Hopefully all Tottenham Hotspur fans had a good New Year’s celebration, but manager Jose Mourinho’s first team squad had the chance to make it a great start to 2021 as we welcome Marcelo Bielsa’s newly promoted Leeds United back to White Hart Lane.
Leeds don’t appear to do draws, they either win comfortably or lose comfortably and as we know, our own form is hardly predictable when it comes to what type of attacking display we might put in.
Whilst we still contend with a few knocks and niggles, having the Fulham clash postponed (at such late notice) has at least given the team a bit of an extra break and that should at least benefit us given the mental fixture list we’ve faced in the opening half of the campaign.
I don’t imagine there will be many surprises with the line up, but if you can call the first half of the season a frustrating success, let’s hope this game is a marker for how we approach the remainder of our league campaign.
MP has a new job! PSG
A lovely win, just what the Doctor ordered, though was a bit, in the first 12mins, in my little mind of here we go again, but I was so wrong, love it.
Played in their faces, no plan B for LU, where did we last see that lol!, but my one gripe is still our passing, though it was a bit better today, not great but better.
A win is a win, great start to the new year and the 2nd half of this season, prediction watch us go! COYS
MP only has a contract with PSG
until 2022 so he will be back. He loves Spurs and most fans love him.
We must do something about the right back position. Doherty looks depressed and totally out of sorts. Mourinho glowered at him so he will be punished and no doubt bullied.
N’Dombele ( our new Dembele) is class and glowered at Mourinho on his way to a warm shower.
Poch used to congratulate the players at the end of any match. Mourinho slinks off with a shrug of the shoulders. Horrible, boring little big head. He was lucky today. Thanks to Kane and Son.
We still need to replace Winks, Doherty, Airier yet Mourinho says we do not need to buy during Jan.
A much better performance, defensively solid and we actually carried a threat going forward. The balance of the team was better. Kane and Son are truly amazing players. It would have been nice if Bergjwin had scored. He played well but I think he needs a goal for his confidence.
My only criticism would be our ball retention and passing – we do give the ball away too much. COYS
Yep a win is a win against anyone . However still much to work on .
At times we looked really good with limited passing to our own players . Strange to see another team even worse than us at passing especially out of defence .
Interesting that during the opening period we were outclassed and shut up shop from the 70 th minute.
Why not bring Vinnie on when 3-0 up ?
Why does Dier never manage to find one of our own with his ‘ passing ‘ ?
I ask the question again why did we buy Doherty ?
There are several other questions but leave that to others .
I am relieved and pleased we won but not convinced yet .
Allan – Doherty’s current form is poor. However his arrival has well and truly put Aurier under pressure and he’s playing far better than he was last season.
A team can outclass you for the whole game as long as they don’t actually put the ball in the net. Although that does raise the question of how you define being outclassed.
You obviously only watch other teams on their good days, I’ve seen plenty of poor passing across the premier league. Admittedly not usually quite as suicidal as Leeds.
How are you lot….all good I pray with all that’s going on…the usual Happy 😊..sad 😢 faces..just Love this site…
Happy new year to all and be safe…stay blessed… COYS
Well I thought we had a decent, balanced performance.
Leeds in reality didn’t trouble us.
Why did we buy Doherty, he was, what? 15 Million as opposed to to Castagne, referred by EJ and myself.
However I think he just isn’t quite match fit, but we will not lose much if we sell him on.
I sincerely hope this isn’t a false dawn, it shows we can play decent forward thinking football, and that we are not a one trick pony.
If rumours are true I would love to see Sabatizer just where Winksy was today.
Roll on midweek.
COYS.
Hi Jod
I consider being outclassed as a team who can pass to their team mates making the other team run around chasing the ball .
Often this season we have allowed so called inferior teams to play good passing football while we were chasing the ball .
Leeds achieved that for the first 20 minutes .
Horrible to watch, never a penalty and 36% possession would not be acceptable if a crowd was present. I can accept the need to instill defensive discipline but not the lack of technical skill in keeping the ball and finding a pass. Memories of VDV not lasting 70 minutes with Tanguy but he is only early twenties. Glad Doherty is out for a while, he can neither attack or defend. Kane is our best attacker, midfielder and defender so play Vicinius ahead of him to at least test the keeper.
