Tottenham Hotspur v. Watford - 19.10.2019 @ 3 PM

  • 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

You'd be surprised how many times teams excuses after playing us last time Quique was in charge was "we wasted our chances, we didn't create enough, we were all over them but just couldn't find the final pass, WE HAD A BAD GAME!". That last one was pretty much said after every team we beat when we came up last time.

That's how Quique sets us up. To disrupt the final ball, to keep a great shape to minimise space in the defensive third, and hit on the break. To play 30% possession of the ball. I think he actually even complained vs Woolwich that we had more possession that he would have liked!

You say we parked the bus. We had 7 shots on goal, a lot of those were second half and a lot of them were actually half chances. It was counter attacking football and we should have scored 2 or 3 more if we were more clinical, even if you exclude the penalty.

So obviously complain all you want about how you think we played and how bad you think you were. We made you look bad and you deserved to lose.
YOU PARKED THE BUS= a tactic you use when you dont think you have a chance otherwise, yes you had clear chances, because you caught us on the break, when we had one or two of our lapses, and our fullbacks decided to play upfront, we were running into your wall of players, you had so much room when you caught us on the break because we only had minimal cover, and you had some good pace, non league teams play that way, and their answer is, well if we dont, we get stuffed, dont park the bus next time, and we will win.
 
quique = park the bus and this is supposed to be the BEST LEAGUE IN THE WORLD, total crap, if it wasnt for spurs who i will support forever, i would only watch la liga, so technically better, and even the low teams can play a bit of quality football.
 
YOU PARKED THE BUS= a tactic you use when you dont think you have a chance otherwise, yes you had clear chances, because you caught us on the break, when we had one or two of our lapses, and our fullbacks decided to play upfront, we were running into your wall of players, you had so much room when you caught us on the break because we only had minimal cover, and you had some good pace, non league teams play that way, and their answer is, well if we dont, we get stuffed, dont park the bus next time, and we will win.

You're criticising Watford for playing the correct tactics.

They have no obligation to play open, free flowing football and play into our hands. If we want everyone to play the same, perhaps we should level out the transfer budgets too.
 
when spurs get real full backs everything will click together and results will come.

Well that I do agree with. Not sure what the long term plan is with Sess, but him on the left and someone like Atal on the right would transform the side.

A proper DM wouldn't go amiss as well.
 
You're criticising Watford for playing the correct tactics.

They have no obligation to play open, free flowing football and play into our hands. If we want everyone to play the same, perhaps we should level out the transfer budgets too.
do you want spurs to play that way because it doesnt work long term, it gets results now and again, but not enough, up to them how they play, but you have just agreed with me, that they are scared to play us, in other words INFERIOR.
 
quique = park the bus and this is supposed to be the BEST LEAGUE IN THE WORLD, total crap, if it wasnt for spurs who i will support forever, i would only watch la liga, so technically better, and even the low teams can play a bit of quality football.

Lol.

It's nice to see people like Cranston appreciating the tactics and play and how the game actually played out.

Unfortunately sometimes you have to accept that certain fans just take games at face value and pick up these "park the bus" soundbites from their favourite MOTD presenters so they can regurgitate them over the water cooler at work on a Monday morning without having to construct any original opinions of their own.
 
do you want spurs to play that way because it doesnt work long term, it gets results now and again, but not enough, up to them how they play, but you have just agreed with me, that they are scared to play us, in other words INFERIOR.

Counter attacking football can be really exciting. I'd have no problem with us, away from home, absorbing pressure and then watching Moura and Son run into space. To see quick transition and our players flying down the wing.

Better that than 68% possession and losing to Brigton 3 nil.
 
Lol.

It's nice to see people like Cranston appreciating the tactics and play and how the game actually played out.

Unfortunately sometimes you have to accept that certain fans just take games at face value and pick up these "park the bus" soundbites from their favourite MOTD presenters so they can regurgitate them over the water cooler at work on a Monday morning without having to construct any original opinions of their own.
dont watch motd its crap, so lets get this right, you think im wrong, so you didnt play scared, all your players in the last third, and hoping we slip up and you catch us out with a breakaway attack , which you did, if our defence full backs played like defenders, you would not have got your chances, because we have crap full backs, and they left you room, delafeou was very good, ex barca, maybe we should buy him, he had pace to hit us fast, and he did, but you totally relied on the break, park the bus is a boring tactic, and a scared team tactic, and it wont win you much in the long run, it is very strenuous and you will get injuries due to it, hamstrings , muscle tears etc, unless you do a leicester city miracle run with no injuries, doubt it.
by the way i have played park the bus tactic in my team, when we faced a much better one in the cup, and it was a survival the whole match, we held firm, and got 0-0 how i will never know, they pummelled us, and in the replay we tried to play abit , and we got beat, so it is a scared team tactic, and when you come out of it you get punished, dont feel bad you played it, just understand why you did.
 
dont watch motd its crap, so lets get this right, you think im wrong, so you didnt play scared, all your players in the last third, and hoping we slip up and you catch us out with a breakaway attack , which you did, if our defence full backs played like defenders, you would not have got your chances, because we have crap full backs, and they left you room, delafeou was very good, ex barca, maybe we should buy him, he had pace to hit us fast, and he did, but you totally relied on the break, park the bus is a boring tactic, and a scared team tactic, and it wont win you much in the long run, it is very strenuous and you will get injuries due to it, hamstrings , muscle tears etc, unless you do a leicester city miracle run with no injuries, doubt it.
by the way i have played park the bus tactic in my team, when we faced a much better one in the cup, and it was a survival the whole match, we held firm, and got 0-0 how i will never know, they pummelled us, and in the replay we tried to play abit , and we got beat, so it is a scared team tactic, and when you come out of it you get punished, dont feel bad you played it, just understand why you did.

