TOTTENHAM ARE STILL A BIG CLUB!

Saw quite a few Gent fans on leaving work today, well done those lads.

apparently gent have adopted charlton as their uk 'sister club', admiring our struggle against duchatelet, and i've heard there was even a pro-charlton chant tonight

if so, lol

anyway, it wasn't 'neglected moron defence' that cost you, it was an own goal from a striker and a ludicrous challenge by an attacking midfielder, spurs defended well until the late breakaway when they'd been playing with ten for 45 minutes and limited gent to not very much at all

Ghent got their second goal with their only shot on target in the entire match (and even that was deflected)

seriously that match was waves of spurs attacks and they could have easily scored 5

They easily didn't, which is V much the norm.

They easily conceded two goals from one shot on target which is P much

And as stated poch bears serious culpability for Ali's discipline

maybe he's just a cunt

Which of em tbh

I'll leave that one with you

Even I can't rly tell when I'm just ironically in character these days tbh

I'm generally in favour of poch and dele I think, yeah I think so

LOL Spurs fan on TalkSport, pleased that they're out of the Europa League so that they can concentrate on getting into the Champions League.

That's sensible enough tbh but you'd be assuming we fix up a squad to give genuine options and not just.....lose upon rotating.

Now you sound like an Arsenal fan.

you were warned about Sissoko tbf

xps to some degree we're all deluding ourselves that this is much other than the footballing equivalent of painting the Forth Rail Bridge, some just choose to express that on a radio phone-in

gave up trying to stream this by the time Dele walked and had to make to with Radio London but v much got the impression that had he stayed on the pitch matters would have panned out the same

Not much craic in repeatedly posting that we're ahead of where we should be based on all available evidence and it's only immaturity and a slightly patchy squad that has us even worried about top four and that European competition is probably a bit of an unwelcome distraction from qualifying for Europe.

Poch knows I love him. I only throw things at him because I've been hurt before.

such despair about a club that's lost one league match in two months

warms my heart tbh

I had an excellent view of that Alli tackle and fucking hell he deserved it.

Having seen four games there now, Wembley is spectacularly ill suited to the sort of football we play and we need to tweak the system to make it more expansive next season, which probably means bringing in a different kind of playmaker and more width outside the fullback positions.

Maybe we'll make the pitch smaller next year. Or maybe I just fucking hate going to Wembley.

"Wembley is spectacularly ill-suited"

O Rly? It's the stadium? Cmon now...

It's not just the stadium obviously, especially when the gameplan appeared to be 'pass it to Kyle Walker at every available opportunity' but we have completely fucked up there on three out of four occasions.

Wembley pitch seems to be 5m longer and 2m wider than WHL. Is that much of a difference?

Must be weird playing home games there. Didn't work for Arsenal either, of course (2-1-3 over two seasons).

THFC have a fair chance of their best finish since 1963.

Not surprised to be trailing CFC. Surprised to be, till now, still so far ahead of LFC, City, United et al. It's very odd that they cannot reel us in.

I thought this was a good article btw.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/may/01/mauricio-pochettino-tipsy-tottenham-hangover

Eleven shots none on target at half time against Barnsley

How the fuck hard can it be to tell some cunts to stop shooting if they're not going to hit the target

It's Tuesday night tbf

At Wembley!

Theatre of Screams

A goal! An actual goal!

Huddersfield losing to fucking Crystal Palace fucks me up. I'm not even half invested in the "Caraboa Cup" or w/e but goddamn that is a sad result.

Otoh Enobakhare <3

On a separate note, Paulinho has two in two for Barca and will probably end the season with 20 goals.

Fuck paulinho

Worse than a nothing player is a player that has it and can't bring it

He's a-ok. Has been from the start, last weekend too. It's nice that a moustached player brought in from China can make a difference.

that was an xp lol

big fan of tached players, need more imo

luiz gustavo still rocking his?

