Why Tottenham should be 3rd in the Premiership
How many times have we seen Tottenham end up losing or drawing games in the last minute/s this season? After the sacking of Martin Jol and the appointment of widely praised Juande Ramos many thought their season would turn around. Wrong!
They didn’t get off the best of starts to the 2007/08 campaign after losing 1-0 to Sunderland. And Michael Chopra’s last minute goal to snatch a result from Spurs on the opening day of the season has not been the only one they’ve seen since.
Their abysmal record in the Premier League this season, from their expectations, has seen them win just two games in total. Both at home meaning; they’ve actually lost more times at home (4) so far this season than away (3). They have the second highest record of goals scored at home so far this season with 17; better than Manchester United, Chelsea or Liverpool, (only Arsenal have scored three more than them). In return though, they’ve actually conceded the most goals at home this season so far – 15. Derby who are languishing at the bottom of the table have even conceded one less with 14.
These statistics have revealed Tottenham to be in 16th place, well below their expectations where for the last two seasons running they’ve almost broken into the top four and getting themselves in the Champions League. The latest defeat came at the weekend at home to Birmingham. A fine win for new Brum boss Alex McLeish, 3-2 with, yet again, Spurs conceding a last minute goal this time from Sebastian Larsson.
The stats I’ve just highlighted above show that Spurs don’t lack goals. In fact they have one of the best attacking forces in the Premiership. Fair enough Dimitar Berbatov hasn’t reproduced his remarkable tally last season but captain Robbie Keane has been brilliant. In fairness to them they can play good football on their day and can produce goals. They have a decent young team and made some good signings in the summer in Gareth Bale and Darren Bent (although he’s not worth the same as Thierry Henry, definitely overpriced). So it doesn’t take a lot to work out the problem with the team lies at the back. The stats don’t lie!
Recently I read an article that the board were still blaming Martin Jol for the outcome to their season so far. Well…what about the players? As Brian Clough once said, “Managers don’t win games, players do!” And what happened at Birmingham?? What about the great Ramos revolution, why has it not started?? Paul Robinson has not had the best of season’s, for club or country, that’s a given. But he needs a lot more protection from his defence. I’ve got several mates who are Spurs fans who have told me that their team are missing Ledley King. Maybe but what about the other defenders? Does the Spurs defence really just rely on injury-prone King??
Far too often I’ve watched them this season not defend properly and not close down the opposition sooner, therefore not defending their lead/ point. They always seem to buckle under the pressure, especially when having to fight in the last 10 minutes of a game.
The amount of points dropped by Spurs this season in games they’ve thrown away in the last minute/s amasses to 19. A shocking 19 points! Add those points onto their total now and the club would find themselves level on points with Chelsea, potentially levitating themselves all the way up to third. Isn’t that what they were expecting at the beginning of 2007/08? Instead they find themselves with a measly 12 points, one more than Middlesbrough who are in the relegation zone.
I expect January is going to be a massive month for Spurs in the transfer market. I’m just wondering whether a DECENT defender or two will be brought in though or whether they’ll bring in another striker and three or four midfielders to clog up an already expanded squad.
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One other thing you forgot to mention was the amount of goals spurs have let in from players who either never usualy score or score one in a million type goals, Just how many time’s will spurs be the team with goal of the month against them this season ? I’ve lost count it seem’s every other week we have a wonder goal scored against us at the this season.
You are both also forgetting the 5 or 6 deflected goals we have conceded this season. The defence have been poor, really really poor, however the luck of the gods have really not been on our side. Being optimistic though, I think 2008 could be potentially awesome for us, with Ledley likely to be back and another Defender/Left midfielder added to the squad in January we could be a force again soon.
Still in 3 cups, don’t count us out of either of them!!
What you have failed to mention or relise is that we have 3 first choice centre backs injured, not just King. That means we have had to put Y.Kaboul in the deep end. But i do feel that we have taken a major set back and possibly been over taken by a few clubs like Man C and A.Villa. I do blame both M Jol and Commolli. Last season showed that we can score goals and our 3 strikers scored over 100 goals. So what do we do, spend most of our money on another striker and then when we have injuries we can’t cope. But Spurs do not like doing things the easy way and that is one reason why i love them. One other thing the FA are a bunch of C*NTS.
