WallisFrizz

It could be worse we could have played Liverpool this weekend, got thrashed and had to deal with all the media delight at Gerrard assisting Liverpool in their title chase (and quite possibly the secret delight of our entire management team).

1 minute ago, hippo said:

Tbf Gerrard does often say the results are "on him" 

He does but I never quite believe he means it.

59 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I'm actually surprised this hasn't been thought of, and done before now.

I honestly don’t think the 3pm games would be included, just the normally televised ones. 

2 hours ago, DCJonah said:

 

I enjoy seeing this and hearing him makes me want to give him time. 

 

Same, most natural and likeable I’ve seen him recently.

55 minutes ago, villarule123 said:

 

It seems they want to keep people hanging around the stadium on and away from match days, focusing on gaming for kids/young adults and possibly building a cinema/pub/bowling facilities to improve the experience of coming to VP. 

 

I get the impression the cinema/bowling/sports pub is for getting people to come on non match days. Maybe to engage the local community aswell as the fanbase although it’s not a million miles from Star City which serves the same purpose (and is well rough).

13 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

He's certainly not a problem this season but I do miss his constant heroics from last year.

That’s my problem with him. He’s not doing anything wrong as such but he’s built up god like status amongst the fan base by just how amazing he was last season, making numerous outstanding saves within the same matches, earning us draws and wins when we were on the ropes. This season, he’s made a few good saves as you would expect any prem keeper to do but he’s been very average.

If this had been his first season with us, nobody would be saying we robbed Arsenal. Let’s hope this season is the one off, not last season. 

22 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

With the recruitment specialists they've signed up, they'll be signing nothing of the sorts. It'll be almost exclusively good to excellent players, able to elevate them or bring about a decent return.

But haven’t we signed recruitment specialists like that aswell?! I’m sure we did, maybe I imagined it but part of the reason I keep being so underwhelmed with our rumoured targets is because even I have heard of them all whereas I’d hoped we’d be swooping in for the next hidden/lesser known gem.

2 minutes ago, IrishVilla10 said:

Yeah against his will, then we would have had to listen to people slating Gerrards handling of our former player of the year. 

I honestly don’t think anyone, even the Gerrard haters, would have been critical of stopping Targett from flouncing out of the door a couple of weeks after we signed Digne and telling him to sit tight until summer when his options could be discussed.

13 hours ago, AVTuco said:

Worse by the game.

Amazed he is getting a free pass from any criticism. He’s saving barely anything at the moment. It feels like everytime a team gets a shot on target they score. Another one of last seasons star performers whose form has dropped off a cliff this season and nobody can blame Gerrard for that.

27 minutes ago, hippo said:

It looks like Purslow might do the first part - but the stupid spending he might hold back on.

I do think we are seeing the first signs of Purslow & co doubting Gerrard.

I think you’re seeing what you want to. What signs?

6 hours ago, The Fun Factory said:

What has happened to Mings and Konsa? Both have regressed massively since Smith left.

Konsa used to talk about the work John Terry did with him. Maybe we’ve missed him more than we thought. 

Mental really…

9 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Today's game is brought to you by a great big sigh.

I don't get it, I'm not entirely convinced we deserved to lose that game, I thought we were the better side for the first hour and the better side by a distance in the first half.

You don't get what you deserve though, you get what you go out and get - Antonio Conte has turned Spurs into a very Italian side, eight men defending around the box and a couple breaking on you - tactically Spurs have become hard to break down and then they have a couple of very dangerous weapons on the break - it's a triumph of practicality, Antonio neither dares nor dreams, he defends.

Even so, we broke through that defence enough times in the first half to have gone in a couple of goals up - Lloris made several really good saves and it was only really a combination of him and some shoddy refereeing that was keeping them in it for the first forty-five minutes. Which they won 1-0.

I only really recall them being in our half three times in that first period, but they made sure to score on one of those visits - and that's the difference.

I think you have to review our performance in two separate chunks - one for the first hour when we were very good and we lost two nil, and one for the last half hour when things were more open, players were tiring and things were a bit messy, and we lost two nil.

While we played well, I thought the two Brazilians were excellent and Ramsey was very good - the triangle of Coutinho, Luiz and Ramsey with Digne to the left of them had Spurs all over the shop at times - Cash was also providing a threat down the other side and the centrebacks were providing a solid base behind. I thought Ings then should have put away one of a couple of chances, but he was positionally okay. For me, I thought that while we were playing very well, two things became clearer - Watkins for all his effort and his threat on the break isn't a good enough footballer for the clever stuff if looks like we want to play through the middle - when we're playing well, he looks like he doesn't fit in - the other thing was that John McGinn's passing isn't consistent enough, it's good one, bad one, and in the way we want to play, when everyone else is playing the ball around well, it sticks out. Both do good stuff, but I'm not sure they're right for the system when we're playing well - and I want us to play well more often.

While we played well, what was clear was that we needed a striker - the build up play was excellent, we controlled midfield completely, we were an almost constant threat, but there was no end product at the top end of things, the ball would fizz into the striker and we didn't shoot or develop play - very often, we just lost the ball. I found myself wondering if we might have won the game with Davis and Archer - which I'm not sure is actually a sensible argument for me to be having in my head, as we had enough quality on the pitch in order to win it anyway, and for much of the game we were playing like we would.

During the last half an hour, when we didn't play as well, I think it showed a little bit of a lack of depth - we didn't have a striker on the bench and we didn't replace any of the midfielders with fresh legs - if he doesn't trust Sanson at this point to do that, we're going to need someone else. We occasionally looked a little exposed and I suspect we might benefit from a rangy defensive midfielder who can cover breaks - I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned that - but mostly, I again found myself wishing we had a striker. It's sort of understandable given the way the game had gone up to the second goal that heads would drop, I think the players shared my disbelief, but it was over as soon as the second goal went in and we didn't have anyone on the bench that could galvanise this side.

