Tottenham Hotspur
2 – 3
Southampton
White Hart Lane
Premier League
9/02/2022 8:45 pm
Attendance: 54012
Referee: David Coote
| Tottenham Hotspur | Southampton | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bednarek (18 og), Son Heung-Min (70) | Broja (23), Eliyounessi (79), Adams (82) | ||||||
| Lloris | Forster | ||||||
| Emerson Royal | Walker-Peters | ||||||
| Sanchez | Bednarek | ||||||
| Romero | Salisu | ||||||
| Davies | Perraud | ||||||
| Reguilon | 83 | S Armstrong | |||||
| Hojbjerg | 60 | Ward-Prowse | |||||
| Winks | Romeu | ||||||
| Lucas Moura | 76 | Elyounoussi | 90+7 | ||||
| Son Heung-in | Broja | 90 | |||||
| Kane | Adams | 88 | |||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Doherty | Stephens | ||||||
| Rodon | Long | 88 | |||||
| Sessegnon | A Armstrong | ||||||
| Kulusevski | 76 | Caballero | |||||
| Gollini | Djenepo | ||||||
| Bergwijn | 83 | Smallbone | |||||
| Bentancur | 60 | Walcott | 90 | ||||
| White | Valery | ||||||
| Scarlett | Diallo | 90+7 | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 8 | Goal attempts | 23 |
| 3 | On Target | 10 |
| 2 | Corners | 8 |
| 7 | Fouls | 13 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 3 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 47 | % | 53 |
If I were generous I could say it was one of those nights.
We could’ve been up by two or three, but then so could they, in the balance of real chances would a draw been a fair result, maybe.
If I were critical, we’ll the “Keystone Cops” are back in defence, talk about a comedy of errors.
They looked like a bunch of strangers, Sanches looked like he’d never played football before, you know your m8 that you just put on the field to make up the numbers, well that’s him, terrible.
Winks is back to his sidey sidey backwards play, there was one, stage at 3-2 down, he passed it right back from a promising forward position..
Royal, where do you begin, words fail me, who the fek scouted him!!!
Davies tho at fault for the 1st goal, I suppose anyone can slip on a wet night.
Hoj tho better than Winks, lost the toss and came off for the much better Bentacur.
There was no link from midfield to the forwards, yet again, there were 3 in attack 8 defending far too deep, S’oton ran midfield, if Winks, wants to know how to play no8, look at Ward Prowse.
I thought Our forwards did well, considering, they had the ball in the onion 4 Times, unlucky at the last, Kane was unlucky with the header, as was Regs when he got through on the keeper.
I thought this, was a nailed on win.
But they out pressed us, had more shots, in the end more goals, more fire in their bellies, we didn’t kick start until their 3rd goal, then we sort of woke up. Terrible.
One of those nights, to forget. 🙃
At home 23 attempts against us says it all really. Shambolic defending. Again our own downfall cost us. If conte keeps picking the likes of winks expect more of the same. Yet again a great chance to make a statement and we blew it.
Can someone please tell me what Conte brings to us. Other than getting us to run more I see nothing. Tactically inflexible, he seems unwilling to switch away from a back three. Leaving us constantly outnumbered in midfield we are relying on brilliance from either Kane or Son to achieve anything. And his constant whining in his press conferences can only serve to undermine the confidence of the team.
Combine this with the ineptitude of Paratici and we are truly in a bad way. Another shocking transfer window where we replaced three midfield players with just one. We now only have four midfield players in our squad, all similar in style. Yes Bentancour looks good but we are desperately short of quality in that area. I don’t even know what to say about Emerson Royal. The poor guy is a total liability and needs to be taken out of the team for his own good as well as the teams. Another Paratici masterclass.
When I see some of Paratici’s work – Fonseca/Gatusso/Nuno – Emerson Royal, the signing of Gil and the sending him back to Spain, I wonder whose interests he is really serving.
Once again, the workings of the club are an absolute shambles. but hey, we may get the Super Bowl to go with our shiny new cinema.
