The unbeaten run continues with a 1-1 draw at London Stadium, yet with a slightly bitter taste in the mouth given the commanding position the lads were in going into half-time.
Indeed, the main positive I take from this match is that, in spite of the disappointment of throwing away a lead, we did not lose a very ‘lose-able’ game – one that we lost less than a year ago, in fact! Make that 8 points from fixtures we got 0 points from last year, still third in the table, and one of three teams still yet to lose after five matches. Happy days…
And yet, I ask, what might have been? Defensive frailties from set-pieces reared their ugly head again – the ball going out for a throw-in seemed to give the lads the green light to take a pitch-side nap while Antonio engaged in a flick that he’ll undoubtedly be bringing up in his BBC podcast until the Epiphany to set up Soucek’s equaliser. (Whisper this quietly, but does anyone else harbour the slight suspicion that the goal stemmed from a foul throw? If it was just me, ignore me!)
Moreover, the slow to-and-fro at the back between Lloris, Sanchez, Royal, and even Dier prevented us from gaining any sort of momentum to carry us up the pitch, and often ended up with poor Sanchez getting harrassed by a flurry of claret shirts and him booting it out of play, or passing it to Lloris, who’d also boot it out of play. This passage of play summed up the second half for me and essentially, killed us off.
Furthermore, I didn’t think too highly of Bissouma’s debut. Although some signs were promising, he was either too lackadaisical in possession, or too hesitant when he had promising options advancing ahead of him. I don’t know if the early (and needless) yellow psychologically hindered him, or the fact that he was nervous on his first start, but I’ll go easy on him…we all know he’s capable of more, so let’s give him time and be thankful that his shortcomings weren’t fully taken advantage of tonight.
The biggest takeaway for me tonight was the absence of Romero’s quality on the ball at the back, given how many times the ball was lost when it reached Sanchez (12 times, according to Sofascore), and also Bentancur’s calmness on the ball, particularly in the second half when momentum shifted towards the home side and we just couldn’t string a series of meaningful passes together to get us up the pitch.
Hopefully both will be back for the weekend, but for now, let’s shake off the disappointment and look at it as a point gained, another game unbeaten, and a tricky fixture ticked off the list. COYS!
Oy vey !!!
5 defenders on the bench. Son is awful. If conte fails to get top4 he should be sacked after been backed, also the players mentality hasn’t changed
Might aswell close our academy, conte has no interest on them.
Omar,
Your summary is far too sympathetic about the poor display. The lads looked to be playing like someone on Saturday morning who’d had a few too many pints Friday night. What comies to mind is Stumble Bum. Why Conte didn’t act at least by replacing a few stumble bumming player early in the second half is beyond me.
What happened during the interval after 45 minutes that changed the level of effort in a steep downward trajectory? The second half seemed an exercise of simply waiting for the final whistle without tending to the fact that they were highly paid players who are expected to put in maximal effort.
Yes, it’s great we’ve gained 8 points where we had none a season ago. Yes, it’s great we haven’t lost a match yet. But if that become the level of effort, we’ll be in for many dreary times to come.
As to Bissouma–his presence on the pitch cannot be blamed for the lethargic and distracted performance of others. Some of the senior players could have given him a boot in the bottom if that were the problem.
Arky,
your comment brought an old VS’er to mind–oi vey Maria. I forget the exact spelling. Wonderful name, though.
Yep, I remember him too TK, I do believe it was spelt OhVeyMaria. Funny how these things linger in the mind though having never met the man himself. 🙂
As far as I know I never met him (her?) either. But the name was brilliant. What a nice way to combine two different cultural traditions. And quite yid as well.
The good,the bad, and the ugly.
The good: 11 out of a possible 15 points. That’s a damned good start statistically. The fact that Man City have done about as well (a smidgen of a difference) is no surprise, although Arsenal’s 15 or 15 is a real surprise. But we’re up there with the top cluster and that’s good. Damned good.
The bad. Long stretches of uninspiring and uninspired football that is an affront to our club’s traditions. For as often as some on here say that they want results and care not about how we get them, our traditions and traditional reputation is fairly clear. We, more than any other club, are associated with winning in a particular way that combines honest play with beautiful play, and at this we haven’t been good. That’s bad.
The ugly. Well we’ve just abou spelled it out in the description of the bad. The match vs. Spam was ugly when compared to our tradition of striving for glory through the playing of beauty. The points we’ve got on the table were not put there through beautiful play, but on play that threatened to put us to sleep. That is, by our club’s standards, ugly. That is ugly.
So that’s the good, the bad, and the ugly at this early stage of the 2022-2023 season. Good results, disappointing style choices, and downright ugly and boring play for too much of the time.
My heartfelt cry out to the men on the pitch: Come On You Spurs! Play beautifully and wrack up the points in a way that your tale will be told by my grandchildren to their children.
When the team starts to play ugly it’s not just an affront aesthetically, that is, it isn’t just that it looks ugly, but it loses points. There’s no way that we should have let Spam take two points away from us. We lost those two points not to good play by Spam. We lost those two points because we played ugly. Pitty patty side passes, meek and timid back passes, unsure attempt to send a ball up the middle. It was ugly and the ugliness now is reflected in the table. Two lost points that did not have to be lost. They were lost to a lack of vigor in the play and a loss of enthusiasm that followed from the lack of vigor.
The word in: “blah.” Bland and blah.
Where I grew up, that’s considered a crime. An affront. An insult to the way things should be. THFC is not supposed to play blah, bland, and ugly.
No more focus of passing to Lloris. No more timidity. Not more passing the ball back and forth at the back. No more waiting for Godot. Let our energy and a forward focus strike fear into the opponent. After all, they’re about the have a wave of Spurs override their positions.
Dare to be glorious. They don’t call it ‘daring do’ for nothing.
My main issue with the game is that, after they equalised, there appeared to be little awareness from white-shirted players that we needed to spend more energy to find the winning goal. They continued to play as if we were still winning! They looked lethargic and uninterested in going for broke. I found it so frustrating watching all the tippy-tappy passes between Lloris and the back four. We wasted too much time that should have been used to move forward.
I would not have been upset at losing if we were making a serious attempt to win.
Conte’s bench has been improved; now he needs to learn how to use it in a timely manner. We should have made sure of the result in the first half. Drawing at Chelsea was a good result; drawing at WHU was not.
I’ve got a slogan for the Spurs: To Dare is To Do.
I think that captures pretty well where we’re doing wrong right now. All that back passing isn’t daring, so it’s not doing.
I must say I’m quite pleased to come up with this new slogan that’s well motivated for the current problems. The phrase is so good that we might convince people to keep it even after this temporary ugly making on the pitch. I won’t even charge for the club to use this new expression. Maybe they could find somewhere in the stadium to display it to remind us of our new traditions and nudging the team to get back to its new basics, if that makes any sense. back to the roots that now give us this identity.
You don’t need to thank me.
Remember the new saying: To Dare is To Do.
That can become the Spurs expression for our new way to play.
After we get over the current blah bland sideways sideways almost always sideways…
Except when its not simply passed all the way back to the back to the back…
Our squad has been improved but is still seriously lacking. We only have one creative, attacking midfielder in Harry Kane, no tricky winger who can dominate the flanks and cross the ball, too many defensive midfielders, only Djed Spence at right wing back and Conte showing no interest in academy players.
We are a dull outfit lacking in creativity and attacking flair and skill. If Kane and Son are not on song we are stuffed as the dreadful performance against West Hame showed. It could be a long mediocre season.
Some observations last night…. I also thought that back & sideways passing was excessive and no urgency in moving the ball forward, sloppy ball control and passes. Their goal caused by no one (hoj) running with and challenging soucek just watched him run past.
VAR & Ref looked at the west ham defender handball from front angle and hard to see, goal position camera was clearer handball. This gave spammers confidence and they got a result of a draw, we were lucky in 2nd half to survive.
Anyway we are still 3rd place, but can’t drop any more points for next few games, as city / gooners looking strong again. It seemed conte told players to pace themselves and a lot of games in 3weeks. COYS
We have no doubt strengthened in the mental approach to the game that Conte bangs on about, but is it just me that thinks our actual football has got steadily worse game by game since the second half against the Saints? For all the incomings we have nobody able to inject urgency or creativity in midfield. Being hard to beat will get us lots of points but not enough to challenge for a trophy. Man City win win them all anyway so why not just entertain us in the Spurs tradition. And I thought that Andre was Very Boring.
I think Conte’s approach is very much that if we can’t win a game for whatever reason, we must make sure not to lose it. which means it’ll be very unlikely for us to chase games unless we absolutely need to.
i walk away from this game with very much the same feeling as after the Chelsea game. It’s a derby, form goes out the window, and WHU are always going to find an extra gear when they play us.
This was the 3rd away game in the last 4, and I expect us to be giving it a bigger go at home.
As we have discussed before, winning at home and drawing away is the recipe for a title, so in that context, a draw away against a local rival is not a bad result.
