Tag: Ivan Perisic

Newcastle 6-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date April 24, 2023
8 Comments on Newcastle 6-1 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Happy Birthday AANP Senior

This weekend was the 90^th 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.

Tags Christian Stellini, Cristian Romero, Daniel Levy, Eric Dier, Harry Kane, Hugo Lloris, Ivan Perisic, Pedro Porro, Premier League, Ryan Mason

Spurs match reports

Spurs 2-3 Bournemouth: Five Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date April 16, 2023
18 Comments on Spurs 2-3 Bournemouth: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Actually Not A Bad Performance

A pretty distracting feature of this latest drama was the overbearing urge to fling the head skywards and yowl away in despair. Difficult to focus on much else I mean, when beating the chest, tugging great clumps of hair from the scalp, uttering every oath known to man and similar such healthy mood outlets.

But having stared vacantly off into the mid-distance for a good few hours, Reason gradually returned to her throne, and the old silver-lining-finder in the AANP blood kicked in and started doing its thing. At least, I began to muse, this wasn’t one of those defeats in which we sat back, ceded possession and gradually dropped deeper and deeper until stuffing up the whole thing in the dying seconds.

Replaying the whole dashed thing in my mind, I actually thought that this wasn’t one of our worst performances of the season. In fact, it was probably one of our better ones – although the bar here is admittedly low. In the first half hour or so, we looked pretty threatening each time we buzzed forward, and before and after the opening goal we might have had another, if those tasked with such things had taken a bit more care.

Things drifted a bit thereafter, and by the hour mark we were behind, which is pretty poor form at home to Bournemouth, dash it; but then for the last half hour we again got our affairs in order and hammered away.

Moreover, even The Brains Trust seemed to up their game, dispensing with that back-three guff and going full Ossie by the climax, with no fewer than 5 attackers (plus two others christened by Mother Nature as wing-backs) flitting about the place. The naysayers may point out that a fat lot of good it did us, but after the negative dross of the last three years – and three managers – I don’t mind admitting to feeling a gentle thrill as one after another forward were shoved into the mix and the strategy became ever more akin to teenage AANP gaily throwing caution to the wind on Football Manager.

For all that I still thought we rather obviously lacked someone in the centre with a twinkle in their eye, but the poking and prodding around the area, and steady stream of half-decent crosses at least made us look like a team pretty annoyed to be behind and pretty determined to correct the situation. Just a shame that amidst all the excitement we rather neglected the whole business of sweeping up behind us. And frankly, with the upcoming fixtures as they are, losing this one verged on criminal negligence, but still. Nice to see us doing some attacking, what?

2. Sonny

Nice also to see Sonny zig-zagging about the place with some of his old joie de vivre. I hesitate to suggest that he is now fully restored to his former glories, but after last week’s throwback goal, yesterday I eagerly lapped up every hint provided that his tendency to collect the ball and dribble north was slowly morphing back towards that of 2021/22.

And whether it was to do with the Bournemouth approach or some other cause, in the first half in particular it did seem to me that the Son of old was occasionally hoving into view. It helped that rather than collecting the ball inside his own half, and promptly failing to hold it up, he generally received the ball yesterday around the final third and pointing in the correct direction. After all, a Sonny jinking towards the opposition goal is infinitely more pleasing upon the eye than a Sonny trying to shield the ball when facing his own net.

He popped up with his goal, of course. Not necessarily one about which to write home, but if a recent Golden Boot winner struggling through leaner times finds a straightforward close-range opportunity thrust his way, one doesn’t ask questions. Sonny tucked the thing away with minimal fuss, and one could almost see the injection of additional confidence ooze onto his map as he wandered off for the regulatory knee-slide.

So that was welcome stuff, but as mentioned it was his general air, in the first half in particular, that brought a bit of fizz to proceedings. Those moments when he picks up the ball around 20-25 yards from goal, in an inside-left sort of channel, and then dips the shoulders this way and that, makes to duck outside, and then inside, all the while with a general air of a bumblebee that has stumbled upon a whole gaggle of flowers in bloom and can’t decide which to get at first.

At one point when Sonny scuttled off into the area he cut in and out so often, and threw in so many stepovers, that I rather fancy the Bournemouth laddie tasked with stopping him was struck with a spot of motion sickness. It would have been one heck of a goal if a defensive foot hadn’t spoiled things; but the general sentiment remained – the fellow had hit a bit of an upward trajectory.

Bar perhaps that hat-trick against Leicester, this seemed the first time all season that Sonny had looked a genuine nuisance at the top of our attack. The onus changed a bit in the second half, as our heroes took to swinging in crosses, but and of course it all fell apart fairly miserably at the end, but this at least gave reason to stride off into the next coiuple of fixtures with a bit of purpose.

3. Perisic

I also thought in that first half that Perisic was having one of his better days. This stood to reason – if not really required to do much defending, and allowed simply to park himself in the final third, jiggle between left and right clog and swing in crosses with either of the aforementioned, Perisic becomes quite the attacking asset.

And so it transpired, at least in the first half. At this point, Porro was seemingly still adjusting to things and appeared to have received special dispensation not to get involved with any attacks until 4pm local time, so it was all Perisic.

This got my vote. The Bournemouth right-back became the latest in a pretty long stream of souls who have this season discovered that Perisic doesn’t actually have a weaker foot, so it didn’t really matter in which direction he tried to escort him. Perisic’s crossing was a constant threat in the first half, and he chipped in pretty regularly in the second too, at least until the formation switched from Wing-Backs to All-Guns-Blazing.

Oddly enough, given that all season the theory has been peddled that Sonny’s ills have been at least partly due to Perisic stepping on his toes, the pair seemed to stumble upon quite the understanding. As Son drifted infield, Perisic overlapped, a routine that, despite its breathtaking simplicity, seemed sufficient to have Bournemouth defensive brains melting, and amongst other delights brought about our opening goal.

Given the struggles of Son to date this season, I presume that the winnings pocketed by the Perisic-Son combo yesterday were at least in part due to obliging opponents; and the thought of Perisic being shoved back and forced to dig in defensively against more accomplished opponents does bring out the cold sweats; but as an attacking asset he’s a pretty handy chap to have around the place.

4. Porro

As mentioned, it was a while before the memo about wing-backs making merry in the final third reached Pedro Porro. Unfortunately, before he was able to crack on with this part of the routine, he made an almighty hash of things at the back, landing the collective right in it.

I’m all for our heroes trying to be proactive, and looking forwards before all else on receipt of the ball; but there’s a pretty obvious asterisk to be slapped against such recommendations: viz. that one carry out such undertakings without imperilling the entire blasted operation.

So when Porro received a pass on the touchline, deep inside his own half, one could salute his initial pivot – infield and forward, bearing all the hallmarks of a wing-back looking to inject a bit of fizz and impetus into things. At that point however, a splash of good old common sense would not have gone amiss. Red and black shirts were converging en masse. Porro had made his point, about beetling forward and showing intent and whatnot; now was the time for him to shovel the ball elsewhere and move on.

Alas, the blighter made a pretty serious error of judgement, in trying to take on and dribble through the advancing Bournemouth horde. It was a pretty wretched attempt all round actually, as he didn’t achieve anything near a successful dribble, his touch so heavy that it amounted virtually to a pass straight to an opponent. In a trice he had ceded possession to no fewer than three attackers. The rest was rather a formality, and well might P.P. have hung his head in shame.

This punctured the atmosphere like the dickens, which was a real shame because, as mentioned above, we had tucked into this one with a bit of appetite in the early knockings.

However, to his credit, Porro set about his business in the second half looking every inch a man who wanted to redeem himself. He was a pretty willing galloper to the byline, as occasion demanded; but vastly more eye-catching was the stream of crosses delivered from his right boot to the penalty area. True, one or two went a touch askew, but in general he sent them over with lovely whip and shape, and I was pretty dsigruntled to see so little fruit borne from them.

Ultimately then, for all his second half efforts, the chap ended the afternoon in debit rather than credit, but whereas some amongst our number attract a fair bit of stick for their faux pas, Porro seems the sort of egg who will make a few decent contributions to the cause in his time.

5. Davinson Sanchez

Hard not to mourn a bit for poor old D. Sanchez, what? Full disclosure, of course, I think the fellow is an absolute disaster of a defender, and ought to have been carted off the premises long ago – but to err is human and all that guff, and in fact yesterday I’m not sure he even erred so significantly.

True, his attempted challenge on the Bournemouth nib in the build-up to their second was at the half-hearted end of the spectrum, but it seemed to me that the ball’s journey from his foot to that of the goalscorer (Solanke) was as unfortunate as it was inept. It seemed fairly reasonable to expect a nearby teammate – of whom there were several – to do the decent thing and step across to hammer the ball clear.

Anyway, nobody did, and having begun that move by losing his bearings in what is unfortunately rather trademark style, he ended it by delivering the assist for the Bournemouth goal. A pretty standard day at the office, by his wretched standards.

But apparently thereafter the chap was booed when he next got involved, and that just isn’t cricket. I’m all for filling the air with a choice curse or two in a moment of instinctive reaction when a lad really stinks the place out; but to wait until his next involvement and deliberately give him the bird says more about those doing the cat-calling than the object of the cat-calls, if you follow.

I suppose the thought probably entered the Sanchez dome at that point that a spot of public support from The Brains Trust would not go amiss; but if he had set his heart on any such vote of confidence he was in for a bit of a shock. An ugly business, substituting a substitute, and unlike a mass brawl involving all 22 plus the benches, I’m not sure it is a sight that too many people genuinely do enjoy. Sometimes, however, the greater good demands these things. Tactically, one understood. On a human level, however, I did rather want to shove a consoling bourbon his way.

That said, if Sanchez never plays for our lot again, I will chalk that up as a major bound in the right direction. The long-awaited overhaul ought to start with him. His confidence is on the floor, and I get the impression he doesn’t exactly instil much steady assurance amongst those around him either. Pack him off to Ligue Un or some such, and let him start again. I’ve no idea what fate befell Monsieur Lenglet yesterday, but if he remains incapacitated a pretty sizeable call awaits for the trip to Newcastle next week. It could be sharp intakes of breath all round.

