Man Utd (A) - 11 DEC

[TheJockmur]

I think it'll be 4231, but with Walker and Rose bombing forwards we'll revert to 3 at the back much like most of last season.

This is the first time we've been able to start with our strongest 11 for this season.

The spine of Toby, Mousa and Harry.

Our strongest team has Lamela. We're not the same without him IMO.

 

[kolyid]

Pretty much every outlet I see says ManU are going to beat us soundly. They also say this is the weekend that Ibra and Pogba are going to turn Utds season around and head down the path for a title challenge. I can't wait till Toby has the Swede in his pocket and Moose runs rings around that idiot Pogba. It's going to be so fun to watch when they have to resort to hoofing the ball because they can't handle the pressure. 4-1

 

[Boltonspur]

Gonna be a cracker......we can go 9pts clear of them

My son works with a load of united fans. He has a £100 bet running with several of them, that we will still be ahead of them by xmas. Anything but a defeat and he collects on Monday morning.

 

[Gatsby]

Part of me is happy to see Leicester winning, meaning we can go fourth with a win tomorrow.


But the majority of me fucking hates Leicester.

 

[Kristeva]

We made a shit utd team look good

 

[sammyspurs]

Here is Nani asking the ref for a penalty

Clattenburg is looking at him at this point, shrugging his shoulders. When Gomes frantically asks him if its a free kick or play on, he ignores him, and lets Nani score.


Criminal. Cheated again at Old Trafford.....after this of course

Apparently thats not in.




I fucking hope we smash Utd to bits AGAIN

 

[Gatsby]

Utd at Old Trafford, a fixture we've won 2 of the last 4.

We go into in good form, 2 wins on the bounce and 8 goals scored. Kane is back amongst the goals, Eriksen has hit form and most importantly.. Alderweireld is back!

I'd like to see..

---------------------Lloris------------------
-------Alderweireld---Vertonghen-----
Walker----------------------------------Rose
-----------Wanyama--Dembele--------
Son----------------Dele--------------Eriksen
----------------------Kane---------------------


They're coming off a tough away trip to Ukraine... but as poor as they've been this year, they still have some dangerous players like Zlatan, Pogba and Mata.

We need to be on top of our game. 3 points here would make a 9 point gap between us and them, and keep up the pressure on the top 4.


COYS

 

[ArcspacE]

Revenge for Mendes

COYS

 

[Steed_Train]

Always odd on the train back when there's more United fans than away fans

 

[Johnboy40]

I don't understand why Son is starting member. He can't score, pass and tackle. He doesn't even run much. Asians can't play football.

lovely piece of casual racism there. fuck off

 

[Hamilton]

This is not a knee jerk reaction- I want the problem fixed before we lose everything that we accomplished last season, its falling apart.
Players and Poch need to stand up and be counted. Sometimes a coach can come to the end of his tenure. Its not a blame game its whats best for the football club. No one is bigger than the club and if change is judged to be the right way forward then so be it.

Poch has gotten more points this season than he did at the same point last season. And he's 3 points behind 4th despite a ton of injuries. He's doing fine so far, getting rid of him after a couple close losses to top teams would be insane.

 

[ThePreacher]

Yet, we're through to the next round of the Europa League and a point better off in the league (with a better defensive record).

Perspective.

After blowing 60 million in the Summer, i would have expected to still be in the CL and more than a fucking single point better off than last season to be honest.

For all the huffing and puffing we have no player who can unlock a defence similar to a Coutinho or Payet according to one of the chuckle brothers, and to be fair he is spot bollock on.

Say what you want but whoever Poch picks in the three behind Kane offer nothing special, nothing special at the very top level of the PL that is and that is quite fucking obvious.

 

[SouthStand Billy]

I'm sure this thread is in its final death throes, but I thought I'd add my thoughts.

I only managed to catch the last 20 mins, plus the highlights on MOTD. It wasn't our best performance, but I don't think there's any need to melt - as many on here seem to be doing. I've even seen a few calling for Poch's head - which is ridiculous.

I know stats don't always mean much, but it looks as though we dominated that game (certainly in terms of possession). We obviously lack a cutting edge at the moment, and we need to play much quicker (even if that results in less possession), but at least we have the basics in place - something to build on.

To put it all into a bit more perspective: we've played AWAY at three of the top six (and at home against the other three). We've had the toughest fixtures compared to those around us - by far. With any luck, we'll pick up 6 points in our next two games, which will put us right back in the mix for top 4. The way things are going at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if Lolerpool and Citeh are the ones that we'll be battling with for top 4 this year. Hopefully the former as I take a special, perverse pleasure in seeing them fail.

Onwards and upwards lads.

Bravo Sir..

What people seem to be forgetting is, we are ahead of where we were this time last season..
We went on to achieve our highest place in the premier league..
Let's hope we continue to better our points tally only with a better finish this season.

 

[Boltonspur]

My argument was never its really easy being a scout & I could so easily find us a player to make us better. So you are making up stuff & arguing against it.

Mane in the summer is 1 I would have gone all out for early on. But he could have been crap for us.
so its a question no one can win at anyway.

Also, I still think the scouts have much better resources than us. I rarely watch football outside of england, let alone closely monitor an individual in most matches.
I think us on the forums are miles away from what scouts see. Although you probably watch a lot more football than me. I only really watch barca & madrid fairly regularly outside of the premiership.

I just disagree that you can only criticise if you can do better yourself. Suddenly we only apply it to scouts on the forum.

