Tottenham Hotspur have had a few hiccups in the 2020/21 campaign, but there is no denying it’s been a stellar season so far. Sitting top of the Premier League table and having qualified through for the latter stages of the Europa League has certainly seen us rack up the games and they don’t come much bigger than Wednesday evening’s clash with reigning PL Champions Liverpool.
12 games in, tied on 25 points and we have identical form on a W, D, L basis, with only goal difference separating us.
This match isn’t a decider, but naturally whoever does win, gains a small advantage and in many ways lays down a marker ahead of us ticking into January. We also can’t dismiss the added confidence boost such a win would bring, particularly for those hoping/fearing we will go Spursy and blow it.
Many will be expecting Liverpool to show a reaction after their poor Fulham performance, but we could be further boosted by a returning Gareth Bale after his illness, as manager Jose Mourinho was expecting him back for Wednesday. Japhet Tanganga and Erik Lamela remain out.
Fingers crossed we come out of this one in good spirits with Leicester City next up in an unforgiving fixture list.
Liverpool...
Win
Draw
Lose
Previous Article:
Spurs Settle For A Point At The Palace – Match Stats
A lot of debate on here regarding our style of football. For me there are several reasons why it is not the way to go. I don’t believe it is sustainable to have so little possession and keep winning matches. The way we are -lying relies almost exclusively on Son or Kane either scoring or creating almost all of our goals. Whilst they are both fantastic players, they cannot keep up their current phenomenal form. Not least because that are being asked to do so much defensive work. Their current rate of creating and scoring goals will drop off soon. Who else will take up the baton. We are so defensively minded that there is no one else.
I also believe that in this heavily congested season of all seasons, the sheer physical effort required when you have the ball as little as we do will take it’s toll either through injuries or loss of form. This will hit us hard as the season goes on as Jose does not like to rotate. I accept he has rotated heavily in the Europa League so far but as we move into the knockout phase he will want to play his strongest team. Unfortunately he seems to lose trust in players rather quickly.
A lot has been made of our poor passing stats. In my opinion this is partly due to a lack of an effective attacking plan but more worryingly as HT has pointed it in some of his superb recent posts, there is no one to pass to when we are trying to build attacks. Our wide attacking players are doubling up as full backs and our central midfield players are so close to the back four, there is all to often no out ball and the attacking players don’t have the energy to burst out of their defensive positions. At the moment, the balance in the team is all wrong
I wonder what the mindset of the team is when they are constantly asked to play like this. It is as if they are being told they are not good enough to compete with the likes of Liverpool, City and Chelsea and that this is the only way we can get a result against these teams. Not good for the mentality if you are trying to build a title winning team. Interesting that Kloppp despite all Liverpool’s defensive issues still played a high line and still toook calculated risks. He backed his players to do the job. We have so much talent in our squad. It would be nice to see them let off the leash – just a little.
Finally, I like to be entertained when I watch football. Frankly we W have become extremely boring to watch, not just in the big games but we were also mind numbingly dull against West Brom, Burnley and Brighton,
This was not meant as an anti-Jose rant. I simply can’t bear watching us play like this and ultimately I don’t believe it will be successful.
Sums up perfectly what’s wrong with the current approach DH . And Liverpool’s’ 7-0 win at Palace puts our laboured draw there in perspective. Let’s hope for some more attacking football tomorrow or we’ll be amongst the also rans.
DH …. Good post, mate.
I’m watching Palace v Pool. It’s 0-3 at HT but Palace should have scored 3 or 4 goals. Pools defense seems to be broken so often and so easily that most of the top 10 teams will get chances against them. If only we’d attacked more …. !!
Well DH you have just eloquently summed up my comments ref our style of play .
To reinforce your mention of the defensive style of play I played as goalie in several youth teams and when we were put under pressure it was most unpleasant and lead to a couple of big loses . Of course the goalie got the blame !!!
There is no doubt about it when you are running around after the ball when playing an extremely skilful team such as Liverpool then eventually tiredness must occur sometime .
However when we were winning it was a complete different mindset .
Interesting to note that Liverpool are 3-0 up at HT against Palace !! My goodness they look good .
Eating well into our at present better goal difference
Surely this can’t be the same palace team that outplayed spurs in 2nd half only a week ago. If we only tried to attack in both games. Failing to get 3 points tomorrow, their is way chance of catching pool.
WOW 7-0
Our score um …. 1-1
*No way
Jose must be feeling right sick after seeing that result.
DH
Good post elequently put across.
Now that’s how to write a post. Your complaints were evidenced well
Re Palace Great result for Liverpool, however I will say that their keeper played out of his skin against us, with at 3 World class saves and another good save, not so today, every shot they had went in.
But that’s football bear in mind they only just got something against Fulham.
And we nearly got something against them.
But we should be braver in our endeavours.