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Newcastle 6-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Happy Birthday AANP Senior

This weekend was the 90th birthday of my old man, AANP Senior, which is a solid innings by most metrics.

Having seen our lot lift all but two of the trophies in their history, and seen in their entirety the lilywhite careers of Messrs Greaves and Kane, I classify the aged relative as something approaching Spurs royalty – so it seemed a bit rotten that he should spend his birthday sitting through that garbled nonsense yesterday. But I suppose if we’ve learnt anything it’s that our heroes will repeatedly find new and innovative ways to plumb new depths, what?

(He was pretty philosophical about it though.)

2. The Players

I recall in my younger days one of the female chums giving me a funny look, and possibly patting my head, saying, “There are many, many things wrong with you,” and it was a sentiment that sprung to mind last night as I recollected the day’s events and tried to make sense of them. For there was not really any single issue that sprung to mind. In fact, one cannot think back to the game without about eighteen different problems immediately jostling for position at the front of the queue.

But amidst the behind-the-scenes circus currently in full effect at the place, the players certainly contributed to the general spirit of full-blooded incompetence yesterday.

I could bang on all day about Romero waddling around from minute one in his own area with his hands behind his back, and it wouldn’t begin to address the problems in the vicinity – but nevertheless, why the dickens was Romero waddling around from minute one in his own area with his behinds his back? Yes, yes, we all know the handball rule means that merely possessing arms is in some cases a punishable offence, but really. The chap was facing down a fellow about to shoot, the situation seemed to demand a spot of spread-limbed antagonism. Instead of which, Romero made himself as small as possible, the complete opposite of what the impending crisis required. On top of which, this arms-behind-back nonsense had the unhelpful immediate consequence of constricting all his subsequent movements in the adventure, Romero hereafter proceeding about the place with all the freedom of one bound by a straitjacket.

Not that Romero was the sole culprit. Right from kick-off, Dier opted against bringing down an aerial ball when given the time and space to do so, instead heading it first time in a manner that stacked the odds against Sarr, who duly lost it. This may sound a pretty incidental detail, and a lot of the time it wouldn’t amount to much I suppose. But in a way, just carelessly tossing the ball around without too much concern for its eventual whereabouts sums up a lot of what is wrong with the troupe. Put another way, next time someone wonders aloud what is meant by the players lacking a winning mentality, I’ll plant them in front of a screen and show them a clip of Dier aimlessly heading the ball with the air of a fellow who thinks it’s someone else’s problem.

On top of which, it wasn’t quite such an incidental detail, because Newcastle promptly scooped up the thing and opened the scoring.

Perisic reacted to the save from Lloris, immediately prior to the first goal, by taking the sight of the loose ball squirming free as a cue to take his first break of the day. Perisic instead adopted a watching brief, as a Newcastle sort politely shuffled forward to poke the ball into the empty net.

Porro for possibly the second goal (I think, one rather loses count) had the decency to check over his right shoulder for imminent threats, and having clocked one such foe lurking with a spot of menace, reacted to the incoming cross by giving it his best Perisic impression and letting the ball sail past him, seemingly convinced that a strategy of non-interference must eventually come good. To his credit, where Perisic had simply goggled a bit, Porro at least made a perfunctory attempt to appear engaged, by raising an arm to appeal for offside. Pointless of course, and infuriating too, in this age of play continuing so that VAR can sort it out at a later date, but if the drill amongst our lot was to find ever more appalling ways to stuff things up then Porro was fitting right in.

Of course, no abject lilywhite capitulation would be complete without Monsieur Lloris adding his signature move of just not bothering to move at all, and he rolled out one of his best for number three (or was it four?), making zero effort even to stretch out an arm, or even twitch a limb, as the ball sailed past him.

This, of course, is but a selection. Everywhere one looked, there seemed to be one of our heroes stumbling off into some new crisis that only ended with the ball in our net and Eric Dier puffing away angrily as they marched back to starting positions. So, chronic and deep-rooted though the problems at the club may be, the current mob out on the pitch are certainly adding their tuppence worth of hokum to the mix at every opportunity.

