The Race For 7th

  • The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

Sort by date Sort by reaction score
harry7 said:
To be honest, I can't see Villa getting much more than 4 points out of Chelsea, Liverpool, Brighton, Palace.

They have Europa games either side of an away trip to Brighton.
Click to expand...

They'll beat Chelsea.

Which puts them 9 points clear of us before we even play Woolwich...

With us having Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City also to play. It's as good as done.

About as much chance of us getting top four as there is England getting that 5th CL spot.

If it happens? Sure, congrats. We've deserved it if we manage to overtake Villa with our fixture list.

Liverpool look spent. They'll probably have nothing to play for by the time the Villa game comes round. Brighton, the same. I can see Palace getting something, sure. But based on form and the teams they're playing, I honestly expect Villa to finish on a minimum of 74 points.

We'd need to win 5 of our remaining 6 games to beat that.
 
Villa seem to be playing all their remaining fixtures before us except all starting the same time for the last game. We will Be playing catch up again……reminds me of another year, let me think….got it.
 
White Hart said:
Villa seem to be playing all their remaining fixtures before us except all starting the same time for the last game. We will Be playing catch up again……reminds me of another year, let me think….got it.
Click to expand...

Nothing to do with the fact our next two weekends are Woolwich and Liverpool. Never expect them to be the big Super sunday games on tv!!

tin-foil-cats5.jpg
 
Brian Fantana said:
Bizarrely. But I suspect it doesnt always come from the manager. The club seem to think the competition is beneath us. It is weird.
Click to expand...
Maybe but Poch was the absolute worst for it. I think he actually said a few times that he didn't consider the EL important, didn't he? I remember it used to really piss off the fans of teams from other leagues in their subreddits. They used to take it emblematic of "English arrogance", not bothering with European competition. It was the Eurovision gripe applied to football. Though the Eurovision thing always struck me as funny because if we actually sent our best artists, we'd batter the competition ever year, so I don't think they genuinely want that -- they just enjoy a moan about the British.
 
Starks said:
That's got nothing to do with why we haven't done well in the competition.

What your advocating is burning out the squad in a potentially 50+ game season.

We need to build a competitive squad for four competitions. Not put the same squad in all four competitions and then moan at them and the manager for not succeeding.

Vicario
Porro - Dragusin - Van de Ven - Udogie
Bergvall - Bissouma - Donley
Kulusevski - Veliz - Johnson
​
Is more than strong enough to beat shitty little teams from Greece and Austria. It doesn't even have to be that team, Donley and Bergvall can rotate and you add Sarr or Bentancur in there too. I imagine van de Ven won't play each time either. If you don't want to start Veliz, then sure start Son or the new striker we bring in the summer. And tbh, rotating full backs is also crucial, they get through alot of work.

But it's absolutely imperative we make sure of our squad is used in this competition. It's draining.

Taking that competition seriously isn't just about playing your strongest team. It's about having the right mindset and mentality for the competition.

Sure, get to the latter stages and begin to use your stronger eleven. But you need this squad to be match fit and match ready for all situations.
Click to expand...
It seems like many continental clubs somehow manage to start their (more or less) best XI from the beginning of even the ECL. But we have a ridiculous calendar over here, with a 20 team league and two cup competitions, of which one is arguably totally expendable. OTOH, the LC does seem to be one of the few things going in favour of Spurs winning something and is the most realistic target year after year.

IDK. It's a difficult balancing act for any PL manager of an aspirational club. Nobody's got it quite right here so far. There's a good argument to be made that a club like this should be going all-out in the LC from the first match, but then that weakens the squad for the other "must go all-ins" like EL. It feels like this club should be going all-in on both, but history shows that such a strategy only ends up weakening us in every competition, with the end result of winning none of them.

I know it's a cliched talking point that recurs every few years - though I haven't heard it for a while now - but it really seems like the LC should go in order to make PL teams more consistently dominant on the continent. A lot of those shock European group stage exits by PL clubs every year are probably down to fixture crowding and heavily rotated teams.
 
White Hart said:
With Woolwich and Man City going out last night and likely Liverpool and West Ham going out tonight will mean Italy and Germany will get 2 of the extra Champions League places next year. A third for Spain probably so where does the 4th go?
Click to expand...
There are only two bonus places, as I understand it. Going to Italy and Germany, as you said. I don't fully get the restructuring of the tournament either. I just know that they might win the coeff competition this year but it's going to take some doing to knock the Prem off top spot overall (five year moving average).
 
Brian Fantana said:
We tried rotating before and we couldnt win a game. Son and kane always had to come on. I'm not going to go through all the games. We all remember them. The second string is never good enough.
Click to expand...
Yep. My recollection of the FA Cup early rounds during Poch's era went like that... Spurs down by one or struggling to break a low-scoring deadlock until Kane comes on in the ~70th minute to score a winner, or at least the goal to take it to a replay and avoid embarrassment. Oh, and sometimes it was Son scoring that goal. In my mind, that was the formula for those first few rounds. I think between them Kane and Son saved some double digit number of cup ties as substitutes.
 
1966 said:
There are only two bonus places, as I understand it. Going to Italy and Germany, as you said. I don't fully get the restructuring of the tournament either. I just know that they might win the coeff competition this year but it's going to take some doing to knock the Prem off top spot overall (five year moving average).
Click to expand...
Only 2 , mis understood somewhere. More difficult now. Home to Woolwich, and hope Chelsea and Liverpool play as badly as they did in their last games. We also need to boost ours goals for.
 
Brian Fantana said:
The Europa league should be a less stressful watch but I want CL now really. Probably because it is so much harder to get for us. A few twists left yet I think. Although I’m usually wrong.
Click to expand...

You had me feeling positive then blew it away with the last sentence.

I’ve already spent my Top 4 winnings. Be a bit annoying if we manage to fuck it up and finish behind Villa.
 
Our run-in is honestly ridiculous. Arse, Chavs and Poo 'ole in one week, then Burnley, right on the line, fighting to avoid relegation, Citeh playing for the title and Sheffield players fighting to get into the shop window. I don't even know how it could be more stacked against us.

It's too perfect.

Suspicious Weighing Options GIF by Law & Order
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom