 central midfielders + Sissoko), minimal creativity.

The most obvious sub to anyone was to get Son on for Sissoko but when there was eventually a change it was NKD. Sorry this guy isn't good enough.

What were Son and Eriksen being held for? Fulham? There was just no plan imo. We've gone with half a line up, and left out our key creative players. By then bringing in NKD in front of Son and Eriksen Poch is basically saying he doesn't fancy the comp much imo. Either go for a win with your best team or don't bother. If we had a key Pre over league game at the weekend I could half understand.

I'm just so confused as to what the plan was tonight - from start to finish.

PS how hard is it, when you finish 3rd, have adequate finance, and have champions league football, to find a player or 2 that can put he ball in the net? All I ever heard was when we qualify for the champions league we will attract stronger players. I'd say our additions this season have been some of our worst.

Correct, although I would say Wanyama was a decent addition, unfortunately his addition appears to have stalled Dier's rise

 

[braineclipse]

Look at the side he picked. Look at the players he picked. We were playing fudging *Gent*.

At some stage, these players, in between looking around for their team-mates like frightened babies crawling around Mall Of America, needed to look at themselves and think 'wow...we're being shown up by *Belgian league* players earning 1/100th of what we do'.

They can't all expectantly wait for Poch to tell them exactly what to do, and then blame him if it turns out sour. That isn't the way it works.

Agreed, a lot of this is on the players.

So many poor decisions, so many poor touches.

Slumps in form are to be expected. Not overly worried. But there are some players that have underperformed again and again.

 

[scaramanga]

Again, how does that square with the whole 'oh, we have a losing mentality at Tottenham, I'm trying to change it, it takes time' stuff? It really ,really doesn't.

A very good way to ensure you win nothing is to go flat out in every match.

We showed that last season and Victimpool have been doing it for about 5 years now.

Until we have a big squad with no weak spots, we will have to choose our victories. We'll have to be more clever than "just fudging motivate them" or "run about a bit".

Sent from my SM-G925F using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

 

[Hoddledro]

Ahh the usual Feb/Mar performance that now wasn't it. The little wobble we have same time every year amongst the europa/fa cup backlog. Then we exit both this round or next with a few damaging league results thrown in.
Mostly blame the players, they just don't turn up.
Poochs failing is that of most young managers. They like small squads. We use 16 or so players for 90% of the season.

 

[paxtonwolf]

Bunch of jokers. All of them. The management team, the players.

Tottingham Hotspur, always good for a laugh

Yes, it seems no matter how bad are rivals do, we seem to rise to the occasion and make sure our fans cant enjoy it for more than a day.

We revelled in Liverpool's season falling apart in just 7 days. 2 more performances like the last 2 and we'll be joining them with having 13 matches left

 

[Benny_Lad]

Correct, although I would say Wanyama was a decent addition, unfortunately his addition appears to have stalled Dier's rise

You are right. Victor has been good (and one of, if not the cheaper ones).

I'd be absolutely amazed if any of the others train on to become Spurs players for the long term.

 

[Benny_Lad]

I think he probably told them to do the minimum to make the home leg easy and not to stretch too much.

I think we've done that.

If he's worried about them getting injured then don't play them. I'd rather have anyone giving 100% than players taking care of theirself.

 

[DubaiSpur]

A very good way to ensure you win nothing is to go flat out in every match.

We showed that last season and Victimpool have been doing it for about 5 years now.

Until we have a big squad with no weak spots, we will have to choose our victories. We'll have to be more clever than "just fudging motivate them" or "run about a bit".

Sent from my SM-G925F using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

We cannot pretend to 'choose' our victories and expect to forge a winning mentality worthy of the name. This is the quintessential nature of winning - you either want it every time or you're not really trying to win. Jenas said as much about us under Harry a few weeks ago; he said that we generally went into campaigns looking to secure 70+ points, possible CL qualification, and so on - and thus we weren't really accustomed to wanting to win every week, or even on any week that didn't matter to the first two objectives. He went on to cast that in purely negative terms - said it didn't foster a culture of winning every week, which was something Arsenal similarly were lacking (he was talking about them and their recent struggles).

To win, you start by wanting to win every week, every day, every minute - from the smallest game of man-in-the-middle to climactic CL games at the Bernabeu, or the Allianz Arena, or the San Siro. Anything less, and you're settling - this may achieve your limited objectives, but it will never foster the sort of winning mentality that carried United (for example) through two glorious decades.

This sort of thing is not conducive to fostering a winning mentality. And I think Poch knows that at least as well as Jermaine Jenas does.

 

[scaramanga]

We cannot pretend to 'choose' our victories and expect to forge a winning mentality worthy of the name. This is the quintessential nature of winning - you either want it every time or you're not really trying to win. Jenas said as much about us under Harry a few weeks ago; he said that we generally went into campaigns looking to secure 70+ points, possible CL qualification, and so on - and thus we weren't really accustomed to wanting to win every week, or even on any week that didn't matter to the first two objectives. He went on to cast that in purely negative terms - said it didn't foster a culture of winning every week, which was something Arsenal similarly were lacking (he was talking about them and their recent struggles).

To win, you start by wanting to win every week, every day, every minute - from the smallest game of man-in-the-middle to climactic CL games at the Bernabeu, or the Allianz Arena, or the San Siro. Anything less, and you're settling - this may achieve your limited objectives, but it will never foster the sort of winning mentality that carried United (for example) through two glorious decades.

This sort of thing is not conducive to fostering a winning mentality. And I think Poch knows that at least as well as Jermaine Jenas does.

If we do that we'll burn out every March.

I suppose we could just about manage a League Cup win that way as it finishes so early.We'll burn out like we did last year for everything else.

Sent from my SM-G925F using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app

 

[ringo]

We may have lost today, but it is two leg tie. We are only one down, and still have the "home" leg to come. So we are far from out of this. Much as I'd like to see us win a cup - I'd rather we consolidate our position in the league. Too many games/not enough squad quality/injuries means it unrealistic to expect us to win cups and be consistent in the league. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of creativity and inability to score from open play -but that comes and goes.

We went for mid season training in Spain recently -maybe that break from routine had an impact on the player's mentality. Maybe they are still mentally on warm weather training.