As expected, tougher than many thought
Sometimes it's not nice to be right. In my preview I said WBA are likely to score in the second half and we will probably need to score 2 goals to win, unfortunately we only had 1 shot on target, Roberto Soldado after 71 minutes.
The statistics showed us we struggle against WBA every season and find it difficult to score goals against them. Today showed the flaw yet again in the inverted winger system when it isn't played right.
If the full-backs are overlapping and passing the ball back into the area for shots or putting in a cross like the Danny Rose one in the early stages of the first half then excellent, it's a great system. However if you don't pick out the advancing full-backs at the right time then it's an easy system to defend against.
It's the system we are playing so it's a system we need to make work, today we didn't. Too often we played the ball too early to Rose in particular where he didn't have anywhere to go, we should be dragging the defence one side and then switching play fast, but we switch play slowly with two passes that look great on individual passing stats but do nothing for our game.
An incident in the second half summed up our problem today for me, when Erik Lamela, for the umpteenth time cut inside and tried to threat a pass through a massed defence, he should have been playing Danny Rose in, who had acres of room. He would have been in behind the defence and Pochettino went spare, ranting and waving his arms. It took the commentators about 30 seconds to realise what should have happened when the cameras went back to Pochettino for the second time.
I'm afraid Lamela was trying to make those passes all day without success, but he wasn't the only culprit, Eriksen was equally as guilty. When Aaron Lennon was brought on, rather late, we didn't create any space for him to run at his defender, simply gave him the ball slowly with two men on him.
By this time Dembele, who slowed out play all day, was off the field. Capoue and Paulinho were like complete strangers, when WBA had the ball on the right they both went across and the middle was wide open for them to attack, fortunately they didn't see but there was no communication or organisation between the two. Bringing Lennon on for Capoue left Paulinho playing the defensive role but his passing was atrocious. Does he actually want to be at the club? What role is he here to do?
As I've been saying for a year, simply play the ball to Chiriches's left and he is hopeless. WBA exploited it all game and found him easy pickings. If their player had gone over his out stretched leg in the second half when he cut back inside him, they would have had a certain penalty. And what was he doing when, for the second home game in a row, instead of clearing the ball when being pressed on the edge his own penalty box, he tries to turn and dribble out of defence. Ludicrous defending.
He should not have been playing and he shouldn't play in the Premier League unless their is nobody else. He is a liability that can not inspire confidence in his defence or the rest of the team and that is essential for a centre-back. Still at least he has learnt to head a ball!!! He does Kyle Naughton impersonations at Christmas parties obviously.
Quite frankly that showed a muddled brain, under any sort of stress he make poor decisions consistently and a player who can't remain mentally calm under pressure is a disaster waiting to happen.
John Lacey was commentating today and is a former centre-back so he knows all about defending. He had the same views, simply play the ball to Chiriches's left and have a field day. He was poor against Sunderland in what should have been an easy game for him and was even worse today.
A poor centre-back, a poor central midfield performance and a poor performance from Emmanuel Adebayor. The spine of a team should be it's strength, today it was our weakness.
The team selection was wrong I'm afraid, our two best centre-backs weren't even playing and they are not injured, we have consigned them to the Europa League. That suggest to me we took the opposition too lightly.
The statistics showed us we struggle against WBA every season and find it difficult to score goals against them. Today showed the flaw yet again in the inverted winger system when it isn't played right.
If the full-backs are overlapping and passing the ball back into the area for shots or putting in a cross like the Danny Rose one in the early stages of the first half then excellent, it's a great system. However if you don't pick out the advancing full-backs at the right time then it's an easy system to defend against.
It's the system we are playing so it's a system we need to make work, today we didn't. Too often we played the ball too early to Rose in particular where he didn't have anywhere to go, we should be dragging the defence one side and then switching play fast, but we switch play slowly with two passes that look great on individual passing stats but do nothing for our game.
An incident in the second half summed up our problem today for me, when Erik Lamela, for the umpteenth time cut inside and tried to threat a pass through a massed defence, he should have been playing Danny Rose in, who had acres of room. He would have been in behind the defence and Pochettino went spare, ranting and waving his arms. It took the commentators about 30 seconds to realise what should have happened when the cameras went back to Pochettino for the second time.
I'm afraid Lamela was trying to make those passes all day without success, but he wasn't the only culprit, Eriksen was equally as guilty. When Aaron Lennon was brought on, rather late, we didn't create any space for him to run at his defender, simply gave him the ball slowly with two men on him.
By this time Dembele, who slowed out play all day, was off the field. Capoue and Paulinho were like complete strangers, when WBA had the ball on the right they both went across and the middle was wide open for them to attack, fortunately they didn't see but there was no communication or organisation between the two. Bringing Lennon on for Capoue left Paulinho playing the defensive role but his passing was atrocious. Does he actually want to be at the club? What role is he here to do?
As I've been saying for a year, simply play the ball to Chiriches's left and he is hopeless. WBA exploited it all game and found him easy pickings. If their player had gone over his out stretched leg in the second half when he cut back inside him, they would have had a certain penalty. And what was he doing when, for the second home game in a row, instead of clearing the ball when being pressed on the edge his own penalty box, he tries to turn and dribble out of defence. Ludicrous defending.
He should not have been playing and he shouldn't play in the Premier League unless their is nobody else. He is a liability that can not inspire confidence in his defence or the rest of the team and that is essential for a centre-back. Still at least he has learnt to head a ball!!! He does Kyle Naughton impersonations at Christmas parties obviously.
Quite frankly that showed a muddled brain, under any sort of stress he make poor decisions consistently and a player who can't remain mentally calm under pressure is a disaster waiting to happen.
John Lacey was commentating today and is a former centre-back so he knows all about defending. He had the same views, simply play the ball to Chiriches's left and have a field day. He was poor against Sunderland in what should have been an easy game for him and was even worse today.
A poor centre-back, a poor central midfield performance and a poor performance from Emmanuel Adebayor. The spine of a team should be it's strength, today it was our weakness.
The team selection was wrong I'm afraid, our two best centre-backs weren't even playing and they are not injured, we have consigned them to the Europa League. That suggest to me we took the opposition too lightly.
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