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**** Sporting Clube de Portugal v Tottenham Hotspur FC ****

That was an extremely dull watch. I thought we were rubbish. I also thought they looked far more likely to score for most of the match. We deserved to lose. I can only hope that this will prove a kick up the backside and there will be some positive reaction moving forward. We have played rubbish all season and got away with it with the results; not so tonight.
 
I blame Conte on this one. If his primary - likely only - game plan is to get the ball wide and have wingbacks cross into the box, then he's clearly missing the obvious on a warm afternoon where the opposition were working hard. The players were absolutely soaked with sweat so what's he doing wearing down the wingbacks and not giving us fresh legs out wide?

Fatigue has also contributed to Royal losing effectiveness and taking a yellow card and Perisic not being able to track back and defend well, late on.

What's Italian for 'Read the room, react accordingly'?
 
That was an extremely dull watch. I thought we were rubbish. I also thought they looked far more likely to score for most of the match. We deserved to lose. I can only hope that this will prove a kick up the backside and there will be some positive reaction moving forward. We have played rubbish all season and got away with it with the results; not so tonight.

At 89 minutes i thought a draw was the fair result - typical we play below our level and look sloppy but opponents don't look any better kind of game. But once they nick the goal and follow up with the second it's hard to argue against the result, but it's harsh nonetheless imo
 
Can understand playing those 3 up top if maybe Son moves to the right as he is quite 2 footed and can cut in.

Lining up how we did tonight completely unbalances things - Richarlison has zero pedigree as a right forward imo. Most of his good stuff is cutting in from the left or playing up top.

Somehow we’ve managed to complicate things and we didn’t even mix it up mid game - it’s so rigid.
 
What is with Harry at the moment? The poor touches / passes are one thing, but the way he didn’t attack Perisic’s brilliant cross across the goalmouth? Just weird.

I noticed he pulled back on a few but he generally never busts a gut to get on those. Royal had one in the first half too. You think with 3 forwards they’d agree one of them will attack it.
 
Can understand playing those 3 up top if maybe Son moves to the right as he is quite 2 footed and can cut in.

Lining up how we did tonight completely unbalances things - Richarlison has zero pedigree as a right forward imo. Most of his good stuff is cutting in from the left or playing up top.

Somehow we’ve managed to complicate things and we didn’t even mix it up mid game - it’s so rigid.

That's a good point, Richarlison should be playing from the left, don't see why he should be forced to the right and Kulu dropped just to accommodate Son, we're weaker in two positions.
 
I blame Conte on this one. If his primary - likely only - game plan is to get the ball wide and have wingbacks cross into the box, then he's clearly missing the obvious on a warm afternoon where the opposition were working hard. The players were absolutely soaked with sweat so what's he doing wearing down the wingbacks and not giving us fresh legs out wide?

Fatigue has also contributed to Royal losing effectiveness and taking a yellow card and Perisic not being able to track back and defend well, late on.

What's Italian for 'Read the room, react accordingly'?

Yeh and the fact we are still relying in Kane to either drop deep to create and or get in and on the end of crosses highlights out issues. We desperately need one of our CMs to be a ball carrying creative talent, someone that gets and keeps or recycles the ball like a Modric in that defensive sense than just someone that looks like they put in tackles. Effectively 6 at the back with 3 up top and Perisic trying to create which is not enough in this day and age.
 
Our best away performance of the season so far as we managed to control the game for once considering how we were hanging on at forest and chelsea especially.

Just were a bit loose in the final third to convert good build up play into more chances and goals. Definitely deserved a point probably all 3. Sporting can count themselves very fortunate to win that but that’s how football goes as we have found to our benefit this season.

I feel we would have created a lot more if Kulusevski had started instead of Son. I hope in the next game Conte gives some others a try such as Lenglet, Spence, Bissouma and Kulusevski.
 
For "the big club in the group," that was a shameful performance and result. I don't normally dump on the team on the forums but this performance warrants it.
Despite Conte's strange decision-making (which many of us have been questioning lately), he's gotten away with the results so I couldn't complain that much. Once again bizarre for this match, but we didn't get away with it this time. I wonder how Conte will respond to questions about squad rotation/management this time...

Kane and Royal were especially poor tonight, Son not at his best and Richarlison wasn't exactly inspired (although I have more patience for Richarlison since he's new and has looked decent lately, so I'm not worried about him). Midfield was very sloppy with their passing... win the ball back, then give it back right away with a completely unforced error.

There was some poor individual performances out there but i thought we were ok tonight as a team, on another night we nick that, the scoreline flatters them big style.
Its not a disaster, not even a bad display, lets not over react.
A disaster would be not making it out of our CL group, which will come to fruition if we keep playing like we did in this match.
 
I really don't understand what Conte has been seeing the last few weeks to stick with this brick.
Kulu is consistently our best player whether starting or coming on from the bench. Son has been arguably our worst player, yet he always starts and Kulu on the bench.
Emerson gives his all but he is not up to the quality we need. Doherty and Spence can be no worse but never get a chance.
At least Spence is young and will learn so there is some benefit even if he is only playing at Emersons level.
Midfield has been shocking all season but still the starting pair in there.
Finally what's with the lack of subs? I though Poch was terrible with his attitude to subs but Conte has been even worse this season.
 
We did not deserve to lose that even though we were a bit meh! Emerson should have been hooked as soon as he was booked. Surely we need to see a couple of the new signings against Leicester this weekend. TBF to Emerson he is not a bad defender but although he puts in a few good balls his decision making is mostly crap. A lot of our players seemed to be a bit off their game today
 
I really don't understand what Conte has been seeing the last few weeks to stick with this brick.
Kulu is consistently our best player whether starting or coming on from the bench. Son has been arguably our worst player, yet he always starts and Kulu on the bench.
Emerson gives his all but he is not up to the quality we need. Doherty and Spence can be no worse but never get a chance.
At least Spence is young and will learn so there is some benefit even if he is only playing at Emersons level.
Midfield has been shocking all season but still the starting pair in there.
Finally what's with the lack of subs? I though Poch was terrible with his attitude to subs but Conte has been even worse this season.
Agreed, I think we all pretty much agree here. We can't all be wrong.



On a hot night, surely we should use 5 subs to keep efforts high AND to avoid knackering certain players.

Is the Spurs v Leicester game going ahead? I assumed it was called off due to Met Police shortage, Royals etc.
 
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