Tags Davinson Sanchez, Ivan Perisic, Ossie Ardiles, Pedro Porro, Premier League, Son Heung Min

Spurs match reports

Everton 1-1 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date April 4, 2023
16 Comments on Everton 1-1 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. The Post-Conte Era

AANP is pretty sharp. The former Commander-in-Chief may no longer have been of the parish, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so into proceedings last night when it dawned on me that actually, for all the bluster and announcements, not a dashed thing had changed.

For a start there was the formation. Now one generously acknowledges that, thirty games into a season, one can hardly force a completely revamped model down every available throat, and expect everything to fall into place without so much as a squeak. The newly-installed Brains Trust had had by my reckoning about five days to inspect the troops. So, much though the wretched 3-4-3-featuring-two-defensive-midfielders grates, one understood the logic and waved an accepting – if grudging – hand.

But nevertheless, while tearing down the foundations and creating something completely wacky and new might have been a bit rich, a few nuanced adjustments would have been nice, what? Brave new era, and all that. Would it really have cost the earth, I asked myself, to have rearranged the deck-chairs and including an extra creative soul in midfield? Not that we seem to have any such souls left, but with a bit of jiggery-pokery – and maybe a Pape Sarr – I thought we might see Hojbjerg pushed further forward, or Kulusevski more central, or Kane and Sonny as a front two, or literally anything that indicated that Conte had biffed out the door in deed as well as word.

But nope. The formation was exactly the same. And if that was not enough, the performance ended up being even more Conte-esque than it had been under Conte, which takes some doing.

In fairness, there were patches of play in the first half that weren’t too bad. Everton had obviously got into their heads the ridiculous notion that we were the sort of mob that would fold immediately under questioning, and so spent the opening exchanges charging in a frenzy at whichever of our lot were in possession, lacking only a bayonet to brandish and a war-cry to shriek. And our lot responded pretty impressively, at least at various points between approximately minutes 5 and 25. Whomever was in possession tended to do a quick tap-dance, shimmy around the nearest swinging Everton leg and pop the ball off to a nearby chum, at which point the whole routine began again.

So we looked competent enough in possession, and able to sidestep the Everton press. Most notably to the AANP eye, we moved the ball pretty quickly. One got the sense that Team Stellini had spent their five days barking a few choice phrases celebrating the virtues of the quick pass and one-touch football, because there was a welcome dash of urgency about the place.

On top of which, whether by our design or the accident of Everton being rather narrow, Messrs Perisic and Porro had a few moments of joy up the flanks. Hojbjerg seemed to be having one of his better days in the centre. Kane had a couple of near-ish misses. Rumours of a new-manager bounce were no doubt miles off the mark, but for half an hour or so I at least thought that we might just about edge our relegation-zoned, lowest-scoring-team-in-the-division opponents.

2. The Performance at One-Nil

I should have known better of course. From the latter part of the first half onwards, our lot absolutely stank the place out. Whatever upper hand we might have had early doors was old news by the midway point, and there was not much improvement in the second half.

It took some pretty generous and unsubtle interventions from Everton to get our noses in front, because goodness knows our clueless heroes weren’t going to manage it themselves. First that laddie got himself sent off; but on seeing that our lot hadn’t really taken the hint, and were still scratching their heads a bit, another Everton slab of meat took it upon himself to give us a penalty, just to make sure.

And at that point, I fancy I even allowed myself a smile, which just goes to show one never really learns. The one-nil lead was not really a deal-breaker; but a one-nil lead against ten men with under half an hour remaining struck me as the sort of binge even our lot couldn’t foul up.

Of course, it is a little hard to describe what happened next. One simply stared in disbelief, and rubbed the eyes a few times. After Sheffield United and Southampton – and seemingly every other game we’ve played this season, in truth – it shouldn’t have come as any surprise, and yet this seemed to be one of the worst performances of the lot. By just about any metric available, we managed to let ourselves get comprehensively outplayed by ten men. Even now, 24 hours on, the recollection of it seems to hollow out my insides.

It is tempting to get a bit Shakespearian about things and declare this the worst I’ve ever seen from our lot, but having had my teenage years fashioned by the delights of Francis, Graham and Gross a little perspective is probably in order.

Nevertheless, though, this collective offering – let’s call it The Conte Tribute Act – was down there amongst the absolute dregs. If a chum had suggested to me that with twenty minutes to go against one of the worst teams in the league, and up a man, our lot would choose the option of dropping deep, ceding possession and praying for the final bell, I’d have laughed them out of town and suggested for good measure they had over-indulged in the sauce. And yet our lot did precisely that! Forsooth!

The amateurish passing from the back; the aimless hoicks upfield; the introduction of Davinson Sanchez as a means to shore up the defence; the brainless red card; the continued absence of Danjuma – I’m not one to betray the emotions unnecessarily, but when I tell you that at least one of my lips quivered with despair as I watched matters unfold I rather fancy you get the picture.

3. Son

The rest is mere details. By full-time I was in such a state of shock that I found myself groping blindly towards the drinks cabinet, but at half-time, when thoughts were slightly better ordered, one of the principal points of concern was the latest dithering performance from young Sonny.

The wise old coves have it that form is temporary and class permanent, which is true enough I suppose, but it makes this dip in form one of the longest temporary contracts in living memory.

The poor blighter was dreadful yet again, in just about every area of his game. I admired to an extent his diligence in trying to track back or drop deep to receive the ball, but seeing him trip over his own feet and fall to the dirt upon every contact, I did look skywards and utter a silent prayer or two that he might just relocate to the top of the pitch and stay there. I much prefer the chap playing on the shoulder of defenders and scurrying off towards the opposition goal.

Not that his attacking manoeuvres bore much fruit either, mind. The days of him dipping a shoulder, side-stepping a defender and whipping a shot goalwards seemed pretty distant specks as we watched him shuffle straight into an opposition frame and, more often than not, complete his routine by yet again hitting the turf.

After last night it is admittedly hard to make a case to suggest that Lucas is the answer, but one does cast a longing look or two towards Danjuma on the bench and wonder what on earth that is all about.

4. Lloris

Amongst the bigger decisions our newest Glorious Leader had to make was between the sticks. Absence, of course, makes the heart grow fonder, and Fraser Forster has not been without the occasional flaw, but I did puff the cheeks and think it rather a shame that he was automatically elbowed aside and the red carpet rolled out for Monsieur Lloris.

In Lloris’ defence he did grab a cross or two of the high-and-swirling variety in the first half, which lowered the blood pressure a bit around these parts. However, with the ball at his feet he seemed, as ever, to be not entirely sure of what day it was or which sport he was playing, and there were more sharp intakes of breath than any right-minded nurse would consider healthy whenever our lot tried to play out from the back. An admonishing clip should be aimed around the ear of Romero at this point, for his bizarre inputs into this particular nonsense, but the whole fiasco did have me pining for the return of Forster.

The real blow to the ribs, however, was the goal. The objective viewer would, naturally enough, raise an appreciative eye at the quality of the strike, but at AANP Towers the headline was all about Lloris and that utterly infuriating habit of his, of simply standing and watching, rooted to the spot, as the ball sails past him.

I don’t mind admitting I could have absolutely screamed at him to use his bally hands. Why the dickens does he keep doing this? Adopting the pose of readiness, as if coiled to leap into action, and then, as the crucial moment approaches, instead of leaping as advised, simply swivelling the hips to watch the ball? It happens over and over, and drives me to absolute distraction. What is stopping him from extending the frame and at least broaching the possibility that he might reach it?

It is galling at the best of times, when he is nowhere near the ball; but last night the thing whistled within his wingspan! I’m not sure he even needed to dive in order to reach it, simply extending an arm might well have done the trick. That the ball was travelling at a fair old lick is beyond doubt; but geographically this was no insurmountable challenge.

Utterly bewilderingly, after that utter crate of garbage – and all the other ones we’ve witnessed – we sit fourth in the table, but given the games played and whatnot (and, more pertinently, the utter guff we keep peddling) we’ll be waving that one goodbye pretty sharpish. One can only look onwards, and hope yet again for an upturn on Saturday, but this really is getting a bit thick now, what?

Tags Antonio Conte, Arnaut Danjuma, Christian Stellini, Cristian Romero, Davinson Sanchez, Everton, Fraser Forster, Harry Kane, Hojbjerg, Hugo Lloris, Ivan Perisic, Lucas Moura, Pedro Porro, Premier League, Son Heung Min

Spurs match reports Spurs news, rants

Conte (& the Southampton Draw): 5 Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date March 19, 2023
7 Comments on Conte (& the Southampton Draw): 5 Tottenham Talking Points

1. Conte’s Rant

I must confess that a good deal of what you might call the specifics of Conte’s rant escaped me. This is certainly not a pop at the fellow’s English, which is a dashed sight better than any other tongue in which I’ve dabbled (when it comes to asking for a cheese sandwich in DuoLingo Spanish, I’m your man; when it comes to discussing the merits or otherwise of my colleagues in a foreign vernacular, I demur to Conte).

But still, this was not one of those systematic jollies, in which each point is clearly labelled and unpacked, leaving the listener in no doubt about the way of things, before moving on to the next item. First listening to his words, and then poring over the transcript, it seemed to me that Conte had about half a dozen different ideas swirling around, and they all oozed out on top of one another.

Nevertheless, one got the loose gist. “Angry man ranting” was the nub of it. Whatever calm and considered plan he might have prepared before strolling out to meet the assembled press, once he had taken his seat and got down to business he seemed not to be able to contain himself. Nor did the passage of time soothe the savage beast, and by the time he had finished ten minutes later the whole thing reminded me of that scene in Predator in which Arnie and chums unleash their heavy artillery and spend a good minute or two of screentime just mowing down every tree in sight.

So while the small print of his frustration was a little mysterious to me, it was pretty clear that one or two things had got up him. Most notably, he seemed at pains to communicate that he was less than entirely enamoured of his beloved players. If I understood him correctly, I also fancy that he aimed a swipe at the board and owners; and for good measure he then veered down a side-road into the theoretical and peeled off a strip or two at the club generally, as an entity. At that point a few questions from my undergrad days about personal identity came swimming back to mind, but they swam off again sharpish.

The underlying feature seemed to be that Conte had just about had enough of the current state of things. And, indeed, the state of things for the past twenty years. So what to make of it all?

