Having replaced former manager Jose Mourinho, Tottenham Hotspur’s caretaker gaffer, Ryan Mason, now heads into his fourth game in charge as we travel to Elland Road to face Leeds United in Saturday’s early Premier League kick off.
Mason’s plan against Manchester City in the EFL Cup Final didn’t quite work, but he does have victories over Southampton, and more recently, a heavy defeat of Sheffield United under his belt, so as we return to a bit more of an attacking intent, we know we will get chances against Marcelo Bielsa’s side.
Another good result puts us on the edge of being back in the battle for the top four/five places in the division and plenty of us had given up hope of that, and although their form over the last five games has tailed off, they are plucky and energetic battlers who keep running, so we’ll have to match the ugly stuff so our quality can show through.
Unless there are issues closer to the game, the only player listed as out currently continues to be Ben Davies, so all eyes to an on form Sonny, Harry and Garry.
DL will never sack a player. Players, to DL, are commodities to buy and sell.
Read a depressing story this morning that JM wants to bring Dier to Roma and DL won’t sell him.
How could a player’s play sink so far so fast. Dier never was wonderful, but he was better than what he’s been showing recently.
But that really has made me laugh that two emails and two manager’s sacked. I doubt my emails made any difference, but they sure made me feel magic for the moment. Maybe I should demand that he replace Ryan Mason at the end of the next three matches. Then I can feel really really powerful.
The last few posts on this thread only reinforce a point I have been trying to make for a while now.
For those who thought sacking JM was the solution to all of our problems, it’s becoming clear that it was only the first step of a long overhaul.
I am genuinely worried that we’ll now stop half way, and we won’t persevere with a full rebuild on the player side.
It’s a challenging time to be a Spurs fan, because I think it’ll get worse before it gets better.
But if there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no perspective, no direction from the board, it could get very ugly for a few seasons.
Alot of our players haven’t improved over the last 2 plus seasons.
Just looking at these last few posts have brought a few things to my mind.
We have still got quite a few players from the Poch era.
This means that this group + any new signings have really failed to perform for 3 managers now.
As many of us have said on the forum in various threads that it wasn’t all JM’s fault, for me, this is now apparent, there has really been no spring board since his leaving and the malaise still lingers.
Now this leads me to several conclusions:
1: Our players just ain’t good enough, they think they are but they’re not.
2: Our players are unfit, how many times have we seen us out played, looking pedestrian not putting a shift in against other “lesser teams” take Leeds, Zagreb, we have looked lack lustre in many games this season. Many of our “top” players are only lasting 70 or so minutes before going off “knackered”
3: Our players don’t give a monkeys, watching some of the post match “banter between Aurier, Lloris etc after a game it looked like they could care less about a loss.
Our players are nieve, and lack back bone, how many times when we’ve been a couple of goals up have we lost that lead, I’ve often sat during a game knowing that for us 2-0 up jus isn’t enough, it is for other teams but not for us, it also takes very little for us to capitulate, one wrong decision and our toys go out of the pram.
4: The tactics of 3 managers have been wrong. Now the tactics of 3 managers have now seen this group win a few, lose a few, draw a few, no matter what, we just can’t get it over the line.
The management styles and support staff aren’t the same, there has really only been one constant, the players.
I don’t have the answer, except for a mass clear out.
Niall, I do agree largely with what you say but also feel there are one or two in the squad who haven’t been given a lot of opportunity to show they are better, Rodon being an obvious example. I would like to see him given more game time, let’s face it, he can’t be any worse than Dier was on Saturday!
I suppose all supporters of those clubs outside the ‘top six’ could say the same thing about their team, some not quite so critical, some a bit more …. at least until they accept that their club is not good enough to compete with the best. Spurs supporters have not got to that stage yet because most believe we are good enough or should be good enough. We all want our club to win silverware, if they don’t, we all complain and seek the reasons. Ahh …. the nature of football.
I agree. We seem to have a history in recent years of buying players and then not giving them a chance to settle in or the playing time for them to adjust to the PL. If they don’t make an instant impact they are forgotten.
So! an apology from the Board and a rebuke for THFCT who voted 3 Fridays ago by 90% of its members for the THFC Board to resign! https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2021/may/club-update/
What’s the point of voting on something when you have no clear mandate to make it happen. It’s irrelevant.
Morning everyone….well, that’s me fully dosed up with AZ!
Pretty quiet day news wise, Allegri is apparently open to an approach from us, don’t know how accurate it is but wouldn’t be a bad option, does anyone know if he speaks English?
Interesting that the apology and the potential board representation comes a few days before the planned protests and with three weeks to go before the season ticket renewal deadline (not going to well apparently).
Interesting that the THST have dismissed the statement from THFC. Quite right too, to me it’s just words and the statement that football comes first has been proved to be completely inaccurate.
Not renewing season-tickets is more relevant than any pointless voting, not that it will create any change but at least some supporters will feel they have let their concerns, whatever they are, be known, .
Geof….True! so simple! COYS
Unlike other clubs outside the “big six”, we were firmly comepting with them and have gone backwards. That’s where the worry comes from. If we finish 8th, but 8th was just about par for the course, then it would be a lot easierto accept that “we are where we belong”. We’ve gone backwards, and in fact the only other club that can say as much is Arsenal.
As for the players, some in the group today are not bad players per se, but I think some may have been ruined mentally from all of those times we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I’m sure it’s traumatic and it’s become a bit of a group inferiority complex.
