Champions League finalists Liverpool and Tottenham now worlds apart

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This thread makes me want to vomit.

Yes they are a great side, yes they will win the title at a canter. But make no mistake they get every little help possible from VAR and the powers that be to go with that.
Our last three games against them including the champions league final we've matched them across the three games and all three games the big decisions VAR have gone their way.

Some of the noshing off going on is sickening.

We are shit at the minute and we were a missed sitter away from taking a point off them last night.

Every star is aligning for them this season and everything that could possibly go wrong for us is going wrong.
 
peter merison said:
OK, I'll give you Orients first 11 , go coach them and win the Premier league :harrysmile:
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Same argument I use to explain why Pep or Klopp are not the second-coming, tbf. Point being, good coaching of similar quality makes a substantial difference. It’s also well-establishes that the earlier that high-quality resourcing snd coaching is introduced, the bigger the impact - hence the obsession with academies and youth scouting. Can’t remember the research, but it’s why there was a bias towards Winter-born (I think) players vs summer-born - turns out it was to do with kids being more physically developed / older when the scouts came - nothing to do with talent but just being older.

just luck, and opportunity, really. (But no-one really likes that answer, we like a narrative to adhere to).
 
If we were having Liverpool’s season I can just imagine the response on here if other teams were attributing our success to VAR and dodgy referees

I hate the scousers as much as anyone else but this lucky crap is ridiculous

You do not go a calendar year unbeaten by luck

Just as you don’t lose 21 out of 60 games because of a lack of such luck

They have backed their manager and been clever m

We have been the complete opposite and that’s all there is to it
 
Back to being as close to relegation as Top 4. Absolutely shit Xmas period.

And not sure how others feel but to me our home ground is tourist central with no threatening aura for existing teams. Just a nice day out at the best stadium in the world.

Things can only get better with our super stadium. Or could get more shit as we lose more home games now.

Spursy 2020 style.
 
Jamie gspurs said:
They have backed their manager and been clever m

We have been the complete opposite and that’s all there is to it
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277531-Agatha-Christie-Quote-The-simplest-explanation-is-always-the-most.jpg
 
SpursUltra said:
Back to being as close to relegation as Top 4. Absolutely shit Xmas period.

And not sure how others feel but to me our home ground is tourist central with no threatening aura for existing teams. Just a nice day out at the best stadium in the world.

Things can only get better with our super stadium. Or could get more shit as we lose more home games now.

Spursy 2020 style.
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Nah.... That doesn't account for any of the footballing, managerial & recruitment decisions that have been made.

.....Best the fans can do is help push the team and I appreciate it plays a part, but it's not significant to that degree.
 
Jamie gspurs said:
If we were having Liverpool’s season I can just imagine the response on here if other teams were attributing our success to VAR and dodgy referees

I hate the scousers as much as anyone else but this lucky crap is ridiculous

You do not go a calendar year unbeaten by luck

Just as you don’t lose 21 out of 60 games because of a lack of such luck

They have backed their manager and been clever m

We have been the complete opposite and that’s all there is to it
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They are set to outperform their expected points by 31. Leicester outperformed their expected points in 2015/16 by 12.

Timely injuries to opposing players (city keeper, Kane) no VAR challenge has cost them points or had someone sent off, no injuries to multiple players at once for extended periods.

They are very good, but they may literally be the luckiest football team of all time.
 
They knew exactly what positions they needed to fix and who it looks like they knew who to buy too. And it was very lucky for them that van Dijk, Allison and Fabinho clicked straight away which basically covered their all their weaknesses.
Give us just as good RB, DM and striker and I think we’re in for a fight.

This and of course the mentals. They had a perfect start of the season and that just gives you more and more confidence and flow, we started like shit and then our long term manager got sacked mid season. Some players are about to leave the club too. So it is harder to keep everyone focused and together.
 
