Match Ratings Ratings vs West Ham

[lukespurs7]

they looked like they had 12 outfield players at times tonight because they were all so deep and pressed so well. I actually counted once to be sure.

LOL

 

[whitesocks]

Changed my vote 3 times from Wanyama, to Alderweireld to Lloris.
We haven't played a defensive line that high since AVB.
Lloris swept up well. But it was scary.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

Live by the Poch, die by the Poch

I'm sure they'll be much criticism heaped on the team tonight, but I think, as with the cup semi-final the biggest criticism should be aimed at Pochettino. I love the bloke, but he got this badly wrong, and it cost us. The really disappointing thing is that he didn't learn from almost identical tactical performances earlier in the season and this time last year at West Ham, and he didn't learn from the negatives of the Arsenal game, the biggest of which was Dier in central midfield.

West Ham set up almost identically to those last two games, that five, almost six at times across midfield, shuffling from side to side like a row of foosball players on a fucking stick, up against Dier and Wanyama who have "next man" vision only in midfield areas. I have no idea why Poch didn't go 3421 for this one, leave Son on the bench, and make it harder for West Ham to funnel us narrow, and making some space for Eriksen and All maybe. As it was it was just identical to last year tactically, with the game compressed, no room to breath and no-one able to by pass the predictable "next man" pass, and break the lines. Poch seemed to want the FB's to play like we were playing three CB's and push right up, but this left the two CB's horribly exposed to West Ham's countering overload, because they were playing 352 they could always numerically flood counter situations.

It's a fucking travesty that Winks got injured because that game was crying out for a player next to Wanyama who can see past that first man option, will pass and move and pass and move. People keep scoffing at the idea of playing Onomah in there, "it would be a disaster" , but if you actually look and analyse Dier's last two CM performances I fail to see how, if we'd played the 3CB system, we could possibly any worse with Onomah playing next to Wanyama than Dier, who panics in tight spaces and who's passing is so paint by numbers it slows us to a crawl.

Poch has got to resist the temptation of putting all our forward creative players on the pitch every game but be brave enough to play a more creative option in midfield sometimes.

I just do not understand why he didn't change it up at half time, and then his substitutions were just fucking piss poor. Why the fuck do you take off our best defender, a LCB, just to put our second best RCB in his place. Bringing on Dembele was a bit moot, he's not exactly going to start injecting tempo and making incisive passes, but if you are going to bring him on, just fucking take off Dier if you're going to keep the shape as is, or take Son or Alli off and change shape? Or as @TheHoddleWaddle said in the match thread, how about trying a 433 for a change, have Eriksen and Dembele hubbing off Wanyama, with All and Son either side Kane, we would have given their midfield more to cope with (kind of 253 with the ball) and then had three going at three at their defence causing them all sorts of problems. As it was the only thing their defence had to do was mop up long punts from Alderweireld trying to Hail Mary over the midfield congestion.

Taking off Wanyama and bringing on Janssen and dropping Eriksen backwards was just robbing Peter to Paul, and we hadn't been able to pay Paul all night with Eriksen where he is best. Trippier for Walker was 90 minutes to late.

Walker had yet another night that mocked the claims he is superior to Trippier defensively. He was poor first half and we were lucky not to be one down early on when he just couldn't be arsed to track back. He did play a couple of good passes in forward areas second half but also got caught out a couple of times too and defensively thats two games running now he's looked like the old Walker.

This was not an easy game, when a team is set up like this it can make things very difficult, and to be fair to Poch and this team, this season we've found answers to this most weeks. Dug out some tremendous performances and results in the face of much tactical buspark-manship. It's not that we deserved to lose this game, but games like this you need to get right tactically, give yourselves the best possible chance, there's been a few like this where Poch hasn't got it right and we've ground out results, or found a way to win, through his changes or our mentality and talent, this was one trip to that well too many. You need to get the first goal and then their tactical plan goes fucking awol. Unfortunately Poch didn't set us up right, and didn't react right. The structure was flawed and the in game management and changes just made us worse not better, the game degenerated into a turgid mess, not even good chaos, just bad chaos.

