Several jounos on talk sport this evening as good as admitted that when there's a draw in a big game they opt to manufacture a talking point.... They also admitted this "Is harry a diver" crap was a non story.
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Several jounos on talk sport this evening as good as admitted that when there's a draw in a big game they opt to manufacture a talking point.... They also admitted this "Is harry a diver" crap was a non story.
They are NOT trying to win the ball back, they are NOT engaging the player on the ball, they are getting him to play the ball, the trap we are attempting to set is to get them to go long, where we are all set with men behind the ball, we win the ball back do this exact thing. It's literally what happens, this is a mid-block in action.
It wouldn't be so bad if the mid block was more than a half arsed amble, but it isn't. We've allowed ManC and Woolwich 56 fucking shots, 19 on target with a combined x/g of about 6 in two games. Look at what Newcastle did to us, same pattern as the Woolwich and ManC games, they just knocked the ball around, Sissoko fucking saunters toward Atsu making no attempt to actually engage him, and he's 30 yards from our goal by now, gives him all the time in the world to pick a pass into our box. And the same happened for goals against Woolwich and ManC with Guendouzi and DeBruyne.
We've gone from being one of the best teams without the ball to one of the worst.
And I'm sick of reading the high press can't be used against the bus parkers, that's who it's really designed for, who it's most effective against, that's why we have struggled so badly in the last 8 moths to even put away the shit teams, because we play into their hands now by waiting for them to give us back the ball and get set in their buses.
Okay, so I don't really care if the correct terms are high-, low- or mid block press. What I see, is Kane walking around in the middle of the park with Woolwich moving the ball around him. I don't know what your definition of pressure is, but in my book, that is exactly what Son and Lamela are trying on Xhaka and Luiz by the sideline.
So far we've let our opponents assist from way out. Tyrone Mings deep in own area against Villa, Atsu from the middle against Newcastle and Guendouzi was pretty far out. Some of these could have been avoided if we'd hassled them a bit more. Not saying Kane was the closest to these guys, but I would understand if our other players felt less desire to chase them down, knowing they wouldn't get a helping hand.
The first of those statements is true. Hes not the same player.
The Kane conundrum: What happens when your best player doesn't suit your best system?
The forward looks to be evolving as a player. The issue, now, is making sure he continues to serve Tottenham’s best interestswww.independent.co.uk
It was an opening that could have been tailor-made for Harry Kane. The 198th North London derby was in its dying minutes, and in a broken, scrappy climax Giovani Lo Celso had won the ball on the Tottenham right and was advancing diagonally towards the edge of the penalty area. With Woolwich stretched, it was the perfect opportunity for a little reverse ball into the path of Kane for a famous Tottenham winner.
- Jonathan Liew Chief Sports Writer @jonathanliew
Except Kane wasn’t making the run. In fact, he wasn’t making any sort of run at all. When Lo Celso won the ball, Kane was close to him in the right channel, but instead of bursting into the area in anticipation of the pass, he lurched forward at barely higher than walking pace: chest heaving, legs heavy, the efforts of the previous 80 minutes having left him utterly exhausted.
And to watch Kane in the last half-hour of Sunday’s game was to glimpse a curiously bathetic performance, the sight of one of the Premier League’s most dynamic players reduced to a weary, trundling husk: unable to summon the energy to show for the ball, win the ball, or even do very much with the ball once he got it. At one point he went 15 minutes without a single touch. Late on, he knocked the ball promisingly past Granit Xhaka, realised he had neither the pace nor the inclination to chase it, and simply crumpled to the turf and accepted the foul.
A couple of minutes later, deep into injury time, came the moment that would ensure his face would be splattered all over the following morning’s back pages. With Tottenham on the attack, he took the ball into the area, considered trying to beat Sokratis, but instead simply got his body in between the defender and the ball, stopped abruptly, and allowed Sokratis to clatter into the back of him.
It wasn’t a dive, per se. There was very definitely contact between Sokratis and Kane. But it was a contact that Kane himself had induced, a sort of footballing brake test, a dastardly little trick with which he had doubtless won countless fouls in the past. And it was in large part, a course of action forced upon him by his own fatigue, his inability to do anything other than seek the contact and crumple gratefully to the turf.