It is not just money but getting the right players that become stars. Lots of talk about Poch bringing on young players and us having a good academy but after the 2 Harry's who has really broken into the team. Is it because the academy is not that good after all whilst I do not follow their results that closely, I cannot remember the kids winning much and look at the youngsters the kids are out of the kids CL. Chelsea have brought through this year several players or was it Poch's fault for not playing the likes of Skipp, Tanganga, KWP. Why could we not find better players than we had, it was not just money but was it the scouting, lack of a director of football or was Poch too blinkered.
Yes I recall at the time not being happy that we spent nothing in 2018 but it is not just that but a number of other factors contributing to what is clearly a decline in our fortunes.
We need to stop dwelling on the past and look to the future, I am not ready to give up the season and hope that someone will be added to the squad this month that actually improves the team. If we need to change whoever is in charge of the academy or scouting, let's do it.
 
BF3 said:
Hasn't been booked all season.
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Liverpool players don't foul opponents. Opponents just viciously run their knees into the Liverpool players' studs. If this doesn't stop soon, we might have an opposition player dangerously attack Robertson's boot with his bollocks. I hope the authorities take all precautions.
 
Fazz said:
Liverpool players don't foul opponents. Opponents just viciously run their knees into the Liverpool players' studs. If this doesn't stop soon, we might have an opposition player dangerously attack Robertson's boot with his bollocks. I hope the authorities take all precautions.
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Nothing is allowed to get in the way of the FA narrative.
 
Spending on transfers and wages is obviously a huge obstacle that Levy places on managers, but the quality of players being targeted is also an issue.

In 2017, we signed Aurier for 23m, while Liverpool signed Robertson for 8m. That really says it all for me.

Van Dijk, Alisson, and the whole team's wages help a lot, but Liverpool and Leicester have found a lot of good players over the past few years that were easily within our budget. That falls on Pochettino and the recruitment team.
 
The Boogeyman said:
Spending on transfers and wages is obviously a huge obstacle that Levy places on managers, but the quality of players being targeted is also an issue.

In 2017, we signed Aurier for 23m, while Liverpool signed Robertson for 8m. That really says it all for me.

Van Dijk, Alisson, and the whole team's wages help a lot, but Liverpool and Leicester have found a lot of good players over the past few years that were easily within our budget. That falls on Pochettino and the recruitment team.
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Spot on - in the last five years Liverpool have spent net 121 million Spurs net 106 million ... is that 15 million really making that much difference? It's the selling and more importantly the massive wages gap that makes the difference.

The truth is Klopp made the radical decision to sell top players for big money - Sterling 64m to Man City, Coutinho for 145m to Barca (dipper fans were outraged some even wanted him sacked) but he did it ... and then what did he do ...

Benteke 46m - failure sold in 12 months for 31m - ruthless
Firmino 45m
Mane 41m
VvD 84m
Salah 42m
Alisson 62m
Keita 60m
Fabinho 45m

then the money ran out and so last year zero spend ... in all he sold 250m and bought in 400m of what we would term big name transfers, he also upped the wages budget by over 100m a year, so how about us?

Sold - Walker 52m nobody else for over 25m - in

Son 30m
Sissoko 35m
Sanchez 40m
Ndombele 60m
LoCelso probably

in all Poch sold 52m and bought 200m of what we would term big name transfers, a very different strategy.

We could have sold Eriksen, Toby, Jan even Son or Kane for very big money but we decided not to ... and that was a good call, four top four finishes and a CL final proves that ... but it was also necessity

Klopp risked it all by selling superstars and buying potential, he could do that with income of 400 million and wages rising to 250 million ... Poch simply could not our income was 280m and our wages budget just 140 million, it simply wasn't possible to sign eight 40 million players on 10m a year wages even if we had the transfer budget to do it.

Comparing us to Liverpool is like comparing Mercedes FI to Sauber whilst both are at the very top of their field one had resources the other can only dream about ... that's why we built NWHL until we close the financial gap closing the gap on the field is simply not possible, not in a sustained way.
 
Spurs fans should fear four years of Mourinho’s small-minded cynicism
Desperate negativity of his approach to playing Liverpool at home is José Mourinho’s management style in microcosm

Jonathan Liew

For around half an hour on Saturday evening Liverpool looked flawed. Roared on by a capacity crowd, Tottenham slung themselves forward in waves – attacking the spaces, pinging crosses across the box, getting shots away. The substitutes Giovani Lo Celso and Érik Lamela grabbed control of the game in the middle third, often by sheer force of will alone. The irrepressible Lucas Moura scrapped and slalomed his way into threatening positions. Big chances came and went.

