Woolwich (H) - The Gallas Derby

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AlMacca_ said:
I thought the banana thing was pretty funny. Still retarded as the bloke will probably be found and banned though. Don't care about the Angola songs, can't take the high ground when we're singing songs with lines like "we don't give a fuck if you're hanging from a tree" in them. Also we'd be singing the Angola songs ourselves if he still played for them or City or anyone else.
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Have to say.... you have an extremely valid point!
 
William Clarke said:
I don't actually disagree with you, I was merely trying to point out that there is an occasion negative to Bale's new roaming role. I appreciate that AVB has stopped treating him like a winger and is now playing him like a false-9 and having someone else (Gylfi) cover the left flank. I think this decision was part of the reason Walcott had a quiet match, whereas he rampaged last time around (albeit against 10 men).

I'm wondering if we don't give Bale a runaround sometime as the sole forward. Just to see what happens.
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Fair enough William, though as I say I don't see any negative at all. To me it's all good and has shown up once and for all that nonsense song about 'he plays on the left'. Indeed as I predicted pre-game the hype of Jenkinson v Bale was way off beam. A lot of pundits who claim to know something about football, clearly haven't been following Spurs or Bale by bigging up a non-issue.

As Tucker and I highlighted, it was the Woolwich CB's that Bale's main duel would be against.

Incidentally I have this enormous, irrational hatred of the term 'false number 9', which I readily concede is definitely my problem:)

But for the record I don't think Bale is a false number 9, whatever that 'god-forsaken-term' means. To me Bale's playing a free role in a similar manner of say Ronaldo, who I don't regard as 'that awful phrase' either.

They are attacking players given licence to roam on account of their supreme talents.
 
pleb said:
“The Woolwich defence are higher than your average junkie”.

Ian McCourt- The Guardian

Sunday 3 March 2013 17.56 GMT
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The thing is we generally play a high line too, though maybe not so much yesterday due to various circumstances. It's just that in Lloris we have the best keeper in Britain and possibly the world for that tactic.

Poor as Woolwich's CBs were at times, I would have backed Hugo to have stopped one or both of our goals because of his pace and reading of the game. Once more underlining just how far we are from being a 'one man team'.
 
I'll just leave this here.

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Greaves_357 said:
The thing is we generally play a high line too, though maybe not so much yesterday due to various circumstances. It's just that in Lloris we have the best keeper in Britain and possibly the world for that tactic.
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Massive props to whoever it was at the club for spotting the need for a player with this attribute. When AVB was managing Chelsea there were so many occassions where the style of football he was trying to play there was scuppered by an immobile centreback (Terry) and a keeper in Cech who barely left his line. Funnily enough though, it used to be Luiz who got the abuse for the defending problems because he tried to play the high line and ended up being left isolated by the rest of the defence staying deep.

The beauty of yesterdays game was that we don't rely on playing a high line and the defence adapted well to the need to play deeper when needed, which turned out to be quite a lot against Woolwich.
 
I just wish I had had the brains to record the bus journey to SS last night. Fuck it was funny. Every fucker going mental and I was sitting next to a very pretty Indian looking girl. I told her "don't worry, no-one means any trouble but just pretend I'm your boyfriend anyway". I think that may have made her even more nervous.
:ledleylick:
 
From today's Fiver:

High lines. When the Fiver slips into its Meiji era silk kimono later this evening and settles down on its chaise longue to watch top pundit Gary Neville expertly pick apart Woolwich's shortcomings during yesterday's Big Match, we fully expect much of the talk to be about high lines. "Look Ed," the Sky pundit will say to his straight man Sky Sports Ed. "Those lines are very high. When you're defending that high up the pitch you need to have your goalkeeper coming out to clean up as a sweeper like Hugo Lloris did, because that was the difference between the sides. That and the fact that when pacy Spurs players are running at you at speed, it helps if your central defenders don't react like soldiers who've just heard a loud 'click' underfoot as they tip-toe through a minefield." Yep, that's what the Fiver confidently predicts Gary will say, because he's always copying our incisive razor-sharp analysis and passing it off as his own.

Asked for his take on Woolwich's failings in yesterday's game, Arsène Wenger could only find two minor areas in which his team failed to function cohesively: defence and attack. "We were not efficient in those decisive zones, not at the back or up front," he mused, having apparently been so preoccupied by the ineptitude of defenders who can't defend and strikers who can't strike that he failed to notice the non-contribution of midfielder Jack Wilshere, whose negligible impact yesterday has been virtually ignored by many pundits and commentators, not least those who have spent recent months bigging him up as the greatest thing since Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the bread slicer in 1928.

Of course it should go without saying that many of those pundits and commentators were also quick to portray Tottenham manager André Villas-Boas as some sort of collapsible car-driving clown when he first pitched up at White Hart Lane, in a state of affairs that was of course in no way related to the fact that he'd been hired to replace their "mate" 'Arry, who has long been a master of making certain media folk feel all gooey inside through the simple expedient of addressing them by their names.

"There is still so much to go," said AVB to the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate after his side's win. "This time last year Woolwich [faced] the difference of seven points and we know how it finished." Wise and cautious words indeed, from a man who this time last year – this very day in fact – was being handed his P45 by Roman Abramovich. From getting a severance cheque for £8m or thereabouts, to having to actually do some work for your money – nobody knows how quickly fortunes can change than Mr Villas-Boas.
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Good stuff there, SOS.

Of course Wenger will be disappointed at losing just as he was last season. The way they set up it's always likely they'll dominate the mid against our team this season and last. We go for a cutting edge strategy with 4 cutting edge players typically in the team (at least when Ade's not playing :))

It's a 'high risk game played in a low-risk manner' by AVB, if that's not too contradictory. What I mean by that is we don't fill up the mid with workers and trackers, so at times Parker and Dembele will struggle. But when you have the pace and vision of Bale, Lennon and Siggy, then your 'mid' offers something different to most other Prem mids. Plus we have the insurance of a sweeper keeper in Lloris, who is almost like having two players in one, an extra defender as well as goal keeper.

I have to say for a lot of the game though I was impressed by Cazorla in their mid. He really is a clever player. But in the end the pace of Bale and Lennon offered something he couldn't quite match. Though I'd take him for our team nevertheless ;)
 
Greaves_357 said:
Fair enough William, though as I say I don't see any negative at all. To me it's all good and has shown up once and for all that nonsense song about 'he plays on the left'. Indeed as I predicted pre-game the hype of Jenkinson v Bale was way off beam. A lot of pundits who claim to know something about football, clearly haven't been following Spurs or Bale by bigging up a non-issue.

As Tucker and I highlighted, it was the Woolwich CB's that Bale's main duel would be against.

Incidentally I have this enormous, irrational hatred of the term 'false number 9', which I readily concede is definitely my problem:)

But for the record I don't think Bale is a false number 9, whatever that 'god-forsaken-term' means. To me Bale's playing a free role in a similar manner of say Ronaldo, who I don't regard as 'that awful phrase' either.

They are attacking players given licence to roam on account of their supreme talents.
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To be honest, I didnt even use "False 9" correctly. Bale is essentially playing as our number 10 right now. IE, a playmaker and scorer of goals who roams around. Though his particular attributes are unlike, say, a Riquelme, and he relies on pace and power more than traditional number 10s, Bale's role in our offense is one that most closely resembles that kind of player (akin to Messi or Ronaldo).

I also think Bale could play as the loan striker up top (we saw this during Spurs friendly with Red Bull in NYC).
 
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