LT
Either your joking or you were watching a different match than me.
I felt at no time we were under pressure from Leeds.
Guess what, if someone is fouled in the penalty area, then that’s a pen.
Bergs was in the penalty area when he was fouled.
I’m among the first to ctiticise when we have been bad .
And we have been over the last few weeks.
But today we were good to decent and could’ve easily had 4 or 5.
As we say here, wise up m8.
Niall, we were bossed until the penalty by a very average team. Sure they couldn’t finish and we deserved to win in the end but it’s not trophy winning form is it? I think you’re wearing rose tinted specs if you think otherwise. Wiseic Issac as I used to say in my youth in Belfast.
Aaahh
At least you under stand the lingo.
If you don’t believe me, have a listen to Alan Shearer’s comments on MOTD.
He stated(rightly) that Spurs set traps for Leeds to fall into.
I’m not saying we were fantastic but we were pretty “decent” against a team who were supposed to give us a challenge.
As I said it easily could ‘ve been 4 or 5, Leeds were lucky to get the nil.
Wind yer neck in. 🙂
Niall, give ma head peace! Lol. I’m comparing these recent performances to those achieved in the heady days of late when top4 was a given. I accept that Jose needs to instill a different mindset and discipline to actually win things but for me it is a hard watch.
I’m happy that we won. I’m happy that we played with some attacking intent of our own for a change. I’m relieved to get the 3 points and climb the table again. I’m pleased with our defending and 3 well taken goals. Especially Son’s.
But, we still gave up the lions share of the ball for most of the game. And it really was poor Leeds defending that gifted us the 3 goals.
I’m happy for now… Happy that we were just a bit better than of late. Not a lot. A bit! And we won!
Just brought up the statistics from the Leeds game .
Aparently we only had 37% of possession yet still managed to score 3 goals !!
Obviously this can’t be answered and we will never know but if we had had at least ,as the home team , at least 50+% of possession we will have had the opportunity to score more goals and further improve our goal difference ?
Was it Oscar Wild who said…
here are lies..damn lies… and statistics. 🙂
LOL… It certainly wasn’t Wilde.
Mark Twain nicked it from somewhere……
LT
I didn’t come up the Lagan in a bubble you know. 🙂
I’m only saying that we have improved from what what we were doing over Christmas.
We don’t compare to the team we were 4 years ago.
We are a different animal now, for better or worse results wise I don’t know.
I do get that we aren’t as entertaining as we once were, but I live in hope even for a middle ground where as Allan says we have at least 50% possession more attempts on goal at least at home.
Just thought that yesterday was a small step forward.
I live in hope.
Bit of ol’ Belfast banter going on there you two… 🙂
Well its the day after, and am sitting here chuffed to bits, with our game plan and play yesterday, plus the changes we were all begging for, ok not 100%, whether it be mindset or play it was visible and I loved it, ok some say I am easily pleased then so be it.
As I said prior I was only a bit negative in my mind for the first 12-20 mins, frowning etc, then we took it to them, they had no answer ie Plan B, heard that somewhere about ourselves a few times a while ago, as the game went on my confidence grew, sitting with a grin on my boatrace and of course a beer or two lol.
Oh yes reading between the lines of some, it seems we only looked good because LU kept effing up, why oh why is this always the reason, other team being poor or effing up, when we have a decent game.
I am also with others regards our ball retention, poor, but mainly our lack of ability to play a simple pass, maybe trying to hard who knows. But for me its still COYS
PY. You’re correct. In that what you’ve said many times now that people used to say on here that MP had no plan b. But It doesn’t necessarily make it true. 😉
What was Jose’s plan b, I wonder? Take off Tanguy and put on the more defensive Sissoko a couple of minutes later? (I’m pretty sure that Tanguy could play a full game by now). But who needs a playmaker when theres Lucas and Sissoko on the bench to run down the time? (Sorry, bit of a moan there)…
I do know that yesterday I was praising Leeds for their good football, in my own running match commentary, more so than I was Spurs.
But we scored and they didn’t. A stat that is definitely not a lie! 😉