Tottenham Hotspur Champions League Thread

Mr. Guappa

3-2 is a great result to take back to the Lane after that performance.

There were some shocking performances in the 1st half, particularly from BAE and Pavlyuchenko. Corluka, Modric and Palacios were also poor and the 2 CBs looked like strangers. I think Harry has to take a share of the blame for the start... surely 4-5-1 was the way to go, we were far too open through the middle all game long.

Improved performance in the 2nd half. Huddlestone, Kranjcar and Keane all made a difference when they came on. We lived very dangerously and they should probably have got a 4th before Pav struck.

King has to start next week... Dawson is so much better beside him. I'd probably go with Keane and Crouch up front, and Bale/Niko on the left.

kakee

Missing the game tonight because I have a match of my own

Jaysus you missed a classic there THFC. Imagine if you stayed home to watch this.

YFlyer

kakee wrote: »

Jaysus you missed a classic there THFC. Imagine if you stayed home to watch this.

More like vintage Spurs

Kastielz

To be honest lads I'm not too disheartened. I had expected a draw or a 1-0 loss due to the pitch anyway, now we have two away goals. Although we were lucky we didn't concede more. Was disappointed with BAE, Pav and Dos Santos (why was he started? Lennon injured or something?)

We're still in with a great chance at the lane, let's hope we get our act together.

kakee

(why was he started? Lennon injured or something?)

Harry said after the game that Lennon felt discomfort in his joints due to the artificial pitch. I reckon Lennon knew the lads were going to be crap and didn't want any part of it.

Dublin Spur

great result after what happened in the first 30mins

we'll piss on them next week

Saab Ed

Lads im suprised by some of your reactions. Watching the way that ball moved about was just mental , it was like trying to play a completly different game.

When they hit the ball it just wizzed off their foot , it didnt have to take time to build up speed. They were used to this. You could really see the difference between players used to and not used to the plastic pitch for the 3rd goal. The ball just flew and the attacking player was wise to it.

If its no advantage to play on a plastic pitch then why did UEFA change it for the euro finals , because its un playable for teams who are not used to it thats why. It'll be a very different game at WHL. Still im shocked that some of ye had us done after 30 minutes :p

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

kakee wrote: »

Jaysus you missed a classic there THFC. Imagine if you stayed home to watch this.

Yeah I know! Kinda happy tho, could've imagined myself breaking the TV when we 3 down... Any one have a highlights link or can I watch it on Youtube seeing as its not a Prem game...?

Wolfe Tone

THFC wrote: »

Yeah I know! Kinda happy tho, could've imagined myself breaking the TV when we 3 down... Any one have a highlights link or can I watch it on Youtube seeing as its not a Prem game...?

http://footyroom.com/

marty2002

dabbler2004 wrote: »

Marty; quality? There has been none so far, let's hope we can limit the damage but going on that first half I'm not at all hopeful.

What i meant was that spurs were noticably the better team from 30 mins on, they certainly never played any quality at all.

mushykeogh

I can see " 3 nil down after 30 mins" becoming the new "2 points from 8 games".
Back four were awful, over ran in midfield and pav with a septic first touch til he buried that chance.
The two goals could prove vital, defoe and modric have to be doubts for second leg after picking up strains. Still in the tie but only just. King needs to rolled out in wheelchair if necessary next week.
As Pav was lining up his goal, i was thinking "dont feicing shot from there you muppet", some finish.
Spurs, you have to just love them, never a dull moment.

Sugarlumps

Could of been a lot worse as many of you have said. King is must for next week, forget the Stoke game. It's not the end of the world, can't play as badly as what we did tonight for the second leg.

Hatch99

Dublin Spur wrote: »

great result after what happened in the first 30mins

we'll piss on them next week

Hope your right. We need an early goal though. Dont want it turning in to one of those nervy nights where it's 1 nil with 20 to go !!

golfball37

hope some of ye followed me and put a few quid on Young Boys last night? Head not Heart lads.

I had 40 on them at 9/2 cos I fancied them to win on a plastic pitch against a notoriously flaky side like us. the result was perfect as it means we still should go through yet I still collect...:D

Bodie Doyle

golfball37 wrote: »

hope some of ye followed me and put a few quid on Young Boys last night? Head not Heart lads.

I had 40 on them at 9/2 cos I fancied them to win on a plastic pitch against a notoriously flaky side like us. the result was perfect as it means we still should go through yet I still collect...:D

I would never get an satisfaction from a Spurs defeat no matter how much money I had won.

Back to the game though and we were poxed to get away with just a 3-2 defeat. Hudd and Robbie are the only 2 who can say they did well last night. How slow was Dawson? Bassong was asleep half the time and only redeemed himself with the goal. Does anyone out there know where Wilson Palacios is because someone else was wearing his jersey last night?
Gio was awful, just awful. Pav gave the ball away for their second goal and was pretty dreadful for the majority of the game bar his wonder strike.
But .... we got away with it somehow. Does it show character or are we just lucky? Who cares. We are in with a great chance with the second leg at home next week.