3. The 4-3-3

The pre-match announcement of the switch to 4-3-3 struck me at the time as ripping news. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that it raised my level of expectation from ‘Nil’ to ‘A Flicker Of Hope’. I’d been baying for the thing all season after all, the sight of our midfield pair repeatedly being outnumbered and generally cut to ribbons week after week having an oddly discouraging effect upon the juices.

Of course, it’s difficult to measure such things as the success of one formation as compared to another, all sorts of wacky metrics being available in these days of Opta stats and XG and so on and so forth. But it’s seems a fairly safe bet to suggest that most right-minded folk would point to a 5-0 deficit after 20 minutes as evidence that the thing had not quite transpired as an unparalleled success.

So no real quibbling on that front, but nevertheless the whole thing left me rather miffed. Like most things in life, done properly a 4-3-3 would seem a perfectly reasonable way to conduct one’s day-to-day. Somehow however, our lot managed to take a pretty normal state of affairs and turn it into the sort of nightmare to rival a stretch in the flames of Hades.

Now there are a few rummy elements to this. One thing that occurred to me is that the club never waste an opportunity to bleat on about how our lot have one of the best training facilities in the business. As bragging rights go, it’s a peculiar one admittedly, but if it helps bring out the best in the troops then I’m all for it.

However, seeing them scuttle about the pitch yesterday like they’d not previously heard of football, let alone adjusted to the rigours of a 4-3-3, did get me wondering what they hell they’ve been doing all week in those gleaming training facilities. One appreciates that change is always a bit much to stomach, we homo sapiens being creatures of habit and whatnot, but honestly. They began proceedings looking uncertain if they were in the right half of the pitch.

Another challenge that has been widely highlighted is that apparently having a wing-back play at wing-back is hunky-dory, and a full-back play at full-back is tickety-boo; but if a wing-back is every required to play at full-back cracks will appear in the sky and the very fabric of reality will come crashing down.

This seems to be the expert take, and is used to explain why, for example, Perisic was utterly incapable of exhibiting any signs of life when the situation at Goal 1 yesterday required him to extend a leg and poke the ball clear. Wing-backs, after all, are incapable of defending. Similarly, Porro’s inability to jog back alongside the striker on his shoulder was not so much his fault, as a desperate flaw in the system – wing-backs are incapable of defending.

So if that’s the unquestionable truth then I suppose we ought to accept it, but I did occasionally pass a hand over the fevered brow and wonder, as our lot fell apart at the seams, whether anyone had tried training Perisic and Porro – and indeed Romero and Dier – to adapt to this new and mind-boggling setup, viz. The Back Four. In this age in which every baked bean ingested is recorded and every drop of perspiration monitored, I’d have thought they’d have the resource at the gleaming training facility to sit down with a couple of the players and shove a few hours of analysis at them, touching on some of the key do’s and don’ts of the role.

4. Kane

It obviously got rather lost in the mists of general wretchedness knocking about the place, but Harry Kane popped up with a heck of a goal. On another day I would have lit a cigar, been pretty liberal with the bourbon and scrawled some of the best prose going in salute to it. There was a spot of one-touch stuff at the outset, completely out of character with the general sentiment of not-knowing-what-day-of-the-week that had been adopted by one and all, before Kane was released on halfway.

And while his little dribble to beat his man owed much to general bluster and force than any particular finesse, it achieved the objective, and left him to make a left-foot shot that many would have dragged wide.

So well done him, although for how much longer such jolly sentiments are lobbed his way remains to be seen. If he decided to sprint out the door as soon as the whistle blows on the final game of the season, one would understand the sentiment.

However, one point I have begun to mull in my quieter moments, is whether a permanent absence of Kane might work to our benefit. One treads carefully here, dodging the slew of incoming rotten fruit, and picking the words delicately, but the point I’m driving at is that we no longer press from the front, with any real sense of verve or spirit when Kane is leading the line.

Essentially this is because the poor fellow is completely out of puff, having strained every sinew non-stop for about four years under Poch. These days, his top speed is something of a chug, which is more than adequate for most of the tasks on his morning To-Do list – finish with the right foot; finish with the left foot; win a foul; drop deep and ping; finish from outside the box; and so on.

