- Jul 29, 2006
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Some thoughts about the match itself.
The midfield worked, in part, because Sissoko repeatedly did what I mentioned before kickoff, which was to run the ball forward 20-25m. This substituted for the missing vertical passes from Winks or Eriksen, as a way to connect the ball in defence to our attacking quartet. It's what Dembélé used to do, during the period when people would insist that he "only passes sideways", without noting that he was passing sideways from a position 20m forward from where he had collected the ball.
In Dele's first season, the long, raking, precise aerial passes from Alderweireld were a lethal feature of our attack. They created goals and won matches. Crucially, they also created variation, thus making it impossible for teams to assume that we would always build slowly from the back. Then he stopped doing them. Why? Was he told to stop? From the moment Mourinho arrived, he has started doing them again, 5-6 times a match at least, and they are again creating goals and causing havoc in opponents' strategic attempts to close down our build-up. So why the hell did he stop? It's blatantly obvious that Mourinho has instructed him to start again.
This leads to another point about Mourinho generally. When he was appointed, there was a rash of posts about his "negative, defensive football" and the lack of goals. Mourinho's teams have never played negative football and they have almost always scored goals by the bucket-load. He doesn't ask his teams to play negative football, he asks them to play direct football as a part of their variety of attack.
Our attacking play has come to life again because we are playing with more variety. This flummoxes opponents, because they can't set up against one approach, they have to work out how to snuff out several different ways to attack. The obvious way to do that is to press us to death, to be quicker and more hungry. Man Utd did that on Wednesday and it worked, in part, because I think some of our players had got a bit smug after a few good results.
I would wager that Mourinho had some harsh words this week about the need to play with intensity, concentration and desire in every match. That no one will lie down and let us win - we have to go out and beat them.
Burnley are not a bad team. They were ineffective today because we were first to every 50/50 ball, exactly the opposite of what happened on Wednesday. Their not-half-bad midfield kept losing the ball, throughout the match, because they had a Spurs player - or three - in their faces every time they tried to set up an attack. It's what we used to do in 2016/7, to such devastating effect.
I thought our defence played very well today, especially Sanchez. Burnley had chances because Burnley are a decent football team. You can't snuff out everything. The transition between a back 3 and back 4 worked reasonably smoothly and Dier was sound and reliable throughout.
Finally: I wonder what will happen when Lloris is fit again. I don't think it's a slam-dunk that he gets his place back. He's quicker than Gazzaniga and a better shot-stopper, but our style under Mourinho requires a goalkeeper who can play accurate long balls to an attacking teammate, line-drive style, in the manner of Paul Robinson. Gazzaniga can do that, as we saw today multiple times. Lloris' distribution is weak and imprecise.
Brilliant post D