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l’Arse 2-0 Spurs: The Seedier Side of 4-4-2

Plus ça change and all that, what? The 4-4-2 business will win us more games than it loses, particularly given the Sherwood mantra that bonus points will be awarded for whizzing the ball from back to front as rapidly as humanly possible, a most edifying change from the sidewards sidewards catchy monkey snooze-fest under the previous incumbent. However, yesterday – and, one imagines, against most of the slicker teams in the country – we were simply outmanoeuvred in midfield. Like a broken clock shouting ‘Bingo!’ twice a day, Andy Townsend stumbled upon an unfortunate truth yesterday when he mused that l’Arse were taking better care of the ball, and that, coupled with their numerical advantage in midfield, rather did for us.

The Three Stooges

It is never too encouraging to see Curly, Larry and Moe line up across the back-four, and while the defensive line is not quite so high these days, blind panic still broke out with disturbing regularity at the back. Walcott’s pace had poor old Daws and Chiriches scuttling around doing their very best decapitated poultry impressions, and as they spun around in little circles and bumped into each other they could not have been more convincing if adorned with blood-spattered feathers. Were one to use the ‘”Who would buy them?” test of a player’s ability, it is difficult to imagine any top-half team pausing to stroke the chin and count the pennies.

There is at least some consolation in the fact that these are our third and fourth choice centre-backs (one hopes), but the news is worse out on the left. The excruciating little tizz into which young Master Rose imploded can probably be shrugged off as the sort of occasional mistake that befalls even the best of us, but the regularity with which he cedes possession jolly well makes me grind my teeth, and not in the good way mind.

Young Walker tends to attract opprobrium on a regular basis, and admittedly yesterday, having done the hard work of racing back to catch Rosicky, it was a little odd that he opted not to intervene any further in matters to prevent the goal. However, I tend to exonerate the chap on the grounds that few men in Christendom seem to take things quite so seriously and passionately as he. Oh that all our lilywhite heroes cared as much about winning their individual battles throughout the 90.

The Unfortunate Lot of a Midfielder in a 4-4-2

The midfield beavered away, bless them, but that whole thing was rather a mismatch. Adebayor’s commendable exertions in dropping deep were not really enough to fight the fires, and when l’Arse got their groove on and started pinging the ball in neat little triangles one imagines there were a few embarrassed looks amongst Bentaleb and chums. On the bright side, when in possession and merrily bursting out on the counter our heroes look about one smart pass away from a one-on-one every time, with Eriksen and Lennon evidently being given all sorts of encouragement to bust a gut in search of goals. Eriksen in particular looks like he has a nice picture of things in his head. The execution still tends to be a little off-key, but one gets the impression that in time he will be quite the play-maker.

Whether Sherwood sticks with this approach for our trickier away-day assignments will make for interesting viewing in the coming months. The 4-4-2 gamble of losing the possession game but having excess numbers on the counter worked a treat vs Man Utd, but had us panting and wheezing a tad yesterday, and ultimately our glorious leader will probably be judged on results in those biggest of big games.

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6 replies on “l’Arse 2-0 Spurs: The Seedier Side of 4-4-2”

Sherwood is out of his depth.

442 is outdated and can only be used to beat crap opposition. His persistence with it will lead to more losses than wins.

By refusing to use the system we have a squad for will only lead to players wanting to leave as we have about 7 players now fighting for effectively 2 spots. The board are to blame for being so stupid in sacking AVB.

The only idiots that are happy are the journalists that pressured the board and the xenophobic fans that never accepted AVB as he replaced their boy Harry.

Spurs were ahead of last season’s tally which was a record and looked good to win cups the season effectively ended as soon as AVB was sacked.

Dim Tim has us out of both cups will soon have us out of Europe and will finish no higher than 8th.

Levy OUT!

Dim Tim has us out of both cups will soon have us out of Europe and will finish no higher than 8th
Love your optimism, maybe you should support another team or maybe start your own club, maybe FC Hotspur??

..it was to replace AVB, who was obviously in the middle of trying to build a style of play that would be effective for the the whole season, home and away, with the Luddite that is Timothy Sherwood. Back to the future is where spurs are going, huff and puff, get it up there, up and at ’em football. It’s no more than some Spurs fans deserve tbh. I hope they are looking forward to more of what they got yesterday

What is there to be optimistic about? We had a manager that was credible represented the club well talked about the club as we and , not them and they. He had a LEAGUE not all competitions win % of 55% higher than any Spurs manager in 30yrs. What does the club do then sack him and replace him with someone with no managerial experience and without even the qualification needed to manage in the prem. Only an idiot supports self destructive policies blindly when all common sense says the action was fatal? Why should I a supporter of 35yrs chose a different team to follow because I’m unhappy at the inept decisions of the board? Idiot!

Well put, gloriousleader. As a fan, at a game I’ll support the team whatever – but it doesn’t mean we can’t see what a huge mess we’ve made of this season. I guess in time it may come out that AVB was sleeping with everyone’s wives or doing something similar, but on the surface, we seemed to be building a consistent and high standard of playing (with a bunch of new players), and even getting better results than we should expect to!

We’ll go back to losing more games, to maybe fluking a few wins against the top teams, knackering out the team as they chase the ball around for 90 minutes. Yeah, it’ll be exciting. We can look forward to lots more 2-0 or 2-1 defeats to the big teams – but hey at least we’re not getting whipped right! No 5-1 or 5-2 defaults because … oh hang on, yeah we used to get them too, now I think about it. Ahh feck.

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