With Tottenham Hotspur again racking up three wins on the spin in the Premier League, and the Europa League continuing to prove fruitful in midweek, there’s probably no better a time to face North London rivals Arsenal.
We travel to the Emirates Stadium to face Mikel Arteta’s strugglers late on Sunday afternoon and we can again expect rotation from manager Jose Mourinho but as things stand, it’s not expected that Harry Kane’s midweek knee knock against Dinamo Zagreb will keep him out of this one, despite his early substitution.
Having found a richer goalscoring vein of form in recent weeks, there’s every reason to be confident in us taking a good victory here. It’s a derby, we won’t have it all our own way and there will be tight and tricky moments, but if our attackers click again, our margin of victory should be pretty comfortable here.
Let’s just hope that’s the case and we take a further boost of confidence as the campaign comes to a close.
Not sure on the luck comments here folks, we do get more than our fair share of VAR decisions against us. Sonny’s 2 sending off for example.
I felt at the time yesterday it was a pen, however I only saw it in real time, I didn’t see the replays until MOTD last night, I can see why it was given but VAR didn’t appear to look at it for too long, before agreeing with the Refs decision, again went against us.
I look at games we should ve won this season,
W/Ham, Fulham, N/Castle, Palace, all games we should’ve taken 3 points but got only one.
Games like yesterday or the Leicester game where we could’ve sneaked a win and should’ve had a draw we some how contrived by poor play and bad luck to lose.
We definately set up to react in our play to “stronger” teams but in reality this isn’t our forte, we need to take the game to the opposition, as DH says you can’t give away a pen in their area, similarly you would find it difficult to score and OG as well.
Our build up at times is much too pedestrian and we look for the backward or sideways pass too often.
We lost Sonny yesterday and couldn’t adjust our tactics, we were the same during Kanes short injury spell. Arsenal forced the play for much of the game and got the luck and (dodgy) decisions, yes the ref was poor, but we capitulated in many ways, not springing to life until we had no other option then they were on the back foot, Stevie Wonder could see which style suits us.
A very sad performance with our personnel problems highlighted .
This is not hindsite but surely an experienced manager would not have picked both Bale and Doherty to look after their fast left side ?
When given time we can be extremely effective but when up against a well balanced and mobile team we flatter to deceive .
Yes I would like Mourinho gone but cannot see a new man making a great deal of difference . The new man would be basically left with Poch’s players plus a few brought in by Mourinho .Even Holjberg has made several costly mistakes and he is the best of the bunch of new buys .
hindsight !!!
Maybe it’s also about the number of games being squeezed in taking its toll on us. After all most of the leading teams have been dropping easy points and we’ve played quite a few more than anyone else, with little rotation for our key players. Must rake the edge off them.
Stan. I think Arsenal started well because we let them. Everyone back in their defensive shape right from the kick off. Putting Bale who was never going to track back and Doherty who is hopelessly out of form up against Tierney and Smith Rowe was madness and to keep Doherty on the field was staggering. Son and Bale’s job was clearly more defensive – son spent most of his 20 minutes on the pitch chasing back. If we were going to be so defensive why pick so many attacking players. I have said it many times, I see no structure to our play. We are not an unlucky team, we are a team with good players who are being badly coached.
I have to say though Stan I do admire your optimism. COYS
DH agreed to a degree, Arsenal did start well, not so sure because we let them or because we didn’t do anything offensively ourselves, which I suppose is the same thing really.
I don’t have the answers, as I said on page one of this thread, on paper and up to Sunday we were the better of two sides, I suppose we could say that shots on target they were no better than us even with their penalty, they hit the bar and post we hit the post had one off side and one off the line.
But Arse generally just had more about them, and they played in Europe same as us, only they were away. So what is our excuse, except for poor coaching, tactics or players who aren’t up to it.
We were shit! Luck or no luck!
I blame Jose and his fearful, negative, non daring, sit back and defend, bullshit tactics.
We gave the game to them via Jose’s planned set-up. And so we had already lost it, before we even kicked off.
I also blame the players. Not all, but most. Why? Because they should’ve taken the bull by the horns and completely ignored Jose’s negative coaching and half-baked tactical approach. Which, by design, stifles our forward game and our obvious attacking prowess. We may still have lost either way, but at least we could’ve at least shown some effort and drive to win it. In spite of the boss!
Rubbish!
What was the last thing I wrote on here before the match?
Was it something about Bale and Doherty looking like they were starting to work well together?
I lied!
I wonder. Will it be seen as good or bad luck that the Zagreb boss has just resigned?
