Tottenham Talk on Monday 23rd Aug
Tottenham Talk on Monday 23rd Aug
A full stadium makes a difference, we saw that with the number of away victories last season.
Villa win a game because of 2 goals from set pieces, directly as a result of hiring a new set piece coach. Match of the Day do a full breakdown on this and Danny Murphy’s conclusion is he doesn’t understand why teams would hire a coach for set pieces!
Harry Kane
Tottenham gave Man City a deadline of Friday to come up with the money to buy Harry Kane or he will be staying.
That deadline passed with Daniel Levy refusing to entertain negotiation at £125m, that is nowhere near our valuation of him and with the cost of his replacements doubling during negotiations, there was no way Daniel Levy would accept anything but our valuation.
My understanding is that Harry Kane is staying at Tottenham and you could argue that being seen in Spurs kit and making a substitutes appearance is confirmation of that.
We would not want him getting injured if we were looking to sell him.
Set Pieces
A team who are prepared will always beat a team who are not prepared.
Spurs are hopeless from set pieces, I recently brought you the statistics from corners, woeful and I have long professed we need a throw-in coach.
I have not studied it but I'd be very interested to hear the percentage of throw-ins that result in a turnover of possession.
You have specialist coaches in other sports, look at American Football, attacking coaches, defensive coaches, special teams, 20 of them in all, every detail covered.
What does the equivalent team have in the Premier League, a quarter of that number.
Why?
Why is football so backward.
The days of giving 11 blokes a football and letting them get on with it are long gone, football isn't a sport anymore, it's a job, a business and that business needs to be run on a far more professional level than it is today.
How many times do Tottenham get to the final third and then play the wrong pass, overhit it, make the wrong decision and a chance is gone?
There should be an attacking coach, a defensive coach, a dead-ball coach, a throw-in coach in addition to the coaches we have now, not forgetting a mental coach.
We coach the feet, we coach the body, but we don't coach the most important asset, the mind.
Crazy, amateurish.
Has our data analyst come up with the number of turn-overs from a throw-in and what have we done about co-ordinating throw ins, half a dozen people involves in movements to create an opening to retain possession?
Paços de Ferreira took one quick throw and were in behind our defence bearing down on our goal, we were asleep, summed up our lazy mentality in that game.
I'm sure you'll find some of those players thought the game was beneath them, certainly their mentality was not right, why not, we should be coaching it into them weekly at worst.
Danny Murphy's view simply sums up what is wrong in the game, an out of date view from a former player.
This is the way we used to do it so this is the way it should always be done, err no.
Every game should be fed into a computer and analysed. Their should be a team working on computer programmes to calculate what options their are in any given situation and the the most effective course of action to take.
Put opponents game through a computer program to determine the probability of action in any situation, know what your opponent is going to do BEFORE he does it.
I harp back to Andros Townsend giving a goal away on the half way line because the Liverpool analyst had figured out he backheeled the ball to the side to change direction and the Liverpool player simply said thank you very much and ran off down the line with the ball resulting in them scoring.
That's the tip of the iceberg.
Football coaching is still at the tip of the iceberg quite frankly.
Yesterday came news that Tottenham approached AC Milan central midfielder Franck Kessié last week.
It was thanks to an early break into the box from Dele Alli who was very clever in allowing himself to be brought down by their keeper making his home debut.
It was Dele himself who stepped up to take the penalty and send the hapless Portuguese keeper José Sá the wrong way, which resulted in Spurs taking the three points in an entertaining 1-0 victory on Nuno Espírito Santo's return to Molineux.
Moussa Sissoko
Turkish Süper Lig team Fenerbahçe S.K. are interested in signing Tottenham midfielder Moussa Sissoko following the departure of Turkish international Ozan Tufan to Watford.
Sissoko is willing to join Fenerbahçe but only if they pay his current £80,000-a-week (€93,169 - US$108,980 - AUS$152,740) wages.
Domingos Duarte
Tottenham linked Domingos Duarte has a €30m £25.76m - US$35.09m - AUS$49.18m) release clause but Paratici is assessing a €10m (£8.59m - US$11.7m - AUS$16.39m) bid.
The 26-year-old (27 next March) Granada centre-back has a contract until 2023 and earns an estimated £19,756-a-week (€23,000 - US$26,905 - AUS$37,706).
In Spain and Portugal, release clauses aren't a players value, just a figure to stop them getting transferred cheaply.
Franck Kessié
A recent report suggested AC Milan want Tanguy Ndombele.