DH – you go look at Conte’s points per game average and compare that to his recent predecessors. If that isn’t your answer, I don’t know what is.
Conte is the least of our problems right now.
If you’re looking back fondly to Nuno’s time, I don’t know what to say.
Conte said in his press conference that he thought we were sloppy in midfield, with PEH particularly guilty of giving away possession cheaply on many occasions, and too many individual mistakes at the back. That seems fair.
No system can work if you don’t track runners in the box. It’s that simple.
Conte also alluded to mental frailty, saying our players were too emotional – ie unable to recover when things didn’t go their way.
On the day, I could have lived with a draw – Southampton were good value for money. But to take the lead twice and lose – shambolic.
As I said, if we finish in the top 4 by miracle, it’ll be because we stumble across the line. We’re lucky that our direct competitors are all flawed in their own way, but we can’t expect any sort of consistency from this team… yet.
We need help from Wolves now, hoping they can up their game against Arsenal tonight and roll over on Sunday.
Bit of good points from both of you DH and BS.
Indeed I agree BS that Conte is among the best around at the moment, and certainly the best we can get.
I don’t think we were that inflexible as we changed to a back 4 near the end.
We have had a decent run of results under Conte lately and we have improved, not just running around.
But will agree on the selection of Winks, as 123 said but in honesty even I thought he had started to turn it around, maybe not, with that sais Sanchez was no better.
I do agree with DH, there was nothing creative coming from midfield, as I said earlier it was 8 defending too deeply and 3 attacking, with very little to link them.
We are terrible playing out from the back and often succomb to the high press, yet again Kane had to drop back to become the ball player.
Paratici, not sure the jury is out (still) we don’t know how much Hitchin was involved in these transfers and just how much pressure (finincially) Levey exuded in transfer dealings.
The two new players are Paraticis’ selection and it looks like he and Conte have wrested the power of transfer decisions from Levey, so time will tell.
This is a wake up call, we still have a lot of work to do.
If it were City all over us last night, I could’ve reluctantly accepted it, but it was, Southampton FFS.
Still need a, RB, Central defender, creative midfielder.(how many times have we said this)
Just look at the efforts S’oton had from even outside the area, needed a couple of good saves and the woodwork to keep us in it, we on the other hand didn’t even try from the 18 yrd box.
There is so much bad play and too many bad players, to talk about, I’ll give it up.
Just a bad day at the office.
Is Conte the best we can get? He might be best if we had a board and the funds to match his cheque book management style but history tells us that won’t happen, the summer window will be the best indicator.
To be fair we had the best manager but the board failed to heed his warning that the squad was stale and needed rebuilding and they sacked him because of their poor performances. What has largely happened since, over what 3/4 seasons, is a succession of highly rated managers going the same way having failed with mostly the same core of players.
I think it is difficult to criticise Paratici for the Emerson Royal signing. He was after all being chased by Inter Milan at the time. However this is evidence of the risk of spending big on players who cannot or will not adapt.
I think we need to look very closely at a combination of Djed Spence (Forest/Middlesborough), Benjamin Mensah (Peterborough), Calvin Ramsey (Aberdeen) and Andrea Cambiaso (Empoli/Genoa) to fill this spot. All young and by definition cheap and hungry. Aaron Hickey (Bologna) who can play left back / defensive midfield would again be a decent pick up and if Reguilion goes we need a left wing back. Ricardo Calafiori seems to have recovered from his knee injuries and potentially also has the height to be the left sided centre back. Giacomo Quagliata is a left sided raider who won’t break the bank.
In the middle Sanchez continues to be half star / half donkey so we need to look at some decent prospects. Romero has one good game and one average game. Bastoni at Inter will cost big money so maybe we buy Romero to use him as part exchange. Or the new Bastoni in Giorgio Scalvini at Atalanta. Reece Oxford has been get strong reviews with Augsburg in the Bundesliga so might be worth an inquiry?
In the middle the next youngster to carry the new Pirlo burden is Samuele Ricci but he won’t break the bank and will offer something different whilst we should also make a run at Benjamin Sesko, the Slovenian labelled the next Haaland and currently at Salzburg.