For those players, every time they’re going to be in a game with something important on the line, all of those memories will come rushing back. Games in themselves are hard enough to win, but if on top of that, players have the weight of decades of under performance to defeat as well, the Spursy tag hanging over their heads etc, it’s like having to fight 2 battles at once.
That’s why I think some of our players should just move on, if for the sake of their own careers as well.
Even with a new manager, I think fighting that elephant in the room is a massive challenge, and I just think it’ll be far easier to get a new group of players who can forget about a past which doesn’t belong to them, and try to start a new chapter for the club.
BS, you seem to be saying that THFC has ruined many players and now should be indecent enough to toss them by the wayside so as not to ruin them further?
Wow! Shouldn’t we at least provide some therapy for them before tossing them aside?
I’d recommend a good therapy group these players could join. It’s called Vital Spurs. The VS therapy group provides daily group therapy sessions, and it’s open to all who have had Spurs as a major part of their lives.
And it’s exactly what these Spurs players need: vital therapy for those touched by Spursy hope. Our group therapy group has a crescent with a cockerel standing on a football on one side, and Pandora looking in her box on the other. We provide the antidote to the words Dante reported on in entryway to Hell: “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”
We, the VS community, are the therapy group for all those who have abandoned hope by entering into Spursiness. No one needs us more than the demoralized football players you describe, BS. We need to provide hope to those who passed through our gates and, as you say, have lost all hope.
That’s a terrible way to live, and, as we have seen on the pitch, a terrible way to play.
Time for Sisyphus to roll another ball up the mountain. And somehow, we still performs this task with hope that it will provide some meaning in an absurd world, and surely no world is more absurd, and thus more human, than the world of supporting Spurs.
Now is the time for us to offer aid and assistance to those who have toiled on the pitch for us. All Spurs players will be welcomed here to learn how to breath life back into the clay from which they were molded.
Same in school with your kids exams, if they were a B or B+ and then ur grades change to a C and a D+. This is exactly what is happening with spurs.
BS
The losing mentality tag attributed to THFC was here long before our current players arrived. Any new players would soon be made aware of this tag and have to deal with it. If the failure of our players to win silverware is due to acquiring a certain negative mentality passed down through history …. any new players will be influenced in the same way. A ‘mentality’ is not a virus that is passed on from person to person.
Our failure to win is not the result of some curse, or a passed-on losing mentality (old wives tale?), but something much more tangible and realistic, you know, things to do with football, like …. buying the right players, finding the right manager, tactics, training, etc.
Geof….just for a change I disagree, if there is a prolonged air of negativity about a work place one or two new faces, no matter how positive they may be themselves can be quickly drawn into the negativity of the much larger existing group. I have experienced this myself in one particular company I worked for.
Agreed, this was my point.
If the problem is a curse, I’ll ask a shaman to assist us. If it’s a matter of a negative atmosphere that’s become well entrenched through a long history, then we need a revolution of attitude. Let VS lead the way.
A sour work place can be changed, if that’s what is needed. A healthy work place can become sour, and what is sour can be blended with honey. Nothing is set forever. The waters in a river flow and refresh. What is parched can have its thirst quenched. What is flooded can recede.
All waters flow from past to future, except imagination, which has no such bounds. Imagination invites us to see like the sow wallowing in the mud, that mud is refreshing. Take what we have and cleans it with the hope that can flow from imagination.
There’s the job of leadership–to provide the imagination that cleanses. JM had a vision that was negative. His vision augmented the Spursy ways. Let there be a new manager whose imagination is not bound by that kind of negative imagination. Let our club be led by a positive imagination in which play flows in the space of the pitch that we see clearly.
Begin the first training session with a view of hope, which is nothing other than an imagination that bends the course of history toward a future that we can welcome with openness.
Okay. that’s as “new age” as I’m able to muster forth.
Now to go to wallow in the worst what can be imagined. Let’s bring back Vilas-Boas. He seems to hate English football, so he’d be perfect for an imagination that wallows in stagnant waters.
TQ …. I get that, and agree with you to an extent …. but not to the extent where it’s (apparently) affected nearly every Spurs player for over a decade.
I don’t think it’s restricted to the last decade or so Geof, we have only won things sporadically since the 1960’s.
Geof,
BS is on to something here. There clearly is a negative attitude being exhibited on the pitch. But this attitude is not set in stone. Waters flow and even stone can be worn down. The path of a stream can change.
Negativity can give way to optimism and that can happen within a person, so it can happen within a group of people. We do not necessarily have to throw away all players and replace them with new players. We need to instill a different attitude that the players can buy into.
Hope can be irrational, but it also can be a powerful force for change. The negative can be worn down in a moment. Like magic a new dawn can rise. The meek can inherit the earth–with a change in attitude?
Wouldn’t it be great if we could generate enough positivity on VS to pass on to the squad, shame it doesn’t appear to work, we’ve had some real positivity on here even quite recently but the team always manage to drive it out of us with poor performances!
Message to players, managers, and ENIC:
We’re playing your salaries. Without us you have nothing. Play in a way that out children and grandchildren do not have to wonder why we support you. Be a shining example for them.
Whether you win or lose, make us proud that we support you. Help us show our children and grandchildren how to act in their daily lives.
Live so that you are happy to see your reflection in a mirror as you pass by. Playing is your profession. Play the way that will make your proud of who you are and what you do. Make us proud that we support you.