2. Conte On The Players

His principal target was the playing personnel, and here he has a point. Whether or not one also drags in the board, the manager or both is pretty racy stuff, but as starting points go this is actually pretty straightforward. That the players repeatedly foul things up on the pitch is difficult to dispute. I doubt there’s a lilywhite in the land who hasn’t at some point this season wanted to grab various of our heroes, give them a pretty violent shake and then smack them across the face with a wet fish.

“Selfish” seemed to be Conte’s word de jour yesterday, but more generally the notions of our lot being unable to cope with pressure and offering little more than half-hearted shrugs in the face of trouble certainly rang true. Far too often this season and for several previous seasons, the players have stunk the place out.

3. Conte On The Board

The board – I think – were next in the firing line, but at this point the mood darkens rather. This seems to be a matter that turns family members against each other, if you follow my thread. Some are ‘yay’, and some are ‘nay’, but everyone seems to voice their point with gusto.

Those who side with the owners can point to the large sacks of cash flung around to bring in such luminaries as Sanchez, Ndombele and Lo Celso in recent years, the argument being that money most categorically has been spent.

More pertinent to the serving monarch, Messrs Kulusevski, Bentancur, Perisic and Porro each seem to have Conte’s personal seal of approval emblazoned across their foreheads. Added to which, Richarlison and Bissouma, whilst each having so far had much about them of the damp squib, nevertheless seemed to receive from the Big Cheese a satisfied nod of approval upon arrival last summer, as if to say, “Precisely the squad member needed for a campaign on several glorious fronts.” Conte, the argument runs, has had his wish-list pretty handsomely indulged.

However, no sooner would the Defence nestle back into its seat than the Prosecution would leap up and start raging that Conte wanted but two things last summer, viz. a right wing-back and left-sided centre-back. On the RWB front he has had to wait half a season for one shiny new Porro to arrive. As for the left centre-back, the whole sorry episode reminds me of that gag from the Good Book, which asks what sort of fellow would hand his lad a stone if he requested bread, or a snake if he requested a fish – both of which suddenly seem pretty rosy deals when compared with receiving Clement Lenglet, when asked for a world-class left centre-back.

A messy old business then. The AANP take is that the players certainly deserve stern words; the culture of the club has indeed been severely lacking in the Winning Mentality department; and that while the board has chipped in with cash it has made various howlers in other areas.

4. Conte Himself

Much of which, however, is for a different day. Following Conte’s tantrum, the burning question at AANP Towers was around the responsibilities of the fellow himself. Shaking an angry fist at the players, for their displays every week for the last year, is all well and good until one remembers that they set foot on the pitch each time with Conte’s own words ringing in their ears. If things have been so bad, what the devil has he done about it himself? Listening to the chap whinge away you would think that he has been barred from speaking to them for the past year.

Conte himself bleated that our lot today are worse than last season, which seems true enough. But given that he is the one running the whole operation it does rather suggest that he ought to have a solid chunk of the responsibility shoved across his shoulders.

To howl about the selected players not being up to the task (or being too “selfish”), whilst resisting any personnel changes as if his life depended upon the same XI, has a bit of a whiff about it. Which is to say nothing of the rigid tactics, or the peculiar reluctance to give things a shake mid-match with a few substitutions.

It is possible that this entire episode was part of the old psychological one-two, aimed at instilling a spot of fire in the bellies of the outraged playing personnel. I suppose I have heard wilder theories in my time.

The drearier conclusion, as pointed out by various more knowledgeable sorts, seems to be that the whole monologue was Conte’s attempt to protect his reputation. That is to say, with pastures new awaiting him, and a sorry end to the season fast looming at N17, it is in Conte’s interests to position the club as beyond saving, the players as empty-headed dullards and the managers – both present and previous – as pretty helpless innocents.

All of which might be true, I suppose. He’s laid it on a bit thick though, what?

5: The Match Itself

After all that – which enfolded, lest we forget, after our heroes had thrown away a two-goal lead in the final fifteen against the divison’s bottom team – to pop back and pick out the positives from the match itself feels a bit like coming home to find the house burnt down, but noting that the sun is shining so it’s not all bad.

Still, there were some plus points, as Conte’s dearest pals are no doubt reminding him. Pedro Porro looks a handy addition, for a start. I’ve previously given quite the salute to his crossing in the final third, and on Saturday I noted that he also possesses a mightily impressive cross-field diagonal from deep. This was unleashed a couple of times, the first of which had Sonny clean through in the opening moments, and really ought to have brought a richer harvest than a shot so wide it headed out for a throw.

On top of which, Porro showed himself to be fully signed up to this business of wing-backs appearing in the penalty area to try their luck at goal. As well as his actual goal, he treated himself to two other pops from close range, both of which, alas, sailed over. Encouraging stuff though, for the remaining ten matches in which we continue to use wing-backs.

Sonny did little to impress throughout, but his pass to create Porro’s goal was an absolute delight. It got rather lost in the tornado that followed, both on and off the pitch, but his one diagonal seemed to take out literally half the Southampton team in setting Porro free on goal.

The other fellow who caught the beady AANP eye – yet again, it should be noted – was young Master Skipp. There were, admittedly, a couple of errors that might have been more severely punished, and his usual rather harsh yellow card, but otherwise Skipp delivered a near-faultless central midfield display. As often sighted winning possession as picking a pass, he hummed away incessantly, generally taking on life’s grubbier jobs as if thrilled simply to be asked.

So much for the silver linings. Heartening though Skipp and Porro were, the lip I chewed throughout was a pretty dashed frustrated one. At no point in this match did our heroes look to be in control of things – which may be acceptable against PSG, dash it, or even AC Milan, but not against the league’s bottom side. At best, our lot threatened on the counter; but on balance it seemed the slight majority of the game was spent diligently trying to keep Southampton at bay.

Even if this had succeeded, it is a dreadful approach to life against a team in that position. And having got ourselves two goals to the good, all as one dropped deeper and deeper, chanting in unison “Backs to the wall” as more and more defensive sorts were thrown on to give it the old skin-of-the-teeth routine. As such, one understands the manager watching that and then promptly losing his sanity – but if this nonsense is still unfolding after a year and a half of Conte, either he is too dim to notice the problem or not good enough to solve it.

Tags Antonio Conte, Clement Lenglet, Dejan Kulusevski, Ivan Perisic, Oliver Skipp, Pedro Porro, Premier League, Richarlison, Rodrigo Bentancur, Son Heung Min, Southampton, Yves Bissouma

Spurs match reports

Man City 4-2 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date January 20, 2023
1 Comment on Man City 4-2 Spurs: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Bentancur

A slightly different hobnob from the norm, this one. Same old outcome, of course, but whereas these things – Spurs matches, I mean – tend to start a certain way (with us going two down), and then adopt a very specific trajectory (of waiting until approximately minute 60 before sparking into life and actually looking pretty impressive on the front-foot), this one, in the interests of variety, flipped all that on its head.

In this instance we didn’t start terribly, which was curious enough. And then for the rest of the first half, we occupied a space somewhere in between ‘Managing Okay’ and ‘Clinging On A Bit’, while crucially avoiding the concession of goals before half-time.

Most curiously of all, we found ourselves two up rather than two down, come the mid-innings break. Hardly merited, but one learns to take the smooth with the rough.

And fairly critical, if easily overlooked, in both goals, was the contribution of Master Bentancur, a bean I would have welcomed back with the most warm and vigorous of handshakes if circumstances had allowed.

As ever, it is easy for the eye to be drawn towards the goals, and other critical moments, when passing judgement on the contributions of the assembled, and as stated, Bentancur rather subtly wormed his way into affairs for both of ours.

But beyond this, and while matters pootled along at nil-nil, he occasionally hove into view like some friendly spectre, to remind us how much better he is than the rest of our midfielders. Shimmies and turns to escape a pack of baying City players, that sort of thing. An ability to receive the ball under a decent spadeful or two of pressure, and still keep his head and get wriggling.

There were a couple of ill-timed lunges too, which were a little less impressive admittedly, but given his ability in possession I was happy enough to churn out that guff about ‘Rough’ and ‘Smooth’ again, and pine for a world in which Bentancur has a bit more support around him.

As mentioned, he played a role in both goals. Firstly, in haring up to the City laddie who received the ball inside his own penalty area.

I must confess to a little shiver of fear, on second viewing, that VAR might stick in its nose and submit Bentancur’s challenge to forensic detail, being concerned that the proportions of man and ball he contacted were weighed towards the former. But apparently it was tickety-boo. So, smooth with rough once more. Bentancur’s eager press had done enough to force the City fellow to wash his hands of all responsibility, and rather oddly gift the ball straight to Kulusevski.

A minute later, a clearance of some description dropped from the heavens, and Bentancur casually plucked it from the sky with his foot, much like a wicketkeeper might do with a pair of oversized gloves.

That in itself elicited an approving noise to emanate from the AANP voice-box – the sort of sound one would make if one said “Oh, I say!” but without actually using words. Ignoring the odd looks I received from those around me, I remained glued to the screen, to see Bentancur pop the ball off towards Kane. The pass, admittedly, was not quite as pristine as one had hoped, but Kane did enough, as did Kulusevski out on the right, and in a couple of shakes of a lamb’s tail the ball was in and Emerson Royal of all people was taking the acclaim.

The Brazilian’s might have been the name on the scoresheet, but the AANP heart swelled with admiration for the real hero, he of the earlier input, Rodrigo Bentancur.

2. Emerson Royal

While the selection of Bentancur was greeted with unfettered joy around these parts, I would be wilfully deceiving my public if I suggested Emerson’s appearance prompted a similar reaction. Still, there he was and there we were, so might as well hope for the best and get down to it, what?

And he did a decent enough job, in truth. Should an uninitiated visitor ever pitch up and request the lowdown on the chap I fancy I would outline 3 key features, viz:

He genuinely thinks he’s brilliant
He adopts good positions
His outputs tends to be dreadful

And he more or less stuck to the script yesterday. The incredible self-belief remained in situ and undimmed (and good for him – I’m by no means a fan, but don’t subscribe to this business of booing the blighter).

Defensively he was adequate, which may sound like faint praise but frankly was a few notches up from Dier, Davies and one or two others.