But when it comes to pressing the opposition, Kane is something of a spent force these days. This is entirely his prerogative, so no complaint there; it does, however, prevent the rest of our mob from effecting a high press as a team.

This is a bit of a tangent that probably needs some cove with a screen and some whizzy graphics to do justice to, and if push came to shove I’d certainly keep the fellow in the ranks and let him do his damnedest pretty much any way he pleases. But as well as wing-backs who can’t play full-back, the generally decrepit nature of whichever system we’re peddling does seem to include an inability to shove any pressure on the other lot when in possession at the back.

5. The Running of the Club


Well that Stellini chap has taken the well-trodden path, so no need to bother about him any longer, and poor old Ryan Mason is now faced with the gargantuan task of trying not to devastate his CV before he’s had a chance to write the first entries.

But further up the food-chain, if I have correctly picked up the occasional whisper, it seems that there might just be one or two murmurs of displeasure against one D. Levy Esquire.

If he would stick to the business side, steer well clear of the football side and bring in a few qualified eggs with a good knowledge of the club, AANP would probably be happy enough, in truth. Off the pitch he knows his beans well enough, and if things pootle along well on the pitch then I’m happy not to give him a further thought. But things on the pitch could not really be much worse, which does rather bend the argument a good 180 degrees.

The complete lack of strategy in the pre-Nuno and pre-Conte appointments (as evidenced by shortlists containing all manner of managerial styles) was troubling stuff, and since then it seems like the blighter has stumbled upon a whole series of choices on the football side of things, which, while no doubt well-intentioned, have really piled one steaming mess upon another.

The ominous silence around the managerial situation in recent weeks – bar, bizarrely, a few off-topic lines at the old alma mater last week – may have been just the job in the 1970s, when one waited patiently week to week for news from the club, but these days serves only to infuriate an already pretty restless bunch of natives.

And frankly twenty years at the head of any company strikes me as pretty unhealthy, although I don’t suppose I’d be giving tongue to too many grumbles if we’d picked up some trophies and waltzed into the Top Four with Levy still at the helm.

However, be all that as it may, we appear to be stuck with the chap, for the foreseeable anyway. And in truth, if we could only appoint a manager capable of giving some direction to the current rabble, I’d once again shove Levy from my mind and just enjoy the ride. One understands the calls for the entire useless shower to be shoved out the door and start from scratch; but looking at Villa, Newcastle and, to an extent, Man Utd, turning their fortunes around with only minimal cosmetic surgery, I do still cling to the hope that a competent manager would give a spot of direction to the existing squad.

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8 replies on “Newcastle 6-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points”

Newcastle fan here.

Be careful with the latter part of point 4. It wasn’t that long ago that Newcastle fans mused the same about Shearer as he approached the end of his career. Spoiler alert, he left and we entered the doldrums for years after, including two relegations. We had a team of stars that didn’t care but without Shearer there too the inevitable happened.

I wish you all the luck in the future and hope you can get it together (not at our expense of course but in general terms!)

Bless you, most kind. Good luck to your lot too. And bravo for Sunday, that Willock pass might be the greatest thing I’ve seen this season.

During the first 20 mins or so, I found myself experiencing distinctly Private Pike (from Dad’s Army) type emotions:
“Mum, those nasty men in black & white keep kicking the ball into our goal! Tell them to stop it mum. Tell them to go away mum. Mum. Mum! MUMMMM!!!!!

I’m sitting here in my lounge room in Melbourne, Australia and can see our players stuff up and the problems we have. Blame the manager, but some of these players must be living in dream world. They just seem to roll up and give it a token try.