Individual

Lloris - Decent game

Walker - Vintage Walker really, much like last week, couple of very good passes, some really bad stuff too.

Alderweireld - Not great tonight. Probably his worst game of the season, but not helped by walker or Poch's tactics and selections.

Vertonghen - was probably one of our better players, and has been all season and taking him off was fucking mental. (unless injured ?)

Davies - Meh

Dier - Another poor game in midfield. His passing lacks vim and vision, and anytime he tried to move it forward it invariably went awry or hit a player too hard with a defender up his arse already. And under pressure in tight defensive areas he keeps making the same kind of ball-hot-potato errors.

Wanyama - Usual energy and tenacity but was fighting an uphill battle.

Son/Alli - The odd moment from each, but there was no time or space and very little supply for them to operate. In games like this Alli has to improve his ability to hold onto the ball and bring others in, not just cough it up cheaply with a poor first touch or an attempted piece of frippery.

Eriksen - He huffed and puffed but it just wasn't happening.

Kane - Plenty of graft but like Alli, there are times his hold up play needed to be more composed.

 

[TommyGee]

It's been a long time since I've even thought about Lloris as my MOM, which is a reminder of just how good our permformances have been this year. He deserves it today though.

'None Deserved' is such a weak cop-out though. We lose our first league game in 3 months and that old Spurs defeatist mentality creeps right back in here. I thought we'd moved on from that.

 

[tippspur59]

It was a hard choice but Lloris is the only one i could think of that didn't do much wrong..

 

[Mate]

It was a hard choice but Lloris is the only one i could think of that didn't do much wrong..

Agreed and it's hard to remember a game in recent years where our goalkeeper was voted our MOM

 

[dynamoSpurs]

Rubbish. We didn't play well but second best? They were lucky to be in the game still when they took the lead and even that involved ridiculous levels of luck with the way the ball kept falling. Bad finishing and great goalkeeper kept them in it, they had no ambition from the start, just sat back and countered. We played badly but to say we were second best shows is just wrong.

Stay away front bridges and busy roads please.

No we won't, different Spurs. We only need 1 point to secure second, and we will smash Utd to get three in 9 days.

All pitches barring a few in the older stadiums (ours for instance) have the exact same dimensions. This pitch is the same as at Stoke, Southampton and Swansea.


This this and this again. Whatever formation, he should be starting unless he physically cannot.

Ty!

 

[SpursSince1980]

By and large we were poor. And not starting Moussa hurt. I can only assume he's carrying a knock. If not, that's the second profound tactical error from Poch over the last two weeks.

Walker was abysmal in the first half. I really had a lot of respect for him as a professional. But if it's true, that he's had his head turned, then it's simply inexcusable if that's gotten to him. He lacked concentration tonight. Wasn't at the races at all. Really really disappointed with his total lack of professionalism.

Dier. Was very poor as well. And if our coach has a blind spot. It's Dier. Seems like he is obligated to play him every week. Give him a rest. He clearly needs it.

Our entire front four were bullied out of the game tonight. Admittedly, it's not easy playing against a team with nearly all 11 players back ten yards behind the halfway line. But still... Kane couldn't keep his balance. Eriksen was on the periphery. Son was anonymous. And Dele was just absent.

Toby will be let down by his own performance. But for the most part he had an okay game. Just a couple of crap moments.

It's games like these, we really miss Rose. With him we can play three at the back and use the wings to drag the other team out and create space in the middle. But Davies simply can't play that role. So, it doesn't really surprise me that West Ham were able to sneak a win. They did the job their coach asked them to do. Make it impossible for us to play, and pray to God that they get something flukey. Which they did.

lastly, 2/10 for the ref. that was utter shite. he should've booked quite a few more of their players. And called a lot more fouls.. instead he let it descend into an insipid game of rugby/football.