I’ll be far more upset if we fail to get max points from our next home game against Fulham.
After Fulham, ou next league games are City, Leicester and Arsenal. If we navigate those fixtures well, the table may look a little different in early October.
As a final note, I definitely think it’s time to drop Sonny. Great player but he’s clearly not at his best right now. Richarlison has provided a spark every time he has played, it’s time for him to start.
Several of us have been calling for the desperate need for a creative midfield type. Yesterday’s match couldn’t have demonstrated this need more clearly. We just couldn’t move the ball forward in the middle of the pitch and they were pinching off the wings doing the job. This is a serious problem with no clear solution in sight.
So we ended up with an ugly draw. This was not one of those times when we can be happy we gained a draw. This draw was a loss of two points that never should have been lost.
Why has Son been so poor so far this season? What’s wrong? He’s been a shell, as they say. Why isn’t Richarlison playing in his stead? I would think the reason for signing him was to play him when someone like Son is off his game.
Five matches into this strange season and anyone can see clearly where the weakness are in this team.
Almost starting to look as though that AVB fellow is still the gaffer. That frustrating failure to bring the ball forward when Plan A is stymied.
BS I remember years ago Bobby Charlton saying win at home and draw away was the classic way to win the league. That was in the days of 2 points for a win and 20 teams, so 60 points was the target. Nowadays with the quality gap 76 will get you top 4 but unlikely to lift the trophy.
22 teams so 63 points, my memory is fading fast lol
Spurs players…please do not pass the ball back to Lloris. He hasn’t a clue and his distribution is dreadful as was shown last night. He puts marked defenders under awful pressure then berates them if they get hustled.
Also stop passing the ball sideways and backwards in memoriam to Winks.
We give opposition far too much time to organise and mark the runners.
Only Kane is able to pick out a forward pass but the others do not even try.
We really do need someone on midfield with attacking credentials and a winger who can cross the ball.
After a sudden surge, very disappointed in the transfer window.We could and should have done much better.
ww …. If I was Sanchez I think I think I’d have a few shots at Lloris to stop Lloris throwing him the ball when he has opposition players all round him.
Agreed Geoff, it’s obvious that Sanchez is poor on the ball and the opposition recognise that, as west Ham did the other night…but he recognises this too, to his credit,so it’s up to Lloris to stop giving him the ball when he doesn’t want it. West Ham set up a trap for him though, they’d hound Dier and Davies and cut off the supply line to our midfield, leaving Sanchez free, then when he’d get the ball as he was the only one available, the claret shirts would instantly zone in on him, where he’d give the ball away. This pattern occurred time and time again…this isn’t down purely to Sanchez though, we saw it last year in the first halves vs Villa (away, won 0-4), and home vs Newcastle (5-1 win), where we wasted so much time dithering on the ball at the back and giving it away cheaply,then second half we’d go direct and hit the long balls over the opposition press and they didn’t have any answers, as evidenced by the final scorelines. I was disappointed that we didn’t recognise the spaces left by the West Ham press the other night, and although we tried to go long once or twice, Zouma and Soucek’s aerial superiority put us off this approach. This was a shame as the space was there, and no doubt opponents will press us as we pass out from the back again…hoping we find a way to beat this press in the coming matches, once Bissouma gets up to speed I’d imagine he’ll help a lot in this department.
This wasn’t just a bad Spurs performance, it was a bad game. Neither side created much, people said how unlucky Forest were but I doubt many will say the same about West Ham. Moyes seemed to think it was a point won for them not two points lost. What baffled me a bit was we didn’t start with Richarlison and when we finally brought him on Conte took off Kulusevski not Son. I did think the original penalty decision was harsh and wasn’t sorry to see it changed. A big part of the problem at the moment to me is we just don’t move the ball quickly enough. It’s not really a new phenomena, under Pochettino we played well when we passed and moved quickly but then would slow down for no apparent reason and struggle. The thing is whether you are playing well or not you have to keep picking up points. Once you lose touch with the leaders it doesn’t matter how much your form subsequently improves, you won’t catch up.
Spot on jod, excellent insight
Jod’s last sentence hits the nail on the head.
Once you lose points early in a season and lose touch with the leaders, you won’t catch up. Man City is far too good to allow a team 6 points behind in September to pip them in May and June.
That’s why the early matches are must-win matches just as much as the last handful of matches can be must win. But losing early eliminates the importance of matches in the last week of the season.
Must win now to be competitive later. The arithmetic is simple: points count the same all through the season. Must take the points when you play the matches, you cannot make them up later.
An opportunity lost is gone forever.