Kane was better in the second half - as was Dier.
In fact, as a team we were much better than we were in the first half. Though I'm not sure if that's down to us or the fact Inter Milan blew their load in the first 30 minutes which gave us more space and confidence to play.
If you were any team playing us right now, you would simply instruct them to press us from the start because fuck me, we don't like it.
To me, it's not that simple. We dealt with their press, they gained nothing from it. What's the point of any team pressing like dervishes if it yields zero opportunities for you? Davies aside we played out through their press multiple times. It was only Davies that was struggling as a result of the pressing but still, they didn't create anything as a result.
There is an awful lot of bollocks spoken about pressing and in the comms last night and listening to Hoddle in the studio at halftime was one of those moments. Whilst they were pressing us in the first 30 mins or so, the comms kept saying "just get rid". Why? they aren't profiting from it. Sure we could have been far better i.e. Had Davies not been so shit in this time we wouldn't have turned over possession so much, it would have resulted in us with more control on the ball and therefore able to control the tempo too. But had we done just what the comms wanted and 'get rid" it would have come back. We are deliberately drawing the oppo onto us. Commentary these days have loose sphincters, they get scared this transmits to the fans watching. Their press was shit because it resulted in nothing, it was totally ineffective.
The more they pressed the less I worried, I was completely comfortable. By contrast, I was NOT comfortable when City do it to us, there is a massive difference between the two presses.
Now onto Hoddle, at halftime he was saying our press on them was shit. It wasn't, it was different, different from the high pressing Tottenham we have seen over the past three seasons. What was different was that we were not pressing high with the aim to win the ball (this is what we have done and what Inter were trying to do), last night we pressed with low intensity, we pressed at an angle from the outside running in, we did this because we wanted them to play the ball long and down the middle, so that we could challenge for the 2nd ball. At no time did we attempt to press to win the ball high. We did engage them in the midfield though and were good at it. For all the talk of us misplacing passes (Mainly Davies) we made them misplace far more.
TDLR: It depends who and how we are pressed. Last night was in the main so comfortable for us (Davies aside). City scare the fuck out of me and we can't cope with it.