Levy will never spend massive but now we have a manager we have 100% confidence in and who has a clear system, Paratici’s work might be easier. The Winter window is always difficult to navigate.
BelgiumSpurs – look at the fixtures Conte has had – all against teams near the bottom apart from Chelsea (outclassed three times) and Liverpool which was admitedly a good performance. We have been getting away with it so far with some poor performances (Leeds, Watford, Norwich, Southampton away) being prime examples where we seem incapable of keeping the ball – not surprising given Conte’s insistence of only playing two in midfield. I don’t look back fondly to Nuno’s time but I have seen very little to convince me Conte is going to achieve anything significant at Spurs.
And he needs to stop the whinging and get on with his job – maybe looking at some different tactics once in a while.
The team is lost, and conte cant or doesn’t know how to fix it,
Well we were overrun in midfield which gave them so many chances to bombard our goal. We had to feed off scraps until Bentancur came on. We can’t expect to win games with Winks (back to his old self) and Hojberg ( another top player going backwards) as our midfield “supremos”.
I have stated many, many times we need an attacking midfielder who can pass forwards, take free kicks/corners ( Son should be in the box as one of our most lethal finishers) and add some control to our midfield. We seem to be playing with 8 defenders and still getting turned over by unknowns ( Ward Prowse excepted…I have heard of him and Walker Peters….why did we sell him and buy Aurier, Doherty and the hapless Emerson?).
I feel sorry for Conte…he looked exasperated last night and lost his rag. Not a good sign.
Levy sits in the crowd with a dumb expression on his face. Yes mate, you have let our club down for years with your miserly, interfering approach with transfers and failures over coach/manager replacements. I am amazed there are not huge protests over Enic, Joe Lewis (who?) and Daniel Levy. We seem to be run by faceless individuals that have no interest in running a FOOTBALL club. Yes we do try and play football occasionally at this flash stadium.
Play 3-5-2
Dire…Romero…Rodon
Doh/?…Skippy…Hoj…Bentacur…Reggie
Hoj to be in front of the 2 so as to break up attacks early.
Twin strikers, take your pick!
Last night we didn’t defend from the front, thus giving their defence way to much time to pick a pass, Hoj in front of the 2 mf’s will stop this happening and gee up the front pairing. COYS
TQ2Spurs – having said that MP came second in a one horse race (ie the French league) with PSG last year, and hasn’t really covered himself in glory with arguably one of the most talented squads in world football. I’m not calling him a bad manager, but he obviously failed to convince Levy the way Conte has. At least Conte’s methods are tried and tested, whereas MP has no track record of winning. If you’re going to bet on either, AC feels the safer bet.
BS….Conte’s methods only work if he has quality players that suit his preferred formation, which we don’t currently have, that’s why I say we can only judge the situation more accurately after the summer window when we will have a clearer idea if the board are willing to match his ambition with sufficient transfer funds.
Can’t the same be said for any manager though?
I mean, that lack of ambition was MP’s downfall too – it’s no different.
DH – Nuno wasn’t even getting results consistently in those “easy” fixtures, so getting those results is already progress.
I think Conte has played 433, 4231, 343 and 352 at various times with this squad already. I don’t think anyone can blame him for not being tactically flexible.
Having said that, no matter what tactics you choose, if you lose individual battles, don’t respect assignments and make bad decisions with the ball, it’s not going to end well.
If the last 3 or so years have taught us anything, it’s that we’ve changed the manager several times already and our problems remain. At what point is it going to dawn on people that changing the manager is not the answer?
There is a massive lack of quality in this squad and a mentality problem. If anything the quality of AC may have papered over some cracks.
Could it simply be that if we are outclassed by Chelsea, it’s simply because there is a gulf in quality and depth between the 2 clubs at the moment?
I’s going to take time, and money, for someone to turn Spurs around. You won’t find many people with a better resume/track record than AC to do that.
