Just when you thought Tottenham Hotspur couldn’t fail to surprise, we put in a dogged and clinical display against Manchester City last weekend to take a very unexpected three points.
Despite Pep Guardiola’s side having far more of the ball and creating numerous efforts at goal, England striker Harry Kane was back to his finishing best as he helped himself to a brace, and January signing Dejan Kulusevski opened his club account four minutes in to hand us the early advantage.
Sean Dyche’s Burnley side on Wednesday evening will be another tough game though, and it’ll certainly play out differently from the last one as you’d expect manager Antonio Conte’s side to dominate here – with the only real questions being, can we keep it tight at the back and then take the inevitable chances that will come our way across the 90 minutes.
Unless I’ve missed someone, the only players likely to be out for this one will be Oliver Skipp, Japhet Tanganga and Sergio Reguilon but we’ll have to wait for the official update with lingering Covid concerns.
Given we lost to Southampton and Wolves you can’t assume because we beat City we will beat Burnley. Quotes from the managers from the City game are interesting;
Conte – “You know when you play Manchester City you will concede 70 per cent of possession. But I say to my players that when you are defending, in your mind you must always be attacking. In your mind you want to win the ball and attack”
Guardiola – “When you play 60 metres away from your goal then controlling the counter-attack is important. Sometimes it is not possible because of the opposition players, but if you use the ball well and do not make mistakes, you will concede few.”
So Guardiola knew what we were going to do and the danger, but he was too arrogant to change his tactics.
Contrast that with the Wolves game where Lage was quite open about changing Wolves shape so we were outnumbered in midfield. When Conte changed our shape he immediately changed Wolves to counter.
Its a safe bet Dyche will look at our team and figure out the best way to set up to nullify us. Its why playing so called lesser teams can be difficult, they don’t let pride get in the way of effective football.
Hi Jod, I’m more than happy to have a mature debate about effective styles of football. You misrepresent me when you say I want pretty football. No I want a team that first and foremost do the basics well. Good movement, ball control under pressure, winning the 50/50 challenges and clinical finishing. If these are right the style of play will take care of itself depending on the strength of the opposition. That’s what I call being competitive. Winning is as much a mindset thing as pure ability and perhaps that was lacking in the Poch era.
As always the games depends on managers tactical shapes and the players doing their best efforts and to adapt to a change of tactical shape during the match… and taking their chances. Burnley will attack more playing at home so spurs counter attack can be effective again. A close game expected with a physical Burnley team and spurs should win by the odd goal, 1-0 / 2-1 if lloris is not nervy again and defence /mf same as the city game,with front 3 son kane kulu. So basically same team as city I expect. COYS
Afternoon folks
Danny yet again thanks for the thread.
Burnley for me are the “Joe Bugner” of the Premiership, they sort of spoil the game, they are largely unattractive to watch, and hard to beat, but that’s their way, and it’s been successful for them.
The guy Wighorst has found his feet now, and Lennon rolled back the years a bit with a decent strike at the weekend, so they could be buoyant after a good win at the weekend, in short they are a difficult team to beat with a sting in their tail.
For us we can beat this team and this game (if we win) puts us over the 40 plus points and safety.
A win may not put us into the driving seat, but it could take us into the passanger seat.
I just hope that our win against City doesn’t make us over confident and treat this like a formality.
I looked at BS’s last comments in the previous thread, around injury to Romero, Dier, Kane, I would add Sonny to this, it is indeed a sobering thought if any or all of these players get injured we don’t have the squad to adequetly cover this.
With that said, I still see a win for us tomorrow night, Kane has gotten his mojo back and the team appears now to be moving the right direction.
jod – say what you want about Pep’s arrogance, his way of playing football seems to deliver results more often than not.
I don’t think we’re the only team that sets up to hit City on the counter, yet most teams fail to get anything out of that game plan. Most of the time, Pep’s team don’t make mistakes, pile the pressure on, get goals and smash teams.
Are we above average at counter-attacking, or did City just have a bad day at the office by their own lofty standards? Probably a bit of both. I don’t think Pep will be second guessing tactics that work 95% of the time, though. We’ll just call our game the exception that confirms the rule.
Having said that, I’ll gladly take it.
But indeed, as has been discussed before, we know we are decent at counter-attacking, but we can struggle against teams who park the bus. I can’t imagine Burnley throwing the kitchen sink at us, so I expect a much more difficult game, tactics wise.
We are going to win, beat Burnley on their own patch, windy, rainy game up the norf, we will win, simple as that, not saying it cos we beat MC, just saying it cos we will.
Nice 0-2 win Spurs.
Said on the last thread about the stats for km covered/completed well Bentacur and Kulu came out 1 & 2 respectfully, Hoj was 3rd, forgot 4th and Harry was 5th. COYS.