And then it was all over. Liverpool sauntered off the pitch, their work complete, their lead at the top of the Premier League looking more ridiculously impregnable with every passing week.

José Mourinho talked about having a “good feeling” from the game, claiming that his team deserved at least a draw and based on those last 20 minutes he had a decent case. It was almost enough to make you wonder how Tottenham might have fared had they decided to play for the full 90.

After all, the chaotic denouement was merely the final act of a game in which Spurs had been at best partial protagonists. In a way that late flurry merely illustrated the folly of their initial approach: cagey and closed, low and deep, spurning possession and inviting pressure. Their first-half possession was 27%. Son Heung-min, their best attacking player, did not have a single touch in the Liverpool half between the 30th minute and the 60th. None of which would stop Mourinho attempting to spin this basic poverty of ambition as some ingenious masterplan.



“If we tried to play the way we did in the last 20 minutes from the beginning,” he said, “I think we would collapse. Because the players are not used to playing in this style and they are not adapted. We did the maximum we could do.”

This is the founding principle of Mourinho-ball: the opposition are infinitely strong, we are infinitely weak. Already in his short Tottenham career Mourinho has told Moussa Sissoko that he lacks the discipline to play in central midfield, accused Ryan Sessegnon of lacking physicality, criticised Tanguy Ndombele for getting injured too much and claimed that Tottenham cannot play their normal game while Harry Kane is injured, even though they managed to reach a Champions League final without him.

In essence it’s a form of managerial negging: chipping away at the self-esteem of the club until it is no longer able to resist the twin lures of Mourinho’s silver-tongued genius and his lavish demands for transfer investment.

Admittedly this is a far easier sell when you are playing a Liverpool side that had 58 points in 20 games, boasting the triple threat of Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah. Admittedly Mourinho has had some past success in nullifying the threat of Salah. Alas, leaving him on the bench at Stamford Bridge for a year and then sending him on loan to Fiorentina is no longer a viable option. And so in the face of Liverpool’s famous front three, Mourinho offered up a jaunty bespoke solution: a double right-back, with Serge Aurier playing just ahead of the 20-year-old debutant Japhet Tanganga.

Like many of Mourinho’s wheezes these days it was both imaginative and desperately cynical, a strategy geared towards containment that ultimately worked for only as long as it took for the novelty to wear off.

Around half an hour in, Gini Wijnaldum began to push a little higher, restoring Liverpool’s numerical superiority on the left, and two clear openings came from that flank before the throw-in that produced Firmino’s goal.

Liverpool could have been out of sight by the time Lo Celso and Lamela arrived with 20 minutes to go: a £90m double substitution that is worth bearing in mind the next time Mourinho moans about the lack of resources available to him.

In a way it scarcely matters that Mourinho’s tactics almost worked or that they ultimately didn’t. The point is that Tottenham – a team that reached a Champions League final seven months ago and have spent much of the past few years playing some of the most scintillating attacking football in the club’s history – is already being recast in his image.

Excuses are beginning to supplant expectations. A culture of pessimism and restraint is taking hold, when losing 1-0 at home with 33% possession can legitimately be sold as an encouraging sign of progress. The motto of the new Tottenham may as well be “To Play Two Right-Backs Is To Do”.

It took Mauricio Pochettino half a decade to purge Tottenham of their jaded mid-table mentality and even the mediocre Spurs sides of the 1990s would always have a go at home, no matter how strong the opposition, however low the morale of the club.

This is the legacy that Mourinho is busily sweeping aside. He narrows your horizons, convinces you not to get ideas above your station, warns you to stop the opposition first and only then to think about playing. All this has taken him eight weeks. Imagine what he can do in four years.
 
I hate Scousers said:
This thread makes me want to vomit.

Yes they are a great side, yes they will win the title at a canter. But make no mistake they get every little help possible from VAR and the powers that be to go with that.
Our last three games against them including the champions league final we've matched them across the three games and all three games the big decisions VAR have gone their way.

Some of the noshing off going on is sickening.

We are shit at the minute and we were a missed sitter away from taking a point off them last night.

Every star is aligning for them this season and everything that could possibly go wrong for us is going wrong.
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are you 10 years old?

the thread is about where our club is going wrong - not about eulogising LFC

comparisons are necessary to make the point
 
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