The midfield is just as guilty as the defence. Berbatov too.
Problems everywhere.
Who’s fault that we cant defend?
Everyone from the top down at the club. Transfer policy (ie the manager isn’t buying the players he wants to work with and we have somebody else deciding what he wants to see. Oh and he used to be a gooner), quality of player signed (Commolli again I’m afraid), all the coaches, half the strikers, most of the midfield, players like Chimbonda who are quality but cant be arsed, Dawson for not being Tony Adams, King for being injured, Bale for not being able to play more than 3 games in a row, Rocha & Kaboul being inadequate right now to do what they have always done and just defend well (I mean that’s why we bought them for 11.5m isn’t it?, Didier Zokora for being so poor as a defensive midfielder and even worse as an attacking one, Jenas for thinking he’s better than he is, and Robinson for not being either the strong character we thought and for not being the keeper we thought, I mean he can barely save anything anymore.
u should calculate the number of points on average, a premier league side has lost this season in the final minutes and remove that from spurs theoretical total.
this is becuase conceding in final minutes of a game is part and parcel of any season.
what would their score be then?
Is it me or should Ramos be telling Robbo that in the last 15 minutes of a game he should be standing on guard, preferbly on his frickin goal line! Time & time again when we let in these wonder goals, Robbos standing too far off his line! Personally, I know what I would do!
I’ve read some rubbish in my time but this one tops the lot. This is just the sort of crap that makes us ridiculed by all other fans. The basis of this drivel is “if only we’d have beaten this club” or “if only we hadn’t have let in that last minute goal” - it’s all nonsense. Every club can turn around and say “if only”. It doesn’t make them climb up the league table. An article that pointed out our many deficiencies would have been more useful (however upsetting it would be to read).
Tottenham desperately need king back.But they still need another solid defender and more than one left footed player in their team and also a better cetral midfield pairing. Jenas is no carrick and zokora is shit.Theyd prob start keeping clean sheets if they sorted this out. Not jols fault though, commolis crap signings.
3rd above whom, I wonder? Certainly not man u, chelsea, arsenal o liverpool?
Hmmmmmm i would have laughed less at an article tha said
United
it would have been more believable
Liverpool
Arsenal
Relegated while Chelsea just survive
Fulham would be top of the league if it werent for late goals being conceded
Thats true, i read Fulham would be on top of the league if the games were only went for 45 mins.
This is a rubbish article, and spurs deserve to be where they are.
Rubbish article…. Spurs are where they are for many reasons. Poor defending is one, physical defenciencies another, the Jol sag….I could go on.
You’d be an idiot to expect a Ramos revolution just because he has come in, but having said that I believe he has changed things. His subs are working quite differently as opposed to hapless Jol. But these things don’t change overnight, when your as low on confidence as the spurs are right now.
Reading your article makes me think you haven’t been paying attention to anything that has gone on recently. You haven’t heard what the manager has been saying, haven’t been watching the difference on the pitch…..Rubbish article….
“The amount of points dropped by Spurs this season in games they’ve thrown away in the last minute/s amasses to 19. A shocking 19 points! Add those points onto their total now and the club would find themselves level on points with Chelsea, potentially levitating themselves all the way up to third. Isn’t that what they were expecting at the beginning of 2007/08? Instead they find themselves with a measly 12 points, one more than Middlesbrough who are in the relegation zone.”
Thats actually completely wrong. We’ve actually lost 19 points from winning positions and 8 points in the last minute. Sloppy story.
What a poor piece of “journalism”. Inaccurate, error-ridden and a poor assessment of Spurs’ season & problems.
