as Ange repeats previous errors.
It’s not even September and Spurs are out of one competition already, probably the one they were most likely to have a chance in, as after an awful performance they went out of the League Cup on penalties.
We were told that Ange Postecoglou would target the cups, get a trophy, he goes out to win, it’ll be different than before.
It wasn’t different. It was exactly the same as before. As the Australian sent out his second XI, which would struggle to be classed as the second string, for their Carabao Cup tie away to Fulham. How many times have we seen a Spurs manager do this and how many times have we seen it work?
From the moment the team sheet was put out you knew how this was going. It was made even worse by the awful third kit they came out in. A colour to match the performance.
Ange excused it by saying…
How am I going to find out my players? We need to give the players the opportunity to contribute. Ange Postecoglou
Well, it’s 2023 mate, if you don’t know by now that Davinson Sanchez doesn’t work, then you never will. I mean Spurs have let three goals in so far this season and all three have come when Emerson and Sanchez have been on the pitch together and all three have come down that side.
Yes, you to give the others a chance but making 9 changes from a team with momentum is not the way to do it. You need to know how those others play with your starting XI, not with the rejects you can’t get rid of.
You’re only the fourth game into the season, you have no midweek fixtures in Europe this season, there’s no need for mass changes and rotation. With five subs available you can start a lot of your first choices and then bring on the others. But when you start the lot, it’s just asking for what he got. With no Bissouma or Maddison, there was no control. It was bizarre in a game where they had over 60% of the ball in the first half, yet couldn’t keep hold of it or control it.
Has Ange learned then from what he saw. He tried Skipp in the first game and it didn’t work, he’s brought Hojbjerg on to shore things up late on it’s sort of worked. But you can’t play the pair together. SkippBjerg. It’s Conteish. It offers neither control nor go forward.
With those two and a defence that involves Emerson, Sanchez and Davies, how can you expect the front players to function? The front three that Ange has picked for the opening games haven’t functioned with the quality of Bissouma, Sarr and Maddison. So you gotta feel sorry of the likes of Solomon, at his previous PL club, he barely saw any action. Now if he moved from Spurs to Fulham he would have been all over his old team.
Does Ange want Lo Celso to stay or leave? He says the former but then puts him in that team, watches it not work for him and takes him off at have time for a kid – Dane Scarlett. The kid we were told by the happy clappers looked good. Except he didn’t, he looked away with the fairies. Every time a ball was played through to him he was on his heels and not expecting it.
There’s one of Ange’s regulars you have to feel sorry for in all of this. Micky van de Ven. Twice now the combination of Emerson and Sanchez has resulted in the big Dutchman scoring an own goal. Emerson cut out with one pass and Sanchez in no man’s land doing the can-can before having rings run around him and not stopping the cross where it flicks of VdV’s heel past the lumbering Forster – more on him later, though he did make one good save in the first half.
The ref gave just 2 minutes of added time at the end of the first half, even he was sick fed up of watching this rubbish, as Fulham dropped off after they scored and both teams went through the motions.
That change was made at half time and it didn’t make it better. It took Fulham going down to 10 men for Spurs to find the net. As the home player went off down the tunnel to change his boot. The process of him losing the original boot saw an awful miss by Hojbjerg. Perisic put in a good cross and Richarlison was there at the back post and unlike at the weekend he didn’t Richarlison this one.
Cue the tweets… Xs… about how this will kick Richarlison on and you’ll see a different player. I don’t know what it was about that not happening last season, that makes them think it’ll happen this. He certainly didn’t look like adding to it in the next quarter of an hour he was on the pitch, before limping off to be replace by Kulusevski, by now Son had replaced Perisic and Sarr would come on for Skipp. Maddison would eventually get on for Solomon, just as Solomon had finally got into the game.
It had pens written all over it and so it was. Step forward Forster and Sanchez and take a bow.
Forster’s technique for the pens seemed to be commit to moving left/right early and slowly fall to the floor nowhere near the ball, as the Fulham player rolls the ball in.
Son almost had Spurs’ first pen saved, Kulu put the second away with no trouble but for the third up stepped… Sanchez… yes Davinson Sanchez… of all people. I mean even if he’d had a good game you wouldn’t want him taking a pen. But after his usual shambles even less so. And duly his poor pen was saved. And that was that, you knew Forster wasn’t going to save any and that it would such a fitting end to such a gawd awful game.
And then people asking what went wrong, how did it come to this?
Well, it was August 29th, only a couple of days left of the transfer window and the deadwood are still at the club. Levy wants stupid money for dolts like Sanchez – Renne offered €9m but Levy wants €15m to €20m, after that performance they’d be lucky to get €9 – so they’re still here and while they’re still here replacements that the manager can use and trust aren’t brought in.
But it’s a masterclass by Levy… poker tactics from a busted flush…
Yes but €9m is taking the piss. I think he may start tonight v Fulham tonight, and if he plays well, and Ange wants to offload him, then Lvy will get his €15m. Poker tactics. 😃
— Grumpy Git 🇺🇦 💙 (@GrumpyGit2021) August 29, 2023
And while those replacements aren’t coming in for the positions most required – central defence and striker – Spurs are looking at wingers. Wingers?! They currently have Son, Kulusevski, Solomon, Perisic, Porro and Richarlison that can play wide. They have no real strikers and are one injury away from Sanchez or Davies in defence and are looking at wingers.
Again as before with every other manager you do wonder if the starting XI was to show Levy what’s there, how bad it could get because as the pundit Craig Burley said after the game…
Craig Burley: "If he has to rely on them [second string] in the league… they're screwed…" #COYS #THFC
— Toxic Web (@Toxic_Web) August 29, 2023