After another dull and boring international break as many of us ignored the serially uninspiring Gareth Southgate stick with his preferred 1-7-0-3 formation for England, the positives for Tottenham Hotspur were both rest and no further injuries that I noted.
With the Premier League return this weekend, Sunday sees us welcome the Appy Ammers to White Hart Lane and manager Jose Mourinho will be hoping to see his side build on our solid recent victories, particularly the 6-1 thumping of Manchester United.
On an injury front, there’s some hope and expectation we can get a first glimpse of the returning Gareth Bale. Giovani Lo Celso and Eric Dier should also come back into contention as well, but according to PhysioRoom.com Japhet Tanganga will again be missing.
Spurs’ own injury update in the next day or two should clear things up.
Despite West Ham having joy ahead of the break with victory over Leicester City, we need to keep our own momentum going and jumping ourselves to ten points would begin opening up that gap in the table, even if it’s still very early days in the campaign.
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It’s not just the defending, it’s the panic that sets in when we concede a goal. To put it down to a wonder goal, a fluky own goal and a goal from someone who never scores is frankly ludicrous. Nine of the goals would have been conceded if we didn’t constantly give the ball away and concede needless free kicks. It also doesn’t help when you invite teams on to you when they are there for the taking. That is down to Jose and his negative tactics. He is a serial winner who unfortunately has forgotten how to win.
Of course you can put it down to a wonder goal when It was a shot from outside the penalty area right into the top corner of the net which 999 out of a 1000 would have been saved, rebounded off a packed defence or ended up in the stands., Yes we may have taken our foot off the pedal in the second half after the amazing first half but given the number of games our players have had ( including far away internationals for some) and other big games coming up this was understandable in the circumstances. Also give credit to the Hammers who in their annual Cup Final against us fought like demons in the second half. The reverse pass that cut open our defence for their second goal was quite brilliant. Shame it always happens to us but that’s how it is. Finally how negative has José been in the last three games in which we have scored 16 goals!?!
TK – fantastic post at 5.34AM. My thoughts exactly and he is not special any more, in fact no where near it.
PY……..how many times do we have to sit here saying ‘lessons must be learned’ before the team gets it?
TK
I take your point on JM. That you don’t like him.
But as HT, Myself and others have said, he is currently our manager and for that worthy of my support.
Do I like him as a person (not sure) he has a bit of the panto villain about him and perhaps some of his comments should be taken tongue in cheek.
However he does have the credentials and the mentality to help us win.
There were those who complained about his style of play. For me the game yesterday (1st half) and the ManU game put that complaint to bed.
Re the last result I’m more with Stan here folks.
Come on W/Ham were never going to win that game, the result was a dream for them.
We scored early in the game. But didn’t build on the earlier goals.
So after around 70 minutes why wouldn’t JM bring on subs to freshen up the players or close off the game.
Where I agree with WW was in whom he brought on.
We should’ve put them to bed with Kane and Bale’s chances, but it didn’t come for us.
There still is an issue closing off a game and losing a 3-0 lead.
We could argue all day on why SANCHEZ headed the ball. Why Winks can’t kick a ball more than 2 yards.
We were the better team yesterday by a mile. They were lucky, just like Newcastle were lucky.
My worry is that these 2 results will haunt us come May.
HT EJ where are you hope are keeping well.
Bringing Winks on was a massive defensive error and imho it lost us the win. We had a new striker itching to get on the pitch and we bring on Winks and Moura. Drop Harry Kane back…by far our best midfielder, defender, tackler, passer and header. Fresh legs up front would have penned a tired W.Ham back instead they spotted their chance and roared forward. Jose must take the blame for his negative 2nd half tactics. Why is he still bullying Dele? He has always picked on one player. Remember how he tried to destroy Luke Shaw. We have a much better squad now but stop this defensive stuff when we have such a strong attacking group. No longer the special one. Will be glad when he packs his bags.
wentworth – so Jose “has always picked on one player”. In your view “Bringing Winks on was a massive defensive error”, so Jose isn’t the only one who likes to pick on one player is he ? We lost the second half because, as a team, we sat back and let them back in the game. Something we didn’t do against United. But much more fine blaming it on one player right ?
