With three Premier League defeats on the spin, Tottenham Hotspur fans are again asking serious questions about our style of play and the spirit in the dressing room under marmite manager Jose Mourinho. No doubt for some, one big question is will this simply get worse on Sunday afternoon as we welcome Sam Allardyce’s struggling West Bromwich Albion to White Hart Lane.
Our style wasn’t too bad at the beginning of the season but whether or not it’s Mourinho’s instructions, the sheer number of games that we have played or something else, it long hasn’t clicked now and our attempts at grinding out 1-0 victories is completely undone by our failure to remain tight at the back.
We go into Sunday’s clash sat in eighth place in the PL table and irrespective of the fact we are again missing Harry Kane through injury, there can be no doubts that we have regressed as an attacking force.
It’s been a strange old season when you look at results across the division, but we look half the side we were even a month ago. On paper, West Brom sat almost bottom of the table should be the perfect boost we need to get ourselves up and running again, but after the Brighton showing, few will be confident of that.
Ho hum, I’ll be hiding behind the settee with a stiff drink.
Glory glory fancy football hotspur
It’s nice to get a win at last but there wasn’t a lot to get excited about, our defence was saved embarrassment by two offsides. The only real positive for me was the inclusion of Lamela who went some way to show how we much we miss someone with a bit of creativity.
Well what an under whelming victory against the worst team I have seen in the Prem this season .
After the 65 th minute ( 2 – 0 ) we reverted to our sloppy passing , retreating and also stopped playing .
Why not bring Vinnie or Scarlett on for the final 25 mins to give Kane a rest ?
Good to see lamela have a good chunk of game time .
With the pressing and team work Everton have I don’t fancy our chances .
That was better. Workmanlike, attacking performance. Thank goodness for superman HK. Without him it could have been 0-0. Lamela worked hard..pity no right foot should have scored and always booked. Moura also lively in first half. Lacking decent wing backs …crosses were awful. Dinosauur Mourinhosaurus Pastus brings on Dane Scarlett for 45 seconds…utterly ridiculous and pathetic.
WBA nothing more than Championship side. Very weak opposition and will be relegated with Sheff Utd.
I think Harry Kane picked the team today through frustration. No one was bad, but still plenty of weaknesses. Bergwijn…not good enough. Full backs ….ok defensively but very poor going forward. Doherty also not the answer….very mediocre both defensively and attacking wise. We miss Reguilon. Where was Winks today? Is Bale worse than Bergwijn? Will Dier get back in? Will Rodon step up? Is Dane Scarlett a better bet than the very average Vinicius? Is Mourinhosaurus about to change his approach to save his job? Lots of unanswered questions. But hey we won.
I thought it was a decent performance all round unlucky not to be 1 or 2 up in the first half.
But got our just rewards in the second half two well taken goals. Not a vintage performance but decent all the same and what we should be doing against lower placed sides.
Thought the bulk of the team played well. Moura ran tirelessly for 70 mins (could’ve brought Bale on for him around then), Lamella again a great performance, a pity he can’t stay injury free.
After 70 mins we lost our way a bit for 10 minutes or so.
I’m with WW here, Bergwijn on for 20 mins or so in the second half, I didn’t hear his name mentioned, likewise Doherty, no where near good enough, I’d also add Dave to that list, again as WW said, this was an ideal time around 70 min to bring on Winks to close the game off a bit.
But good result, decent performance, good to see Kane back doing what he does best.
Looks like we can play offensive football after all.
Niall…..Winks wasn’t in the matchday squad but agree with many, we could have subbed earlier and rested some of the more important players for the cup game in midweek.
At last an attacking spurs team. HK10 makes all the players perk up, sonny in particular. One step forward from recent malaise. Now continue at Everton next game in FA Cup.
Both West Brom. goals a clear offside so nothing bad about our defence in that, they held the line and moved as they should, so offside 2 goals in 6yd box. Lucas had a good game and kept running / passing and assist to sonny, despite being badly fouled a number of times, as did tanguy, West Brom. lucky ref was lenient could have sent off 2 of them. Young lad scarlett looks a good player, his dummy move with opponent on him was classy.
It’s only small margins with the offsides block and demonstrates how easy strikers get between our centre backs.
We won and with a bit of the old Spurs style. Two well made goals, the second created by Lucas at his best. A much more attacking lineup with some creative support for N’Dombele at last from Lamela who also had one of his better games.
Let’s hope that Mourinho has now seen the light and that we keep to this pattern in future games when we will also be able to call upon some of our attacking injured players
Looks like a couple of offsides calls will keep us from a relegation fight. Mourinho Out! Even if he’s seen the light, I’d like to see his backside as the door closes behind him.
