With a disappointing turn in our Premier League form of late, Tottenham Hotspur can give themselves a little distraction on Wednesday evening as we go into battle against Championship side Stoke City in the EFL Cup quarter final.
Travelling up to the Midlands probably won’t be a walk in the park for us as Stoke are in reasonably good form this year, sitting just outside the Play-Off spots as I type, but this is absolutely a game we should be looking to win to push us one step closer to a day out at Wembley.
Injury wise, it seems Giovani Lo Celso might be a doubt for this one, but in any event I would think manager Jose Mourinho would again take the opportunity to rotate folks around for this one.
Whatever team is put out should be good enough to take victory, even if it’s not entirely comfortable.
Then we can enjoy whatever version of Christmas we actually get, and then we do it all again for the second half of the season.
Stay safe folks and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
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Unless spurs win the fa cup or better arteta Will be more successful
Jose’s success is based on bullying and intimidation, that’s why it isn’t sustainable and his tenures have been short wherever he goes. Yes, it has brought him short term success, we know it generally brings him silverware in his first full season, but players will only put up with his management style for a certain time before turning on him and downing tools.
Hope you all had a besttest Xmas you could possibly have, I know I did, mainly because more importantly I spent it with my “nearly lost her 7 wks ago” wife, the real love of my life.
As for the debate on regards JM, like or dislike, his football for Trophies, or super-duper entertainment foot and no Trophies, it is for me each to their own, and all that is happening, moaning n groaning, is circles, round n round we go.
Me! yes I would like more free flowing attacking football, I would be a fool if I didn’t, but hey! we have what we have, no matter how some gripe about it, it is what it is! so a Trophy or 2 this season the way we are playing will do for me and am afraid it will not be the end of my world.
Oh yes! why is politics brought in to justify decrying JM? just a query. COYS
PY
Trust you and your missus had a lovely Christmas and I extend this to all my Tottenham chums and supporters of any other teams who may read this.
PY you last Paragraph and a bit just about nailed it for me.
I’m (hopefully like you) just supporting my team who ever manages and plays for them.
I would love us to get a trophy this year, not for Mourinho’s ego but for Tottenham.
The unspoken assumption in all this is that no matter what there’s no possibility of relegation, short or long term. But as we’ve seen with Arsenal the threat can sneak up on you fairly quickly. We were travelling in the same direction at the end of Pochettino’s time. Ultimately the worst case scenario isn’t playing attractive football and not winning a trophy. It’s playing attractive football and getting relegated.
First of all, I hope everyone had a great Christmas.
There seems to be an assumption that we are guaranteed to win trophies under Jose. I don’t see it. Yes we may win a league cup especially with the draw we have had but Jose was brought in to make sure that we get back into the Champions League (that’s where the money is and that’s the only way we can compete with the biggest clubs). Right now I see Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd, Chelsea, Leicester and Everton are all superior to us, better coached and with more variety to their play. All I see with Jose is negative low risk football which frankly in the modern game gets you no where. He has not evolved as a coach, he loses trust in players way too quickly, he is totally reliant on some magic from Son or Kane and in all honesty I don’t think he knows how to set a team up offensively.
Whilst always a pragmatic coach, we was never as defensively minded as he is now – I remember when he used to leave two strikers in attack when the opponents had a corner. He has become a cowardly coach, a shadow of his former self.
TQ2Spurs – You seem to say that because of JM’s horrible personality, his shelf life at any club is short. OK, fair enough. But I will point out that ANY PL manager, on average, is only there for a short time. What’s the average tenure of a PL manager ? 2 years and 8 weeks.
So being a nice guy doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be in a job any longer than JM, arrogance and all, will be in his. Managers don’t come much nicer than MP, yet his Spurs reign lasted just under 5 years.
Would you rather put up with JM’s abrasive personality for 3 years, and hopefully win something in the process, or hire a nice guy who wil probably get the sack not much longer after anyways, if he fails to win anything/the first time he misses out on top 4?
BS…….for me it just demonstrates a lack of man management skills if you have to rely on bullying and intimidation to achieve success, Jose has a record of picking on a few players at every club he has managed in order to send a message to the rest of the squad which says ‘this is what I do to players who don’t do as I say’.
Treating players this way with so little respect is unacceptable. Success off the back of mistreatment of players? Not for me, sorry.
By those standards, I feel that there are a lot of managers who would fail to meet your standards.
SAF is widely regarded as the most successful PL manager of all time. He bullied, harassed and humiliated players arguably even more than JM has. Yet he is generally praised by pundits, media, and fans alike.