Did anyone else hear Jose’s half time team talk. ” Well done lads. Great first 20 minutes. We’ve won this so sit back and have a rest. I’ll bring on Gareth for 20 minutes to play by himself that should keep them busy. Harry K..you to drop back into defence.Then I’ll get Winksy on to bore them to death (sorry Jod) and we can take the three points and go home. Not to worry if you give away free kicks;they won’t score more than one. I have a plan.”
You could agree if they scored their goals were spread out but they scored none up until 82nd minute, that is a totall collapse, players and jose are to blame, again a weak mentality, bale had a sitter to win it, he was sloppy when he came on.
The fact that these goals were scored only in the last ten minutes suggests that the plan was working up to this point. The “collapse” happened as a result of one exceptional gaffe and a one in a million strike that wouldn’t have occurred if the referee had blown his whistle a few seconds earlier.
And who can blame Bale for being “sloppy” with his finishing after he had made the chance with some fantastic footwork and when this was his first game for many, many months after recovering from an injury .toboot.
Come on folks.
How many managers have tired to close off a game being 3-0 up with around 20 mins to go. Bearing in mind that at this time as PY says they were creating very little.
Whilst I’m no Winks fan even I thought this would’ve been the ideal scenario to bring him on as I would’ve thought as WW says he could bore the t*ts off the opposition.
Moura is a runner like it or not he has a decent engine. But do we have( as WW says) better quality to come on probably.
We still had two great chances after the subs came on.
Look folks they were lucky we weren’t.
ND … I’m wondering where EJ is, too. I’ll throw out some bait ……
K I N G
West Ham were not lucky. They had a few chances to score well before the last 20 minutes. There were some great blocks we put in before half time and Fornels missed a sitter early in the second half. We got sloppy after about 30 minutes. And as Declan Rice did, for some reason they sat back. Poor management from Jose and the usual weak mentality from the players which Jose seems to be unable to sort out. He also seems unable to sort out the defending at set pieces. “You’re not special any more.”
While I can forgive Bale his miss, which was likely down to him being rusty after such a long time without match sharpness but……. saying that we ‘couldn’t do anything about a worldie’ is almost as negative as the tactics we employed in the second half. Of course we could have done something about it, we could have played the second half in the same manner as the first, if we had continued playing attacking football after the break and had scored a 4th goal early in the half they would probably have given up the fight and would have been a much more comfortable position to defend. The ‘defeat’ as it is in my eyes was purely down to the complacency of thinking we had done enough and sitting back and only attacking on the break when an opportunity arose.
TQ
I think you may have just nailed it. I think we got a bit complacent in general. Perhaps thinking they were finished. However I think it was more we “lost it” than they came back.
Something needs to be done when we are 3 up if we want to close off the game.
It was still a worlide tho…
Anybody else concerned that our best creator in the team is also our best finisher, for a few games now. Its almost like having HK taking the corners in lieu of scoring from said corners.
Could we have not played keep ball for the last two minutes, regardless of the caliber of the players whom subbed on ? Or how about kicking it into row ZZ, seems all the rage at the playgrounds.
For the past few games, we are unable to defend decisively, i.e. any corners/free kicks swung out to the back post. Its the identical spot on our right that the oppo thunder their headers in from.
Rant over but the fact and observations remain, overall happy though. Sort it out JM.
Just re watched the highlights again.
Saw Bale’s attempt and have to say if that was Man U playing they’d have been given a pen for the challenge on Bale. The player made no attempt for the ball an simply barged into Bale.
These are the margins. I’m not saying it was a pen but I’ve seen them given for far less. Look at Palaces pen over the weekend ludicrous.
Even if we did get complacent, at 82 min it was 3-0, say no more,