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Morning one and all.
The good ship Tottingham sailed into the the quarter finals of the Champions League last night. It wasn’t how many of us thought it would be. AC where bound to come out fighting and they certainly adopted a different strategy to the one that saw them get beat at the San Siro. But the real difference was how Spurs stood their ground.
The unsophisticated viewer might say that a ‘bus’ was parked. But without being to biased I felt that what was implemented by Arry and the boys was a tad classier. Parking the bus is everyone and the tea lady blocking play, your centre forward as a centre back. Hello Wolves fans.
Spurs actually held a line and held a shape that wasn’t breached too often despite the Italians chucking their fancy top of the range kitchen sink at us. It was a credit to Spurs that they had the wit and the wisdom to adapt and survive.
It wasn’t a thing of beauty, but then it’s difficult to imagine that 3MP in the nip is either – but Abbey Clancey’s let him get off with her so much experts say that she will sire a baby giraffe by him later this year.
Gomes 6.87 Apparently he’s a big Shaking Stevens fan.
Charlie 5,43 Not at his best but still worth 2.5 Begbies.
Gallas 8.23 ‘Too old’ – Arsene Wenger. ‘Super duper’ – Harry Hotspur.
Les Dawson 6.38 Held the line well enough.
A&E 5.99 Under pressure he cracked.
Azza Blud 6.92 We played down the middle a lot. He was okay.
Sandro 9 MOTM A revelation. Lots more, please.
Modders 6.93 He was swamped. Not an excuse, a fact.
Peanut 5 Arry, play Krankie, old son. Please.
VDV 6.45 I’m terrified he’s in an ‘injury cycle’. I hope I’m wrong.
3MP 7 The referee was a wonker. He couldn’t buy a fair call.
Bale, Pav & Jen*s all too little time to warrant a score…
See. I believe we can fly now – 1st class, not your easy jet crap
I’ll jump in late on this ratings thing, and say I am personally startled with the low ratings for BAE and Corluka, and the high 6.93 rating for Modders. It’s like Modders’ rating goes up by 1.5 pts automatically cos it’s Modders. Just as J****’ rating goes down automatically cos it’s JJ.
I see a discussion has been taking place regarding our midfielders. I’ll ramble a bit cos I’m tired, but I’ll put it out there anyway.
Modders is a bit delicate, isn’t he? I thought he was not at his best yesterday. Though I will give him a little respite from total criticism as he has not long since had his appendix removed. He is very good when on song, but he can lose a ball or two.
VdV is a bloody good player who has suffered with niggles/injuries throughout his career. This is well documented. He’ll only play two thirds of the season, and sometimes only two thirds of a match. So no matter how good he may be, he really is another Ledders.
Hudd is also great. I love the way he plays. I also think he would do great alongside Sandro. Sandro is going to be marvellous, of this I’m certain now. Which begs the question, what should we do with Modders? Play him where VdV plays? Sell him for £50 or £60 million to an Italian club? What about VdV or Krankie in behind the striker?
IF we sold Modders for a small (geddit?) fortune we’d still have fucking loads of midfielders. And if we had to sell Bale or Modders, who would your choice to go be?
Either way, none of this will make any sense until we sell Crouch and Defoe (and clearly JJ :winke: ), and buy Forlan and Rossi. :-D :freu
IMO Modders is our most important player. We should have more than enough games next season to keep modders, hudds & sandro happy as long as HR rotates a bit more often.
If we had to sell one i’d let bale go before modders (and vdv before both). It’s easier to find good wingers than it is to find a top class playmaker with our budget restrictions.
Have to say I think you could find a playmaker to fill Modders’ role before you could find a top class left winger to fill Bale’s.
And Modders’ heir would probably be bigger, and stronger, but in replacing Bale, the option would likely be smaller, and weaker.
