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No, I haven't, it was the actual low amount of passes, not the completion percentage, which is actually high.
You feeling OK?
No, not really. In fact I feel quite ill.
But both our CMs saw little of the ball does that maybe not suggest that there job maybe wasn't to receyle possession but instead to give inter very little time on the ball? As stated both the CM duo of Inter had shocking stats doesn't that suggest maybe it was a tight midfield battle that our two came out on top off? Again your picking and choosing stats that suit your agenda and that's the problem with stats you can make the say whatever you want.
All I know and the other 99% of the footballing world know is that Moussa and Winks had a fine game.
Exactly. Almost everyone has given Sissoko Motm, not just in spurs forums, but everywhere.
This guy's obsession with a high number of passes is strange. Most of the time Sissoko would just pass the ball forward and let the front guys do their bit. Why would we not want the likes of Eriksen, Alli and Kane on the ball more? Of course we could have wasted time and played tikitaka and collected a large number of passes but thats not going to get a goal, one which we desperately needed to still be in the comp.
There are games where we had players with passes in the 70s and 80s where we have been destroyed. If opposition presses you midfield effectively, then our CMs have to pass backwards to CBs or sideways to full backs, then they pass the ball to our cms to move it forward again, who fail to do so and send it backwards again and then receive it again and again. This results in very high number of passes. Who gives a shit about high number of passes? Only fucking idiots do. What is the point of celebrating that nonsese over effective passes that result in goalscoring opportunities? Sissoko created goalscoring opportunities while playing mainly behind the front 4. That is more than enough.
I'll admit a lot of this tactical talk is over my head, but surely it's the quality of the passes, not the quantity that wins you the game. You only have to look at the Chelsea game - they had considerably more possession, but we had lots more chances and more importantly, more goals!!!
Wait...Henry Winter said it? Henry...Winter! THE Henry Winter. You should have said...
Henry Winter is a Chavs fan and probably hated all the great work Star-man Sissoko did!!
Except you don't know that, you think that. I think you're wrong. Poch doesn't want their midfield to have the ball, and he also wants and expects us to dominate the ball, that is how we generally play, (I can count the times on one hand when we've tactically set up differently) especially against an inferior side, at home and a side who have come to avoid getting beaten who don't have to win. But their midfield numbers were barely any worse than ours. Their CM2 competed 73 passes. Ours 86. Brozavic (a DM) saw more of the ball and made more passes than Sissoko for example. Now if this was because Sissoko was busy being a defensive dynamo that would be mitigation, but he wasn't. He was poor defensively, barely laid a glove on Inter, zero tackles and very little pressing. And these two were very much a meant to operate as a double pivot.
This wasn't the same type of opponent as Chelsea, where we could blitz high up, suffocate their midfield get goals and then be pragmatic, allow them to have more ball and counter. This was a deeper block team who we wanted to grind using ball circulation, using Poch's tried and tested 4231, forward overload.
You just have to watch the first half to see what Poch wanted, we dominated possession 55/45 and the shot count, and Winks and Sissoko's contribution/numbers were OK-ish (Winks 36 and Sissoko 24) but neither were very incisive and we really didn't create much but long shots.
I wasn't blown away by their performances first half, especially Sissoko but second half was what I was really criticising. It was really inept stuff. The midfield drives games, especially the way we play. Both Winks and Sissoko's passing dropped off a cliff (Winks 14 Sissoko 12), as team we made 100 less passes second half, all of a sudden Inter were having more ball, making more chances and us less chances.
There is no way that this was a tactical intention of Pochettino.
I haven't got an obsession with passing or anything algorithm. It's an end to a means. Ive explained several times now what happened, and just used passing stats, amongst others, to back that up.
Our passing from midfield started off perfunctory and diminished throughout the game until second half we weren't even dominating the game we needed to win. To simplify for you, that meant we were creating less chances than the first half (and we didn't create many first half) and they were creating more than they were first half. That's not a recipe for footballing success.
When weighing up a game, you don't just look at one moment and say if that was great then everything was great.
Quality is absolutely vital MrsP, but even better than one moment of quality, is two and even better than that is five etc etc.
If you accept that most teams invariably need more than one moment of quality to win a game (because to score goals often requires several moments of quality on it's own, and if you don't finish that chance you need another, and another etc until you score enough to win) then the ideal is the more quality chances your create the better, no?
So what Ive tried to explain is that if we aren't even having much of the ball, and our CM's aren't using it well enough, often enough, getting the ball to the forwards etc, which ours weren't, especially second half, your chance of creating those quality chances you need to win diminishes, which ours did - as we had less shots on target second half and they had more etc.
Luckily one moment did it. And that's great, but until that moment we'd not really created anything of great quality, and that's not a great game plan is it?
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Yep, could be that.........
Or, it could be that he actually deserved it and your assessment and analysis is biased and flawed
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Ok, but at least I’m providing some fact based evidence - passing stats, possession, shots, tackles, anecdotal etc - and contextualising that evidence with what I saw to support what I’m saying.
Yea but you are cherry picking. You are talking about how Sissoko wasnt very useful defensively because whoscored.com told you he had 0 tackles, as if numbers in the tackling stat is the only way one can defend. Sissoko also made 3 interceptions and 2 clearances and 1 blocked shot. It is possible to defend without tackling and waiting for the right moment to intercept or push an opponent into a corner. In fact one of his runs that also resulted in a shooting opportunity was a result of him intercepting from a 50-50 situation and then making that run.
None of our CMs except Dembele have a high rate of successful tackles anyway. Winks puts in more tackles than Sissoko but gets 2/3rds of them wrong which can create even bigger problems than backing off. Which leads to the 'dribbled past' stat, possibly a more important stats than the plain old number of tackles. Sissoko gets dribbled past 23% when his tackles fail , Dier 48% , Winks 68%, Dembele as expected only 17%.
I was having another look at the second half a couple of days ago, and what I noticed was that Sissoko was caught ball watching/not tracking his man on a number of occasions, particularly in the course of Inter's most dangerous attacks. It's a weakness in his game; the other stuff is coming together, and I wouldn't be disappointed to see him start tomorrow.
It’s not cherry picking to point out that our cm2 contributed too little to that game, especially second half, as a midfield pair.
I agree about a tackles stat, it’s not always informative, but it was fine was everyone was throwing it around for Sissoko last game wasn’t it? and being dribbled past isn’t great, which is why I gave an examples of real instances when Sissoko was slack defensively.
Also your notion that all failed tackles mean something worse is equally bogus. A failed tackle can still slow a move etc.
The main criticism I was making was that our midfield, Sissoko and Winks, didn’t do enough second half, to give us a platform, some structure, they lost control of the game, and ergo, so did we.
And people tried to counter that by saying “well maybe it’s because Sissoko was defensively great” but he wasn’t. And I didn’t just use stats I gave examples. He was dribbled past first half, and second half allowed Perisic to run off him, Perisic too much time and space to cross to name three.
And let’s be clear, Sissoko wasn’t the only one I criticised, starting with Poch for picking a weak midfield two combo, Lamela and Moura too were poor.
He was just the one that most people took umbridge with.
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