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*** Tottenham Hotspur v Woolwich *** OMT

Bedfordspurs said:
I remember asking Ginola why he did that run vs Barnsley in the cup and he said because I can, and if stopped to think about it i would have been tackled
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I think that is exactly right. Whether playing tennis, or in an important business meeting, 'thinking', analysing the situation in the heat of the activity is the worst thing you could do. Our brains have a limited capacity. You should be acting on instinct.

What you do however (or can do), is set out your mental approach before hand. Or when you get a moment to think. So for me I find I play better tennis if my approach is: I am here to enjoy this game, I don't mind if I do not win. Now that works for me. I am not a good tennis player but I beat players who I normally lose to by taking that approach. In meetings I personally find it best to predetermine what I want from them. I put my desired outcome consciously into my mind. In football, of course players aren't actively thinking - I will make a run. Or conversely how many times do players miss an easy chance when they have too much time to think? Get the mentality right beforehand.

When 1-1 Henry would just see the ball in the corner of the net. Not think at all. Let his instincts do it. But he thought about it when training, when preparing.
 
SpurMeUp said:
I think that is exactly right. Whether playing tennis, or in an important business meeting, 'thinking', analysing the situation in the heat of the activity is the worst thing you could do. Our brains have a limited capacity. You should be acting on instinct.

What you do however (or can do), is set out your mental approach before hand. Or when you get a moment to think. So for me I find I play better tennis if my approach is: I am here to enjoy this game, I don't mind if I do not win. Now that works for me. I am not a good tennis player but I beat players who I normally lose to by taking that approach. In meetings I personally find it best to predetermine what I want from them. I put my desired outcome consciously into my mind. In football, of course players aren't actively thinking - I will make a run. Or how many times do players miss an easy chance when they have too much time to think. But get the mentality right beforehand.

When 1-1 Henry would just see the ball in the corner of the net. Not think at all. Let his instincts do it. But he thought about it when training, when preparing.
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I agree. What I don't agree with is that you can read our players' minds
 
SpurMeUp said:
You're position has moved somewhat. From the opponents being tough as a reason for the draws to we can't know what's going on in the players heads. I get you. But there are some circumstantial clues. 1. Pre and post Pool game Spurs players were talking about the new manager effect and matching them. 2. Do you think we had the right mentality when we were coasting against the Scum? 3. Are we a young team, that you wouldn't expect to be experienced playing and approaching such games? 4. Poch talked about how it was a "young team" post Scam game. Does he think the players have more to learn about their mentality and approach to closing games?

We don't know what the players are thinking exactly, but we can see how they play, and how they need to improve in my opinion (and I believe in Pochettino's too).
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But when the game is won or drawn on such fine margins what can actually be learned from the result about the mental approach of our players?

Had Kane picked up on Lamela's tackle on Cech just a bit sooner and put in the 2-0. Or one of our other chances to make it 2-0 had gone in, would you have a different view of the situation? Or one of our chances against Liverpool where overall we created the better chances... Our players would have gone into the games with the same approach.

You're arguing against a straw man by arguing about Pochettino thinks the players need to learn about mentality and approach. No one is claiming that we don't need to improve.

We deserved a win against the scum (and against Liverpool imo). That shows that the mentality of our players is very much on the right track at the very least. You talk about Ferguson, but it's not like his teams always edged close games... They had plenty of games against very good teams where they were marginally better and drew. This in itself is not a problem. Despite us still having to improve and grow.
 
@thebrain I think I understand your point. Is it that we were a little unlucky? We deserved to win, it was close and simply bad luck that we didn't?

braineclipse said:
We deserved a win against the scum (and against Liverpool imo). That shows that the mentality of our players is very much on the right track at the very least. You talk about Ferguson, but it's not like his teams always edged close games... They had plenty of games against very good teams where they were marginally better and drew. This in itself is not a problem. Despite us still having to improve and grow.
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You say we 'deserved' to win. The fact that we didn't - not in one game but in a number - would lead most to ask what was missing? For you and Milo it seems all was missing was luck. From what Poch has said I think he believes we need to evolve our approach to win games we control. And you kinda contradict yourself as you also say we still have to "improve and grow" (after saying there is no problem).

The difference between top teams and us, is that they would win games where they are the better team, more often than we do. Of course its not just developing a mentality, as I mentioned previously better forward movement, effective width, accuracy of final balls are also needed. But Ferguson was a master at getting into a teams and individual players mind. Poch understands the importance of a 'mentality'. This is a young inexperienced team, why would you believe their mentality is unquestionable?
 
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SpurMeUp said:
@thebrain I think I understand your point. Is it that we were a little unlucky? We deserved to win, it was close and simply bad luck that we didn't?

You say we 'deserved' to win. The fact that we didn't - not in one game but in a number - would lead most to ask what was missing? For you and Milo it seems all was missing was luck. From what Poch has said I think he believes we need to evolve our approach to win games we control. And you kinda contradict yourself as you also say we still have to "improve and grow" (after saying there is no problem).

The difference between top teams and us, is that they would win games where they are the better team, more often than we do. Of course its not just developing a mentality, as I mentioned previously better forward movement, effective width, accuracy of final balls are also needed. But Ferguson was a master at getting into a teams and individual players mind. Poch understands the importance of a 'mentality'. This is a young inexperienced team, why would you believe their mentality is unquestionable?
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I really don't see how I'm contradicting myself.

I would have thought that we need to improve regardless of the performance and results against both Liverpool and Arsenal. We could have won both (in addition to the City game) and I still would have thought there would be reasons to look for improvement. If our "youngest team in the League" had no room for improvement on the mental side of the game it would not only be a first, but a rather ridiculous idea on the whole to me. Especially as we've still won nothing... Far from thinking that their mentality is unquestionable, I think it's developing all the time.

