Norwich MotM
Dejan Kulusevski
Harry Kane
Rodrigo Bentancur
Son Heung-Min
Norwich City
0 – 5
Tottenham Hotspur
Carrow Road
Premier League
22/05/2022 5:00 pm
Referee: Chris Kavanagh
| Norwich City | Tottenham Hotspur | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kulusevski (16, 64), Kane (32), Son Heung-Min (70, 75) | |||||||
| Krul | Lloris | ||||||
| Aarons | Emerson Royal | 73 | |||||
| Hanley | Sanchez | ||||||
| Byram | 36 | Dier | |||||
| Giannoulis | Davies | ||||||
| Dowell | 61 | Sessegnon | |||||
| Sorensen | Bentancur | 73 | |||||
| Lees-Melou | 71 | Hojbjerg | |||||
| Normann | Kulusevski | 68 | |||||
| Rashica | Son Heung-Min | ||||||
| Pukki | Kane | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Zimmermann | 36 | Winks | 73 | ||||
| Rupp | 71 | Rodon | |||||
| Placheta | Gollini | ||||||
| Tzolis | Bergwijn | 73 | |||||
| Gunn | Lucas Moura | 68 | |||||
| Tomkinson | White | ||||||
| Gibbs | Scarlett | ||||||
| Springett | 61 | Devine | |||||
| Rowe | Craig | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 9 | Goal attempts | 19 |
| 0 | On Target | 13 |
| 3 | Corners | 2 |
| 13 | Fouls | 7 |
| 3 | Yellow Cards | 1 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 40 | % | 60 |
Niall – I for one think the Forster signing makes sense.
It’s an easy way to fit a homegrown player in the squad and FF is a solid, experienced PL keeper.
We’d all like to see the club bring in Hugo’s heir apparent at some point in the near future, but any promising keeper is going to want to play. Johnstone turned us down for that reason and I’m sure it would be a consideration for any other young keeper worth buying.
As long as Hugo is the clear number 1, I think we have to accept that Spurs aren’t going to be an attractive destination for a talented young keeper. In that context, FF is next best thing.
My only qualm is that while FF is quite a solid keeper, he is terrible with the ball at his feet. Hugo’s distribution isn’t the best but it’s passable. If we ask Forster to play out from the back, that could spell trouble. You ideally want your backup keeper to be able to step in and not affect how the team plays. In this case, it might.
OK we have CCV, Lo Celso,N’Dombele, Gil and Jack Clarke to sell. We have seen them all and they don’t fit.
Then we have Winks, Emerson Royal, Bergwijn, Gollini and possibly Doherty, Moura all tested but not really the tops.
So that’s 11 players that won’t be missed. However we should bring in enough funds to add to Enic’s offer.
We are now on the rise with Champs League football and a top coach.
Just keep Levy out of transfer negotiations. No 11th hour cheapies or Blue Cross offers.
Onwards and upwards. C’mon you Spurs.
Onwards and upward
Yep BS
Re Foster I take your point, as I alluded to it was more about his age rather than ability, and indeed for that reason, why did we get rid of the similarly aged Hart, unless he, wanted a last hurrah else where, I just thought that if there was ever a time to bring in a “young pretender” this would’ve been it, given the plethora of important games we would have to play, surely a 2nd keeper would achieve a good lot of minutes given the prospect of being no1 next season.
With that said, I take your point, and he is home grown and a good stopper.
Hi TQ
I had a wee look over the “fence” at the forum, looks like I need to be on Face book or twitter, which I’m not, to put entries in.
But worth a look at now, and again, cheers.
Niall, no you don’t, just join em/sign up, there is quite a few of us over there.
Come n join mate! COYS
Beat me to it PY! lol
Hi Niall, no it’s not necessary to be on FB or Twitter, if you are registered with Vital you should be able to just join the conversation as far as I remember.
I’ll give it another go cheers 😉
Jose Mourinho won the inaugural ECL competition last night.
That’s his 5th win in 5 European finals. He becomes the only manager to have won the CL, EL and ECL, and only the 3rd manager in history (with Ferguson and Trappatoni) to win trophies in 3 separate decades.
I’m not writing this as some sort of ode to JM’s greatness, before anyone accuses me of that. I am just going to back to the many conversations had on VS when JM went to Roma.
I said at the time that despite the ugly football and abrasive personality, Mourinho’s ways could still be winning ways and he has proven that again.
Granted, it’s not the flashiest competition but before anyone knocks it, plenty of Spurs fans were saying that this was a competition we should go for at the beginning of the season, a trophy that was within our reach. It can’t be both ways: if it was a cup worth winning at the time, then JM’s achievement has value now.