No doubt some of the posters who come on after a defeat to say Jose needs to be sacked will go missing today!
I thought the team showed spirit and it was clear after the first goal how much their confidence grew. Yes, West Brom aren’t a great team, but they worked hard, anyway you beat what’s in front of you and Spurs could have had far more than two.
I’m not a fan of Jose but I do think the right time to assess his impact is at the end of the season. But of course, some posters will still say he needs to go, even though that would likely be followed by Harry, Son and others going and then mid table mediocrity at best! After over 50 years supporting Spurs I want to see them return to winning trophies, not be a club like Newcastle, or some of the ones in the Championship, thinking we are better than we are and pining for past glories.
So please, those of you that love the club, get behind Jose and the team for the rest of the season and stop with the endless unhelpful negativity.
Wow all these people writing about how desperate they are to get rid of Mourinho and not one them has a clue whose going to replace him, because anyone in the whole world would do a better job right ? Mind bogglingly stupid.
Going on to the actual game. There’s a term in rugby – “go forward”, its about how sometimes momentum is enough in itself to make things happen even if the quality of the rugby isn’t that good. There was something of that in the game. I thought both Moura and Lamela provided momentum, pushing forward and always looking to make something happen. I’m not sure N’Dombele is entirely comfortable playing as deep as he was today but the shape of the team overall looked better. I have to give West Brom some credit for their first half defence but once the first goal goes in that tactic has to change. I’ve said before that the key is always getting a two goal lead, only then are you in control. This time we got the second goal. Once again a big centre forward looked like he was more physical than our centre halves were comfortable dealing with. Luckily he seemed to have no more understanding of the offside law than Defoe used to do. We’ll see what happens against Everton.
While both of their ‘ goals ‘ were offside they had a golden opportunity to go 1 up just before half time which would have meant we played attacking footie for the full 45 mins to win in the 2nd half !!
Yes Mourinho managed a win but more down to Harry . Mourinho just can’t produce a team to play well without Harry and obviously relies on him far too much . Perhaps someone else could produce a football team playing good football without Harry but we can only assess this at the end of the season when we know once and if Harry has submitted a transfer !!
Sorry for last sentence .
Big Chiv: “No doubt some of the posters who come on after a defeat to say Jose needs to be sacked will go missing today!” I’m here and still saying that JM should leave now. And if we win some tin cup with him as manager, he should go anyway. His a rotten influence on our club. An embarrassement that cannot be cleansed even when we gain a few points with him on the side.
No, Big Chiv, speaking as the first person to call for his dismissal when he was hired, I remain constant: Mourinho Our! Fora Mourinho! We deserve a manager with a heart. He sold his to the *** decades ago. Beelzebub just isn’t worth it. Make the tea lady manager. At least she has roots at N17.
no need to apologize, Allan. This is a site to speak freely about Spurs and without fear.
I assume that most of today’s players will be on the reserves in the next match. They broke José’s instructions to keep a tight line in front of Lloris. With all the possession, clearly the lads didn’t obey his orders. José hates possession. It leads to giving up possession. Might as well never have possession in the first place. The idea is to knock the ball out or bounds. They can’t score against us from there and it uses up clock. The safest football is the ball off the pitch. That’s the Mourinho way to play. If you can’t knock the ball off the pitch, pass backwards to a teammate who can. Not the Spurs way, but it is the Mourinho way. Anything over 20% possession is an abomination. Try to win by 1 x 0 on our only shot on goal of the match.
A big up to Ekkaboy for bringing some joy to the day.
So we won whilst playing high up the pitch and on the front foot. And then a couple of posters gloat whilst laying into the rest of us that have been insisting that Jose needs to have his team playing higher up the pitch and more on the front foot! Funny that!
But this was Sam A’s absolutely awful WBA, who were always going to park the bus. What else was Jose going to do today? Park his own bus too?
Just happy with the win! I was please to see our approach which we have been begging for. Not gonna say anything negative about the performance. We won a game that we should have, let’s see what Mourinho does going forward. Nothing has changed in my mind about wanting him gone!
A lot of good debate, I agree with Jod and Big Chiv here to a degree.
I like many here have seen enough of JM now to assess that a lot of his tactics are having a negative affect on the team.
I do think he should leave, but now is not the time, I think let’s get this season over as I said in the last post there are players who also need to be moved on, with a new season new manager and some new, recruits including Skippy, Sess, and Clarke we could move forward.
JM will have done his job (maybe) got us a Cup and a decent league position, he could move on.
But for today, come on folks it was a good performance we played like most of us called for us to play let’s enjoy let’s enjoy it.