Few Tottenham Hotspur fans would’ve foreseen the start (or the end) we had against a poor Newcastle United side last weekend, but finding ourselves 1-0 down in the opening two minutes, the team woke up and whilst it wasn’t a vintage showing, goals from Tanguy Ndombele, Harry Kane and Sonny did the trick for all three points. Fortunately, Eric Dier’s ridiculous late own goal shouldn’t dampen spirits as we head towards the midweek Europa Conference League clash with Vitesse.
Thursday sees us at the halfway stage in our Group G battle and Nuno Espirito Santo will be determined to protect our unbeaten record, so on current form, that upcoming game will be the Group decider.
Nuno will inevitably rotate the starting lineup again to try and keep players fresh, but Vitesse could be our fourth straight win since the Arsenal disaster and that’s been the necessary response even if performances can still improve.
Get Thursday out the way, then it’s West Ham, Burnley and Manchester United and there’s every chance we can move through October unbeaten.
Yep poor result and very lack lustre performance tonite, we had too few, shots on goal and many of our forwards looked about 2 stone too light and too small.
Many of our senior players (internationals) were piss poor tonight, we appeared shapeless and bereft of ideas. At stages you could’ve thrown a blanket over Dele, Bergs and Lo Ceslo, they were at times actually getting in each others way.
Rodon seems to have a fascination with booting the ball out of play at every chance given, not just in this game (BTW)
No surprise that I agree with WW and Ddrums re Winks, I just don’t see what he offers.
I’m now starting to feel similar about Lo Ceslo, but for some reason I still have (misguided) faith that Dele will come good.
With that said the Ref fell for their diving tactics and at one stage I thought he, was honestly on their pay role.
I thought Diane Scarlett deserved a pen.
Defence to a degree fought well, but we were shapeless in midfield and toothless up front.
We’ll I got what I asked for, play the fringe players I said, give em a run out I said, well at least we know who our best 11 are and none of em were on that pitch tonite.
Big January sale coming up.
All joking and jibes aside we weren’t great, but those guys didn’t get much time playing together, some of them must think they are in the last chance saloon and could be holding back for a January move, and these Euro nights are historically difficult games to get anything. 🤔
Roll on Sunday.
Come on guys, I don’t think you lot were watching the same game as me. You need to take the positives from this game. Yes, the first half was poor. Yes, the second half was poor ,,,, but the half time break was fukin awesome!
At least the spammers played many of their first eleven last night, shame they rested Antonio, expect to see him terrorise our defence on Sunday!
This competition is a no-win situation.
Win and you’ve only beaten farmers, lose and the jokes write themselves.
This is why I think we need to exit this competition asap. No good can come of it. At best we’ll have won a plastic trophy, but at worst this is a confidence and momentum killer.
I stand by Nuno’s decision to rotate heavily, but this is what happens when you just throw 11 players on the pitch with no fluency. We got what we deserved.
I don’t think we should read too much into individual performances. Messi would have struggled in such a disjointed team. Football remains a collective sport and no player, no matter how good he individually is, can shine in that context.
What do you expect when a manager puts out a team which hasn’t worked on the pitch together . No wonder it was a disjointed performance .
However the fact that we only lost 1-0 was a plus and if Scarlett had been awarded a justified penelty the score would have been parity .
This disjointed performance led to players playing poorly but the thing which I was disappointed with was the poor lack of judgement when opportunities ( and there were some good ones ) presented themselve when we were near their goal .
Win the next 3 and we go through .
Whatever the opinion of some on here with their negativity towards this cup why enter a comp with the intention of not competing to win it .
I felt that Tangy and Davidson had good games and the new lad who replaced Scarlett looked interesting .
With that reasoning allan, we can just do what we do every year: fight too many battles at once, lose all of them eventually and apparently, learn nothing of past mistakes…
Our squad as it is just isn’t deep enough to aim for success in multiple competitions. We should aim to be successful in one to begin with, and stop being pretentious.
And if we’re going to choose battles, this one isn’t worth fighting.
The “farmers” of Vitesse are currently sitting 6th (just 6 points from Ajax at the top), in the Eredivisie. They are professional footballers and deserve a little respect.
Beating Spurs though, if they were simply a bunch of farmers, would demand even more respect!
Maybe it’s our lot that would be better off herding sheep or suchlike for a living!
We were not very good at playing football last night. That’s for sure…
I forgot how the Dutch league is the pinnacle of European football…
Players in the 5th tier of Belgian football are considered “professionals” as in they get paid to play. That doesn’t mean they are anywhere near good enough to give PL footballers a run for their money.
With all due respect (and believe me, I have plenty of it for players in the Eredivisie), any failure to beat them has to be considered a major blow for Spurs. No point sugar coating a bad result.
Its pretty simple, either our squad players are good enough to win these games or they aren’t. If they aren’t then we are better off out of the competition and we need to look at replacing those players who weren’t up to the task. Whether its quality or attitude is irrelevant really, either way they have no place in our squad.
Okay! So you disrespect them (calling them farmers), and yet also respect them for playing in the Eredivisie!?
But, despite what you have also just written, they did actually give us a run for their money. They beat us!
Sometimes BS I do wonder why you have to be so dismissive of my every comment. As in virtually every sentence that I write. Whilst seemingly not reading my posts with any real attention at all, anyway.
How can my sentences about Spurs players “herding sheep” and and them not being “not very good at playing football last night”, be construed at sugar-coating a bad result?
Where did I call Vitesse farmers? I said that the competition in general has teams made up of farmers. I never said Vitesse players were. Vitesse are probably one of the better teams in the ECL.
That still doesn’t make them great. And yes, there is shame in losing to them.