The real reason why I find this noteworthy, is that Spurs offically become the only club in JM’s long managerial career where he won nothing. That is a statement in itself, and to me, it says as much about how dysfunctional our club may have been in the recent past as it does anything about Mourinho.
Spurs are the outlier here, and it’s worth asking why, in my opinion.
Don’t get me wrong: we are far better off with Conte in charge and I wouldn’t go back.
But I am still wondering why/how a coach that can visibly win things pretty much everywhere he goes, could fail to do so at Spurs.
I hope this is a moment of self reflection for the club’s board.
I said as much on VS at the time and the story/prediction has come full circle.
I think it’s as much a moment of reflection for the squads players at that point in time, it was largely down to their reluctance to play for the manager in the group stages that cost us. After watching the game last night I can’t help but think we would have had enough quality to have won the trophy if the players had shown a better attitude when it mattered.
As Jose said… when he joined Roma, he won 25 1/2 trophies in his clubs management… so alluding to his dealings with Levy etc. He has again won a trophy no. 26 and entry into Europa League where he could well meet spurs. If so expect a fired up encounter…
So as we all know and many VS posters commented over the 22 yrs of Levy / Enic ownership it appears that it has not been a priority to invest in the team to win silverware, just cashflow in from various cup / PL/ merchandising sources to support the infrastructure they built. Having said that Levy has done very well in this as Enfield training ground (£20m+ CL money we got from harry redknapp mgt.) / WHL stadium show. So now we have the prospect of input funds of £150m + player sales to finance transfers in / out for conte. COYS
Before anyone jumps onto my post about jose meeting spurs in Europa League, I did say
he could well meet spurs. But of course I don’t want that… Spurs to get their 2nd CL final next season… COYS
I say thank goodness that levy fired JM just before he had the chance to win a trophy with spurs. (Carabao cup).
Because if he had won that cup for spurs, he may well still be our manager.
Ugly football, as you put it yourself bs, is no good compromise to winning the ECL. Or indeed the Carabao cup. And yet finish the season in 6th place in the league. Which is what Roma have just done
The most dysfunctional thing that thfc have done in recent times, was to hire Jose in the first place!
Exactly my thoughts .
A successful manager doesn’t become a poor one overnight .
I wasn’t impressed with his appointment but with his track record it was worth a try . I was also a believer that we might have won the new cup comp .
Did he have the right players ? Did he have financial backing from the board ?
It is interesting to note that Conte although initially doing well really only got the team picking up with the arrival of the 2 in January .
How many competitions have we won since ENIC took over ? Perhaps therin lies the answer !
Hi Allan.
May I ask why you wasn’t impressed with Jose’s appointment at spurs in the first place?
Hasn’t some of the £150 mill got to pay for the purchase of Romeo and the Swede after their loan deals have expired ?
Has Bents been bought outright ?
Although £150 mill doesn’t go a long way these days it is a step in the right direction and rightly so after Conte’s efforts and achievements so far .
Being negative . Is it simply a blue patch in the sky where 100 % cloud cover has been the norm ?
HT
He won a cup which entitled them to play in the Europa cup which is the next step up what ever some may think about the so called lesser Euro comps .
What meaningful comp have we won since ENIC took over ?
Allen Its been mentioned in the media yesterday / today the funds are 150m + player sales (lo celso and a few others like CCV, winks for about £100m + total ?) so 250m possible. Bentacur was bought in jan. on 4 yr contract and kulu on loan, and reggie is on a 3 yr loan to pay for from the Barca. deal which can be put back to next yr. plus to buy romero. so general figs. Spurs buy two defer reggi, Then some 150m or more is available for new players to enhance what we have in the squad…HK10 sonny hugo etc.
HT
I think my judgement on Mourinho’s appointment was a subjective personal one rather than a footballing one . I wasn’t too keen on the bloke owing to his abrasive nature .
However I did say at the time that he was worth a punt and I think with backing he may have had some sort of success .
Personally, my objection to Jose was for footballing reasons.
Andm, whatever the results were, the football on show was some of the most negative and boring play I have seen at spurs in many a year. Not good at all.
He didn’t need backing as much as he needed sacking!
Fair enough, but if this was a problem and style was a priority,why appoint Nuno, of all people, next?
It’s like getting it wrong twice despite having had an opportunity to do better.
Romeo and the Swede, Allan?