And in the other direction his eyes rather lit up whenever the attacking gong sounded. One of the few joys of Conte-ball is seeing one wing-back arrive on the end of a cross from the other, and if you don’t mind me butchering this definition a bit, his presence at the far post from a Ben Davies cross in the first half very nearly freed Kane for an unmarked pop.

At one point in the second half I had to rub my eyes and look down at the contents of my tumbler in some wonder because it seemed for all money that as we attacked Emerson was sprinting straight through the middle in the centre-forward role (referring us all neatly back to point number 1, above).

And then of course there was his moment of glory, the curious egg briefly morphing into Lineker to poach a dashed difficult header for our second.

No doubt about it, the goal was masterfully taken, but that aside Emerson’s outputs were as Emerson’s outputs generally are. As ever it was clear that any joy to be had on the right would not have as its genesis one of his crosses.

Still, no calamity befell, and his goal was a triumph both of endeavour and skill, so I’m happy to file this away as one of his better days.

3. Perisic

Any regular suckler of the AANP sauce will know the drill by now – plenty of pointless fluff, a finger jabbed with meaning into the ribs of one of the usual suspects and a spot of gooey fawning over the crosses that emanate from either sacred clog of Ivan Perisic. But really, if your team is as lacking in creativity as our lot, who wouldn’t stand and purr at the sight of I.P. hoisting the thing as if on a string, into the single most devastating spot in the opposition area game after game?

I fancy I’ve heard that he has 8 assists to his name in lilywhite this season, which a) sounds about right, and b) even if not right is believable enough. Either way it hammers home point – namely that the chap is a dashed useful sort to have patrolling the left, either to deliver his own customised outputs or to pop up for the provision of helpful input when crosses are delivered from the other side.

All of which renders even more startling the stat – for which I’ve admittedly used a healthy swig of dramatic licence and made an educated guess – that the blighter has yet to score for us. It feels like he has come pretty dashed close to so doing, at various points this season, having regularly arrived as the auxiliary forward for countless attacks, to deliver the coup de grâce, only to be foiled at the last, in cartoon style, by countless unforeseen interruptions.

A perfect example materialised yesterday as a City bod who wasn’t even looking managed to deflect Perisic’s shot onto the post, a routine he would not have pulled off if he had been attempting it for weeks.

The flip-side to the rich attacking harvest offered by Perisic is that he treats defending as if a completely different sport, and one entirely foreign to him. Blame could be shared around pretty liberally for the various goals that rained down upon us from various angles last night, but Perisic was woefully at fault during at least three.

In one instance Mahrez waggled a foot or two and that was enough to prompt Perisic’s resignation from the task at hand, he pausing only to dangle an insincere leg as the chap sped past him.

For another, he tracked Mahrez as the ball was lofted aerially towards him, but seemed to consider this sufficient, the concept of challenging the chap, or shoving him off balance, or in any other way inconveniencing his attempt to head the ball seemingly well off the Perisic radar.

And then for another, Perisic almost comically over-committed himself to a 50-50 just outside our own area, seemingly motivated by the prospect a full-pitch counter-attack rather than focusing on the more pressing concern of stopping City from pummelling us once more.

So one of Mother Nature’s select defenders he is not. But not for the first time the whole sorry debacle takes my mind back to the Croatia team of the World Cup, a mob that set up in 4-3-3, with 3 preeminent passers absolutely controlling business in midfield (Modric, Brozovic and Kovacic); Perisic left of a front-three, with not too much defensive onus; and only lacking a decent centre-forward to make hay. Should I ever be gifted a 30-second audience with Our Glorious Leader, that is the tale I would tell him.

4. Lenglet

A substitution to which Signor Conte seems peculiarly wedded when we are, inevitably, chasing a game in the latter stages, is Lenglet for Davies, or vice versa. An odd one, if you ask me. Maybe something about fresh legs or whatnot.

Anyway, it happened yesterday, like clockwork, achieving nothing in an attacking sense, as always. What caught the eye, however, was that even though he barely had time to work up a sweat, Lenglet still managed to distinguish himself as amongst the very worst of our comfortably bad coterie of defenders.

At one point he tried a casual 5-yard pass inside his own area, pretty inaccurately, towards a chum whose coordinates had been identified for attack by a City sort. And then in the dying embers of the thing, he failed to deal with that most challenging of situations for any footballer – the football.

There it was, spherical as they come, lobbing towards him without anyone in the way of it, courtesy of an uncultured heft from Ederson. Now one would imagine that any human who had demonstrated basic motor skills while still being bounced on their mother’s knee would have the capacity get their body in the way of a ball, and kick, head or otherwise interact with it in order to send it off in the opposite direction.

So what the hell possessed Lenglet to let the thing apologetically skid off his frame and into the path of Mahrez right behind him is anyone’s guess.

I suppose if there was one redeeming feature of this absurdity it is that the game was already lost. But honestly, it’s just not cricket, what?

5. Lloris

Of course, while on the subject of ghastly errors that are scarcely credible amongst professional footballers, poor old Lloris popped up again.

Rather a shame, because his first half had some impressive qualities to it. He dealt – just about – with a few crosses of the high and swirly variety, whilst being jostled by various genetically-engineered City goal-beasts, and also made one particularly natty save, changing direction just so to avert a shot that caught a pretty angular deflection. Things appeared to be looking up for the fellow.

Alas, there then followed the second half, and his run of good form and fortune ended rather abruptly. For City’s first he came flying out horizontally to give the ball a reassuring pat, but inevitably miscalculated and landed within a heap of limbs – some his own – and facing his own net, which seemed an impressive feat. Anyway, he having missed the ball completely and by some distance, the upshot was that it pinged around a bit before someone or other poked it in – there no longer being a goalkeeper present to prevent this – and Lloris’ day had taken its usual turn for the worse.

And then to seal the deal, he was beaten on his near post for the third. A deflection was present, ‘tis true; but this does not alter the fact that he had left a significant gap through which any shot, deflected or otherwise, might squirm.

Lloris’ sorry fortunes might be deemed emblematic of our current woes. Or they might not. Either way, while it does at least keep Woolwich reined in a bit, it was another pretty shoddy collapse, and from a position of unexpected superiority too, dash it. Ah well. On we bobble!

Tags Clement Lenglet, Emerson Royal, Hugo Lloris, Ivan Perisic, Man City, Premier League, Rodrigo Bentancur

Spurs match reports

Spurs 0-2 Arsenal: Five Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date January 16, 2023
12 Comments on Spurs 0-2 Arsenal: Five Tottenham Talking Points

1. Lloris

After yesterday’s mess, anyone in the market for a spot of finger-pointing would have no shortage of options, for “Sub-Par” seemed to have been the motto adopted by our lot throughout. Nevertheless, even Hugo Lloris’s own family members would probably have to accept that their man played a pretty critical role in the whole sorry affair.

It would be a stretch to say that we were on top of things, or even matching Woolwich, at the time of his main clanger. Although the scores were level, they were making good use of their extra man in midfield, passing from the back and through our press a little too niftily for my liking and having oodles of joy in that Saka-Sessegnon mismatch.

But nevertheless. The scores were still level, and our lot were showing a bit of willing going forward. On top of which the atmosphere in the place, while hardly confident, was at least still hopeful. When a first-minute pass into the path of Sessegnon on halfway is greeted by a roar the like of which is normally reserved for a goal, you know that the watching masses are suitably bucked. Anything, one felt, might yet happen.

Alas, what did happen was Monsieur Lloris treating us to the latest malcoordinated flail of his limbs. Maddeningly, he had signposted that he was in the mood for a clanger just moments earlier. A back-pass of the harmless variety had landed his way, and rather than just deal with the thing through means cultured or otherwise, he went down the bizarre route of assuming that he would be allowed to saunter unchallenged across his area for as long as he fancied.

Well, it didn’t take 10 years in the Premier League, 100+ international caps and two World Cup Finals to see that that the scheme was doomed. Barely had Lloris started dribbling the thing than an opponent was at his back, and routes to escape were fast disappearing. Lloris sought solace in the form of a countryman, but popping the ball at Lenglet’s right peg added a further layer of complication.

Not that Lenglet should have had too much difficulty in simply blasting the ball to safety, whichever foot was required, being an international footballer and whatnot. But, perhaps taking a cue from his captain, he botched the operation further by giving the ball straight to a Woolwich player in the six-yard box, of all things. In the panic that followed, Lloris at least had the dignity to save at point-blank range, but the awkward glances were already being exchanged.

And sure enough, calamity soon struck. Which is to say a fairly straightforward undertaking was required, and Lloris made a pig’s ear of it again.

One might leap to his defence by pointing to the various mitigating factors about the place. Sessegnon might have done better than simply stepping aside and waving Saka through; the cross when delivered caught a deflection of the small-but-critical variety; and it also came flying in at a rate of knots.

And if the blister charged with minding the net had been a ten year-old, or perhaps an elderly and overweight sort whose hand-eye coordination has always been a bit off, these might well have been acceptable excuses. But for a chappie whose life is dedicated to catching footballs, and who, as mentioned above, has more Premier League and international appearances than one can shake a stick at, such excuses do not wash. Catch the bally thing. Or at the very least buffet it off into a safe space.

Watching Lloris instead pat the ball upwards and backwards into his own net really did have the will to live seep from every pore of my being.

Thereafter, all the saves in the world would have done little to rectify things, because in a game in which we were second-best anyway, it was pretty crucial to avoid gifting them a goal, and similarly crucial to keep the atmosphere charged and hopeful.

Not that Lloris did make all the saves in the world thereafter. Romero was to a large degree at fault for the second goal – first in not bothering to close down the chappie, and then turning his back on the shot, forsooth – but from 25 yards or so one would expect a luminary of the goalkeeping trade to cover his bases and extend a sturdy paw sufficiently. Lloris was beaten too easily, and I imagine there are now few about the place who expect him still to be in situ come the start of season 23/24.

2. Sessegnon

For young Sessegnon already to have been chastised twice above in a sermon about the failings of another player entirely is rather telling.

His selection certainly gave the eyebrows of all in N17 a bit of a pre-match jolt, but one could at least attempt to explain it away, loosely on the grounds of the vivacity of youth – Perisic, after all, while a bit of a specialist with the ball at his feet and the masses howling for a cross, is not the sort of chap at whom one would point and say, “There’s the fellow on whom I wish to build a defence, particularly on account of his breakneck speed”. With Saka in opposition, I presumed that Conte saw in Sessegnon a young bean with enough to pace to thwart Woolwich’s right-sided threat.

