The morning after the night before.
The players stand accused of, ‘believing the hype’. But it’s a little more intricate than that. There is an element of rogue ego, but the problem lies largely with the the mismanagement.
For those who cannot cope with the subtleties of argument, click away now. Here on planet Earth, there is light and shade. Arry’s record at Tottenham is extraordinarily good. 2 points, 8 games, not guilty, triffic. He has got it right on the bulk of occasions.
But now and again tactically, he goes missing. Either he appears not to have given the lads any direction whatsoever, or he sets the team up incorrectly and appears incapable of correcting it. The latter happened yesterday.
You build a team from the back to the front. That’s how it works. King wasn’t limping, he was just looking old. We’ve had a good run of it, getting away with this but the derby was a particularly grim time to get caught out.
The substitutions were baffling. Arry brings in vdV who clearly was a million miles away from being fit and Sandro who didn’t appear to know what his role was. Are we to presume that Azza Blud was even less fit that the Dutchman?
We had no width. Yet Arry decided to bulk out the middle. Yet he failed to do that. His inability to appreciate Kranjcar blinkered him yet again and despite the obvious fact that Bale and Modric don’t like to get involved in too much tackling these days he took off the only man who was baring the brunt of it alongside Parker.
Once they took the lead, we ought to have taken King off for Dawson, retired Walker, put Bale on the wing and introduced Lennon and gone at them. Instead we did nothing and made them look like Spain.
And so to Bale. It’s like watching a great racehorse that’s been got at by the handicapper. Someone needs to sit down with the lad and break it to him gently. His ambition is a wonderful thing but he got this free roaming thing all wrong. Also, we all know that he was becoming fed up with people kicking him, but diving is for suckers. Stop it.
If you look at the game from Arsenal’s perspective they showed us how the grown ups do it. They suffered a deflected goal. They suffered a penalty that was won by cheating. But they played as a team with defined roles. Man for man, Spurs probably had the better team on paper. The more exciting team on paper. But as a team on grass they were superior in every department.
Spurs need to take a long hard and honest look at themselves.
5.008 Probably went home and played, ‘One Man Band’ by Leo Sayer.
6.173 Not awful.
5.472 Not great.
3.653 Since the diagnosis we’ve been lucky. He doesn’t train, ho ho ho. He uses the chairman’s pool he he he. Well the jig is well and truly up.
3. 542 Played like he was on a beach somewhere. Ran like he was in deep sand, may have nipped out for choc ices at point. Uncomposed, leaky performance.
Should have replaced Walker sooner.
6. 444 Does the job of three men because he’s the man who has to mop up when the opposition breeze past the rest of the squad. Wings clipped after the yellow.
5.932 I hope Abramovitch was watching.
5.781 It gives me no pleasure to say that I covered Bale’s new found lunacy a few weeks back. His agent has convinced him he’s the new Ronaldo. What we actually have his Ronaldo MacDonaldo.
6.824 Defended admirably. A man who has the wit to realise it isn’t all about scoring a hat-trick and being home in time for tea and medals.
Insufficiently fit to play.
Dawson came on for Walker and screamed at him which made me wonder if he’s a gormless or had he simply not been given any instruction by anyone.
6. 732 It’s a cheap shot to deride the quality of his goal. Especially when it was just about all he contributed.
6.732 Yet again he opened brightly and when slowly but surely went off the boil. Took his penalty well.
Somewhere beneath my bellowing of fury, is the little voice of reason telling me to keep perspective. We’ve been great this season, and most teams in the league including Arsenal (perhaps with the exception of City) have taken a trouncing at some point. Such is the nature of the Prem. However it would be negligent for lessons not to be learned from this. Allowing our full backs to be so constantly exposed 1 on 1 was suicidal. Lennon and Bale usually offer excellent cover, which leads me to Bale’s equally suicidal “free role”. This needs to be put back in the toy box from whence it came, certainly in a 4-4-2 – with two holding players behind, maybe – but not in this shape. It may be good for you Gareth, but to the detriment of the team. Dawson and Lennon should have started, but Harry has got these calls correct this season more often than I. Dawson on the basis of fitness and form, Lennon just on the merit of cohesion and shape. Let’s hope lessons are learned by Harry and the players, and we bounce back against United. Be interesting to see how gleeful and smug that Woolwhich mob are this season when they finish 5th. COYS.
Harry can drop the fucking “it’s an international break now” blah moan blah. Building excuses for the team to f*ck up against Man U already, not want I want to hear!!
Be good if he’d actually held his hands up & stated that he got things massively wrong, as that’s what happenned, followed by the team performed awfully.
Well p*ssed off today. Starting Kran, please, what a joke?! Squad player, since when has he been a first team starter in our big games??? Rotate against the lower sides, full strength every derby & top 5 game, surely a no brainer??!
England football manager – my Ricky Tomlinson!!
At least King Kev had the good grace to say that he didn’t have the nous / experience to cut it at that level.
BAE wasn’t fit enough to chase Walcott – but he could still do a lot better with the “over the shoulder to VDV”
I presume Parker was already lined up for a suspension when he got the second yellow card – it was a kind of a freebie.
You can’t say that yesterday was a shock – it was, however, very sickening.
I am bitterly disappointed like everybody else with the result but some of the comments on here are just disgraceful. Harry is a crap manager after a 23 game run where we outplayed every team we came up against. King is for the scrapheap after a season where he has played the highest number of games for years and led the defence which has looked good every time he has played. Bale is nothing more than a diver when he has been the classiest player in the EPL for the last two seasons. Do everybody a favour. Have a drink and a lie down and comment when you have some reasonable perspective rather than writing dribble that you’ll be embarrassed you wrote when we win our next game. We got slaughtered today just like ManU did at home to ManCity; just like Arsenal were slaughtered at Old Trafford; and like Chelsea did at home to Arsenal. When we recover and take third place and are in the Champions League next season some of you should come back and read what you’ve written here and be embarrassed to cheer the team on and accept the glory.
It was the manner of defeat i find absolutely galling.
Where was the fight, the passion, the desire???
It’s a North London Derby for chrissakes!!!
You want to shout Twitchy’s name from the rafters when we are getting results, by all means do so- i have no problem with that.
But our last two performances have been pitiful and just happened to coincide with the ‘won’t he will he’ England bollocks!
The buck stops with the manager!
Dream on Oz!
We aint going nowhere, not until we have resolved the stadium issue.
Harry Redknapp’s magic lucky charm has worn a bit thin now.
So sit back and enjoy the old Spurs we have followed for so long, and pray we don’t slip too far down the league, if you can!
Fuck off Arry and all your coaching team, because we’ve got some serious building work to do, and you cnuts are getting in the way.
You didn’t rate ‘Arry? Um… there’s a pun in there somewhere. Personally, I would give him 2/10 for this showing. Saw what was going on in the first half and not only failed miserably to rectify it but compounded the error by bringing on VDV instead of Lennon! Ah well…