We have defended very badly this season but that is improving, especially in set piece situations which was our real weak spot. Individual errors have cost us more recently, min particualr by Kaboul, but when you only have 4 fit defenders out of 9 its hard to really turn things around quickly.
its actually 19 pts with games lost frm being in a winning position. of course we havnt defended well but look how many blinders, deflections and last min goals we concede. If man u, chelsea or arsenal get a pen against them like we did v brum i’ll get an arsenal tattoo on my face. V w.ham green shouldv got sent off, no 2 ways about it, for that challenge on Keane which was the simplest decision a ref will hav to make. But the following week he gets a str8 red for winning the ball
i could go on for ever about our bad luck
That is what i like about football so many different opinions.All these stats that fly around dont mean anything,if arsenal only played the second half of all there games last season they would have won the league,history shows that man.utd won the league because they played for 90 mins and in some cases 98 mins if at old trafford,stuff the stats face reality spurs are in trouble it was the strikers to blame against birmingham and fulham when we should have won both those games by a big margin,i liked jol but he took us as far as he could,now its time for ramos,its our 125th anniversary and the thing i fear is arsenal winning the league and us being relegated,dont be to certain that it wont happen,come on you spurs.
spurs have themselves 2 blame 4 keeping robinson.
it’s ok 2 do the occasional error but defense should have faith in their keepers. watch cech, reina, green…
n he leaves his line 2 much.
spurs defense is pretty gud, there complementarity is shit
Shoulda, woulda, coulda
I should be sleeping with a super model, but I’m not.
Ted, wouldnt u be pissed off if u had a super model in bed n she left at the last minute 6 times
What about all the fortuate decisions spurs have had go there way this season.
A clear penalty not given when Robbo fouled Agbonlahor and Kaboul equalised with a double offside goal in injury time.
Against Birmingham the spurs first goal shouldn’t have been given for 2 reasons. Firstly Huddlestone tugged back Muamba and then Berbs dived for the penalty.
Same old lucky tottenham.
Oh dear, Spurs are near the bottom so it must be bad luck, bad refereeing, cheating by the opposition, injuries, loss of form, FA biase, Sky’s scheduling, traffic round the stadium, dirty tricks involving lasagne - anything but down to themselves.
Spurs have had more bad luck & bad decisions then ones that go in their favour. Injuries have also cost us.
However, we are where we are because we are not good enough!!
Birmingham were awful and totally outplayed - however they manged to score 2 goals from three shots!!! and 3 goals from 6 (on target)!! We had 18 attempts and could only score 2.
Bring back MARTIN JOL!
More to the point I think has been some terrible refereeing. I was at Old Trafford when Spurs were denied 2 penalties by the ref only to conceed a last minute, deflected shot by Nani. Few people would deny we totally outplayed them on their own turf.
We have wrongfully conceeded penalties and late free kicks that have resulted in goals against us.
Keane (who was top prem goalscorer) getting sent off and banned for 3 massive matches and no doubt leading to us losing 3 points last week was the icing on the cake.
Maybe someone should work out where we would be in the league if it wasn’t for atrocious refeering. Here is my estimation:
1:Tottenham GF 97 GA 2 Points 144
2:Derby GF 3 GA 99 Points 143
3:Brum GF 55 GA 54 Points 34
18:Man Utd GF 4 GA 236 Points -73
what your forgetting is that villa were 3-0 up against spurs earlier this season therefore that is a losing position were they gained a point. this article is farcical the table doesnt lie they are in the position in the league which they deserve for their poor performances against the likes of sunderland and birmingham
Lol, ok, we will take that point off the 19 others, so it’s only 18 now… Also if you watched both the Sunderland (where the ref denied a clear penalty to Berb in the first half) and Birmingham (where we were all over them until the ref sent Keane off for a fair tackle and they were given a penalty although Kaboul made light contact with the ball before the player) matches, we played them off the park. Maybe you should pick your example matches better.
Stop the squealing and moaning Spurs’ fans. You are where you are because you deserve to just there. Over a season you get your just deserts. Like England, Spurs have simply not been good enough; whether it’s attitudes, systems, managers, the players etc. etc. Work needs to be done on the team. You have a very good manager in Ramos and over a couple of years, you ought to be back up in the top six. Until then, avoid getting embroiled in a relegation dog-fight and just chill it, man.