I know you you don’t want to be hearing this, old chap, but this was the worst case of dogging it I’ve ever seen on the part of an entire team. The only rather tepid exception was young Master Skippy–and he merely got screamed at by Stellini for his pains, under the principle of savaging the weakest. This business of working to rule been going on for some some time whenever it’s convenient to the ringleaders’ aims, viz. when Mourinho was ready to be turfed, or when the club turned against Nuno, and finally when the locker room had just about enough of the Italian waiter. But one would really have thought that at least the shop foreman might have called a work slowdown where they actually did work to rule, rather than abandon all pretence of any prior knowledge of the sport. For that matter, why the haste to rid themselves of Stellini, admittedly a reminder of Conte, but of little more irritation value than a flea? Why tank themselves so thoroughly out of Europe next year and all cash incentives–not considerable, granted, but welcome at Christmas? Unlike past sit-downs by the players, this one was not confined merely to the heavyweights, but extended to nearly every single one, even the baffled Sarr. I believe that the highest player rating any of them deserved for that exquisitely choreographed first half was a 1 or 2–and the entire defense rated a zero, including Lloris. My dear fellow, to disillusion a shining youth worshipping his heroes is a shameful act, and I feel a rotter spreading my missive of gloom and doom. But these bounders are far worse because they have conspired to create what must be considered a criminal conspiracy every bit as bad as the betting scandals of earlier times. They have conspired to rid themselves–in particular, one player– of a series of managers, while he himself preserves his sacrosanct goal or two per game. You wonder if the team might be better off without him? Indeed, they may eventually be but not in the short run because his poison has infected his teammates. They are nothing but mercenaries; no self-respecting professional would behave like this, and it’s no wonder that they’re mocked and despised by players on other teams. Mocked and despised, and nearly by their fans. One utter collapse is an aberration and one may feel pity and confusion, a yearning for some managerial savior to right the ship and restore the factory floor. But this has been a pattern with Spurs for several many years. It’s not daffy-headed “Spursiness” any more–it’s deliberate, destructive, and the result of an ego that has grown so monstrous that, at the first hint of failure, it conspires to bring the workplace down. As long as he’s at this one, nothing will change. His every goal says, “I’m alright, Jack, screw you all!”

I agree, clear evidence of this is from the fact of teams with lesser paid players, lesser paid managers and smaller budgets playing much better football than Spurs, and it seems many times we win due to a huge dollop of luck.

I agree with virtually everything that’s been said, but a few questions :
Did Stellini go 4-3-3 because we need 3 in midfield (always) or because he didn’t trust Sanchez and Davies and Lenglet weren’t really fit enough?
How do we feel about Pedro Porro playing like a dick and then having a chat and a laugh with a Newcastle player on the field when the final whistle blew?
Is Lloris really injured ?
I see the players committee is made up of the 2 guvnors (Dire and Hoijberg) plus Lloris and Harry. I wonder how they will react on Thursday when Ryan Mason has to tell them only Harry is playing?
I have been really supportive of Daniel Levy, but maybe he is losing it. Can we really afford to wait to the close season to appoint a new manager when there is so much deadwood to clear out and so many young home-grown players to assess?

Always a pleasure to read your posts which subdue the pain of it all (just a little).
Your venerable pater (belated birthday felicitations) lumbered you good and proper, tarring you with the lillywhite brush (as it were). I only have the late, great Greavsie to blame for my allegiance, not even knowing that this Spurs outfit indeed came vaguely from my vicinity. Once smitten can never be unsmitten, dash it…
This blessing/ burden (heavily weighted towards the latter of late) has not been helped by the steely-eyed Chairman’s inability to see the blinding obvious viz the revered Pochettino. Although reports are mixed, if M Levy’s ego has prevented him from grabbing the aforementioned sacked former manager by the lapels and pleading with him to save our season asap (or even a slightly more nuanced approach) then he really is not the great Spurs fan he purports to be. He certainly pays scant attention to the fans’ opinions. Levy’s recent managerial choices have been poorly judged and not at all in line with the attractive football we all long for. Poch, having had the temerity to suggest that the squad be freshened up (as indeed it did) and subsequently being handed his P45, has seemingly burned all bridges back to Spurs through the fragility of the Levy ego: heaven knows, he might even have made a success of it, thereby inferring the chairman had made a mistake and then where would we all be?! Not on his watch…
Having played his Kane card for all it’s worth (“gentleman’s agreement” be hanged) and with the fabled Son partnership having run aground perhaps it’s time for Levy to finally cash in and try to assemble a team that actually plays as a team, not like the grudgingly-affiliated bunch of mercenaries that they resemble at present.
Perhaps Levy will have an epiphany and realise that he’s not been blessed with top notch footballing nous, however formidable his business skills. I fear that day has a long wait till it breaks…

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