Another embarrassing defeat piled even more pressure on Spurs head coach Andre Villas-Boas but the boss was defiant in the wake of yesterday’s 5-0 loss at home to Liverpool. Results at the weekend saw us slip one place to seventh and with the season almost half way over, a gap is starting to open up between ourselves and the top four.
“Liverpool played really well and we cannot take the merit away from their performance,” Villas-Boas said. “They were on top, we couldn’t get our play together they deserved to go 2-0 up at half-time.”
Andre pointed to Paulinho’s sending off as the point where a difficult task became impossible.
“Our response was extremely good at the start of the second half but the reality is that the sending off really affected us,” he added.
“We had some good moments in the second half. The spirit was there and we were gaining control, we were playing better.
“We’d just made an attacking substitution by removing Dembele and we ended up with 10 men with Nacer Chadli and Lewis Holtby in the middle. It was difficult for us.”
Andre concluded by recalling the squad’s reaction to defeat at Manchester City and he believes that they can recover in a similar fashion.
“We want to do better. We have to bounce back. We did it against City and we have to do it again after this heavy defeat. We’re not far from our objectives, but it takes a bit out of everyone, for sure.”
The margin of defeat was an obvious concern but we have now played each of the top five teams – Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Everton and Chelsea – and in those five matches we have scored just once. Is that a more telling statistic?
Next up for Spurs is a Carling Cup tie against West Ham on Wednesday while a strong Southampton side await at St Marys on Sunday the 22nd.
My biggest worry from the match is that AVB seemed to forget everything we did after the City game. Our defense played deeper, gave us more space in the middle and didn’t leave us so open.
Against Liverpool we were back to the high line and with our midfield’s total failure to protect the back 4 we were punished. After the first 5 minutes he should have been screaming for everybody to drop 10 yards but he never did, not at 0-0, not and 1-0 and not at 2-0. We played a suicidal game, with our first choice defenders it could have worked (Capoue’s relationship with Dawson was a shambles) but there is simply no sense in magnifying the pressure on such a makeshift defense.
I thought he learned that after the City game but apparently he didn’t. He’s got to stop being so stubborn with his system, I’m not saying I want two strikers up front but he must pick a system that plays to our strengths and not the oppositions.
Poor manager who made his name in a poor league with a team of stars . That could be done by any fool just look at graham souness at rangers in scotland or that other fool at celtic at the minute . Give a man a real job in a proper league and you find out how good or bad he is . The problem here is he has been hid by some very lucky results against some very poor teams . The guy needs to do the decent thing and go but sadly he won’t . Liverpool are where we were last season in that they have a star player making a poor team and a poor manager look good. We yesterday made them look great and now all liverpool fans think they are the best again . The truth for us is we are not that far away from being a very good side . We do still need a couple of players but most of all we need a manager who knows his players and knows who best to play them and AVB is not that man .
Taxi for AVB and please no to Capelo he would be worse.
What the opinion on here from Spur supporters about AVB in general , do you all still have faith in him to manage this big club or is he out of depth ?
Liveropool lost confirm we need sack avb to new teqnical manager
The feeling is and i have checked on many sites with some having poles on them is 75% are in favour of getting rid of AVB. The new manager should not be someone that we have tried before so no to Hoddle ,we tried that boat and it did not work . Why not give someone like Sherwood a go he can’t be much worse can he? AVB just will not change things when he sees they are going wrong because it worked so well at Porto so he feels it has to work again you just have to stick with it . The truth is this is a much tougher league and there are better players and managers in this league and you will be found out much quicker here + we do not have the players Porto had back then .
Time for AVB to go he has proved from very early on he does not have it and but for a certain Mr G Bale we would have seen it before now .
Had enough of him now. I was there yesterday and could clearly see that the team’s now going backward, not forward and Liverpool simply tore us to shreds. What the hell happened to Rose and Ericksen, who both appeared in that “nothing” game on Thursday night?? Instead AVB puts a very average RB at LB and continues to ruin Dembele from the player he was last season. The sending off was irrelevant really, as we were already struggling after the first 25 minutes. I have supported AVB since he arrived and forgave him when we lost 0-3 to the Hammers and then again when we were destroyed 0-6 by City. If you then lose 5-0 at home a few weeks later, how on earth can anyone argue his case to stay??
This squad is the best one I can remember since I first started coming to the Lane 25 years ago and it’s clear that the system and tactics do not suit the personnel. We’ve been playing our best CB at LB for most of the season and Jan will be straight off to Barcelona or similar if we’re not careful. Love Dawson’s passion, but while he’s a good squad defender and can do a job away at the likes of Sunderland and West Brom, he’s simply can’t do it against the top opposition!
To sort this out and salvage something from this mess, we have to part company with AVB now and steady the ship, much like Chelsea did themselves two years ago. Go back to 4-4-2 (certainly at home), use the talent and pace we have on the wings (Lennon, Lamela, Townsend) and use two bloody strikers up top!! Soldado needs a partner up there – without one he’s being completely and utterly wasted!! Time to recall Benny from QPR too, as it’s complete lunacy to have a player like that in the championship, who is our best LB option!!
My club is a laughing stock yet again and enough is enough – don’t even care who replaces him as nobody could do worse right now!! Give the job to someone like Hiddink, Hoddle or even Jol till the end of the season and you can bet we’ll be instantly much better off…
good post from kjspur, i was at the game too yesterday and agree with everything he said.
yes where was eriksen yesterday, if he was fit enough to play for the last 20 mins on thu, why was he not even on the bench yesterday?……everyone is focusing on daws & capoue, but the real telling stat from yesterday was that we did not have one shot on target all game! the problem is and has been all season, we don`t have anyone creative (apart from eriksen) in midfield! our team is packed with defensive midfielders and no-one is able to thread a pass through to our isolated forward/s.
i am not surprised, avb set his stall out to play like this when he first came here, but like everyone is saying, last season looked ok, because we had GB