New Tottenham Hotspur manager Antonio Conte has an unbeaten record as we go into the November international break, but with a troublesome performance in our victory against Vitesse added to what is now four odd hours without a Premier League goal given the scoreless draw with Everton, he’s got his work cut out for him as we now move towards the Leeds United clash.
With Everton being yet another game without a single shot on target, Conte certainly won’t be helped with our international attackers off for duty – not least misfiring Harry Kane – so his chances of a quick fix over the break will be patchy at best. Everton was, however, a clean sheet, which is a start after more recent leaky performances, but any fan would be hard pushed to say it was a performance you’d have expected to see following the appointment of a ‘name’ like Conte.
For many, that will be a troublesome development of its own as we look to these players and continue wondering why they are now consistently underperforming based on how we know they can play.
It’s an important fortnight, and all we can do is cross our fingers.
Danny, your post didn’t create a new page because the current isn’t full, if say a page contains 21 posts when you write and post number 22 it creates a new page and this is where the refresh is sometimes delayed.
Haha, my last post was the perfect demonstration as it became the first post on page 6 and appear instantly but when I navigated back one page the new page (page 6) had disappeared and only re-appeared after doing a refresh.
I’ll try and get on my main comp tomorrow and drag everything together and have a better play.
I’ll double check but with how that explanation reads, that sounds like your internal cache rather than ‘site side’ as you navigated back to an old stored page whilst the refresh gave you the update. I’m not exactly a techie though, so as said I’ll check.
It’s not a big deal Danny, would rather they put their effort into putting the page navigation back at the top again.
Yup, have noted that as well and understood TQ.
Actually folks the two results of last night were Scotland against Denmark and good old Northern Ireland against the European Champions Italy, well done to those two teams.
No offence to England But a big result against San Marino is no shocker, but a good result all the same, but if we’re honest it should be at least 5 or six against a team like this and I am much of the same opinion as Ian Wright in this, that teams like these, Andorra, San Marino, Faroe Islands, Malta, Gibraltar should have to play in a qualification round even before these games.
As for the likes of England this is little more than a training match.
Niall – Being Belgian, I don’t care either way, and I agree that England beating the likes of San Marino is business as usual (even if the score line is extraordinary, even against minnows).
However, when it comes to the 2 other results, I feel it’s probably not right to lump both together.
While Scotland’s result against Denmark deserves lots of praise, I feel the Northern Ireland result is a bit of a case of “so what?”, with all due respect.
Scotland needed points to secure a place in the playoffs, and they beat a previously unbeaten Denmark to get them. It was a game with high stakes, against quality opposition, and they delivered. Overall they have had a very good campaign for the first time in a long time.
With NI on the other hand, while the quality of the opposition is unquestionable, there were no stakes for NI in that game and they could play freely, knowing that even a bad defeat would have only been seen as an expected outcome. It’s always easier to play well when there is no pressure – the real test for teams is if they deliver under pressure. In the end, drawing with Italy means nothing for their qualifying campaign, and while the result on the night is positive, the campaign as a whole remains underwhelming.
From a neutral perspective, it’s probably not the result that stood out, to me.
Congrats to Ben and Joe, fantastic performance by Wales to earn a seeded play off place.
Some really surprising names in the WC playoffs. It will be atough road for anyone in those groups, Italy included.
Italy in footie are a bit like the Aussies in cricket……they only turn up for the big games!
Having had a quick play.
The ‘comment on this article’ directly under an article sends you straight to the comment box, so is a bit speedier on a scrolling front. And even though the ‘last page number’ isn’t bolded or highlighted, it is clickable – so folks don’t have to scroll through comment pages they have already read. Although like the previous format, any replies direct to a post would be missed.
Danny, that’s a useful suggestion to scroll down quicker, I guess from the site owners perspective they want users to scroll down and see all of the ads to get to the page navigation! 😉
Button is there for a reason, it’ll be factored in TQ – I wasn’t being cheeky in mentioning it lol as my own share of the site comes out of Ads as well. But looking at the format (I got Ads on base box, I’m not getting them on lappy as I’ve noted that as well) the button will simply ‘scroll’ the post build up and be easier for people to get back to where they left off with a little less inconvenience – although it must be said, some of the sites I see out there now, I’ve stopped visiting them as it’s pure overkill. We have a far better balance and thankfully no pop ups. Once we are back on the aggregators, I’ll push harder with articles so hopefully the community will be boosted by new voices as well.
Hi BS,
No surprise that you disagree with my submission, you seem to be doing that a lot lately.
Firstly, I don’t feel England’s result was the best of the night.
However Scotland indeed was,
The reason I mentioned N I is because I come from there and indeed, even at home, when Italy needed to win we held them to a draw and should’ve won.
Italy haven’t been beaten since 2018 and we came close, they’re the European champions, so I thought it worth a mention, and certainly a good result, to each their own tho…
BTW we’ll done to Wales for reaching the play offs.
Hopefully they’ll all get thru and give us a good bit of interest.
Great results for Scotl and NI and even ROI against Portugal, belgium way overrated these days and Wales held them to finish 2nd. Reports also about Romero picking up a knock.
Yet the only “overrated” team in that post is so far the only team qualified for the WC…
Niall – no need to get defensive.
I was just pointing out there there seems to be a bit of bias there when I read that post.
I’m not from the UK so I won’t even try to dip my toe in rivalries between “the home nations”, but from the outside looking in, there does seem to be a tendency to downplay England’s results and talk up the others – probably fair banter I suppose!
For what it’s worth, the draw in Cardiff means Belgium will be guaranteed to remain number 1 in Fifa rankings until March 2022 at least. This will mean more than 4 consecutive years as the number 1 football team in the world. To Belgians, that’ll be the most noteworthy thing to come out of this latest round of internationals.
We’ll all value such an achievement differently, and it’s a pale substitution for trophies, but at the very least it’s a testament to consistency over a long period of time. For a country with only 11 million in it, it remains a remarkable achievement. But I also accept that this is a bigger deal in Belgium than it would be abroad.
BS …. Sounds a bit like our consistency under MP for about a 4 year period.
Geof – true, but Belgium aren’t, on paper, the 8th most important football country in the world.
Given its place in world football, its history, and its revenues, a strong case can be made the THFC have under performed in recent years.
Given its place in world football, history and budget of the Belgian FA, a strong case can be made that Belgium have over performed in that span.
That’s the difference.
BS
Not getting defensive, I actually outlined my bias, just as you being from Belgium are “bigging up” your team and rightly so, over here there are less than 2 million of a population and for political reasons many wouldn’t put a NI shirt on, so it’s actually around a million of a population, so to get a result against Italy who needed it was a boon.
Geof, our ladies hammered Watford 11-0 last night in the League Cup, you can watch the full match or highlights on The FA Player or Spurs TV.
TQ …. I found out the result as soon as I woke up but I couldn’t find any highlights or replays. I did look on FAP but maybe it hadn’t been put up then. I’ll try again. Sounds like a really lucky win!
Somewhat surprised to see us linked to Jordan Pickford as a possible English replacement for Lloris, if that’s what we want then I’d rather we went for Dean Henderson, who clearly wants out United, or Nick Pope. i would have preferred Ramsdale over both but we missed the boat there.