A nice idea in theory, but pretty wildly off the mark in practice. How Perisic might have fared in that first half against Saka we’ll never know, but the berth was Sessegnon’s and it was pretty obvious from even casual observation that he was pretty powerless to stop Saka doing whatever he damn well pleased. With neither Lenglet nor Son particularly inclined to help out, we pretty much just resigned ourselves, at least in the first half, to that flank being wide open for business and as good as unmanned.

Sessegnon did show some early inclination to carry out the more attack-minded elements of his role, but even there, having made the necessary gallops into threatening territory, he was let down time and again by a string of crosses that seemed to give up on their mission as soon as they left his foot.

In the interests of fairness it should be noted that his dash infield, which brought about the first-half chance for Sonny, was impressively bobbish. It showed a spirit of enterprise and adventure we otherwise lacked, and was topped off with a surprisingly crafty little diagonal through-ball. What the devil he was doing there, in some sort of Number 10 slot, is anyone’s guess, but it was much-needed.

He also combined neatly with Kane for his one-on-one in the second half, but whatever merit he earns for making the run, he rather loses for failing to bury the chance.

Those two little jaunts aside, I saw precious little in his performance to impress, and even before half-time I was constructing the argument for his removal and replacement by Perisic.

3. Sarr

The other selection of considerable note was that of Pape Matar Sarr. One rather sympathised with the young bounder, for as long Conte sticks with his 3-4-3 then the central midfield pair will almost always find themselves outnumbered, which seemed a rotten hand to deal a fellow on his full debut.

I suppose if one were to cast a cursory eye over a narrative of the first half, and digest that the Woolwich mob cantered through the centre pretty much at will, one might conclude that the Sarr selection was a failure on a par with that of Sessegnon.

However, I am inclined to launch a fairly robust defence of young Sarr. Given that Woolwich employed a midfield three, often supplemented by a fourth in Zinchenko, Sarr admittedly spent a lot of time simply chasing shadows, but, as I have thought of Messrs Benancur and Hojbjerg at various other points in the season, the lad can hardly be blamed for being outnumbered.

When Sarr was able to intervene, he did so well enough. He took to his tasks with plenty of zest, shuttled the ball along to others sensibly and seemed pretty composed when dwindling options forced him to quicken his feet and dance away from trouble.

He is by no means the finished article, and his yellow card was evidence of the fact that this was a midfield battle we definitely lost. On top of which, for all his positives, he is another in the depressingly long list of hard-working but rather functional sorts, when our midfield absolutely screams out for some creativity. However, both in terms of being outnumbered in midfield, and populating said midfield with functional bods, the blame lies squarely with Our Glorious Leader.

All things considered, I thought Sarr bobbed about pretty well. Quite where he stands in the midfield hierarchy is a little unclear – I heard a whisper that Bissouma had a knock, and Bentancur will certainly waltz straight back in, but Sarr, it appears, is now a credible alternative to and possibly preferred option above young Master Skipp.

4. Kulusevski (and Son’s Ongoing Struggles)

If Sarr’s performance was one of our better ones by virtue of being acceptable enough, Kulusevki’s was possibly the best, by virtue of offering an occasional threat.

Not that you’d have known he was playing in the first half, during which time our heroes struggled to string three passes together. Naturally, beginning the second half with a two-goal deficit was the prompt for a slightly improved performance, and it seemed little coincidence that we were far more threatening once it occurred to those in lilywhite that they were allowed to pass to Kulusevski.

He did his usual thing – running literally around opponents, and yet doing so in surprisingly effective fashion; standing up crosses towards the back post; cutting in to curl efforts with his left foot. And on another day, one or two of those little adventures might have brought slightly richer harvest, but even though the conclusion of his little incursions repeatedly fell a little short, his presence and involvement at least sparked us into life.

By contrast, on the other flank, poor old Sonny once again laboured away like the less talented twin of the chappie from last year. As happens every week, he simply failed to run up a head of steam in any respect. Be it a dribble, shot or attempt to shield and hold up the ball, his bright ideas repeatedly came a cropper at source, and not for the first time we were as ten men and one passenger.

Injury and conditioning no doubt forbad an earlier appearance from Richarlison, but the AANP line from pretty early in the second half was to hook Sonny and plop the Brazilian in his place.

5. Conte’s Role In All Of This

For all of the above, however, my principal grumble is not so much the individual performances as the masterplan (a term with which I play pretty fast and loose) from Our Glorious Leader. Yesterday was a neat illustration of how we are getting on under the chap.

The formation, and in particular the use of a back-three, irks the dickens out of me. I suppose in theory one might argue that the more defenders one thrusts onto the pitch the less likely we are to concede. And perhaps amongst most right-thinking folk, this would work out swimmingly, one fellow covering the next fellow, and so on. If the back-three were watertight and achieved clean sheets every week, the case for it would be pretty compelling.

Amongst our lot, however, the back-three is anything but watertight. And not only is it a pretty flimsy structure, its very existence also weakens our midfield. Deploying three central defenders means deploying only two central midfielders; and as evidenced yesterday – and in almost every match this season – our central midfield pair are routinely overrun by opponents with a midfield three.

On top of which our midfield pair offer precious little creativity because their principal role is to destroy rather than to create. In fact, I often wonder if their principal role is simply to gulp down great mouthfuls of oxygen at every opportunity and recover after galloping around trying to do between them the work of three men.

Aside from the formation, The Conte Way irritates because it seems the general philosophy being peddled is to defend rather than attack or entertain. The strength of our squad is undoubtedly its attacking riches, yet Conte’s primary goal each week seems to be to focus on shutting out the other lot. All of which inclines one to fling up the hands and implore them just to attack for heaven’s sake, what?

The fellow seems to be steering our ship until something more to his liking comes along. One year in and his brand of football is neither fun to watch nor particularly impressive on paper (fifth we may be, but we’re pretty comfortably beaten by all of our ‘rivals’). As I saw it put last night, “Conte’s priority appears simply not to mess up”, and this isn’t much fun to drink in every week.

Tags Antonio Conte, Dejan Kulusevski, Hojbjerg, Hugo Lloris, Ivan Perisic, Pape Matar Sarr, Premier League, Ryan Sessegnon, Son Heung Min, Woolwich

Spurs match reports

Spurs 0-2 Aston Villa: Four Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date January 2, 2023
6 Comments on Spurs 0-2 Aston Villa: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Not The Worst Opening Hour

Family commitments being what they are, AANP spent yesterday afternoon watching Disney princesses until the eyes bubbled, and as attempts to shield the self from the final score for 24 hours inevitably came a cropper, I found myself in that curious situation of settling down today to watch in its entirety a game the outcome of which I already knew.

Admittedly I was already pretty used to challenging viewing, following the marathon of wicked stepmothers and whatnot, but I naturally braced myself. The gist of the communication received overnight had been that, while not necessarily our lowest ebb, this performance was making itself quite at home amongst the great heapfuls of decidedly low ebbs we’ve had to experience in recent times.

But oddly enough, as the game unfolded I though our lot did reasonably well, albeit without being particularly good.

I probably ought to take this opportunity to duck out of the way of any rotten fruit being hurled my way by whomever is reading, for I suspect this is not a popular opinion. The masses, one fears, will not approve. Nevertheless, having expected the usual business of settling in for minimal possession until two down, or forlornly shuttling the ball along the back-three from east to west, and then west to east, each of the principals dwelling on their opportunity as if trying to get through a chapter of War and Peace before playing a pass, I was taken aback to note a degree of urgency throughout.

While there was a definite blank in the column marked ‘Creativity’, there seemed to be a consensus amongst our lot that if we were going to explore dead-ends we might as well do it snappily. (As an aside, I attribute much of this to the absence of Eric Dier, a chappie who, when in possession, does not consider his day’s work worthwhile unless he has wasted about half an hour rolling the ball from one foot to the other while contemplating his next move.)

In the absence of Dier, and in a general spirit of hurriedness, our lot managed at least to roll the ball from A to B within two touches each time. This struck me as a few notches up from rock-bottom, so I welcomed it happily enough. Moreover, but for some pretty iffy refereeing calls in the opening ten minutes, we might have been through on goal a couple of times. Before half-time Perisic found himself clean through, leading to the Kane header that was cleared off the line, and we started the second half looking far likelier to score.

Obviously things fell apart pretty spectacularly thereafter, and in an odd reversal of recent history, on finding ourselves two down with 30 to go our lot gave the shoulders a collective slump and dialled their efforts right down – but here at AANP Towers we viewed the first hour or so, if not exactly with uncontained enthusiasm, then at least with a degree of optimism. The urgency of that first hour was a welcome sight.

2. Bissouma

The flip-side of this, apart from conceding two more goals that made eyes bleed and soul weaken, was that for all our urgency there was no attacking spark.

The absence of Bentancur from central midfield does not help matters in this regard, but I suggest that the problems run a little deeper. Talented soul though he is, Bentancur alone is not the solution to our lack of midfield spark.

We seem to lack a fellow of ingenuity and whizzy ideas, slap bang in the centre of the stage (or perhaps ten yards advanced of that spot). And this seems to come back to the formation, the use of three central defenders meaning that we are restricted to two in central midfield – and while Hojbjerg and Bentancur have been amongst our starrier sorts this campaign, neither really are the creative masterminds whose reputations have been built on creating and scoring goals through an array of shoulder-dips and defence-splitting passes.

There has been a fair amount of chatter in recent weeks about the similarities between England and Spurs – I found it instructive to note how the national team nailed its colours to the Back-Four mast, thereby adding a sprinkle of creativity to midfield, and as a result died fighting, as it were, rather than waving a white flag in meek surrender.

Back to our lot, and in the absence of Bentancur, young Master Bissouma had another crack at the big-time. Alas, as with most of his previous appearances, nothing quite seemed to work for the chap. Not being one of those creative mastermind types alluded to above, his raison d’être could reasonably be concluded to be more along the lines of a defensive sort – collecting scraps, making tackles and intercepting Villa moves at their genesis.