This, perhaps, is the really interesting issue: far more interesting, at any rate, than another shrill and tedious back-and-forth about diving. “The ref probably thinks I’m looking for it, but all I’m trying to do is shield the ball,” Kane explained to Sky Sports afterwards, still a little out of breath. The operative word in that sentence is “all”: in the 93rd minute against Woolwich, with the score 2-2 and Kane one-on-one with a defender, all he was trying to do was shield the ball. And as Tottenham’s fans continue to puzzle over their strangely inert start to the 2019-20 season, Kane’s worrying lack of sharpness may just hold the key.
On one level, Kane is still producing. The penalty he so emphatically put away in the first half was his third goal in four games, which when you consider that two of those games have been away to their top-six rivals, is a very fair return. His shot volume, expected goals and key passes are a little down on previous seasons, but again given the standard of Tottenham’s opposition and the small sample size, it’s nothing too noteworthy. But there is one telling metric that betrays a subtly different Kane to the one we have seen in previous seasons, and it has nothing to do with his goalscoring.
During his first few years at Tottenham, Mauricio Pochettino established them as one of the leading pressing teams in Europe. Kane, as well as being the leading goal threat, would lead the press from the front, backed up by the bite of Dele Alli, the energy of Christian Eriksen, the speed of Heung Min-Son and the deadly studs of Erik Lamela. Kane’s tackling stats reflected this: 1.6 attempted tackles per 90 minutes in 2013-14 and 2014-15, 1.8 the following season, before stabilising at around 1 in each of the last three seasons.
KANE TACKLES ATTEMPTED PER 90 MINUTES, BY SEASON
This season, by contrast, Tottenham’s front press has been anaemic. Manchester City, Newcastle and now Woolwich have largely been able to play the ball out of defence at will, with the press only kicking in at around the halfway line, or when Tottenham identify a “choke point” near the touchline, where a defender can be isolated and quickly swamped. Kane’s role in winning the ball back, meanwhile, has gone from pivotal to negligible: just a single attempted tackle in four games, which came in the first half of the opening fixture against Aston Villa.
- 2013-14 - 1.6
- 2014-15 - 1.6
- 2015-16 - 1.8
- 2016-17 - 1.1
- 2017-18 - 0.8
- 2018-19 - 0.9
- 2019-20 - 0.3
This can’t simply be explained away by opposition strength or styles of play: two of the four sides Spurs have come up against enjoyed more possession than them. Besides, the new goal-kick rule should theoretically be offering attackers more, not fewer, chances to win the ball high up the pitch. Nor is this a case of poor execution: the stat covers all attempted tackles, not just successful ones. This isn’t a case of Kane trying, and failing, to win the ball. It’s Kane not even trying, and given what we know of Pochettino’s methods we should probably assume this is the product of a clear tactical plan rather than laziness or insubordination.
The evidence of the eyes suggests that Tottenham’s unwillingness or inability to press effectively is exposing their once-exemplary defence. The question is why this might be the case. During last year’s run to the Champions League final, Pochettino successfully reconfigured Spurs as a counter-attacking team, using the pace of Son and Lucas Moura in transition to hit opponents who had overcommitted. Kane, remember, was injured in the later stages of the tournament, and when he returned for the final against Liverpool looked distinctly undercooked.
So has Pochettino simply decided to sit deeper in big games, trying to invite teams forward in the hope of hitting them on the counter? Tottenham’s first goal would certainly appear to suggest this: as Hugo Lloris looks to clear their lines, Kane drops deep to win the initial header, leaving Son, Lamela and Eriksen to feast on the second ball. As Eriksen tucks away the rebound, Kane is still 40 yards back, having not even made an effort to join the breakaway.
That’s one possible scenario. But there’s another, and here Kane’s apparent lack of sharpness is extremely relevant. Could it be that Tottenham are currently unable to play a high-energy pressing game because Kane is not up to the physical demands? As any half-decent coach will tell you, a press is only as strong as its weakest participant, and with Kane spending much of the second half at a canter, perhaps Pochettino has decided that Tottenham are better off using him as a more conventional target man for now, stepping up the pressing game when he returns to full fitness.
When – or if. Perhaps the real question here is whether this is a temporary or permanent state of affairs. Kane is only 26, but he already has almost 400 games under his belt at senior level, most of them playing a full-throttle, highly physical style of football under Pochettino for Spurs and Gareth Southgate for England. As is well documented, he has suffered five ankle injuries in two-and-a-half years, the long-term effects of which are yet to make themselves known.
