As Wazza Rooney off to a luxury stateside boot camp for conditioning it raises the question if Levy could get a group rate.
Alternatively, Spur players might want to give blogs and websites a go. It was difficult to find a single online piece that didn’t suggest they routinely taking their foot off the gas after a stellar performance and Bolton might well – at home and in good form – be up for doing ’em.
The game looked evenly balanced for a bit but that was a period of false remission. Turned out Bolton just needed a while to warm up.
Here’s some player ratings then.
Gomes As good as the back four in front of him. So shakey then. 4
Begbie Listless and hungover looking until he scored. Whodathunkit? 6
Gallas Got nothing right yesterday. Got much wrong. Bad signing. 3
Kaboul Back to being a trainee carthorse. 4
A&E Flashes of mediocrity unforgivably stupid penalty. 3
Sandro Off the pace is about as kind as I feel like being. 5
Palacios Hasn’t been the same since the funeral. 5
Huddlestone His fouls are becoming ‘anti football’ maybe he needs to be sold to Stoke. 5
Modders Contributed less and less as time went on. Depressing. 5
Krankie Rusty? Dusty? Not a fine performance. 5
Bentley Couple of good runs. Perhaps ought to have started. 6
Bale They double up’d on him, he still hit the post. His value sank to £49M. 7
3MP All the grace and usefulness of an ironing board collapsing. 4
Pav Came on and scored a goal that in any other game would have been historic. 7
I can’t concur with some of your scores H, Crouch, BAE and gallas can’t be worth more than a 2 on that showing yesterday.
If I was the spur’s coach driver I would have p*ssed off without them – completely caddish performances from experienced pros.
What a week eh? pure ecstasy & agony inside 5 days. All the champions league teams had a mare this weekend, only manure were lucky enough to be playing a team who couldn’t hit a horse’s ar*se with a banjo.
I agree about ‘arry needing to up his game but it’s the so called big name players who are letting both him & us down with these half hearted performances. We were nearly a goal down in the 1st minute due to BAE mincing around like Julian Clary.
The Crouch Issue – oh why on earth did we sign this player?
I stand by my comments before we signed him that he was useless in the air and so it’s being proven week in week out. Fair play he has contributed to our development but he is still not good enough to be our main striker.
The reason for that is quite simply he misses too many chances and at the level we are trying to get to you cannot afford to miss those chances. Until we address this major problem we’re going to flatter to deceive. Imagine a striker of eto’o’s class up front for us – he’d score thirty goals easily.
Time to clear some deadwood and buy true class
You are spot on. We aren’t scoring enough goals yet Arry persists with a player who has never scored many goals. He is NOT a striker, he can’t control the ball and is average in the air.
While on the bench is a proven goalscorer who has scored more goals than Crouch with far less time on the pitch. How can our enormous management team not understand the bloomin obvious?
Watched this game from Spain and even this far away could see you were never going to get a result.
to be honest i’m abit worried,only 5 points of relegation this far into the season is a big concern :whistle:
Daniel Levy, if you are reading this – PLEASE SELL CROUCH WITHOUT HARRY”S CONSENT AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE. If Harry doesn’t like it, then he can follow his love child out of White Hart Lane!!!
Bit harsh on Gomes, I couldn’t really fault him, two one-on-ones, a penalty and a deflection; more worried that for the second goal FIVE blues shirts were standing still, not marking anyone! Those same shirts could probably claim assists for the others! But the whole team selection was a bit wonky, like a wheel that’s not quite round.
We all know about the frontline, but our midfield is supposed to be the best around and frankly it did nothing to warrant that rep or to provide cover for what is becoming renowned as a shaky defence.
There’s little doubt in my mind that no matter how hard you train, there is no substitute for match time and full levels of competition. Playing Sandro, Niko, Wilson, Bentley across the middle, none of whom have had sufficient match practice (imo) to be called ‘fully’ match fit was a strange move. Was it arrogance; it being only Bolton or our latest struggle with rotation and utilising a squad.
This is new to Harry, he’s not really had to manage what is in effect two campaigns, with two differing sets of conditions and different strategic and tactical requirements to meet them: so far he’s struggling.
In fairness, its a new lesson for all and he’s earned the right to take it on, I’m sure he’s doing what he can to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but we are bleeding, no hemorrhaging points. If we’d have taken the “easy” fixtures we would be up in 3rd/4th now. Instead we have Bolton and Chris Hughton (power to his elbow over the weekend) looking down on us.
Luckily the calamity and been splashed around a bit and I can even live with 3 points for Citeh, knowing that at least we stay above the Baggies! But we need to get into the groove of the EPL, we need to stop shipping goals, and frankly 0-0 is better than a 2-4 even if we don’t entertain so much. I know its stating the obvious that we need to triage this better than we are. Niko could have had match time before now, and we could have played either Sandro or Wilson.
Going to Bolton and expecting to get something with a team that is only two thirds match ready is…. well its put us seventh and on performance we’re punching above our weight to be there!
Good points especially the match fitness issue. JJ has had some pretty decent performances recently so why not play him with Wilson or Sandro ?
One of the first things Arry did was to stop changing the team as often as the previous mob, which improved things and has it’s merits. But that policy is now the main cause of Sandro, Wilson and Krankie being less than match fit. Then when he had an opportunity to play Krankie, against the Goons in the couldn’t careless cup, he overlooked him for several youngsters who are behind Nico as first team choices. Good to give them a go but surely getting someone like Nico fit has a higher priority ?
Then we come to Begbie. He obviously has some personality issues and maybe Arry just wants rid but if that’s not the case, why has such a talented player not been seen more?
I love Charlie but Hutton is a far better player. It’s as if Arry sticks with more or less the same eleven until he is forced to change it.
Unless a player is very tall and called Pete