benjii

I think we should leave out a few who will start against Liverpool but it's also a good chance for others to play themselves into a bit of form. Assuming the 4-3-3, I'd go with: ---------------------Forster-------------------- Stephens-------Yoshida------Virgil-----Bertrand -----------------------Reed----------------------- --------------JWP---------------McQueen--------- --------Redmond---------------------Tadic-------- ------------------------Long------------------------ Subs: Huey Lewis, Martina, Fonte, Davis, Sims, Rodriguez, Clasie I'd probably look to give Jay Rod half an hour in one of the wide attacker roles as well, as I think he could be useful there for us, particularly in away matches where it would be good to have him and Long on the pitch to provide an outlet.

Yes, that one was unbelievable. A favourite from last season (albeit a lino, not a ref) was this failure to give offside: In fairness, he doesn't have a clear view or anything....

Yes, but then we usually had Mane to chip in as well who is a much, much better finisher than Tadic or Redmond and better at stretching teams. I like Boufal, and I think he will do really well for us, but he's a different sort of player than Mane and isn't going to score as often. When we played the 4231 under Poch we had Jay Rod, in addition to Lambert/Gallagher. Again, a much better finisher than Redmond or Tadic. Perhaps the "answer" going forwards if we stick with a 4-3-3 is to play Rodriguez as one of the wide players with Long/Austin central. That means that two of Redmond, Tadic and Boufal miss out though and seeing as Redmond is apparently the new Thierry Henry/Arjen Robben/Lee Holmes and Boufal is our record signing that probably won't happen. My feeling is that Puel probably has a mandate to develop a new style from the board, the board recognises this will have teething problems, and the club is reasonably happy if this season isn't exactly stellar. Whether that's the best long-term plan or not remains to be seen. Personally, I want to see a system that has Boufal in a central role and the team built around him. A "standard" 4-3-3 won't really allow that.

Yes.

I don't think there's too much wrong with the system. Some fans are just a bit dumb. It's like saying "opera is boring". It probably is if you don't have a clue what you're watching. If I've got a concern it's more about the psychological side and the mentality of the players because we seem to capitulate far too easily as soon as the opposition scores. We lack character at the moment. However, if we scored a few more goals people would love our neat, controlled, technical football. It's small margins. He's been left with a squad without a single top-half quality striker (taking into account Jay Rod's injury) and with a bunch of midfielders who probably haven't scored ten goals between them in the last 5 years. Then you've got a captain who seems to be restless over money / contract and a goalkeeper suffering from a crisis of confidence. I'd say he's doing remarkably well in the circumstances. People also forget how dire our football was under Koeman at times. Mane got him out of jail often.

Agreed. Disappointing

That's obviously a made up name!

Pochettino and Koeman clearly had "their" men supporting them when they were here. I'll be danged if I didn't even know the name of Ronnie's fitness coach. Why didn't Puel arrive with his own team? Or did he?

Give me Puel over Krueger any day. What the feck is he up to?

I'm watching Middlesboro v Leicester. They make us look excellent.

It would be good if Clasie is fit. He was our best midfielder in recent weeks. Assume Boufal won't start (if he is available?) seeing as he started the last two. I'd be tempted to go with a front three of Long central with Rodriguez and Sims either side. Everton aren't the fastest team and that front three could cause then some problems. They will hit it direct at Lukakau which is a worry without Virgil. We need to accept he will bully Fonte and Yoshida and make sure we've got people ready to win second ball. I'd be tempted to play McQueen, for a bit of extra height, in midfield to do some shielding.

PS. That's not to say Poch isn't a better coach than Puel but painting the last four years as some sort of glorious parade of attacking football is utter nonsense. There were matches last season when we could barely string two passes together.

Yep. "Sideways passing", "pretty possession ********", "no plan B", "threw away the Cup at Sunderland" etc. There's a lot of history re-writing going on. The fact is, the only players in our best XI with a hope in hell of getting into Spurs best XI are Virgil, Bertrand and maybe Boufal.

Do people not think we played well in the first half then? We murdered then and should have been a couple up. Even with their dire, time-wasting, park the bus crap, we carved out several decent chances. Then, as soon as our players see the other team score with their first shot yet again, heads drop. I don't blame Puel for today at all really. Maybe could have picked Cedric but that's about it. When the players did what they were supposed to do for the first forty minutes we played some great stuff. Then individual mistakes and an absence of players willing to take responsibility cost us. Those are issues of form and issues of squad composition and I don't think that's Puel's fault. 10 shots today and only 1 on target. That's not the managers fault.

One thing I am learning at the moment is which of the people that stand near me at SMS are immature tossers.

It wasn't a yellow and the one he did get was harsh. He's an awful player though.

Agree with pretty much all of this.

He was our best player by a distance today.

I'm not having that. He's got a great touch and he's foreign so he must be lazy.

When / if Rodriguez and Boufal are fit and ready for a sustained period I actually think going back to the early season system with Boufal central and Rodriguez coming in from wide would be worth a go.

You can control your own life and ambitions. You have zero control over what SFC does. Some people seem too emotionally and mentally under-endowed to come to terms with these two facts.

The ref obviously thought that Alli was still being impeded when he shot or that the earlier foul was still affecting his poise / balance etc. - that's why he blew his whistle. Otherwise advantage would have been over and he wouldn't have blown the whistle. In the context of the decision he made the red card was correct. Whether it was the right decision or not is a different matter (obviously it wasn't) but you can't really appeal that - you appeal the application of the law. And it will just be a one match suspension, I imagine.

Quite rightly. The red card was the correct decision given that a foul occurred. I don't think we have any grounds to appeal. The penalty was incorrect but you can't appeal that. The only way the red card is "wrong" is if you say that Dean let them have advantage and shouldn't have brought play back. ie. advantage was over by the time Alli missed. That's actually what most refs would have done, IMO, but he's a "look at me ref" and was clearly quite chuffed to be giving the penalty. But, again, I don't think you can appeal that. And I doubt Redmond would have started against WBA anyway.

Now you are really talking about something completely different pal. You were wrong. That's ok. You're probably wrong quite often, like most people. Learn to accept it pal.

The funny thing is, I don't even think Poch underachieved and if he'd stayed for another season we would have done really well (although I doubt much better than we actually did do anyway). But clearly he wasn't hamstrung in his second season by Fox, Hooiveld and Davis/Gazza considering they rarely played. So I was right. Not wrong. #pal