I presume that you mean Romero and Kulusevski…
Apparently they will cost spurs approximately £68m for the pair. So that £150m could buy those two and another two like them, and with some change left over. And it will be partly as an addition to our transfer funds as they were before this cash injection.
I do find it odd that when ENIC as a company, have
now cleverly engineerd a way to add another £150m to the thfc coffers (something very similar to that which their detractors have been asking for, for years), that those very same detracters are showing such negativity about it. it’s disingenuous and unfair.
HT – finishing 6th with Roma is not bad considering their financial means compared to the teams above them. It’s about where you’d expect them to finish, but he has a trophy on top.
My point was, and is, that JM probably could have won things at Spurs had he been backed and trusted.
If Levy didn’t want to trust and back JM, fair enough, but why appoint him in the first place? It’s not like nobody knew what Jose was like…
This is for me yet another example of Levy being out of his depth in footballing terms and inconsistent. None of it made sense.
We should have either ridden the storm for better or worse, or foregone he experiment altogether. Instead we were stuck with some sort of half way compromise,a purgatory of sorts. Stupid.
The only thing I really hope is that this will serve as a lesson for Levy. If he insists on calling all the shots, we’ll never get there.
If he is willing to let recognised football men do their job this time, we may actually progress.
I’m pretty certain that if Jose had had us looking strong in the pl and/or that the football was a lot more entertaining, that levy would have backed him.
He fired Jose because he wasn’t doing the job to a satisfactory enough level his hefty pay package and past successes would have indicated. And, he was also alienating players to the point that they stopped working for him, in spite of his trophy laden past.
My point wasn’t that roma should have finished higher in serie a, but that that position for spurs (or lower) is not now acceptable for spurs. And that cl qualification is more favourable to us than if we had won either the ecl or carabao cup, or even both. With or without José.
Very good post there HT, am in agreement with you. COYS
Chicken and egg situation there.
If JM had been backed from the get go, he may have performed better too. We’ll never know.
If MP had been backed, he would probably still be at the club.
Comparing Roma’s table position with ours is comparing apples with oranges.
It’d be like saying Conte isn’t as good as Guardiola because Pep won the league and we finished 4th.
Conte recently said finishing 4th with Spurs was one of his biggest achievements. Similarly, finishing 6th with Roma may have been very good performance in its own right.
I wasn’t comparing spurs to roma… I thought I’d explained that already.
Jose has gone! Why discuss now what may have occurred if he had stayed? It’s a pointless waste of time…
I understood that Nuno was paraticis choice and that he had to convince levy of it.
Paratici is indeed in charge of football matters and not levy. So why some keep on with insisting that levy is making the football decisions and choices (transfer targets etc), i do not know.
But of course, if it goes well for thfc it will be all down to paratici and Conte. but if it doesn’t, levy will be to blame, I suppose… After all, he hired them!
None of us were privy to that conversation.
But I would find it odd that Levy would have had no input in the decision.
Similarly, it seems convenient to blame Paratici for Nuno’s appointment but credit Levy for naming Conte.
For some, Levy can do no wrong but the record books continue to tell a different story.
BS .. I didn’t say that Levy had no input. Of course he did.
In the long time after Jose was fired and before Nuno was hired, Nuno was never mentioned as one if the many managers that were speculated on in the media as being on the club’s shortlist. That didn’t happen until Paratici started at Spurs. And it was widely reported that Nuno was Paraticis choice. Paratici was known to admire him.
Whereas it is known as a fact that Levy had already spoken to Conte (among others) before Paratici started at Spurs. This was confirmed by Conte himself.
And then when Conte eventually did sign I think it would be safe to suggest that Paratici would then have had a big influence on Contes decision to join Spurs, and Levy’s decision to then hire him.
Anyway, if it wasn’t for Nunos brief spell before being fired we would not now have Conte at the club.
So, all’s well that ends well. If indeed it does end well…
I was much with Allan, on this, at the time, whilst I wasn’t keen on JM, I couldn’t over look his obvious “talent” for achieving trophy wins.
I thought we may have gotten someone to “steady the ship” so to speak.
For me he had a bad attitude, but similarly had several players with poor attitude issues also.
So it was much like waves, against a rock.
The football was poor to terrible, and at the end I was glad to see him go.
Obversely Conte, has been able to rid the club of many of those players with, poor attitudes and for me actually change the ethos of our Club from the owners, thru’ training staff, players right down to the now famous “char lady” or perhaps “espresso lady” now.
JM has done well in winning the trophy, but if he never “graces” the Premier League again I’ll be happy, even 6-1 against Manure won’t change that. 😉