I suppose we will just have to wait and see…
But I have the feeling that it will probably be mostly down to good or bad football on the day. As to whether we win, lose or draw. Whether we go through or get knocked out…
It was clear within 5 minutes of the start of the game that Jose had reverted to his ‘sitback and hit them on the break’ tactic and it wouldn’t be any surprise to me to see him want to do the same on Thursday in the hope of protecting our two goal lead and nicking another on the counter attack.
HT re Bale and Doh, I was much the same as you, however I was totally wrong.
I just don’t see (now) where Doh fits in, as I said what’s a wing back? I meant by this that surely it was an overlapping defender who could play offensively, much like Regs.
Looks to me that Doh just can’t cut it.
Re luck will disagree (slightly), we have been on the shitty end of a few decisions, whether that’s luck or something else I don’t know.
But agreed HT on Sunday we were reactionary and totally shit.
HT’s post saying we were shit, bad set up, bad thinking, correct.
So the Gooners came at us from the off, it was us that allowed that to carry on thus their confidence grew.
HT went on to say why didn’t our players take the bull by the horns and say fcuk, HT didn’t say that I added it, what JM wants…..thus! as I said in an earlier post, get hold of the ball, keep it, battle, get in their boatraces, play with quick one two’s, push n run wanting the ball, so putting pressure on their iffy defence.
This then asks as HT, why didn’t we/our players do that? answers on a post card please lol! COYS
Lastly on luck or bias, who noticed the pen that wasn’t in the first couple of minutes in the Wolves v L’Fools game, which assisted the Scousers in a win. COYS
Well said HT. It is all down to Jose – I don’t know what has happened to him but he is clearly a shadow of the coach he used to be. He simply cannot help himself, his overwhelming cowardly negative football will always win the day whenever he sees any sort of threat from the opposition, so what chance was there that we were going to play front foot football against the 10th placed team in the premier league. We will probably see the same against Villa because of the threat of Grealish and we will certainly see the same tactics when we play Man U. talk about giving the players an inferiority complex – he manages as though we are struggling against relegation.
I wonder what Rodon and Tanganga must be thinking – I don’t think Rodon has been forgiven for trying to bring the ball out of defence – I mean what was he thinking, trying to build an attack.
The longer Mourinho stays at our club the more damage he will do. I am guessing that the end of this season will reduce the amount Levy has to pay him for his settlement -however much it is, it will be money well spent. COYS
The photo at the top of this article showing the desperation of Harry Kane plus his frustrated, uncharacteristic, unpunished foul on Gabriel sums up Spurs at the moment. I hope Harry has the courage to confront Mourinho and warn him bout potential unrest in the camp. One man dictates and controls tactics…it cannot be just coincidence that we seem to set up defensively even with an attacking group of players.
Time for a complete change of coach even if it costs us. Enough is enough. Dinosaurs became extinct years ago.
I am still baffled by how many supporters think that changing the manager is the solution to all of our problems.
Whether JM is the right man or not remains to be seen. But even if he is part ofthe problem, he is far from our only problem.
I am not completely absolving him of any blame for the defeat, I am just saying that plenty of players share some guilt.
That’s the nature of the game BS……it’s easier to change 1 manager than it is to half the team, the only other option is to be patient while the manager identifies those not up to it and gradually rebuilds the squad. There are two obvious issues with this option, one is that many fans are impatient and expect instant success, the other is how long do you give a manager before you assess whether he is bringing about the improvement you hoped for when you engaged him? You would hope that after nearly a year and a half, and quite a few changes to the squad, we might expect to see more improvement than we have from a coach of the standard Mourinho claims to be.
The other way to look at it is that although JM has been there a year and a half, about half of that time was spent fixing the mess he had inherited, finishing a season he hadn’t started.
How long do you give a manager? Interesting question. But I would hope the answer would at the very least be “one full season at the club”, which JM hasn’t even had yet.
The is no denying the initial improvement JM brought. He took over with the team in 14th place last season, and his points per game average would have seen us finish in the top 4 if extrapolated over the full season.
Has he kicked on from that? In the league, no. We are in the conversation for 4th, on the outside looking in. But we’re in a EFL Cup final and looking good in the EL.
Are things really that bad?
Sorry I just don’t understand comments here to the effect that it was Mourinho who put us on the defensive from the start. Could it not be that we were forced on to the defensive from the start with forwards having to backtrack to help out. That happens in games regardless of how teams are set up. And there are phases in games where even the best teams have to defend for long periods. They then come out of them when things go right. Unfortunately things did not go right for us what with Sonny’s departure and certain lucky breaks for the other team that I’ve mentioned. What I will concede is that Mourinho got the subbing wrong. Sissoko for Bale was a defensive move to shore up our right flank, when the better ploy would have been to replace the anonymous N’Dombele and try to bring Bale into a more attacking role. As I say I Hope lessons have been learnt in this respect.