 

[DiamondLites]

Don't like how we've erred away from 3-4-3 to shoe horn Son into the XI, especially when we play a Dier-Wanyama midfield axis

Out fought and out thought by a shambles by a club top to bottom

Lloris 7
Walker 4
Toby 4
Jan 6
Davies 5
Dier 4
Wanyama 7
Eriksen 5
Dele 4
Son 4
Kane 4

Moose 6 (why didn't he start? Madness)
VJ 5
Trippier 5
Poch 0 - frustrating set up and pointless subs

I'm so proud of my team but bugger me we are frustrating. Far and away the beat team in the country for 2 years and nothing to show for it

And as an aside the media make me fucking sick. They all moan and bitch about the lack of English talent, the foreign ownership and money ruining the game yet here we are, a club who has home grown or at least nurtured the spine of its team, with mainstays of the national teams future, English owned and promotes its academy players, and has a negligible net spend and they couldn't be happier those jokers turned up for the first time this season to hand the title to a club who is everything they piss and moan about

 

[onthetwo]

Not actually sure if I'll ever forgive Dier for losing Lanzini in the box by sticking his arm in the air and turning around to the ref asking for a hand ball. It's day one stuff. Play the fucking whistle.

He did something similar in the Chelsea semi i.e ball watching so he needs to work on it.
Anyway, hes young and will learn (i hope!)

 

[Gaz_Gammon]

Not actually sure if I'll ever forgive Dier for losing Lanzini in the box by sticking his arm in the air and turning around to the ref asking for a hand ball. It's day one stuff. Play the fucking whistle.

He isn't the player half of the people in here think he is.

 

[felmani26]

He isn't the player half of the people in here think he is.

He's slowly falling into the the trap of 'utility man' and Poch likes this perceived versatility mid game which is all very well but when he's poor, just haul him off for the greater good rather than shuffle the pack to accommodate him.

 

[Ionman34]

Poch Giveth Lots but taketh away a Little Too

I'm sure they'll be much criticism heaped on the team tonight, but I think, as with the cup semi-final the biggest criticism should be aimed at Pochettino. I love the bloke, but he got this badly wrong, and it cost us. The really disappointing thing is that he didn't learn from almost identical tactical performances earlier in the season and this time last year at West Ham, and he didn't learn from the negatives of the Arsenal game, the biggest of which was Dier in central midfield.

West Ham set up almost identically to those last two games, that five, almost six at times across midfield, shuffling from side to side like a row of foosball players on a fucking stick, up against Dier and Wanyama who have "next man" vision only in midfield areas. I have no idea why Poch didn't go 3421 for this one, leave Son on the bench, and make it harder for West Ham to funnel us narrow, and making some space for Eriksen and All maybe. As it was it was just identical to last year tactically, with the game compressed, no room to breath and no-one able to by pass the predictable "next man" pass, and break the lines. Poch seemed to want the FB's to play like we were playing three CB's and push right up, but this left the two CB's horribly exposed to West Ham's countering overload, because they were playing 352 they could always numerically flood counter situations.

It's a fucking travesty that Winks got injured because that game was crying out for a player next to Wanyama who can see past that first man option, will pass and move and pass and move. People keep scoffing at the idea of playing Onomah in there, "it would be a disaster" , but if you actually look and analyse Dier's last two CM performances I fail to see how, if we'd played the 3CB system, we could possibly any worse with Onomah playing next to Wanyama than Dier, who panics in tight spaces and who's passing is so paint by numbers it slows us to a crawl.

Poch has got to resist the temptation of putting all our forward creative players on the pitch every game but be brave enough to play a more creative option in midfield sometimes.