Paratici had a meeting with his agent, George Atangana, and offered his client a salary of €8m-a-year net (£6.86m - US$9.36m - AUS$13.09m) and a 5-year contract.
That equates to €153,846-a-week (£131,943 - US$180,056 - AUS$251,625).
Adama Traoré
Adama Traoré is way too expensive at £40m (€46.58m - US$54.49m - AUS$76.33m) when he is a little like a young Raheem Sterling, bundles of pace but very little end product.
In 141 Premier League games, he has scored 7 goals and had 16 assists covering 7,947 minutes, the equivalent to 88.3 full games.
He participates in a goal every 345.5 minutes or 3.84 games.
Lucas Moura participates in a goal every 224.89 minutes (17 goals, 10 assists) or every 2.5 games.
Steven Bergwijn participates in a goal every 199.1 minutes (4 goals, 6 assists) or every 2.21 games.
Son, as a centre-forward has participated in a goal 49 times in 55 games, he participates in a goal every 116 minutes (71 goals, 43 assists) or every 1.29 games.
You wouldn't say Bergwijn and Moura's output was great but Traore isn't in the same league as them statistically and he is valued at £40m!
If Nuno had his way, Spurs would have bought him already but Nuno is not the one making transfer decisions.
Spurs are considering taking the Spanish international (6 caps, 0 goals, 0 assists) on loan for a year which would give us a triumvirate of pace in Bergwijn, Moura, Traoré, although many would add Son to that.
Well we saw today what I have just said, no end product, through on goal and bottled it, yes he catches the eye, yes he causes problems, but his shooting is woeful.
Wolves vs Spurs
Cristian Romero didn't travel and hopefully he will be fir for Thursday while Serge Aurier, who is training, can't make a 20-man squad with three defenders injured.
Moussa Sissoko didn't play Thursday and didn't even make the bench and the same with Tanguy Ndombele.
Surely that means those three must be off before the end of the window.
Dane Scarlett continued his match day learning curve and Bryan Gil, another youngster continued to get a feel for the atmosphere in England on match day.
Harry Winks though, did make the bench.
Now on Ndombele, we have to remember that we own Lyon the remainder of his transfer fee and we need to recover that from any sale plus the agents fees.
That pushes his cost up, possibly to a level clubs do not want to pay.
Failure to achieve that and we are effectively paying him to leave the club and don't forget he is due a loyalty bonus as, although he wants to leave, he hasn't handed in a transfer request.
If we loan him out then as I explained with Joe Hart, we need to cover our annual costs for him so we would probably be paying a part of his wages, but we would receive a loan fee to cover as much as we can of that.
That is the juggling act that Fabio Paratici is doing with the offers coming in for him, not all of which appeal to him.
He thinks he is Barcelona, Real Madrid level, which he could be if he could be bothered.
Anyway, back to the game, Son still hasn't scored against Wolves, no idea why he didn't take the penalty.
Dele scored his first Premier League goal since before the pandemic began and there are only four teams who have won both their first two games, Liverpool, my favourites for the title, Brighton, Chelsea and ourselves.
West Ham have yet to play Leicester City.
Harry Kane didn't look anywhere near fit and will need some minutes under his belt on Thursday perhaps, one half or 20 minutes or so.
Adama Traoré gave Japhet Tanganga a hard time and Dávinson Sánchez put in a shaky first-half performance where once again he was beaten on the byline, this time by the returning Raúl Jiménez.
His passing out of defence was poor and on one occasion instead of sprinting to get to a ball before Traoré, he ran, then started sprinting and had to make a sliding tackle to put the ball out of play.
Sorry, but he should have been to the ball first. It is these little things that make the difference, it put them on the attack with the upper hand when we could have had it.
I recall a pass to Dele that he had to stretch for when he could easily have played it to his feet, Dele had 2 players around him at the time.
Dier, who gave them their one chance when trying to dribble around a player in their half when he should have passed the ball, had the better game of the two for the second match running.
There were too many wrong passing options chosen.
The easiest pass isn't always the best pass, sometimes it keeps us under pressure when with a bit of vision another easy pass to someone in space is on.
Again this could be solved with the vision training I have suggested a few times now.
Son again couldn't hold the ball up so the return of Harry Kane is certainly needed, which begs the question, where do you play Son?
I ask, because Steven Bergwijn showed more in this game than in any other for me and his touch of skill on the sideline to take two Wolves players out of the game when a throw-in looked certain was simply Delesque.
Then there was his backheel in the box to give us a shooting opportunity after his excellent shot on target.