BS …. You say that MP has no track record of winning. I think he was a winner for most of his time at Spurs …. until the club failed to support him and spend toward the end of his time. I’m not talking about winning trophies (which will obviously form the basis of your argument). I’m talking about playing an entertaining, exciting style of football that was globally recognised for around four years (a long time in football terms).
JM has a track record of winning (trophies) …. but not for some time. And when he did win it certainly was not always with attractive football. Whether a manager is successful or not is not so much based on his own abilities as on so many other factors; the players at his disposal, man management skills, size and reputation of the club he manages, and the financial backing he could enjoy …. just to name a few.
Judging Conte by the standards of Nuno is setting a really low bar.
We were outclassed by Chelsea who were otherwise in miserable form dropping points to the likes of Burnley, Everton, Brighton and West Ham. I don’t recall the managers of either of those clubs saying we are levels behind Chelsea. They just got on with the job.
If Conte is such a great coach he needs to stop whining and find solutions.
It’s setting the only reasonable bar there is, ie other managers at the same club. All other comparisons will introduce many more factors making any such comparison that much harder.
There’s no point comparing us to other clubs with far greater finances.
Chelsea had a blip, how is that a fair point of comparison? You can’t take a club at their lowest and use that as a valid benchmark – statistics 101 will point to the small sample size as unreliable.
According to your logic, we beat City this year therefore we are a better team than they are. That is a ridiculous assumption.
MP, Mourinho, Nuno, now Conte all saying the same thing yet they should all just get on with the job. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, DH?
We have been poor now for around 3 seasons, Poch seen it coming.
Whether we like it or not, we as a club have been guilty of poor acquisitions both player and Manager wise.
Some of those who have left this season should be just the first of the exodus.
Conte has said that wholesale changes need to be made.
There are those whom many of us have named who still need to go.
We can say what we like, about Contes tactics last night, however it’s the first true loss or shocker we have suffered since he has taken over properly.
A lot of players on the pitch fell into their old bad habits, yet again.
We need to look at who the true culprits, are in this debacle over the last few, seasons and it ain’t Conte.
For the record he has improved our players, it is measurable, from the dreadful pedestrian play of both Mourinho and Nuno.
Was last night a glitch? “did we set up wrong? Possibly in both counts, but for me I’m not writing off another manager just yet on one bad night, and some players not stepping up to the mark.
I agree 123 the team is lost, but, Conte does know how to fix it.
Let’s face it even last night we could’ve won or drawn that game, we had the ball in the net 4 times and to some of the players credit some of em were focused and didn’t give up.
Now we would’ve been lucky to have done that, but some times that’s the way football is, I remember Battering W /Ham for 80 mins not so long ago and they came back with 3 goals.
No Conte in that game , the common denominator was many of the same players. Making the same mistakes.
100% agree
Geof – ultimately, you can spin it as you want but your definition of “winning” is highly subjective. You may not like mine (ie trophies) but at least it is fairly universal, and easy to measure. Two things “entertainment” are not.
I am in agreement that winning things requires many different factors coming together, the first of which is creating enough belief at board level to get backing. Like it or not, Levy never believed in MP enough (rightly or wrongly) to back him. And if MP couldn’t get that backing in the first place, it was always going to be a struggle. Is it Levy’s fault for not believing in MP or MP’s inabiity to convince even his own board? Probably a bit of both.
I just know that in most jobs, getting the backing you want from your boss largely depends on your ability to convince him/her that the investment is worthwhile. AC is getting an amount of control MP never could – why is that?
Any match that Winks is in the starting 11 will most likely not go well. Especially if the other team is pressing and we need him to pivot the ball through the pressure. Hojberg lacks in this skill as well. It looks like Bentancur has this potential but still early to really know. The engine room, the most important part of the pitch and an area where we need the most help in. Kane is actually better in that capacity than all our central midfielders currently and that’s a sad state of affairs.
BS , I ‘m not sure how my post indicates we are better than City. Let’s just carry on with our two man midfield and Conte should carry on undermining the squad in the media just to divert the blame from himself.