As the whistle blew for full time at the Emirates, four games into the new season after a relatively unbroken summer, Kane slumped exhausted to the turf, barely able to stand any longer. And it was hard not to wonder how he might evolve and develop as a player over the next couple of seasons, how Tottenham might evolve and develop with him. Kane is obviously talented and driven and intelligent enough to make a success of whatever role he chooses for himself: whether as a clever, angular, Sheringham-esque No 10 or as a ruthless, pared-down, Ronaldo-esque killing machine at No 9. And of course, it’s perfectly possible that this may just be early-season cobwebs, a gentle late-summer workout before the real hard yards of winter.
But if not, then at some point Pochettino may well have a decision to make: whether Kane’s goals and link play are worth sacrificing the pressing game he so favours. Because if this isn’t a blip, and Kane really is transitioning into a different sort of player to the one who first emerged, then Tottenham have a conundrum to solve: what happens when your best player doesn’t suit your best system?
Interesting piece
I'm aware of this mate. But for reasons I've stated previously, we can't press high with players who haven't had a break for two (maybe longer) seasons on the trott, whilst also suffering numerous ankle injuries (Kane) or best presser (Dele) carring a thigh injury for an entire season, Son playing Internation, PL, Internation, PL, International, Eriksen desperately holding it all together covering these injuries so never being given the chance to be rested and a non-existent midfield. The solution has been to choke the midfield and stuff it full of players. Whilst we've conceded many chances on our goal it would have been far worse if we would have lost our attack too as they just ran themselves into the grave by Jan.
We were not the only ones to have dropped it, Liverpool also abandoned thier high press, for all bar a handful of games. Their press was still different to ours, they never push up on the 'keeper and rarely push up on the defence, allowing the ball to be played (in general but might identify a key player like Toby who can ping a long ball to target so to limit that long diagonal) at the back, they will swam on the 2nd phase when passed short into midfield, it's not a high-press but it's not a mid-block, it's higher up the pitch than ours and as they had all their best players, they were far better than us.
Nice work with the video.
If we have a high-press then Kane will lead that. We don't have a high-press so he won't. Don't expect him to do what we haven't done for the past two years. He's doing exactly what the plan is.
You are right about what we have let our opponents do but that's nothing to do with a high-press, it's because we stood off City for the entire first half, our midfield was shit against them, put no pressure on the ball, the mid-block wasn't even there. The same too with Newcastle goal, Sissoko put no pressure on the ball to prevent the ball being crossed, Atsu(?) had at least 6 seconds with his head up to pick out their number 9. Nothing to do with a high-press.
A long ball onto our defence should be dealt with by our defence for the McGinn goal and yes the bibble head wasn't closed down to prevent the cross, nothing to do with Kane or a high-press.
If you want to know what 'a press' is, I suggest you watch Liverpool - especially in the first 10 minutes of a game. It is a calculated and done in packs. We used to do it, not as well as Liverpool now. Watch when the opposition full back gets the ball; there will be three players on him straight away.
Did we press the Chavs high when we beat them 3-1 last season?
Tottenham impress in title hunt
Tottenham were staring at back-to-back home defeats having been beaten by City before the international break, but stunned Chelsea with a blistering show of their high pressing game, which left the Blues devoid of ideas.
www.bbc.com
Tottenham impress in title hunt
Tottenham were staring at back-to-back home defeats having been beaten by City before the international break, but stunned Chelsea with a blistering show of their high pressing game, which left the Blues devoid of ideas.
Tottenham 3-1 Chelsea: Spurs inflict Blues' first Premier League defeat of season
Tottenham produce a superb performance at Wembley to outplay Chelsea and condemn the Blues to their first Premier League defeat of the season.
www.bbc.com
Thanks
I remembered the part, because I threw a toothpick across the room while cursing a little bit. Picked it up straight away, looked at the screen again and decided to send the toothpick into orbit
It was something I picked up on during the game. I could have tried putting it into words but that video is simply incontrovertible evidence that there is something seriously amiss here.Thanks
I remembered the part, because I threw a toothpick across the room while cursing a little bit. Picked it up straight away, looked at the screen again and decided to send the toothpick into orbit
So in this mid-block press we're supposedly executing, Kane is not supposed to play any role?