And while he occasionally did each of the above, he just as often seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Villa attacks bypassed him; he picked up a booking essentially for being out of position and tripping a fellow from behind; and in possession he again seemed oddly uneasy with the physics of a sphere, seeming a little too easily confused by its propensity to roll, and bounce, and whatnot.

His nadir came with the second Villa goal, when for the second consecutive game the notion of tracking his man into the penalty area appeared a long way down his To-Do list, leaving the bounder in question with more space in our box than was reasonable to afford. One would understand – not accept, but understand – if a born-and-bred centre-forward made such an error, but here is a chap whose job title essentially reads “Defensive Midfielder”. To neglect the first rule of defensive midfielding, twice in consecutive games makes ones eyes bulge a bit, what? And it’s not as if he has a whole sackful of attacking party tricks into which he can dip to atone, at the opposite end of the pitch.

The fellow needs to get himself up to speed, and pronto. Frankly, if he is not going to carry out his defensive duties as if his life depends on them, I’d sooner he were politely shoved from his spot and someone more creative used in his stead (admittedly a practical problem or two emerges here, given that we have no-one matching that description in our ranks, but you see my point).

As it happened, I thought that the young lad Sarr looked a bit more familiar with things in the defensive midfield vicinity during his ten-minute cameo than Bissouma did during his eighty minutes, but the pecking order seems well established.

3. Lloris

If a few stern words can be bellowed in the direction of Bissouma, decency forbids elaborating upon the suitable punishments for Lloris after his latest hare-brained input.

Cast your minds back to the World Cup and the Lloris on display looked every inch the seasoned professional, carrying out his duties correctly and with minimal fuss, neat-and-tidying his way to the Final. Of the various clangers magicked out of thin air in our colours every few weeks there was no sign. It would be a stretch to describe him as ‘The Best on Duty’, but a reliable sort of egg he most certainly was.

What the hell happens to him once he pops up for our lot is therefore anyone’s guess, but this rot he springs from nowhere is simply too much. Fully paid-up members of the Lloris Fan Club may warble about the ball moving, or the ball bouncing, or the ball turning a somersault en route, but that guff won’t wash at AANP Towers. The chap’s job is first and foremost to catch the dashed thing, and if he can’t master that particular basic then I’m at a bit of a loss to understand what purpose he serves.

These mistakes are far too frequent. Moreover, while one of the johnnies of yesteryear once came up with a decent gag, that to err is human, the gist being that just about every player will make the occasional mistake, the goalkeeper is well aware of his lot in life. There’s little in the way of safety nets or bail-outs in that position. Either get it right or be off, is pretty much the AANP message to the goalkeeping fraternity, and Monsieur Lloris has now created quite the catalogue of foul-ups for our lot.

4. Gil (and Perisic)

If absence makes the heart grow fonder it pretty much bursts through the ribcage and howls for Dejan Kulusevski at present. Still, no use complaining, what? The absence of D.K., plus a couple of the other preferred options, meant that young Senor Conte had to dip his hand into the box marked ‘Last Resort’, and pulled out a Bryan Gil.

I suppose the one-line summary is that we found out nothing that we did not know before. He was full of willing, itching throughout to unleash a trick or six and, containing practically zero in the way of muscle about his frame, was always liable to come out second-best in any man-on-man combat.

I thought the young nib made a decent stab of things. If points were awarded for body language he’d have needed a decent-sized bag to carry off his prizes, because he seemed to burst with enthusiasm for the task at hand. There were a few good link-ups with Matt Doherty (who I thought also fared well enough, certainly incurring less rage in his decision-making than the other fellow) and a few moments when he dipped a shoulder or two to create space for a cross. Alas, Gil continues to look like a boy in a man’s world. A delightful and earnest boy, the sort who would take great pleasure in doing his mother’s bidding – but a boy nevertheless. Still, I was glad to see him get a game, combine with Doherty and buy into the general mentality of urgency.

And on the other flank, I thought this was one of Perisic’s better days, at least when on the front-foot. The ‘Back’ part of the wing-back role is, as touched upon before, not one to which Perisic attaches too much concern, but going forward he is a pretty nifty so-and-so. His ability to choose from right or left clog when it comes to swinging in crosses is a bit of a blessing, even if his only targets tend to be Kane and Doherty, and as often as not he was our most advanced forward.

However, for all the silver linings and first half urgency and whatnot, this was another dreadful defeat. A couple of opportunities await to right these wrongs, before a few rather alarming fixtures come flying at us later in the month.

Tags Antonio Conte, aston villa, Bryan Gil, Dejan Kulusevski, Hojbjerg, Hugo Lloris, Ivan Perisic, Matt Doherty, Premier League, Rodrigo Bentancur, Sarr, Yves Bissouma

Spurs match reports

Brentford 2-2 Spurs: Six Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date December 27, 2022
3 Comments on Brentford 2-2 Spurs: Six Tottenham Talking Points

1. Same Old Same Old

For those of us so distracted by all that World Cup guff that we forgot how the good souls of N17 go about their business, our heroes helpfully wasted no time at all in reminding us of their preferred Don’t-Bother-Until-Two-Down gambit.

No point in fighting it at this stage. Best just to shrug the shoulders, stiffen the upper lip and accept. They’ve had a whole month to chew over the tactics, practise their drills and so on, and this is the result, so no matter how nonsensical it seems to those of us in the outside world, the plan – of waiting until two down and then going full throttle for the final 30 – is evidently here to stay.

There is of course a temptation categorise our performance as only fitting the extremes of Gubbins on the one hand and England-vs-Holland-at-Euro-96 on the other; but actually there are plenty of nuances in between, and I thought our lot hit a few of those yesterday.

In possession in the first half, even at 0-0, I thought we at occasionally least tried, to force matters. It was not as turgid and sideways as it has sometimes been. Hojbjerg in particular seemed struck by an urge to get through his day’s work in a hurry, and generally tried to shovel the ball along tout de suite, often looking for a diagonal pass “in between the lines”, as they say, which seemed a pretty progressive idea.

Of course, behind him Eric Dier was doing his best to negate any such urgency, the fellow seemingly deciding that, having spent a lifetime receiving the ball and taking approximately 23 touches before distributing it, he would be damned if he were going to change the routine so soon after Christmas. So this was a bit of a spanner in Hojbjerg’s plan, but help was on hand from other quarters, notable Sonny, who at least seemed to recognise what the Dane was attempting and bobbed up in space to receive the thing.

Short we may have been on clear-cut chances in the opening hour or so, but intermittently there were clearly recognisable attempts from various members of the clan to insert themselves deep within enemy territory and fashion something. Nevertheless, it wasn’t quick or inventive enough, until we conceded the second and the whole bally lot of them reacted like a bunch of Roman slaves being freed from their shackles and given the run of the town.

2. Dreadful Goals Conceded

Beavering about in slightly uninspiring fashion might have been bearable, but married to defending so bad that one wondered if some of them had spent six weeks actively un-learning how to play the game, it made for some pretty serious lip-chewing from the galleries.

For the first goal, I apportion little blame to Forster (big man). The deflection was unhelpful, and he displayed adequate reflexes in simply blocking the thing as it flew at him. Of course it would have made for a pleasant festive treat if his hands like a frying pan had scooped up the thing, but we can’t have everything, and he at least did the basics.

Which is more than can be said of those in snazzy sky blue around him. The initial cross picked out a Brentford forward on the right, who appeared to have been gifted the freedom of the Tottenham penalty area, or at least half of it. One appreciates that this was something of a counter-attack, but really, to leave the chappie unattended in his own acre of land seemed to be laying it on a bit thick, even for the first game back.

Perisic was barely in shot on the TV cameras, while Bissouma, having tracked the fellow’s run stride-for-stride, had rather maddeningly veered off towards the centre rather than sticking with him to make a challenge, evidently attracted to the ball like one of those less intelligent moths you see going hell for leather at a flame.

So much for part one of the attack; the sequel, picking up immediately after Forster (big man) had parried the shot, was pretty much entirely contained in a single act, comprising a Brentford chappie strolling up to the ball and tapping it in, not one objecting soul anywhere near him.

Rewind the VHS and one sees that the Brentford bod in question started his gallop forward at the same time and from the same starting point as one P-E Hojbjerg, only for the Dane to keep his jog carefully within the limit of ‘Slow and Steady’, rather than busting a lung or two to ensure he stayed with his man.

Crosses will be made and shots will be taken, one accepts this; but simply to stand – or jog – around and watch the aftermath, rather than trying to muscle in and prevent ensuing calamity, is just not cricket.

And if that first goal had AANP crafting a few choice curses, the second had the air turning purple. For a start, Dier’s shank to gift the corner in the first place inflamed the passions of the watching masses.

And then, once the corner was delivered, Hojbjerg was again at fault, incredibly waiting for the ball to bounce towards him on the goal-line rather than charging towards it like a frenzied bull determined to clear all in its path. Rather inevitably, a more alert opponent was vastly more proactive about the whole thing, and simply trotted a couple of steps forward, a manoeuvre sufficient to earn him pole position ahead of Hojbjerg, Lenglet and Perisic.

The whole business of zonal marking has a rationale to it, but I rather fancy that if those involved take literally the business of staying in their zones, and simply do not budge from their allotted spots, then the entire system crumbles like a house of cards. One cannot overstate the obvious flaw, that if the defenders in a zonal system do not move at all, then the opponents will pretty swiftly learn to pop the ball around them. It is breathtakingly empty-headed, and yet this is precisely what each of Hojbjerg, Perisic and Lenglet – seasoned internationals – did in allowing Toney to mooch past them and tap in.

3. Perisic’s Crosses

On the subject of Perisic, few in our ranks are quite so maddening in the way they go about things. Credit where due, first of all, his crosses are things of beauty. Be it with right foot or left, he ticks every box you can think of in the Crossing Department, whipping in the things with pace, curl, elevation, top-spin and whatever else is relevant.

I don’t mind admitting that there have been times this season when I have watched our lot labour to get the ball anywhere near the penalty area, and been struck by the thought that we should simply abandon all pretence of subtlety, give the ball to Perisic and queue up in the six-yard box.

On the flip side, bar these crosses (and occasional long throw-ins) the chap seems to do little else at all. Of defending he wants no part, seemingly viewing that particular exercise as little more than the pause that exists in between attacks, a chance to catch his breath and ponder with which foot he might deliver his next cross. As mentioned, when Brentford pushed forward for their first, Perisic was a good ten yards behind the action.