Spurs continue to be a fancy-dan classless group of players and fans that genuinely believe that they are significantly better than they are - they ole'd a passing movement in the 91st minute that I think may have been only their second period of sustained passing in the entire match for example, and I expect they'll believe they fully deserved the four goal margin. If I had a partner that went down and stayed down as easily as Tottenham, I'd never leave the house. I'll be rooting for Arsenal.

For us, I'd like the manager to shut up about the summer and think about his next game - that's four defeats on the bounce and only one win in our last six homes games - some of those have been tough fixtures, but Norwich at home has weirdly become a sort of must-win. If we play like we did in the first half that win will come, we were really good for an hour today - but we have to learn the lessons being taught by Kane and Son; we have to take chances, we have to turn chances and possession and domination into goals, and we can't necessarily wait until the summer to do that.

The players were applauded off at half time and deserved it, they didn't deserve to lose 4-0, it just wasn't a 4-0 sort of game. 

There's a big lesson available from this one.

 

 

 

Such an excellent post. So many of our own fans calling us sh*t when we really weren’t but we were wasteful. Ings and Watkins were our poorest players. Luiz had a great game. 
 

Favourite moments of the second half- Young hacking down Kane- totally worth the card and Luiz dragging the spurs player to his feet…the amount of theatrics from them was ridiculous. 
 

As for the Spurs fans, they’re living the dream under Conte you can’t blame them for celebrating but the big group of drunk lads walking up Bevington Road after the game winding up the locals most of whom probably couldn’t care less about the football, I hope they have a hideous trip home.

1 minute ago, hippo said:

Even if you give him a pass for today. We've lost 4 on the bounce and 7 from the last 10. ....

Any of those on him ?

Yes, as I’ve said previously. There are matches when he’s got it wrong, things I’ve not been pleased with but I’m not someone who is just going to pile on someone constantly because I’ve decided I don’t like them.

20 minutes ago, wict01 said:

Absolute shite. Gerrard once again sat on the bench with his finger up his arse as the pendulum swung very obviously away from us. Glad that a) we have to wait two **** weeks to play again to wash the taste of this out of our mouths and b) the costs for next season are going up. Love my club. 

That’s not true though. He was in the technical area for 90% of the match, sat back down to speak to the other coaches a couple of times but didn’t sink into his seat like he has done before.

1 minute ago, MaVilla said:

tbf, we were really, really good for about 80% of that Spurs game, we played some lovely football, anyone who says we didnt are either lying or didnt watch the game.

BUT:

1) We cant create that many chances and not take them, and expect or deserve to get anything out of the game.

2) Our defence is s***, we prob need 1 x DC in the summer, and shock horror we need a proper DM.

3) We need to sell Ings & Watkins in the summer, and get someone in who actually suits what we are trying to do, and ensure they are able to finish some bloomin chances, watching Watkins and Ings look like a Benny Hill type duo up front was something to behold.

Honestly, if you did watch todays game, if that's Gerrard ball im all in, we played some lovely stuff, but it also showed how poor we are defensively, and how we lack any type of clinical edge, we could have scored 4 goals today with more clinical finishing.

This team needs a big overhaul, i think we need 1 central defender, a number 6, probably a number 8, Coutinho and a striker as minimum, basically a whole new spine.

 

Totally agree with this. 

7 hours ago, useless said:

A guy called Gerrard made an off the cuff remark about Preston needing to get their 'naughts out' if he wanted Archer because he isn't going on loan next season, and seems that's been taken as him being for sale at the right price, but I don't think that's how Gerrard meant it looking at the context of his quotes.

He also said something along the lines of everyone wants Cam Archer and good players cost a lot of money. I was a bit surprised, he sounded more open to it than I thought he’d be. I would be gobsmacked and disappointed if we sold him. Maybe he’s just bigging him up. 

1 minute ago, gurru991 said:

I agree .. I was just having some fun

 

If I’m honest, I misread your first post and nearly said we were in the market for Neymar Jr and Messi.

19 minutes ago, gurru991 said:

It seems that Tielemans want Champions League football.

Don’t they all.

In all reality Gerrard just watching the opposition in advance of us playing them.

2 minutes ago, gurru991 said:

They just showed Gerrard in the stands at the Leicester - PSV match. I wonder who he's looking at.

We've been linked with Tielemans. Another non starter I would say.

11 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Worth remembering that at the moment the 30% increase rumour has come from a single twitter account and might be a bit of a red herring.

 

7 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

They would be mad to increase it that much. 10% would be acceptable.

Maybe they leaked the 30% rumours so that everyone is delighted when they announce 10% increase.

He’s ‘liked’ this post on Twitter…

2 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Grealish is a winner, Phillips is a winner, JWP is a winner. the difference is they play like they want to win. McGinn, Luiz, Watkin's at the moment, don't!!

In normal life, some people go to there 9-5, do there bit, and go home. Other's you'll notice, want to achieve stuff in life, promotion, wage rises, or even just to get noticed, the grafters.

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree about whether they are classed as winners or not if they haven’t won anything (although tbf Phillips won the championship with Leeds and was so close to winning the Euros). However totally agree that the mentality you’ve described is what we need. 

2 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Your idea of proven winners are wrong. They don't actually have to have won stuff. I think if we can get Phillips and JWP (wishing) that's a great start. Ship out the 9 to 5 players, McGinn, Luiz (who I love by the way), Watkins, an bring in a proven goal scorer, although I would be happy with a fit Ing's in the squad for goals.

Now you’ve lost me…