I just don't think the Arsenal and Liverpool games told us anything in particular about this, because individual games that are relatively close are often decided by coincidences. If anything I think our performances are more important if we're looking to learn something about the team. What we've learned is that we've come a very long way with a very young team. And even against top team we can stand our ground.

The performance against Arsenal was bizarre in some ways. They had their centre back push up on his own trying to play someone offside without anyone putting pressure on the man on the ball, how often have we seen that be the other way around? They were on the ropes defending their own box and way overstretched in midfield, how often have we seen that the other way around? We went away to an Arsenal team that would have gone top of the league had they won and we were the better team. How often has that happened before in the last 20 years? Not that often... Does that tell us something about our mentality in a big game? I would have thought it would tell us at least as much as the actual end scoreline.

The last time United won the title under Ferguson they did so winning 20 out of their 19 games against the bottom half of the Premier League. Winning games where they were by far the better team. Against the top third of teams in the league they won 6, drew 2 and lost 4. They lost against City, Chelsea and us at home. They didn't complete a league double over any other team in the top 6 of the final league table! Of course looking at those games in isolation I'm sure a lot of conclusions could have been drawn about mentality and so on. But most of them would probably have been faulty. As are conclusions about us looking at a small sample size like these two games, where we drew, and one of them was against a team most experts consider to be better than us away from home. I don't think you're comparing us to the actual results Ferguson got.

In short: Yes we have to get better, but drawing against Arsenal away is not symptomatic of an underlying problem.
 
braineclipse said:
The performance against Arsenal was bizarre in some ways. They had their centre back push up on his own trying to play someone offside without anyone putting pressure on the man on the ball, how often have we seen that be the other way around? They were on the ropes defending their own box and way overstretched in midfield, how often have we seen that the other way around? We went away to an Arsenal team that would have gone top of the league had they won and we were the better team. How often has that happened before in the last 20 years? Not that often... Does that tell us something about our mentality in a big game? I would have thought it would tell us at least as much as the actual end scoreline.

The last time United won the title under Ferguson they did so winning 20 out of their 19 games against the bottom half of the Premier League. Winning games where they were by far the better team. Against the top third of teams in the league they won 6, drew 2 and lost 4. They lost against City, Chel53a and us at home. They didn't complete a league double over any other team in the top 6 of the final league table! Of course looking at those games in isolation I'm sure a lot of conclusions could have been drawn about mentality and so on. But most of them would probably have been faulty. As are conclusions about us looking at a small sample size like these two games, where we drew, and one of them was against a team most experts consider to be better than us away from home. I don't think you're comparing us to the actual results Ferguson got.

In short: Yes we have to get better, but drawing against Arsenal away is not symptomatic of an underlying problem.
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Agree with your first paragraph. My point is very simply, we should be winning when a team are on the ropes. We've played well in a number of games this season and dropped points. Not just the pool and arse games. Poch commented often about the team being young and developing.

Ferguson's teams did whatever it took to win. In that final season they ground out the title without a lot of quality. We have the quality, and a good foundation. Sometimes we need to grind out results. Pochettinho has alluded to the same.

I made some observations. My beliefs post Scum game. I don't think they are really all that different to your views. Maybe my assertion that you make your luck is at odds with some of the previous things said, but its more semantics than anything. I do believe this team will develop a killer instinct. Confidence in attack, better final balls, a ruthlessness up front. We are not used to dominating the scum away and we came away with a draw. With Poch in charge I think we will kick on, take that next step and believe in ourselves to turn dominance into goals. As mentioned, a mid to late 20s attacking player with drive, to complement the existing talent would be ideal in Jan.
 
SpurMeUp said:
Agree with your first paragraph. My point is very simply, we should be winning when a team are on the ropes. We've played well in a number of games this season and dropped points. Not just the pool and arse games. Poch commented often about the team being young and developing.

Ferguson's teams did whatever it took to win. In that final season they ground out the title without a lot of quality. We have the quality, and a good foundation. Sometimes we need to grind out results. Pochettinho has alluded to the same.

I made some observations. My beliefs post Scum game. I don't think they are really all that different to your views. Maybe my assertion that you make your luck is at odds with some of the previous things said, but its more semantics than anything. I do believe this team will develop a killer instinct. Confidence in attack, better final balls, a ruthlessness up front. We are not used to dominating the scum away and we came away with a draw. With Poch in charge I think we will kick on, take that next step and believe in ourselves to turn dominance into goals. As mentioned, a mid to late 20s attacking player with drive, to complement the existing talent would be ideal in Jan.
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Apart from perhaps the top 2-3 teams in Europe all teams have games in a season where they play well and dropped points. This is football. Ferguson's teams did whatever they could to win it sometimes seemed, they did at least somewhat frequently fail though. And I'm not sure we have a lot more quality in our team currently than Ferguson did in his final season.

I agree with the final paragraph. And because of that I don't see what happened aginst Arsenal as problematic.
 
milo said:
Do you agree that our players were caught up in the Klopp hysteria? Or we half way along a journey to get better and not yet taking full advantage of positions of dominance?
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The latter. I don't think Klopp meant anything to us personally, but I do think the latter is in cll-effect. Frankly, we are about 8 months ahead of my personal schedule of expectation!!!!
 
thfcsteff said:
The latter. I don't think Klopp meant anything to us personally, but I do think the latter is in cll-effect. Frankly, we are about 8 months ahead of my personal schedule of expectation!!!!
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Poch is certainly well ahead of the schedule I had mapped out in my mind. Didn't expect so much progress this season that is for sure.
 
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