I just do not understand why he didn't change it up at half time, and then his substitutions were just fucking piss poor. Why the fuck do you take off our best defender, a LCB, just to put our second best RCB in his place. Bringing on Dembele was a bit moot, he's not exactly going to start injecting tempo and making incisive passes, but if you are going to bring him on, just fucking take off Dier if you're going to keep the shape as is, or take Son or Alli off and change shape? Or as @TheHoddleWaddle said in the match thread, how about trying a 433 for a change, have Eriksen and Dembele hubbing off Wanyama, with All and Son either side Kane, we would have given their midfield more to cope with (kind of 253 with the ball) and then had three going at three at their defence causing them all sorts of problems. As it was the only thing their defence had to do was mop up long punts from Alderweireld trying to Hail Mary over the midfield congestion.

Taking off Wanyama and bringing on Janssen and dropping Eriksen backwards was just robbing Peter to Paul, and we hadn't been able to pay Paul all night with Eriksen where he is best. Trippier for Walker was 90 minutes to late.

Walker had yet another night that mocked the claims he is superior to Trippier defensively. He was poor first half and we were lucky not to be one down early on when he just couldn't be arsed to track back. He did play a couple of good passes in forward areas second half but also got caught out a couple of times too and defensively thats two games running now he's looked like the old Walker.

This was not an easy game, when a team is set up like this it can make things very difficult, and to be fair to Poch and this team, this season we've found answers to this most weeks. Dug out some tremendous performances and results in the face of much tactical buspark-manship. It's not that we deserved to lose this game, but games like this you need to get right tactically, give yourselves the best possible chance, there's been a few like this where Poch hasn't got it right and we've ground out results, or found a way to win, through his changes or our mentality and talent, this was one trip to that well too many. You need to get the first goal and then their tactical plan goes fucking awol. Unfortunately Poch didn't set us up right, and didn't react right. The structure was flawed and the in game management and changes just made us worse not better, the game degenerated into a turgid mess, not even good chaos, just bad chaos.

Individual

Lloris - Decent game

Walker - Vintage Walker really, much like last week, couple of very good passes, some really bad stuff too.

Alderweireld - Not great tonight. Probably his worst game of the season, but not helped by walker or Poch's tactics and selections.

Vertonghen - was probably one of our better players, and has been all season and taking him off was fucking mental. (unless injured ?)

Davies - Meh

Dier - Another poor game in midfield. His passing lacks vim and vision, and anytime he tried to move it forward it invariably went awry or hit a player too hard with a defender up his arse already. And under pressure in tight defensive areas he keeps making the same kind of ball-hot-potato errors.

Wanyama - Usual energy and tenacity but was fighting an uphill battle.

Son/Alli - The odd moment from each, but there was no time or space and very little supply for them to operate. In games like this Alli has to improve his ability to hold onto the ball and bring others in, not just cough it up cheaply with a poor first touch or an attempted piece of frippery.

Eriksen - He huffed and puffed but it just wasn't happening.

Kane - Plenty of graft but like Alli, there are times his hold up play needed to be more composed.

Nothing there that can be argued with really. What I would add though is that West Ham need to be given credit where it is due. Bilic did his homework here. They had a game plan that they executed almost flawlessly, compress the space in their final third, match us in aggression and press the man on the ball relentlessly.
I felt their press was very intelligent as well, any time they were advanced they pressed the ball carrier and the passing avenues, forcing us to play the ball backwards which then allowed them time to find their shape in their third again.
Rinse and repeat.
Only on a handful of occasions did we manage to work our one touch game to pick that lock. When we did their keeper made some great saves or we made the wrong decision for the final pass.

As with any of the best, there will always be a game like this, maintaining the type of intensity we've shown over the past 4-5 months is an enormous ask, and this game was always going to be a huge test as it's the biggest game of the season for them.

Yes we got a lot of things wrong on the pitch but, for me, that was as much down to their game plan as our lack of one.

 

[Japhet]

I think Harry Winks has been a huge miss since his injury. He would have been such a good option off the bench last night.

