This Shit Game we call Football
What a fucking utter pile of wank that was. That's up there with the worst games we've played under Poch. In the last three weeks we've probably played 45 minutes of decent football out of 270, the second half against Dortmund being the bacon, sandwiched between the two thick cut slices of dog shit that were Leicester and Burnley.
I didn't like the 3412 format that Poch started with, it's one CB too many and one central striker too many, leaving us desperately short of quality control in the middle of the pitch. And with Eriksen in the 10 role, he, Son and Kane were all funnelled into a very narrow congested channel. The attacking width that Rose and Aurier were supposed to provide barely materialised, and Winks struggled to play midfield all on his own as Sissoko trundled around like a baby rhino on a smack enema.
How the fuck Pochettino keeps picking Sissoko is anybodies guess. Such a terrible footballer, several times today just flapped the ball away under pressure. Today Winks was on the pitch 34 fucking minutes less than Sissoko and still managed to make 12 more passes. In 94 minutes Sissoko attempted 33 passes and managed to give 8 of them away. Second half he made 9 fucking passes. Burnley constantly threatened down our right as the fucking chuckle brothers Aurier and Sissoko played not to me, not to you.
All of the above made Poch's first sub absolutely fucking baffling. Firstly, we weren't struggling to get a foothold in this game because we lacked height in the box, or a third centre forward, we needed more control, more creativity, more craft. We had manage to build a little momentum second half, but Rose, Auier, Sissoko and Son were just bumbling about like silly cunts.
The logical choice would be to take Foyth off, who was not having a great day anyway, and by the second half was pretty moribund, drop Eriksen back, allowing him to play that 8/10 hybrid role where he can find more pockets of space, in the three man midfield type set up we've used mostly this season, and bring someone like Lamela on and go 433, outnumbering their CB's with our FB's still pushed up occupying their FB's. If he really, really had to take a midfielder off, surely take fucking Sissoko off, who was doing fuck all good, not Winks would have been the logical choice. What he did in taking Winks off, was exasperate a deficiency, made things worse not better, now we lost control of the midfield, the game got scrappy and Burnley were looking as likely as we were to get something.
His solution took out the only midfielder we had who was doing anything constructive, turned our only creative hope, Eriksen, into a shit DM just to put another useless body up top who needed to be creating for. Put simply, increased the burden to create and reduced the creative capability. It was fucking piss poor tactically.
It was another 15 minutes before he made the sub he should have made in the first place, but by then things had just got chaotic, and got even more chaotic as Poch kept desperately shoving on attacking bodies, in the end we looked like some grotesque characture of an Ardiles side.
I can't remember two games back to back as poor tactically as the last two league games, since Poch's first season. Burnley have ended up with an x/g of 1.31, ours was 91. Piss poor on both fronts.
Midfield has been our single biggest weak spot for the last 2 years. We watched Dier trundle about for chunks of it, only to be usurped now by the Sissoko aimless trundling of this season. How can he keep picking a player who is so uncomfortable under pressure in midfield, so technically inept, so devoid of game intelligence.
Individual
Lloris - OK
Aurier - Defensively piss poor, offensively inept. Hapless fucking play leading to their winner, could just nod it to Alderweireld, instead ops to kung fu kick it to them and then go awol. Fucking chump. Not helped by Sissoko's incompetence.
Foyth - Poor game. Lost his man at the corner, gave the ball away too much.
Alderweireld - Meh
Vertonghen - Not great, should have done better with the second goal, trying to use his left instead of his right.
Rose - As ever, got forward, but the odd cross he did put in he seemed to aim for the opposite corner flag.
Sissoko - 25 completed passes in 94 minutes. Repeatedly gave the ball away under pressure. Really, really shit game. Turgid. Pub level, and if it was my pub, he wouldn't even make that.
Winks - Struggled on his own in midfield, but was doing more than Sissoko, why he was subbed I have no idea.
Eriksen - Not his greatest day.
Kane - Great goal. worked hard.
Son - fucked about.
Poch - Piss poor.