Overall a very pleasing battling performance that showed the non-believers that we are not defensive pushovers, although there was still plenty to work on.
Dele doesn't seem to like his new role to me, well not the defending part, you could see him sighing during the game, drop his head before jogging to the left to do some more defending around our area.
He started taking extra time on the floor while the game went on and I was expecting him to be substituted.
It was an efficient Mourinho performance under Nuno, defend and counter-attack.
Our Achilles heel, passing out from the back under pressure was evident in that first half, but I write about that in Wednesday's post, which already has a 1,729 word Spurs Chat intro.
Hugo had one serious save to make, one-on-one with Traoré and came out on top in his 300th Lillywhites Premier League appearance, a new record.
Oh yes, the commentary I was watching, well for the first-half, I turned it off for the second-half, was so Wolves biased it was untrue.
They rated Neves shooting from outside the box, yet as I pointed out in midweek with some stats I gave you, Neves is the second worst long distance shooter in the Premier League, 1 goal from 50 shots last season if I remember rightly.
You can add another couple to that today, although one was on target, the other, miles over the bar.
Brief Match Report
Tottenham Hotspur maintained our perfect start to the new Premier League season at Molineux.It was thanks to an early break into the box from Dele Alli who was very clever in allowing himself to be brought down by their keeper making his home debut.
It was Dele himself who stepped up to take the penalty and send the hapless Portuguese keeper José Sá the wrong way, which resulted in Spurs taking the three points in an entertaining 1-0 victory on Nuno Espírito Santo's return to Molineux.
Without him being up to speed Wolves lacked the cutting edge they were missing last season during his absence.
It took 9 minutes for Spurs to get the only goal of the game and Wolves pressed hard for the rest of the half but couldn't really trouble Lloris.
Lloris was called into action after an hour when he had to save a Francisco Trincão (guess where he come from) shot at the near post.
He then had to save from the lively Adama Traoré who was a thorn in Spurs side all afternoon, when he was played through just after the hour, after Dier lost the ball in midfield.
Harry Kane made his first appearance of the season after 71 minutes replacing Son and had his chance when through on goal blocked by Sá.
Spurs hung on to maintain our unbeaten record at Molineux stretching back to 2010.
Match Stats
Wolves Possession 59% Spurs Possession 41%
Wolves Goal Attempts 25 Spurs Goal Attempts 8
Wolves Shots on Goal 6 Spurs Shots on Goal 6
Wolves Shots off Goal 9 Spurs Shots off Goal 0
Wolves Blocked Shots 10 Spurs Blocked Shots 2
Wolves Free-kicks 7 Spurs Free-kicks 9
Wolves Corner Kicks 5 Spurs Corner Kicks 4
Wolves Offsides 2 Spurs Offsides 0
Wolves Throw-Ins 28 Spurs Throw-Ins 20
Wolves Keeper Saves 5 Spurs Keeper Sales 6
Wolves Total Passes 469 Spurs Total Passes 346
Wolves Completed Passes 394 Spurs Completed Passes 275
Wolves Tackles 29 Spurs Tackles 17
Wolves Fouls 9 Spurs Fouls 7
Wolves Attacks 134 Spurs Attacks 82
Wolves Dangerous Attacks 90 Spurs Dangerous Attacks 25
- For the second game running Dele covered more ground than any other Spurs player, 11.05Km.
- Second was Skipp 10.69km and third was Højbjerg 10.25km.
- Our head-to-head record against Wolves now stands at won 8, drawn 3, lost 4 and a positive goal difference of 9 (28 - 19).
- This was Dele's first goal against Wolves in his 5th game against them, Jermain Defoe (6 games) and Robbie Keane (4 games) are our top scorers with 4 goals each.
- Son Heung-min is our top assister with 2 in 5 games.
- Hugo Lloris has kept 2 clean sheets against them in 5 games.
- Reguilón to Bergwijn to Reguilón to Dele PENALTY
Well that's it folks.
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1 comment
That's not to deny they did have pressure, and possession, and also that they actually threatened on a few occasions. Simply that all-in-all it didn't add up to any more than you'd expect from a Premier League also-ran side. On the few occasions we really broke through we offered more threat; otherwise we barked & snarled just as they did.
Bergwijn impressed me too on the day, though I have to say that even on what I see as his best day, he choked in front of goal. So similar to Traore in that regard. Wrong choices when the pressure's really on. What a sublime dribble to get to one of the two other times we really threatened though (after the goal). I hope that…