Agree with much of that MS, but I think that Harry’s tactics last night were superb and included Modric as the “bait”. Certainly to start with PNR had room and Sandro was pretty much left to his own devices as was B&E along the flank as a) Bale was not there and they didn’t feel theatened and b)they focussed on Modric as the play maker and figured (probably rightly) that shutting him down would limit our attacking options, which it did.
I’d have to guess that HR had seen that one coming: the team selection as well as the subs were all aimed at disrupting their patterns and screwing with their game plans. Modders took the heat and freed others to gain space, that as an attacking force we did not exploit that is as much to do with an exceptionally good defensive and defensive midfield performance from Milan as it was down to us.
Lennon got little of the game, but they could not leave someone like him free and our attacking play even diagonally from the left moved towards the right wing reinforcing the pattern of Lennon being our key player. Bringing Bale on when he did was a stroke of genius as they’d started to manouver around our “supposed” tactic and then had to readjust to the sudden threat of Bale on the opposite flank…..I suspect he might not have been fit enough to excel, but a quick cameo on the w/e as well as the “will he-won’t he” comments to the press over the last week kept the perception of threat alive and something to worry about for Milan.
Just as theye were really starting to dominate, Milan suddenly had to cover both flanks which meant the had to sir a bit deeper, stretched them in the middle and gave Sandro centre stage JJ was a bit of relief for him towards the end. Huge performance by him, but I think that is why and why too Modric was perceived as being out of sorts: we played him as a dummy hand!
If a team wants to go out and negate a players game they will. But there will be a cost and last night we showed we can exploit that, lesser teams might have gone home two or three down. Redknapp seriouly stuffed them tactically, outread them in both legs and won the mind game, as well at the tie. I’m reminded with the Bale substitution, of Rocky switching from Southpaw.
HR used his pieces to plan the man, I don’t think we can read too much into their ongoing roles based upon this match.
On Van der Vart, maybe he is another Ledley but he’s younger and if we get what we have so far this season and nothing more again, for the next two years, I won’t complain.
damn , we need a edit fuction HH…
Should read “play the man” (Allegri)
Wow. You can sure wax lyrical Finn ;-) – this coming from me, too!
Not so sure it was a dummy hand or part of any tactically brilliant gameplan.
Harry made adjustments sure but I don’t think this was a “Harry set his stall out to” scenario, more a “Jesus, they are all over us, defend, defend!”.
AC pressed us back for much of the game – even if there was to be no end product for them. I’d expect Harry wanted us to attack, but we just weren’t allowed/able to string it together. We won, but we won pretty ugly for all the glory IMO.
If it.s worth saying…..that’s why you don’t get me doing 30 posts at two paragraphs a piece..too old to do the twitter/facebook thing I suppose :whistle:
As for the tactics, Redknapp would have been certain that a team like AC Milan, renowned for attacking and 1-0 down, were going to come at us big time. He knew too that they were worried about our ability to break fast especially down the flanks. He’s teased them with Bale like a fly fisherman with a coachman, then switch-baited twice, firstly not starting him and then putting him on. All the while he’s kept them guessing with Lennon and Modric.
As I said I think he’d have liked to exploit that especially with PNR but in fairness AC did a solid job on closing us down too.
By the way I wish it was THIS one was labelled “Finn”….. :pirat:
One of Modders biggest fans but thought he got bullied out of it last night. Would love to see a midfield of bale,modric,hudd,sandro,lennon with one up front. wingers given licence to roam. that midfield would destroy most teams.
would love to see us get real madrid if they progress next week. possibly the worlds two best tactical minds going head to head.
Do you think if we beat a mourinho team over two legs the redknapp knockers would retreat to back under from the rocks they came ?
You’re overstating Redknapp’s case a little, aren’t you? :shocked:
:daumen: ………got me
I like that midfield. Could work well for big away matches and for the 1st hour of the final against Barca.
Now we have our very own player ending with O ,they all better watch out.
Hey davspurs whats your take on balotellis half time injections.