Not to seem ungrateful but Alli sissoko son are not a great trio for keeping the ball are they

Foyth won't be breaking into the team them

Vintage stuff this

It's easy to say it

But sissoko has been comically bad tonight apart from popping in his finish.

His retention rate cannot be fifty percent and he's not even created anything for all of his risky flicks and touches

lol wtf is going on there?

Didn't want to clog up the premium thread

Think that spurs are in a very interesting place rn

The current position (not the most recent very poor form, but the stuttering bumps with only a handful of decent team performances and a reliance on solidity with one or two moments of quality to get the results) is more honest imo as a reflection of the longer-term project and where we are with it.

the realisation that this team is in a fight for cl qualification would be a very healthy one for our younger players and I think lloris meant this when he said it very bluntly recently.

The bigger clubs with better squads were always going to come back, two seasons in a row of the majority of them stinking the place out was a happy fluke for poch in establishing himself firmly- hopefully that happy success gives him the base required to slug this next period of adjustment out because afaict he is now in a position where quite a few of the players on whom he has relied and who have thought themselves title challenging players are now pretty squarely in the way of the development of the club and it will be a massive challenge to coordinate their efforts now that they are in demand, have international recognition etc etc

There's a few Lee sharpes waiting to be fucked out imo, hopefully poch gets rein to do what he reckons is necessary

Would rather we started again with youth players and poch than keep watching Alli and Dier in particular play like they did tonight for much longer.

Can't help but think that Rose has contributed heavily to the whole thing, even if his on-pitch commitment can't be questioned. Even leaving his summer fuckaboutery aside, the constant dripping of shittalk to the press since he presented back fit for duty four or five games ago is a stark contrast to how this team was running when it was performing.

Also.....I enjoyed his book but he somewhat puts a few first team players in their place in it....and we've been shit (in the league) since it's release

Obviously we've been killing it in the Champions League and we're within touching distance of everyone that isn't City so this is hardly a crisis just yet, but these things neede addressing.

- Lack of a defensive midfielder when Wanyama and Alderweireld are both injured. We don't need to be playing five at the back against Leicester or West Brom if it means no real defensive presence in midfield. We need to be moving Dier back into midfield, where he's actually good. Our attacking players were much better last year when they were playing in front of a defensive base in which everyone clearly had full confidence. Vertonghen and Sanchez have both looked merkedly less assured since Toby's injury as well.

- Overreliance on fullbacks for width. Chelsea, United and City all play with two wide forwards either side of the CF, Kane is usually flanked by Alli and Eriksen who are really twin number 10s, so we look very narrow in attack. This doesn't always work against teams who defend deep and loses a little something on the break against teams that don't. We looked a lot more threatening with Son and Lamela on the pitch, which won't work against everyone and necessitates moving Alli into a deeper role, but he can do that.

- Dodgy team selections. The system and the balance of the team worked perfectly last year but moving Sissoko and Aurier in and out of the team for no real reason has unbalanced things. Aurier will get there but Sissoko should be nowhere near the team.

merkedly otm

Other thing

Nobody ever in the box. Ever!

Like a team afraid to do anything but show for the ball on the halfway line and play it quickly back to where they found it

Poch unassailable obv but I think the absolute adherence to some aspects of the doctrine at all times gives players a place to hide

the movement in the final third is very uncoordinated; without many attempts to make runs or move defenders, players slow down as they approach the box and see nothing on. aurier in particular kept passing backwards when he received the ball in good positions. rather than work opportunities players optimistically punted the ball in to a densely packed box and it was easy to defend. at times it feels like the team is blunt and can only grind opponents down and exploit mistakes, especially when the team selection skews so much towards the powerful dribblers; aurier, rose, dembele and sissoko felt excessive especially when not playing on the counter. lamela's quick, short one-touch passing was a very welcome relief, and with winks and even trippier back in the side I think they'll move the ball around quicker. I confess I really enjoyed the end of the match even though it was frustrating, it was just fun to see such an attacking team out there. also sanchez remains fantastic.

lads

God now what