It’s a rather big claim to make that both of those managers lacked man management skills when they have arguably set the bar against which all other managers are judged, in that line of work.
Show me “nice guy” managers who have achieved the same level of success.
BS…..it surprises me that you think intimidation and humiliation of players an acceptable practice.
BS …. Who cares what the personality of the manager is. That is not basic to the requirements of most supporters, who simply want to watch their team playing some attractive and entertaining football.
I personally care little about the personality of the manager. On that we agree.
But I disagree that most supporters just want to watch attractive and entertaining football.
If VS is a microcosm of the varying opinions of Spurs fans, it seems that SOME supporters want attractive football, and SOME supporters want winning football – whatever form that takes.
For those who want to win things, there is probably a predisposition to look past the manager’s shortcomings, to a certain extent, as long as the results are there.
DH – With the possible exception of Liverpool (and even they got hammerd 7-2 by Villa this year), all of the teams you list have got some horrible results to their name this year. You may think that all of those teams are better coached than we are at the moment, but that is a very personal opinion.
Where would LEicester be without Vardy? United without Fernandes’ penalties? Everton without DCL?
You can’t knock Spurs for relying on magic from Son and Kane, yet marvel at those teams, who are arguably just as over reliant on not 2, but one single player…
I hope you all had a good christmas.. well done PY yours must have been brilliant..
There no mention of Jose’s 4231 tactical shape against stoke… this is what spurs players are happy with and hopefully will give us the balance of more attacking play, and yet defensive strength as I mentioned on this thread before the stoke game. While I have supported the way we have played so far is effective, and produced results, we have dropped off a bit, as opposition have responded to our counter attacking and double up marking sonny . HK10, and defenders run themselves into the ground. This is ok for them until later in new year tiredness / injuries catch up. So spurs should have another run at top 4 feb onwards.
Truth told, I think seeing JM win the league or UEFA while with THFC would depress me as much as it would make me happy. I feel embarrassed that he’s at Spurs.
TK it is what it is, personal hate is one thing
I think it’s par for the course in top flight football, and in elite sport in general (because let’s face it – scandals of bullying and intimidation have popped up in many sports) .
Whether that is right or wrong is an entirely different discussion – and not what we had been discussing. For the record, I am not condoning it, I am just saying it’s been around forever. And to somehow focus on one manager specifically, and demonise him for it, when in reality it is probably common practice at most clubs, seems unfair to me.
If you want to believe Jose Mourinho is a bad man, that’s fine, and who am I to argue. But please at least, for the sake of intellectual honesty, put things back into context, acknowledging that Jose is one of many in that line of work.
(That last message was an answer to TQ2Spurs by the way.)
To add to that message, I feel it is hugely unfair to imply that I would stand for bullying and intimidation, when I am in fact merely pointing out that it is merely the reality of that industry – whatever my opinion of it is.
I personally cannot stand the authoritarian nature of the armed forces in general. I have huge amounts of respect for those who serve/served their country, but I do not believe that crushing people on arrival (“break them down so you can build them back up” and all that), obliging them to conform to a certain mould, and taking away any form of individualism is great.
I also recognise that although I wouldn’t like it for me, 1. it is common practice, and 2. it’s a very specific environment, for which very specific rules may apply.
So instead of being judgmental about it, I just hope that there is a method to the madness, a reason why things are done that way that goes beyond “that’s just always how things have been”, and try to accept that there are reasons why things have to be done in that way.
I try to do the same thing when it comes to judging managers, who must have their hands full managing rich, entitled, pampered, self centered and highly competitive kids.
BS, how are you, good by the sound of it!
Your post though I agree and disagree, the para relating to the Armed forces, not with you there at all, being ex-forces myself, as you have never served, that is another story for us to agree to disagree on.
Your final para, regards entitled, pampered, self centered kids, note I missed the highly competitive, what you have described having their, managers, hands full is spot on, it almost describes the general modern generation of me me me. COYS
PY – In a way, you made my point.
I think it’s very fair for you to point out that I cannot speak about what works and what doesn’t in the Armed Forces, and I have never served. I would be speaking of something I have a very distant understanding of, based on perceptions from the outside. It’s a fair point, of course.
And it would be a mistake to try to draw parallels between my experience in managing teams in a business environment, with managing teams on a battlefield. Differents skills, challenges, people etc.
But by that same logic, should we not also exercise the same caution when we speak of how PL managers do their jobs?
And unless someone here has extensive experience in elite football management, I’m not sure any of our experiences are really all that relevant to managing a modern-day PL dressing room. That was my point.
What goes in certain environments may not be suited for others.