What am I making up to argue against? All I've said is that it's easy to complain about Spurs having a lack of ambition when there isn't any evidence to suggest that in recent times. For all we know, the scouts could be working round the clock trying to unearth these gems but maybe real talent is not that easy to come by & you can bet that what talent there is will also be being scrutinised by scouts at other clubs. We got Dele through sheer good scouting & everything falling right into place for us. One of the brightest prospects in English (if not world) football.
He was a £5 million gamble that paid off superbly. What about Dier too? So there are two relatively recent examples of our scouts doing what could reasonably be described as "a fucking diamond job". But still there is disquiet about a lack of an X factor player. These well known elite players who would make a difference are already at huge clubs anyway. Spurs are presently in the business of creating superstars, sometimes from scratch. More recently, we seem better able to keep hold of them-which makes a nice change than worrying about which mega rich club is going to take our best players.

What I am saying is that if you want to complain, then it all seems a bit pointless if you don't know or understand the logistics of what it is you're complaining about.

If we are talking about players who WILL make the difference between challenging or not, it's a very limited pool. We know their names because everyone does & they will be difficult/expensive to bring in. So we are relying more on prospects being found.

Fwiw- I still think Janssen will come good as he returns from injury. We expected too much from him too soon & I feel a bit sorry for him being thrown in so quickly because of Kane's injury.

 

[Mr S Pippo]

Big game tomorrow, if we put in a Chelsea-like performance we'll win

We lost 2-1?

 

[TheJockmur]

1 - 0 Spurs. Last minute Dele Alli dive in the box to win us a penalty, followed by Kane slotting it in.

That's not my prediction. It's what I want. And I want it to be the worst dive we have ever seen.

 

[SouthStand Billy]

Yeah Fuck off Kane you've done nothing for this club...

 

[Paul Allen's Omen]

Overall I thought on the performance shown, I felt we might have been good enough to get a draw out of that game, but when you’re playing against the top teams and it’s tight, a mistake or moment of quality will often settle it. I knew beforehand that there would be periods when we would be on top and there would be periods when we were on the back foot.

However, what angered me most was the naivety we displayed in the last 20 mins (plus stoppage), we were playing a team that played away in the far reaches of eastern Europe on Thursday, a team we are fitter than, a team we put 3 goals past in the last 20 mins last April and a team that were psychologically vulnerable to holding onto leads late in the game. But we showed a lack of focus and rather than a fluid intense attacking phase with occasional counter attacks from Man Utd. The Spurs players showed a lack of discipline and started to give away constant stupid fouls out of frustration often when the Man Utd player was under pressure and any momentum was lost. We may not have scored by being more focused and fluid but at least we would have given us some hope, I don’t recall a serious chance for us in the last 20 mins. If anything we should have displayed that mentality of niggling fouls and breaking up play, when Man Utd were on top in a 20 min period mid-way through the first half.

We need to be smarter.

 

[kingdawson]

We did alright, at least in the first half. Their only clear cut chance was off of a mistake of ours. Problem is, though, that's all it takes for Mourinho-ball. They seemed to have 7 or 8 man deep at all times and we didn't have much of a plan how to break them down. Also, we passed backwards and sideways a lot. At least a few times we got to the final third, we ended up passing backwards and ended our own chances.

Didn't really understand the Sissoko sub- he did ok I guess, but I don't see how it gave us a better chance of winning. He doesn't really look that comfortable as an outside attacker, does he? Between him and GKN, our options in attack look pretty meager right now.

I wish we'd have rested players for this game over the CL game midweek- this 6 point swing is pretty brutal compared to what the opposite result would have done for us. I guess the worst part is that this result has saved Mourinho and Utd from facing a crisis situation and revitalized their season.

Sissoko only did ok to you??? he beat Darmian every single time and looked our most dangerous attacking threat.

 

[LeeMcl]

Rather stupidly I care about Spurs, but my sense of disconnect is really becoming an issue. Odd to care so much given that none of us can really change a thing, as mere client reference numbers our power is somewhat minimal.

Historically across the past 20/30 years our performances against United tended towards passive. And that's a problem with our club and what disappoints me so much about today is that I feel it takes balls to go to United and win, yet we have players strolling about. Half arsed. beating themselves, being passive.

While mentioning passive I think the Ref today is passively taking it up the wrong in from either Jose or Drunk Alex.

I want to see our team contest every ball equally to the home side. Then I want them to press their style and then they should ( try ) to ram their bits down the opposition fucking throat's ! We have done it, as recently in April against a better United team. Today we did not and the game mirrored so many games over the past 20 years. Watch April's game and then watch today. It's light and day between the two performances. Backwards has been our journey since Spring.

I can't help but feel that too many players got let off with the cluster fuck of the last 4 games of last season and they have settled into the acceptance of losers. It's a shame, but some of them should have been cut loose after what happened, they were not and now they look like turning up is their job, not putting a shift in.

Has it ever recovered since spring or am I not seeing it clearly? hard to know. I tend towards the negative with Spurs overall. Was there too many flat feet today and not enough fight, grit and determination, or am I being harsh ? Coach said we played well. Facts show we lost. My eyes showed me we were a tiny bit shit. As confusing as Elton John's life style choices.

If today was a one off, fair enough no one should knee jerk. But it's not been a one off. Big game players turn up at the big games. The only true form we have this season is a constant failure to turn up when it matters most. It's ok to lose. It's never ok to lose without giving everything, I do not feel everything was given today.