I really enjoy watching City play and have no qualms about them winning the league , if they do . To me they play the correct way and hopefully if Conte stays and gets money from Levy ( ? ) then hopefully we will play a good passing game while applying pressure on the opposition .
For this game Burnley will be defensive but I expect to see them play some good football if they go one or 2 goals behind
I don’t have a concert tonight but will be watching the match so not sure what will happen but I would expect a hard fought win .
City are easy on the eye, yes. Very reminiscent of how we used to play under MP.
I don’t think we’re ever going to see this from a Conte team. I think we can look at how Chelsea used to play under Conte to find a better example of a well-drilled Conte side. Different style but still very effective and sometimes quite entertaining too.
Thats all very true BS. COYS.
BelgianSpur – Fair point, you can’t play like we did unless you have the players to do it. Most teams simply don’t have the combination of pace up front and really solid defence to beat City. But they have only beaten us once in the past six meetings, we’ve shown we can do the same thing to them on multiple occasions under different managers. Which is why I say it was arrogance not to change tactically. Of course Pepe may figure losing the odd game won’t hurt him, City will still win the league comfortably. But Liverpool are getting closer and the two teams still have a match to play. So he may yet come to regret his tactics against us.
Watching the City game, I’m not sure I would have described our back 5 as “solid” – let’s be honest, we were quite fortunate on several occasions as City carved us open numerous times. They had a bad day in terms of finishing but on another day they could have scored 5 or 6.
Having said that, we do seem to pose problems for City. In 15 games against Spurs, Pep has won 7 of them, lost 6 and drawn 2. Not many teams have this sort of record against Pep. In fact, of the team that he has played against more than 10 times, only Liverpool do better.
https://www.transfermarkt.com/pep-guardiola/bilanz/trainer/5672/sort/v.desc
I still think that City will win the league in the end – Liverpool will finish a comfortable second, though, and will be a force in the CL.
Niall D – How do you cover the loss of a player Like Son or Kane ? They are world class and by definition there won’t be anyone on the bench even close to their standard. Its like when Virgil van Dijk had his bad injury, it basically destroyed Liverpool’s season. But there was nothing they could do about it.
BelgianSpur – I think you are confusing possession with chances. City had four shots on target, we had five. Just because you have the ball in and around your opponents penalty area doesn’t mean you are actually creating genuine scoring opportunities. The flip side of the City game was the previous one against Wolves. There we had numerous attempts on goal where there was a Wolves body in the way, something they did exceptionally well. Again plenty of possession in a dangerous area but not really chances on goal. You only carve a team open if you are left with only the keeper to beat, if there’s still a defender in the way then its not working.
Must admit BS, having seen the game v MC twice now, I still cannot remember a single, “they carved us open” chance.
So that says I am inclined to agree with jod in his last post sentence. COYS
On the subject of tonight at wet n windy Burnley….weez gonna win, simple as that. COYS
Hi Jod,
Just referring to BS’s point on our strongest 11, agreed we can’t replace Sonny and Kane.
However without Kane at the start of the, season we managed a couple of wins.
My point was on the back of BS’s comments, in reality we can’t afford to do much rotation “anywhere” as we don’t have the squad depth and to lose any of our top performers including Dier, Skipp, Romero as we have seen can be a catastrophic.
Re the City game, surely one of their efforts on target was the dodgy pen, which for me takes their “created” shots on target down to 3.
Plus I’m near sure we had the ball in the onion 4 times but a tight decision lost us that goal.
So am inclined to agree with you Jod on this one.
Re tonite, I just think we’ll up the gears and beat Burnley. COYS.
This will separate the men from the boys, also set piece are more critical then ever, no silly Free kicks and corners. Must win game to keep in the mix. Have we got the hunger and fight till the end of the season.
Same team which is good news. Time to consolidate with the new boys after the disastrous N’Dombele and Lo Celso.
Disappointed that we are still persevering with Winks and Doherty on the bench. We know they are not good enough or ever will be so why not at least give some academy lads a chance…Paskotsi is one…far more potential than Emerson or Doh. Youngsters need to be given hope and encouragement. They must look at our squad and think I could do that.
We still have too many passengers despite getting rid ( temporarily?) of the dodgy transfers.Time to look to the future. Out with the old and in with the new?????
No shots on goal against a team 2nd bottom. Pretty grim.
Same old story. Can’t play out against a press, slow in transition and poor passing. Fairly solid in defence but not winning 50/50s in midfield.
You can only laugh at this bunch, once I saw winks come on, I should of went to bed.
How has conte set up his team to allow so many attempts on goal. Its crazy. We are no better under nuno.
Still a bunch of spursy bottlers
Oooops.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. You can never write the script and there are no pushovers in the Prem.
As someone noted, when Winks came on it was time to go home. Match over. I just sighed. Is that the best we can do?