Of course, this is the consequence of buying a wing-back who is a little long in the tooth. As AANP knows any too well, the march of Father Time is pretty relentless, and anyone expecting Perisic to motor up and down the flank is in for an unpleasant surprise.

All of which would be pretty vexing – but by golly, he does whip in some glorious crosses.

4. Tanganga

If Perisic can at least point to his crosses as justifying his participation, young Tanganga has no such get-out. Now one ropey defensive performance doth not a dreadful centre-back make, and the young bean will doubtless have better days, but alas this was a stinker. If there were an opportunity to make a pig’s ear of a contribution, Tanganga was first in the queue every time.

His headers were wildly mistimed, which was as peculiar as it was ghastly to observe, and he fared little better on terra firma. Even his distribution was below par, passes to Doherty often delivered with too much force or too little accuracy for the wing-back to do much more than scramble to keep the dashed thing within the confines of the playing surface.

His selection was understandable enough – he has featured in recent friendlies, and one would have supposed he were possessed of the sort of assets that would be useful enough in a tete-a-tete with a fellow like Ivan Toney.

Alas, you know you’ve had a pretty miserable afternoon when you look up to see your number raised and the awkward figure of Davinson Sanchez giving those limbs a swing in preparation to replace you; and it speaks volumes of Tanganga’s contribution that Sanchez of all people seemed a clear upgrade once stationed within the back-three.

5. Doherty and Kulusevski

On any other weekend this season, the news that Doherty had been preferred over the wretched Emerson would have been pretty sensational front-page stuff, but in truth when the team news filtered through, such had been the gap between fixtures that the seismic relevance of this pick failed to register in the AANP loaf.

And in fact, for much of the first half it didn’t have a particularly big impact either. I suppose one forgets quite how much the endless faux pas of Emerson prompted howls of rage and despair in those pre-World Cup days, and instead the sight of Doherty keeping his head down and not really doing anything particularly wrong or right in the first half just drifted by me.

But in the second half, once the concession of the second goal forced all concerned to buck up their ideas, Doherty’s assets as an attacking wing-back gently surfaced, not least in bobbing up at the back post as an auxiliary forward, when Perisic or Lenglet or whomever delivered crosses across the box.

However, the real star of the right flank was undoubtedly Kulusevski. Probably our brightest spark in the first half, he was a pretty key figure in the second as well, setting up our equalizer and generally thrusting himself slap bang in the middle of events whenever they unfolded on the right flank. The Kane-Son-Kulusevski triumvirate has still not quite clicked, but this seemed to be due to no fault of his.

With Doherty appearing vastly more attuned to what ought and ought not to be done as supporting act on the right, one imagines that Kulusevski will continue to play a pretty major role in the second half of the season – and Emerson, with a little luck, will have to make do with guest appearances from the sidelines.

6. Hojbjerg

A word in passing on Hojbjerg. At fault, to varying extents, he may have been for both goals conceded, he did a lot to atone for these mistakes in the rest of his game. As mentioned above, in that often lacklustre first half he seemed motivated to push matters along rather than wait for death to reach him, and in the second, as if to ram home the point that he was taking the gig seriously, he popped up with an extremely well-taken goal.

Hojbjerg’s all-round contribution was much-needed too, given that Bissouma, in the first half in particular seemed not to know what sport he was playing. His touch in the first half was oddly appalling, the ball bouncing off his size nines as if allergic to them, and the memory of a few imperious performances for Brighton last season seemed all the more distant.

Mercifully, he picked up a bit in the second half, but there could be no doubt that, particularly in the absence of Bentancur, Hojbjerg was the boss of the central areas yesterday.

Tags Brentford, Clement Lenglet, Davinson Sanchez, Dejan Kulusevski, Emerson Royal, Eric Dier, Fraser Forster, Hojbjerg, Ivan Perisic, Japhet Tanganga, Matt Doherty, Premier League, Rodrigo Bentancur, Yves Bissouma

Spurs match reports

Marseille 1-2 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date November 2, 2022
4 Comments on Marseille 1-2 Spurs: Four Tottenham Talking Points

1. Sessegnon

I’ll get to the salacious stuff in due course, but during the occasional first half moment when I paused to drink in the full extent of the catastrophe unfolding, one concept that kept bugging me was this business of Sessegnon at right wing-back.

In fact, even before the whistle peeped and all concerned sprung into action, my eye had been drawn to the teamsheet and the forehead had promptly creased. For a start, there was the sight of three more right wing backs, plus one Tanganga, on the bench. (Actually, this was rather well received at AANP Towers, as it meant that Emerson’s interference with proceedings had been restricted, but nevertheless, the cogs were whirring alright.)

Call me old-fashioned, but I had rather assumed that Sessegnon would be stationed on the left, with Perisic, a cove more used to swinging the right boot, assuming RWB duties. The sight of Sessegnon ambling around on the right from kick-off therefore threw me. It’s happened before of course, fleetingly here and there, but I’ve rarely seen the point of it, and the use of inverted wing-backs in a game as critical as this certainly did wonders for my repertoire of puzzled looks.

Whatever the plan was meant to be, it pretty much died at birth. When the stars align, Sessegnon can be an effective left wing-back – diligent in defence, and pretty willing to stick a foot on the accelerator and make a bit of hay in the final third. Last night however, the stars did not align. If anything, the stars came crashing down from their moorings.

Sessegnon did not make it to halfway, let alone the final third, so whatever the elaborate ruse was around using his left foot to cut inside on the right, we were dashed if we were going to get a glimpse of it. Instead, the young potato bobbed along around the edge of his own area throughout, and while he can’t really be faulted for effort, I felt anything but assured by the sight of him patrolling his spot. Indeed, Marseille’s first decent shot (the volley from the left that Hugo beat away) came about from an attempted Sessegnon clearance that apologetically bobbled about two yards.

A degree of sanity was restored towards the end of the first half, with Sessegnon switched back to the left, but the whole experiment struck me as pretty dashed odd – especially, to repeat, when countless naturally right-footed sorts were giving the beady eye from the substitutes’ bench.

None of this is to suggest that all our first half problems lay at the door of poor old Sessegnon, far from it. For a start the problems seemed a lot bigger than any single player (more on that later). And if we are singling out individuals then Eric Dier, a fellow from whom one would expect a lot better, inexplicably opted to lob a few passes back into our own penalty area, via some passing, low-hanging clouds, as a spirit of general ineptitude spread about the place like wildfire.

So it was not all Sessegnon’s fault by any means; but it would be no understatement to suggest that his deployment on the right baffled the dickens out of AANP.

2. Emerson’s Positive Contribution

Desperate times and all that, but even after observing the car crash that was our first half, and after seeing young Sessegnon square flap around on the right, come half-time I had not reached the stage of yearning for a spot of Emerson to solve things.

But someone in the camp obviously thought that was what was needed, so on he rolled, and promptly introduced himself to the galleries by heading a ball firmly to his right and out of play, when all ten of his teammates loitered at various points to his left.

This seemed ominous, if in keeping with his career to date, but I shifted it from my mind – as is healthy practice when taking in eyefuls of Emerson – and waited keenly to see what might unfold next. And I’ll be dashed if I were not treated to the sight thereafter, of Emerson generally doing the basics in competent and reliable fashion.

It helped, of course, that the entire collective upped their performance level about sixty notches, but nevertheless it was a pretty startling sight to see Emerson contributing healthily as required. Most welcome, but startling nevertheless. As various members of our mob oiled further up the pitch, passing options began to spring up everywhere you looked – and Emerson, to give him his dues, did not shirk responsibility in this respect.

Nor did he overcomplicate things unnecessarily, or bungle crucial interjections. On one or two occasions he galloped up into attack and pinged in a cross as the situation demanded, and while few would suggest that he existed on a different, superior plane to all others, he nevertheless contributed considerably to the marked upturn in our fortunes. Gradually we asserted a spot of control, and, remarkably, Emerson was a played a significant part.

3. Bentancur

If Emerson’s ability to do normal things made my eyes pop out of my head somewhat, Bentancur had the vaguely opposite effect, in that his ability yet again to rise a level or two above everyone else seemed simply to be standard operating procedure.

His anonymity in the first half was a tough one to swallow, but that painful drudgery having been very much a collective effort, one did not dwell. However, whatever the nature of the sorcery that was discussed and greenlit at the break, it seemed that Master Bentancur had been enlisted to play a pretty critical role. With Bissouma thickening things up in midfield (and, in the second half at least, producing one of his better performances in our ranks to date), Bentancur appeared to have a bit of licence to jolly off into attack as the urge grabbed him.

He rattled off his lines with aplomb. Dreamy technique never goes amiss, of course, and having been neutered in the first half he was right on the money second time around; but on top of which, the nature of the thing, with Marseille heaving forward and leaving themselves rather exposed at the rear, meant that Bentancur was often to be observed leading the charge over halfway, sprinting up towards their area, either with ball at feet and killer-pass on radar, or in support of whichever other chappie was at the controls.

It is true that as a collective our lot improved pretty much exponentially, but either because or due to that – and strong cases can be made in each camp – Bentancur was at the hub of much that was good in our second half play. Be it retaining possession and putting in a spot of game-management, or haring up towards their goal, Bentancur was the font from which our goodness spouted. A mild shame that he overhit the pass for Lucas, which would have had the latter through on goal, but that aside his was, again, a performance vastly superior to all others’.

4. First Half vs Second Half

Of course, the column inches on Sessegnon, Emerson and Bentancur amount to polite small-talk. The real front-page news was the umpteenth instance of our transformation from clueless and impotent in the first half, to clued up and punchy in the second – the prompt for such a metamorphosis, as ever, being the concession of a goal.

Why the hell our lot must always wait until falling behind to unleash their better selves is an absolute mystery, but to this end my attention was arrested by a sentence casually lobbed into conversation by Monsieur Lenglet during his post-match buttering last night. Lenglet stated – and I paraphrase here – that the johnnies in the camp were unsure, when pistols were drawn, whether the message from above was fight or flight.