Bitterly disappointed that Dele has deteriorated so much after an amazing start at Spurs. He was knocking in goals, laying off passes and tackling. He was a top star in the making. Is he like so many of our prospects and dragged down to a lower level? Or is it him?
I can see that Winks will never improve…he has very little to offer. Lo Celso is so limited. Bergwijn has very little about him. These 3 should be gone. We need strong back up players until we can sort out our youth. Our bench is pretty dismal bearing in mind that last night’s crew will be warming it on Sunday. Hopeless.
Give the youngsters a proper chance, maybe. Do we have any? Markanday looked bright last night about the only excitement in a dreadful, lacklustre performance.
It was painfully obvious last night that Lo Celso has a bad habit of running with the ball and then turning into the opposition player who is shutting him down, subsequently losing the ball. He has little game awareness and is far too slow to react …. but that’s enough about his strengths.
Still say that Vitesse are a decent enough side in a decent league, they are getting results against the likes of Fyenoord (spelling) and Anderlecht, remembering their top teams like Ajax are there or there abouts in the latter stages of the CL and always give a good account of themselves.
I would argue that the Vitesse team I saw last night would give Watford, Burnley, Newcastle, and certainly Norwich a run for their money most weeks,, so for me certainly not farmers.
Where I do agree with BS here is that we cannot fight every battle with our strongest 11 and hope to win each one and gain top 5, because something has got to give.
This is a good testing ground to view fringe players.
It was a bit of a “Bear pit” crowd wise last night, and the ref fell for it.
It was our 2nd 11 last night and they havnt played together (much), I know abut what iffery, however if the Gil effort went in or we got the deserved pen, we would all be a bit more happy, but still there are a few senior players who need to address, their, fitness, commitment, professionalism, attitude
Some are just coming back from injury however as Jod says do some of them have a place in our squad WW went on to name some of the Offenders, I think the manager can now assess out of a training scenario who is actually stepping up to the plate.
Roll on January.
I still have hopes for Lo Celso. He hasn’t really had a run in the side to establish himself which is chicken and egg of course. Clearly well thought of in Argentina so maybe if he stays fit and gets some PL game time we will get a better recognition of his abilities. Dele has had his chance and blown it.
Actually, Lo Celso has had loads of opportunities. He has scored once in over 50 Prem team games and has had few assists. He was originally a loanee and we made a massive mistake signing him. Regularly falls over and only one leg.Similarly, Bergweijn has very little to offer after one amazing goal on debut.
I believe in Dele. He was crushed and bullied by Mourinho ( his team lost 6-1 last night, by the way)) but would like to give him chance to return to the top player he was.
Winks should have gone years ago. Doherty and Davies should go.
We will now rely on N’Dombele to stay focused and Son and kane to keep scoring to get us through to the summer transfer window. Here’s hoping we can make some massive changes, our squad is very, very weak.
Can’t really argue with you there WW.
We know Dele can be good we have seen it, he’s young enough for his spark to return, he also did OK in the first few games of the season.
But the others you have mentioned have indeed shown little, intent, improvement, invention.
I was on the fence last season re LoCeslo but started to watch his performances more closely after some of your comments early 2021, and he does flatter to deceive and not in a good way, is there a good player in there, well for Argentina yes but so far for us he is coming up a bit short, for me he not giving those 6 to 8 out of 10 performances on a regular basis, he seems to be shoved off the ball too easily and like Bergwijn often his play goes into a dead end with little or no product.
Having said that if they can’t perform against these teams they don’t belong I should qualify it slightly. For young players they will hopefully learn from these games and may become better players. But players like Dele, Winks, Lo Celsco ? If they aren’t up for these games then we need to look at replacing them. Not an overnight task of course.
We do have to look closely at our recent signings….. Bergweijn, Lo Celso (a loanee), even Bryan Gil ( a Ginola he certainly isn’t). And the what about Jack Clarke, Ryan Sessegnon who were signed as future stars.
It appears that N’Dombele might have turned a corner. We desperately need him there is no one else.
Our sales won’t bring in much cash as their worth must have plummeted. Winks claims he needs more playing time. ( Certainly not for us. Maybe Div 1 or 2.)
Poor game by us, a team that how many times have they played together? v a team that plays together on a regular occurrence, is still learning to play as a side, but they were let down by 4 so called senior players…
Davies, Capt what’s that all about? Titanic comes to mind there!
Winks have tried to back him so I give up,
Dele, ditto Winks comment.
LoCelso the same.
The rest….
Tanganga & Sanchez looked like they gave a shit.
Rodon, still a lot to learn, god knows why!
Bergs, forgive him, just back from injury.
Gyl and Will (Scarlet) for those who don’t get it lol! are bloody kids but they were in a Boys v Men scenario.
The ref was quite blatantly a bloody “homer” he allowed Vitesse to be like the School Yard Bullies, and didn’t they make use of it, plus our totally crap Capt allowed this and did not remonstrate with the said Homer enough.
Now imagine if Gyl’s cracker of a shot had gone in, and we had got what in everybody’s mind was a penalty, multiple fouls on Will, except of course for the Homer and his mates on the side line, VS would not be in such a detrimental mood.
I still believe we will go through and win the Group, then lets see how things go from there. COYS
Isn’t there a stat floating around that we covered the lowest amount of ground in the PL games so far ? That is with our first eleven. Where does the problem lie ?
Players are full internationals yet fail to perform here. You can start alongside Messi but not good enough for Vitesse. Where does the problem lie ?
It is a team sport, yet we look like 11 strangers out there not only yesterday but even before the Emptycrates “bad day at the office”. Where does the problem lie ?
Clueless, clueless if players are to be blamed.
All these analyses of the individual players performances but what as a whole ? Was there a pattern of play there yesterday ? Or were the players on to do their own thing and win, you know ala Maradonna ? Who are you blaming for that shower yesterday ?