Pacing Mule

It's not a case of head or heart. A true supporter should never ever hope to profit from their teams defeat.

golfball37

Just to be clear- I wasn't hoping to profit at all from last night I just knew we'd lose so figured I may as well.

nothing would have made me happier than to have been wrong

el diablo

The second leg certainly won't be easy and Young Boys look dangerous with their counter-attacting game. Them lot watering their plastic pitch certainly caught the lads off guard.
After going 3-0 down I could see them going on and scoring more. We certainly got lucky last night with that scoreline.

RichMc70

I feel like we got out of jail last night.

If Young Boys had taken those two sitters in the second half, we would have been looking at a 5-1 scoreline. As it was Pav scored a cracking goal to put us back in the tie. Ironic in a way because he was one of the worst on the pitch.

I think we can do it in the 2nd leg but I won't say I'm 100% confident as afterall Young Boys went to Fenerbache level at 2-2 and got the 1-0 win they needed to get to this stage.

A nervy home return leg I think.

Bodie Doyle

golfball37 wrote: »

Just to be clear- I wasn't hoping to profit at all from last night I just knew we'd lose so figured I may as well.

nothing would have made me happier than to have been wrong

If you weren't hoping to profit from the defeat last night then why did you put 40 quid on Young Boys to beat us? Were you hoping to lose your hard earned cash but be happy Spurs won?

kakee

hope some of ye followed me and put a few quid on Young Boys last night?

I reckon half the spurs team had money on this one lol!!!!

2nd Row Donkey

typical f**king spurs, giving me more false hope for the return leg!:mad:

We'll mess it up at home in typical farcial fashion.

We need a 1-nil win to progress right?

Watch spurs get the 1-nil lead only to throw it away with 10 mins to go .. probably an og, penalty or something similarily self inflicted. Final score 1-1, YB progess 4-3 on Agg

Or worse, the return leg goes to 3-2 to spurs (5-5 on agg) and then we score an OG or give away a penalty in the dying moments.

You read it here first.

Hatch99

2nd Row Donkey wrote: »

typical f**king spurs, giving me more false hope for the return leg!:mad:

We'll mess it up at home in typical farcial fashion.

We need a 1-nil win to progress right?

Watch spurs get the 1-nil lead only to throw it away with 10 mins to go .. probably an og, penalty or something similarily self inflicted. Final score 1-1, YB progess 4-3 on Agg

Or worse, the return leg goes to 3-2 to spurs (5-5 on agg) and then we score an OG or give away a penalty in the dying moments.

You read it here first.

Love the positivity...

keane=cock

just to clear this one up.

ok spurs are not used to playing on a "plastic" pitch. its not plastic like the ones in england in the 80's(luton) its like grass. harder surface yeah n the ball moves faster.

these are professional footballers! they play football for a living. some of the defending was shocking. if u seen it in the conference u would say they werent good enough for that level let alone champions league. its easier to pass on that surface yet they couldnt do that either. they need to openly admitt they made a balls of it. they underestemated the young boys drastically. they got caught cold and got punished. needed to be professional in this tie and they werent.

got outta jail with the two away goals. one nil at the lane n we are through. put it down as a learning curve.

i said before if we dont beat them we dont deserve to play champions league.

COME ON YOU SPURS.

believe lads

mickman

i still think we will eat them alive at the lane, it could be 5 or 6. young boys are a poor team who caught us on the hop cos they were fitter, a gammy pitch and we under estimated them. simple as that.

none of that will happen next week. one thing i think happened tonight is that ekotto was exposed again for the fraud that he is. caught napping time and time again. he nearly cost us the game against city at the weekend and was all over the place tonight

when corluka got the ball last night i had to turn away, i actually couldnt watch him pass it back to dawson EVERY SINGLE TIME. he has no pace, cant attack and is an ok defender. ship him out now

Mullo76

mickman wrote: »

i still think we will eat them alive at the lane, it could be 5 or 6.

Jesus Mick now thats positivity and I hope you are right. I think we will progress but the way they are set up is ideal for parking the bus and them counter attacking quickly which they looked good at.

We should have too much for them but then again we should have had too much for stoke et al last year. Pesimistic eh:)

oppiuy

Hopefully last night will open the purse strings a the lane. We need a top quality centre half and centre forward. Bassong and Defoe just cant cut it at the top level. I love Pav but he was woeful all night, They all were really. Keane did well when he came on, he should be rewarded with a start against stoke.

i THINK we'll take them at the lane but we'll do it the Tottenham way, cause us all minor heart attacks and do our best to Fcuk it up

Dave11

Sure where in god's name do you start with this one......