This did not strike me as mightily encouraging. One would have thought that any team at any level would head off to battle with clear instruction ringing in their ears at least as to whether the general approach would be attack or defend. With Conte having a reputation as the sort of egg who drills home tactical instructions for every eventuality, I found the mind boggling a bit at the notion that Lenglet – and who knows how many others? – was not sure in even the broadest sense what the setup was supposed to be.

I certainly understand that a deficit in any game removes any lingering doubt. When trailing, after all, one is rather obliged to up the levels, in order to salvage something. However, the notion that at kick-off the players simply look at each other and shrug, none the wiser as to what course ought to be plotted until they fall behind, seems to me rummy in the extreme.

Another theory being bandied about the place is that Conte is essentially playing rope-a-dope, both in the short- and long-term. In each individual match he wants the opposition to expel every last ounce of puff by around the midway point, so that our heroes have that much more mileage to go snatching and grabbing the points at the death; and over the course of the season he would like us simply to keep pace with things until the World Cup, so that the shackles can be cast aside come the new year and the race be run with a spot more dash and elan. In truth, however, AANP treated this one with a pretty sceptical eye.

Perhaps more believable is the notion that Conte simply does not have much faith in our defence to do as bid, and therefore piles up the reinforcements each game, resulting in scenarios such as the first half last night, when all ten outfield players are wedged within spitting distance of Lloris, and there is no attacking outlet at all.

Whatever the reason, be it accident, design or some otherworldly intervention, it is pretty maddening stuff to ingest every three days. As numerous second halves have indicated, not only are our lot perfectly capable of playing on the front-foot, giving multiple passing options, defending relatively high up the pitch and winning the ball in midfield or higher, but they can actually do it pretty effectively.

All of which makes me fling my head back and howl at them for not simply adopting that approach from the off, and racking up the goals at various points prior to the absolute dying seconds of the game.

On a positive note, however, last night was, ultimately, an absolute joy, the like of which we haven’t experienced in the Champions League since Amsterdam. Qualifying for the knockout stages was a triumph, and I suspect ticked a box that most of us would have scrawled at the start of the season when pondering what a successful campaign would look like. To dump out in such manner a team stocked everywhere you looked with former Woolwich blisters added to the fun. And credit where due – for the third time in a week (albeit ruled out on one occasion by a dubious VAR) our heroes have come from behind to score a winner in the dying seconds, which represents a heck of an improvement from all those lightweight Spurs sides of my youth.

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Tags Antonio Conte, Champions League, Clement Lenglet, Emerson Royal, Ivan Perisic, Marseille, Rodrigo Bentancur, Ryan Sessegnon

Spurs match reports

Man Utd 2-0 Spurs: Three Tottenham Talking Points

Post author By AANP
Post date October 20, 2022
4 Comments on Man Utd 2-0 Spurs: Three Tottenham Talking Points

1. At Least Lloris Put On A Show, What?

This being a new day I thought I’d begin with a once-over of the positives from last night. Alarmingly, there was in fact only one, but never mind that, and step forward Monsieur Lloris.

There’s a train of thought that it’s a bit redundant to bleat, “We would have lost by such and such an amount if not for our goalkeeper,” because the whole point is that the fellow is our goalkeeper, and that making those saves is precisely his job within our team – but nevertheless seeing everyone in front of him simply melt away time after time, forcing the poor chap into about eighty different extended reaches, did seem a bit much.

Oddly enough, Lloris’ evening had threatened to get off to a pretty horrendous start. Just about his first involvement occurred when a United sort spotted him off his line after a botched clearance, and attempted a lob. These are usually pretty anticlimactic interludes, promising much but typically fizzling out on launch, and so it proved as the shot barely reached head height.

Now I’m no goalkeeper, but if I see a ball gently float towards me I prefer to take the old-fashioned approach and catch it, ideally keeping any additional fuss to a minimum. And this had appeared the designated tactic of Lloris, until at the last minute he appeared to lose control of just about all of his critical limbs, and somehow, from a standing start, ended up flailing around on the ground, only just managing to pat at the ball, and diverting it marginally wide of the post.

It had seemed a pretty ominous start, and had me bracing myself from one of those nerve-riddled routines of his between the sticks. However, in one of those nifty little quirks of fate, that moment actually turned out to be the cue for everyone else to peddle absolute rot, while Lloris transformed into something vastly beyond the realms of mortal man, pulling off a whole sequence of full-stretch saves from around that point until the end of the match an hour later.

One in particular (from Rashford, if I recall correctly) had him in full flight in one direction, but having the presence of mind to stick out a paw in the other direction, whence he had come, creating the overall effect of a chappie who had mastered the matrix and was able to defy physics by bobbing around faster than the eye could make sense of. It just seemed rather a shame that this whole exhibition was of pretty minimal value. I mean, it stopped us losing about eight-nil, so I suppose it could be argued that it did in fact teem at the edges with value, but you know what I mean. Losing cause and whatnot. Still, bravo Hugo – which is more than any other of the blighters deserve.

2. The Fabled 3-5-2

With the regular 3-4-3 having made dashed hard work of such luminaries as Forest and Everton so far this season, in recent days you couldn’t have lobbed a brick in North London without it hitting on the head someone pleading for Our Glorious Leader to switch to 3-5-2.

All such wishes were granted last night, as injuries to Richarlison and Kulusevski rather tied poor old Conte’s hands on this front (admittedly I think most reasonable folk of lilywhite persuasion would have gnawed off their own arm to have Kulusevski restored, he being pretty much the missing link in all this). And moreover, with Emerson by his own idiocy absented, we armchair experts even had the luxury of Doherty on the right. As such, the pre-match sentiment at AANP Towers was one of cautious optimism. Quietly smug, knowing smiles were very much the order of the day. This one seemed winnable.

Or at least it did until the game actually started, at which point it pretty swiftly fell apart at the seams. Having howled away that we were getting outnumbered in midfield with the 3-4-3, the sight of our lot having rings run around them in a 3-5-2 had the AANP map turning a pretty impressive shade of crimson. Numbers of pairs of legs, it appeared, had not a dashed thing to do with it. Quite frankly, our lot were utter rot.

It’s all very well pointing out that United were on pretty spiffing form, but if any team can make Fred look like a master of all he surveys then one has to wonder if there’s some deep-rooted failure lies within. And sure enough, the problems amongst our lot were so numerous that I started to look about me for parchment and quill, for simply trying to keep track in my head was becoming increasingly problematic.

Defensively, despite having five fine specimens neatly lined up across the back, with a further three doing the doorman thing in front of them, there were great yawning gaps out wide. When United did tuck inside, our heroes seemed pretty spooked by the novel approach being used against them, of quick, one-touch passing, and gaps promptly appeared amongst our clustered bodies. Out on our left, all of the years of experience and League Title medals about his frame did little to prompt Ivan Perisic to stop Anthony chap cutting infield with gay abandon.

There was a train of thought within the AANP circle that part of the problem was that Bentancur seemed to have licence to roam forward, leaving us understaffed further south. While true enough at the outset, thereafter it seemed that even if Bentancur got his coordinates bang on it was of little use.

Moreover, the 3-5-2 meant that there was no useful means by which to stop their wide chaps chugging forward at will, as Sonny and Kane were both narrow.

All of the above, and various other failings, created the bizarre scenario that our massed defensive ranks seemed bizarrely incapable of robbing United of the ball outside our area, or preventing either their passes or shots in around the same vicinity.

On top of which, whenever our lot did stumble upon the ball they made a point of stumbling back off it again pretty sharpish. Not one of them seemed to have the good sense to seek out a teammate when in possession, the drill seeming to be that life might as well be made as difficult as possible. And unable to play beyond the United press, the net result was a pretty incessant barrage of all things United, from bally start to bally finish.

The 3-5-2 will see better days, but by golly this was a mess.

3. Conte

Rather awkwardly, the whole sorry affair does rather make one shoot a dubious look at Senor Conte, and clear the throat in meaningful manner. Knocking over Forest and such rot is one thing; and if we were losing with grace and elan to Top Four types that would be another; but simply mooching about on the edge of one’s own area and waiting to be blown away, against each of Chelsea, Woolwich and Man Utd, really is a bit thick, what?

It’s the style of play, of course. Watching the likes of Newcastle and Woolwich bound about the place with gusto and attacking intent does make one scratch the chin and wonder why our mob couldn’t be cajoled into something similar. It’s not as if we lack the talented individuals for such things.

Instead, we have a slicker version of Jose’s anti-football, all defence and countering. Against the weaker teams it’s rarely much fun to watch; and against the better teams we barely hang on to the coat-tails.

The counter-arguments, however, are pretty loaded. It would be a pretty significant dereliction of duty as a fan of the good ship Hotspur to forget quite what a stinker poor old Nuno had left us in, and quite what a job Conte did of dragging the club up by the armpits and into the Top Four.

Moreover, by the end of last season, the football was starting to flow and the goals fly in from all angles. There’s a pretty reasonable train of thought that if we can get to the World Cup in or around the Top Four, then a similar gallop in the second half of the season, possibly nudged along by a January signing or two, would be just the ticket.

And then, as alluded to earlier, there’s Kulusevski. Now a cautionary note ought not just to be struck, but given the full gong treatment, because nothing increases the value of a young nib like his absence from the team. One can gloss over how good he actually is – simply the fact that he is not in a team that is performing badly is generally enough to convince the human mind that the lad in question is the answer to all prayers. As recently as last week this was the case for Doherty; already it is becoming the case for Spence; and one does not have to cast the mind back too far to find umpteen other examples.

Nevertheless, Kulusevski became pretty critical to our play in his guise as ‘Johnnie Linking Defence to Attack’, and also providing our lot with some creativity beyond simply ‘Kane Diagonalling the Thing into Son’. That surge in the second half of last season, to which I alluded above, owed much to the fact that Kulusevski was fit and firing in just about every game. His absence is keenly felt. Bring him back, or so goes the narrative, and the Jose-esque dross currently being peddled morphs into something vastly more palatable.

Either way, the garbage on show last night was nowhere good enough. The visit of Newcastle this Sunday therefore takes on a rather meatier hue – not quite Top Four sorts yet, they are certainly a notch or two above Everton and the like, so our performance as much as our result will be watched with a pretty critical eye.

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Tags Antonio Conte, Dejan Kulusevski, Harry Kane, Hugo Lloris, Ivan Perisic, Man Utd, Premier League, Son Heung Min