 

[kev1nxxx]

Nothing there that can be argued with really. What I would add though is that West Ham need to be given credit where it is due. Bilic did his homework here. They had a game plan that they executed almost flawlessly, compress the space in their final third, match us in aggression and press the man on the ball relentlessly.
I felt their press was very intelligent as well, any time they were advanced they pressed the ball carrier and the passing avenues, forcing us to play the ball backwards which then allowed them time to find their shape in their third again.
Rinse and repeat.
Only on a handful of occasions did we manage to work our one touch game to pick that lock. When we did their keeper made some great saves or we made the wrong decision for the final pass.

As with any of the best, there will always be a game like this, maintaining the type of intensity we've shown over the past 4-5 months is an enormous ask, and this game was always going to be a huge test as it's the biggest game of the season for them.

Yes we got a lot of things wrong on the pitch but, for me, that was as much down to their game plan as our lack of one.

If their players turned up and played like this against most opposition instead of just us in their "final" they would not be in the state they are now. Badly letting their manager and fans down imo. Anyway whatever their gloating and celebrating right now I would not swap one thing about us (except the result) with ANYTHING of theirs.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

If their players turned up and played like this against most opposition instead of just us in their "final" they would not be in the state they are now. Badly letting their manager and fans down imo. Anyway whatever their gloating and celebrating right now I would not swap one thing about us (except the result) with ANYTHING of theirs.

The thing is with playing like this is that if the opposition do score first it goes to pish. Not every opposition that goes there plays like us either, super high line, 4231 with fb's pushed high up. As @Ionman34 said, they were set up perfectly for us, and unfortunately, we for them. That's the disappointment for me, that they've played like that the last two times we've played them and Poch had not put enough thought into it, and worse, his in game solutions were poor.

I really need him to explain the logic of effectively swapping Vertonghen for Dier at LCB ? It was as idiotic as when Jol was chasing a game, would take off one of the FB's, put another striker on and put Jenas at FB ?

 

[Wellspurs]

they looked like they had 12 outfield players at times tonight because they were all so deep and pressed so well. I actually counted once to be sure.

I did the same! At times they had two right backs, left backs and centre backs!

No wonder we found them hard to break down?

 

[BringBack_leGin]

The thing is with playing like this is that if the opposition do score first it goes to pish. Not every opposition that goes there plays like us either, super high line, 4231 with fb's pushed high up. As @Ionman34 said, they were set up perfectly for us, and unfortunately, we for them. That's the disappointment for me, that they've played like that the last two times we've played them and Poch had not put enough thought into it, and worse, his in game solutions were poor.

I really need him to explain the logic of effectively swapping Vertonghen for Dier at LCB ? It was as idiotic as when Jol was chasing a game, would take off one of the FB's, put another striker on and put Jenas at FB ?

The removal of Vertonghen was insane, perhaps Pochettino's worst ever decision. And while I think Dembele in from the start would have dramatically improved us, at least in allowing us to resist their press better and keep the ball higher up the pitch (even if he is vision challenged), the decision to have DIer and Wanyama together was madness. The only way those two should both play is in a 343.

 

[Cornpattbuck]

Just bad days at the office all round.

Choice of passing, touches, communication etc - just terrible.

We looked so off the pace, which even stunned a few West Ham fans I know. They were as baffled as we are.

People can blame tactics but it was poor individual performances pretty much across the pitch that sunk us. We weren't anywhere near our normal level and West Ham were a hell of a lot better than anyone could have anticipated. No idea where their energy levels came from.

Never seen Toby and Christian have worse games in Spurs shirts. Only human but bad day for everyone to have a bad day.

Still think the ref let WH off with a lot and I'm left wondering if the Friday night game affected our preparation, as we looked spent from the start... but I'm clutching a bit.

Ah well, on to the next one and hopefully we get our shit back together. The boys know they're much, much better than that.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

I think Noble was fucking lucky not to get sent off. He owes Dier for not making more of it.