We were SO SO SO lucky to come away from that game only 3-2 down! They had 2/3 clear chances in the second half which would have just ended the tie! The first half hour was one of the worst half hours I've ever seen Spurs play in the 23 odd years I'm supporting them! I couldn't believe the difference between Saturday and last night. Player wise.... Corluka looks so slow and sluggish, Dawson played well as always and was unlucky on the goal I think, Bassong- less said the better, goal or no goal!, BAE is just a disaster, Dos Santos was so negative. I was roaring at the the tele to actually play it forward and stop turning back to Corluka, Palacios is just away in another world sometimes. I believe he has a few personnal issues going on and maybe he should be given time away from the game to sort things out. Modric was ok, Bale ok, Defoe and Pav were very poor and Pav's first touvh was shocking, funny pitch or not, not good enough!
I thought Keane, Tom and Krancjar did ok when they came on and think Keane has defo earned a start against Stoke and will be disgusted if Harry doesn't see that!!

Now..... Back to the Lane it is....I am confident that we will sort this out and go through. I think we were very disrespectful towards Young Boys and thought we were just going to cruise by them.... that doesn't happen in the Champs League!!!! I assume we will approach the game in a totally different way Wednesday week and be professional about it!

COYS!

Mr. Guappa

Decent article on last nights game:

Will `Arry Learn From Swiss Mistake?

'Tactics don't win matches' was the headline on Harry Redknapp's Sun column following England's friendly victory over Hungary. In fairness to Harry, the headline is a tad disengenuous - he was clearly talking specifically about formations rather than generally about tactics - but the theme was that football 'is 10 per cent about the formation and 90 per cent about the players'. He might care to calculate those figures again.

One glance at Tottenham's starting line-up in Switzerland on Tuesday night was enough to evoke the three words 'asking for trouble'. First lesson of management in European football: Do not play 4-4-2 away from home in the first leg of a two-legged tie. You could add the caveat 'unless you have two strikers in startling form', but that caveat would be wasted on a Spurs side that featured an out-of-streak Jermain Defoe and bit-part, part-time footballer Roman Pavlyuchenko.

Neither player is lauded for their contribution outside the penalty area, so Redknapp basically sent out eight outfield players (including the lightweight pair Luka Modric and Giovani) to contain ten Young Boys - who frankly urinated all over them in the opening half-hour until Tom Huddlestone came on, to suggest that including someone capable of keeping and distributing a football might not have been a terrible idea.

Redknapp woefully underestimated Tottenham's opposition - "We watched them Saturday and they were poor" - and that surely must have influenced his selection, mistakenly believing that their supposedly-superior firepower would be enough to steamroller an average Swiss side. Sorry Harry but this is the Champions League and it really doesn't work like that. There's a reason Sir Alex Ferguson saves his 4-4-2 formation for games against poorer Premier League opposition. He would not have played Dimitar Berbatov and Wayne Rooney in Berne, and Pavlyuchenko and Defoe are far from being in the class of that double act.

Everyone was quick to denigrate Fabio Capello for stubbornly sticking to 4-4-2, but we will not hold our breath waiting for the same derision to be heaped on tabloid favourite Redknapp, who was sprung out of jail by a Russian striker lucky to still be on the pitch after his own woeful opening 45 minutes. Absolute disaster was averted, but blame for that disaster should have been placed equally on Redknapp and the Spurs defence. The good news for Tottenham fans is that their manager may have been taught a salutary lesson.

If Tottenham had triumphed in Switzerland by a couple of goals, Redknapp's gung-ho tactics would have been applauded and then replicated in the group stages. Good old 'Arry, playing the English way - he's obviously heard that these foreigners really don't like it up 'em. Instead, Redknapp tinkered, ultimately bringing on Robbie Keane and switching to something closer to the 4-4-1-1 tactic that should be their default mode in Europe.

As Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez have previously proved, success at this level really is about tactics and formations rather than a slap on the back and a bottle of ketchup.

If Spurs do get past the Swiss - and the bookies currently have them at 2/7 to do so - then their second move (after buying a centre-half quicker than Michael Dawson and less jittery than Sebastien Bassong) should be to bring in an experienced striker capable of playing in a 4-5-1 formation. Miroslav Klose is one name mentioned on these pages and the German would suit the role and the ambitions of the club perfectly.

Perhaps with the right personnel, coupled with the shocking lessons of the arse-reddening 30 minutes of spanking at the hands of Young Boys, Tottenham and Redknapp could yet emerge from their first Champions League campaign in credit.

Sarah Winterburn

Link: http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,13320_6320378,00.html

Undercover

A combination of King's absence, our not being used to the surface and opening night nerves all added up to a classic Spurs non-performance. Just when we though those days were over. That said the reactionary comments are a little over the top. While they scored their three chances we missed our two that should have been put away in the first half. Confidence drips away easily when these things go against you and the King ain't there.

Wasn't overly impressed with Young Boys, like Mick above I fully expect us to put them to the sword, by halftime, next week. And sure if we can't we've no business being in the CL anyway.