Yes, our defenders should do better dealing with long balls, but it is easier to be a defender, when defence starts from the front line.
They've all just had a whole summer off and a full pre-season.
Liverpool definitely altered their approach last season, varied their press for games and phases of games, but they didn't just stop pressing or being tactically disciplined and cohesive, they had an XG Against that was half ours last season, and only 3.5 behind City's - and they had all the same issues of the previous summer.
I'm not just talking about pressing high, I'm talking about pressing at all, or even just being tactically good without the ball, cohesive collectively etc. There are times in the last few months when we've started to look like we did under Redknapp, a bunch of reasonably talented footballers sent out with no real clear plan in the hope that certain individuals will either save our arses or win us games.
It's not like we've sacrificed organisational discipline for creative panache is it, someone said we've scored the same amount of goals as Newcastle in the last 15 games (or in 2019 or something like that), we had the worst XG in the top 6.
The Villa and Newcastle games gave me some hope, in terms of the control we exerted with the ball, which resembled the old Poch Spurs, but without the ball we've continued to look pretty ropey and downright shit against City and Woolwich.
And the argument about worn out players isn't going to wash this season, and even last season, if players weren't capable of doing even basic defensive diligence, then there are kids in our academy who would have come in and ran through fucking walls.
Why the fuck has Poch put up with that donkey Sissoko for 2years ambling around like a turtle in a fucking windsock when he could have had Skipp out there pressing like a cunt and playing some football too.
Poch has let his fear of being unpopular, and dropping big dressing room players who's names get sung every week, castrate him.
Yes.
There may well be different tactical approaches in individual games, like against City, we chose put Lamela on Rodri, who we identified as a threat from deep, who could start attacks from deep. It didn't work even though Lamela marked him out of the game, it didn't work because both of their CB's (and Ederson) just did his job and were pinging balls about for fun and so many of their attacks were started by them. This wasn't a high-press but it was a player that we pressed high on if that makes sense we left that battle as a 1v1.
You will see Kane always close the 'keeper, he's not charging at him trying to win the ball though, he will angle his run so as to make the 'keeper kick long but into a space where we might have an overload of players or, what we feel is an unfair match up e.g Toby vs a small CF like Hernades ergo we stand a strong chance of winning the ball in that area.
Or, they may be a player like Toby who has a fantastic long ball distribution so Kane's role would be the same as on the 'keeper, not to win it but to hurry them and angle his run to show him an area of the pitch where we are confident to win it back.
But he's not pressing because we don't press high anymore for 95% of our games.
No he clearly has never learned a thing!
If everyone comes back fit from the break we have no excuses left as far as I'm concerned. Poch has 2 weeks to sort it out, examine the tapes and sort the midfield and defence out. Excluding Newcastle we haven't looked that shit going forward and 4 goals against City and Woolwich is a great return (admittingly we where very lucky v city) it's the defence that really worries me. We never don't look like conceding when the oppo have the ball
All of this makes sense, nothing wrong with it.
I'm just amazed by the clip. I can't seem to understand the purpose of Kane
I hear that but Liverpool had NO injuries and didn't have almost their entire first eleven with only a weeks pre-season, two completely different set of circumstances not worthy of comparison. I brought them up solely to show that they thought it necessary to change how they press last year too.
It's not an excuse but it's absolute fact we lost our best two midfielders I think I've seen (Wanyama and Dembele), it's absolute fact we had no pre-season and the worst injury record we've ever seen, we had to plan for the entire season, I think we did quite well.
I don't like it, I much prefer us pressing high, I want to see this back again. I'm not disagreeing with anything about this. I'm saying we aren't pressing-high and we haven't pressed high for two years.
There's nothing wrong with Kane, he's not being lazy, he's playing as CF in a team that doesn't press high, this is what it looks like.
I think we will start to see the return of it, I'm just not sure when. I think we will see it when Ndombele, Locelso and Dele are all back in the side. I'm not convinced Ndombele will be up to speed to quite some time, whilst he has a huge amount of quality he does look significantly off the pace, with the oppo running off him and him visible blowing out of his arse at the moment. (Locelso did look lively on Sunday in his run out). With these players available there is no room for Sissoko.
We also saw us pressing high in pre-season so for me, that's another indicator that we can expect a return to it hopefully.