We played counter attacking football. It's a lot different to "playing scared" or "parking the bus". We purposely conceded possession to allow you to come on to us to open up the space behind you.

We didn't sit back and hope you slipped up. We player a fluid and agile 532 when with the ball switching to 442 or 541 when without, creating 2 banks of 4 or 5 and dropping to the final third to suck the space out between the 2 banks, meaning your forward creative players had no space in between the banks to turn or move around.

We allowed you to have as much possession as you wanted in our half but restricted you to Hollywood style miracle passes to try to break us down either passing through loads of players or over the top which usually went out of play, something that probably maybe only a player like Eriksen could've managed, and you left him on the bench.

And while you struggled to break us down we picked you off and created chance after chance behind you with our pace and passing, only really lacking the final shot.

Leicester actually won the title playing similar tactics, concentrating on defence first and relying on the counter attacking pace of Vardy to break teams down while Kante broke up the attacks. To be honest, Vardy and Kante aside we arent much worse a team than they were when they won the title.

Wouldn't you like to win a title now. But you play the way you do. And to dare is to do right?!

As Cranston says, we obviously have to play with the resources available to us. We could go all out attack but we clearly don't have players as good as spurs. What we do have is a tactically savvy manager who knows how to adapt his tactics to the strengths of our players and to outwit managers and teams like yours.

And we did. And we should've won.
 
We played counter attacking football. It's a lot different to "playing scared" or "parking the bus". We purposely conceded possession to allow you to come on to us to open up the space behind you.

We didn't sit back and hope you slipped up. We player a fluid and agile 532 when with the ball switching to 442 or 541 when without, creating 2 banks of 4 or 5 and dropping to the final third to suck the space out between the 2 banks, meaning your forward creative players had no space in between the banks to turn or move around.

We allowed you to have as much possession as you wanted in our half but restricted you to Hollywood style miracle passes to try to break us down either passing through loads of players or over the top which usually went out of play, something that probably maybe only a player like Eriksen could've managed, and you left him on the bench.

And while you struggled to break us down we picked you off and created chance after chance behind you with our pace and passing, only really lacking the final shot.

Leicester actually won the title playing similar tactics, concentrating on defence first and relying on the counter attacking pace of Vardy to break teams down while Kante broke up the attacks. To be honest, Vardy and Kante aside we arent much worse a team than they were when they won the title.

Wouldn't you like to win a title now. But you play the way you do. And to dare is to do right?!

As Cranston says, we obviously have to play with the resources available to us. We could go all out attack but we clearly don't have players as good as spurs. What we do have is a tactically savvy manager who knows how to adapt his tactics to the strengths of our players and to outwit managers and teams like yours.

And we did. And we should've won.


I'm no happy clapper, and have been a pretty fierce critic of what Pochettino's been doing for the last two or three seasons, so believe me when I say this is not tribalism, I'll give fair do's to anyone that actually does something tactically interesting or just "plays well", and defensively you played well, but lets not pretend Quique has re-invented the wheel here.

To claim you made us look bad (as you did previously) is to have not seen us recently. We are definitely making ourselves look bad without any help from the opposition. Brighton made us look bad, by actually playing football against us, and got their just rewards, and if your coach had the ability to coach something other than the bog standard "sit deep in two banks of four/five and counter" - which incidentally is about as tactically innovative as Tony Pullis being spit roasted by Roy Hodgson and Sam Allardyce - you might have actually got more out of the game than the point you ended up clinging onto, which was the very most you deserved for not managing to do what that tactical icon Steve Bruce did, and have three shots on target.

Chance after chance ? You had one shot on target in each half. Your X/G was a shitty 0.85, which was actually 0.04 worse than our shitty 0.89.

You did have a couple of very good break situations, but you spunked them away without really threatening. Lets not pretend you tore us apart again and again with your clever strategy. Which by the way got you where last time under Quique ? Mid table ? him sacked after one season ?

I have no problem with the variations of tactical approach, all have merits when done well. I actually thought you played some decent stuff under Gracia and were rewarded with some great results. I think you've got some decent players, I'd swap most of your midfielders for Sissoko.

But what you did yesterday was pretty much what I've seen teams do at our place (and at their place quite a lot) about 87% of all games we play in the last few years. Results tell us that If you get the rub you might get a draw, if you get really, really lucky you might go away with a squeaky win, but most often you'll go away with fuck all, having watched your team in our half about 4 times in 90 minutes.

I think if you'd actually shown a bit more tactical ambition, without turning into Eddie fucking Howe's lottery Bournemouth or something, you could have won that game, because we are a mess. But you didn't. You did what everyone else does, shelled it, hedged it and you got the very best that lack of innovation deserved. Just as our manager's ineptitude got what it deserved.
 
Back
Top Bottom