Fresh from our clinical, albeit not great, display against Sheffield United, the fixtures for Tottenham Hotspur have given us a small, but much needed break, and we aren’t in action again until next Monday where attentions again turn to a possible trip to Wembley.
Our next opponents are Championship team Wycombe Wanderers in the fourth round of the FA Cup and although the struggling side are bottom of the second tier table, the pattern this year for manager Jose Mourinho’s select XI has been to struggle against the strugglers.
As I type, the only injury I’m aware of is the long standing issue with Giovani Lo Celso and even if a knock or two was picked up in the last match, the week’s break here should do the trick, so it again becomes about how much Mourinho wants to tinker with an eye to the fixtures ahead.
Let’s be honest though, banana skin or not, this is another of those games fe4w won’t expect us to win and win comfortably at that. Let’s hope we’ve got our shooting boots on again.
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Clinical Spurs Take The Points From A Dogged United- Match Stats
here’s hoping we can score an early goal without ending up in a draw as we give up a goal in the closing moments. Time for a match where we score early and often and keep a clean sheet.
It’s a cup game so clean sheets don’t matter …. but a win does. And that shouldn’t be too difficult.
A clean sheet doesn’t matter in terms of 3 points, but it does matter in terms of satisfaction over a match well played defensively. 3 x 0 has a much different feel than does 3 x 1. But I take your point: a win is a win is all that matters to get past the rival on this occasion. But winning isn’t all that football is about for me–and a clean sheet in a good-flowing match is satisfying.
Ah, but doesn’t 3-1 feel better than 1-0? 😉
Good morning HT, I am 100% with you there 3-1 is better than 1-0, like 2-1 is the same as 1-0, 1 goal diff’, all this clean sheet malarky gets on my tits, I do not care how many goals we concede as long as we score 2+ more, then a better goal diff’.
Thank you Danny for another very good Match thread.
Wickham next then in the FA Cup, what sort of team will our great! Marmite leader put out?
It needs to be strong esp at the back, if I am right they have a player up front built like the proverbial brick ? house, who will bully our CB’s if he is allowed to.
Across the middle we will need to be strong with quick lads in and around Sid Vicious, he will score goals for us, so he must be supplied and given the chance to prove his worth.
Beat them, simple really. COYS
1 x 0 makes for a much more exciting last 20 minutes than does 3 x 1. lol
Keeping clean sheets doesn’t in itself indicate a good performance from the team, win or lose.
But a team (any team) will always prefer to keep one. No goalkeeper and his defenders want to concede goals. And If you don’t concede you don’t lose… All very obvious.
But goals being conceded aren’t always down to poor defending overall. And the thing with the way Spurs currently play, is that we tend to give the opposition far too many chances to score. Whether that be Sheffield United or a club at the top.
For example, we gave up to the Blades, 15 chances on our goal, with 5 being on target. Spurs had 14 chances, also with 5 on target. It becomes almost inevitable that the opposition will score at least 1 goal with that many efforts. Even if they are at the bottom of the PL. Or indeed the Championship, as Wycombe are.
Well HT, great minds, just read your post regards my hated clean sheet being so important malarky, explained very well and in more depth. COYS
Just for the record. As with the Carabao cup, there’ll be no replays in the FA cup this season.
So we could still draw this match in the 90 minutes but then there will be extra-time and possibly penalties to decide the result.
This thread will be going for a while. I wonder where it will end up because there is only so much to be said about this game. Prediction; 4-4 after 120 minutes and a 10-9 win to Spurs on penalties. : – )
Wycombe have a very savvy manager in Gareth Ainsworth but are clearly punching above their weight having made it into the championship. It must be very difficult for them trying to bridge the gap in quality between league one and the championship without having some decent money to invest prior to or at the time of promotion.
They clearly are struggling to get results in the league but we underestimate them at our peril, I think it’s going to be to our advantage that they won’t have any of their fans in the ground to lift them to a level required to beat us.
Interesting. The rules say VAR will be used, but only at PL stadiums. I find that strange because it’s not a level playing field. Imagine a team being robbed by a referee mistake in one game, while another game sees a result preserved by VAR in another… I would have thought they’d have said either VAR everywhere or nowhere…
I don’t know much about Wycombe, other than they’re dead last in the Championship so probably not in great form. I assume JM would like to rotate as much as possible given the following fixture, so maybe another opportunity for Vinicius (and others) to show what he can do, this time against better opposition (these will be professional footballers at least).
Most lower league teams just do’t have the capacity to facilitate VAR BS.
But with or without VAR, both teams in the same match are in the same boat. Regardless of which other matches have VAR or not. So it is equal in that much….
Anyway, I’d rather there was no VAR at all, anywhere, at anytime!
I understand why VAR can’t be used everywhere, HT.
I just think that with that being the case, the rule should be lowered to the lowest common denominator, instead of creating an uneven playing field.
There is no valid reason why some teams should, depending on your opinion about VAR:
benefit from the “fairer” refereeing it provides
or
have to suffer through the inconvenience that VAR brings
when other teams do not.
I am in the “no VAR anywhere boat”, stop bloody starting, goal, pen or not, did this happen, did it not happen blah blah, fans have to hold their jubilance back while VAR is looked at, then add Linesmen not flagging offside until 20mins! afterwards, what’s that all about? thus the two have brought chaos into to game.
What happens in one FA cup game with VAR, bears no relationship to what happens without it in another game.
We could lose out or get lucky with or without VAR. As can any team in any game….. What if we score the winning goal in this match with Kanes big toe in an offside position but without VAR, we get the benefit of any doubt?: And then say Everton fail in the last minute to get an equaliser versus SW because VAR sees Calvert-Lewin’s big toe as being off side when he knocks one in……
We could say we are lucky because we get SW and not Everton in the next round. But I’ll suggest that a big toe should never make a player be offside anyway…… Swings and roundabouts and everything in between.
This is why VAR should not exist, period!
VAR isn’t all about refs making errors or not…. So much of it is still about the subjective view of the ref anyway… Do I send him off or not?! Deliberate handball or not?!
And if a big toe is seen to be offside by that virtual VAR line then this has nothing to do with the ref or assistant messing up for initially giving a goal… unless he or she has bionic super-vision.
Having the same basis for competition in all games seems a pretty essential thing to me…
It’s like arguing that some games could be played using the offside rule, and others not, and justifying that by saying that offsides may or may not happen in a game, and that there are plenty of other ways for a referee to influence a game anyways…
In modern football, VAR is THAT influential. Therefore, I don’t think it should be overlooked as an inconsequential afterthought.
I’m not going to waste too much time arguing about this, because frankly there are more interesting things to debate, and the decision has been made anyways. But for what it’s worth, I think it’s a mistake by the FA.
If my club was unfairly knocked out of the FA Cup because of a refereeing mistake with no VAR to correct it, while at the same time a rival team was saved by VAR and through to the next round, I think that would be pretty solid grounds for a formal complaint to the FA. Let’s see if the situation arises this week.
BS …. If you take your first sentence to it’s logical conclusion every game would have to be controlled by the same ref …. as they are all different.
Geof – let me respond to that in another way: wouldn’t you say that it’s fair to point out that the perceived inconsistency between how different referees call a game is a source of frustration for many, in modern football?
If there was a way to address that, I’d be all for it. We can probably all agree that having exactly the same rules apply for everyone would be best, in principle.
However, having the same ref for all games is, in practice, not feasible – so unfortunately, the conversation is a non starter. The next best thing is having the same rules, and the same formal training for each ref.
In this case, the VAR or no VAR for all decision IS in practice, feasible, and a relatively easy decision to make in order to avoid many potential headaches – which is why I am surprised.
Though I am anti VAR, I think ALL! games in the FA Cup should either have it or not have it, simple as that, all equal, so it would cut out the genuinely good argument of fair/unfair or lucky/unlucky.
As BS said….grounds for a formal complaint, that would really put the cat among the pigeons lol! COYS
Well heres my tuppence worth.
When I played the game (during the war) I knew I was playing to the same rules and standards as those above me. ie ref 2 linesmen (persons). Making decisions, which to a degree weakens their position.
Now the standards are different as the Prem now has VAR.
I can just see poor Refs all over the country being hassled by iPhone Vids (from parents) of decisions they got wrong..
Like PY I like a bit of rugby, home internationals mainly, but the video ref just doesn’t seem to be as invasive (time wise) plus you can actually hear the discussion taking place.
ND…spot on there! esp the Rugby, don’t forget its a gentleman’s (persons) game lol! COYS
Conundrum. Dele or Jose. No contest in my mind. Flair versus Boredom. New versus Old. The Future versus the Past. Great, attacking play versus a cheap tin pot. Entertainment versus soporific mundanity. Star of the future versus man from the past.
Will be so sad to see Dele go. However, he will be with a coach who values skill and attacking play above boring defensive play. One day we will be coached by a top, progressive manager. Always living in hope. I hope I don’t die before I get old. (75 at present).
The club is bigger than any one player… or manager. Jose’s time will come and go. So will Dele’s (so has Dele’s?).
Dele still has time on his side, but right now, I’m not sure “star of the future” applies. Right now, it’s hard to say what the future holds for Dele. He could rediscover his form and become a force again, or he could be the next David Bentley… ie another talented, but probably overhyped English player who fails to live up to the early promise he showed as a youngster. The jury is still out.