‘AVB faces a backlash from Spurs fans’ – Lazy Journalism

AVB attacks Spurs fans’ , ‘Villas-Boas turns on Tottenham fans’ and ‘AVB faces a backlash from Spurs fans’  were just a few of the headlines littering the sports news feeds in the aftermath of our win against a very resolute Hull team. I wonder if the Hull City coach driver got a bonus for being able to manoeuvre the team bus onto the pitch.

Now I would like to think that we Spurs fans are vastly more intelligent than the average Gooner and can see through the tabloid campaign of causing unrest at the Lane because negativity sells papers.  Ian Holloway has gone already and Moyes was given annual leave this week after beating Stoke so it’s no surprise to me they’ve latched onto this non story. AVB has just asked for a bit more patience from the home fans when trying to break down teams who have settled for a point from the first minute and he’s perfectly justified in doing so.

Now if we analyse the Spurs team at the moment, AVB has laid the foundations that every team needs to achieve success in the most competitive league in the world. We now keep clean sheets and we now win games away from home consistently which is a new concept to us.  It’s easy to forget that we played our best football this season in the first 50 minutes of the Chelsea game and that was at the Lane so I don’t think we have a major problem just a little fine tuning here and there.  Our problem is creating chances against teams who are happy to sit in front of their 18 yard box and hit on the counter every now and then.

A few suggestions that may help us to counter this problem:

Change in formation:

Teams coming to the lane know we will play 4-2-3-1 so they can plan the whole week to play against this and how to deny us space so maybe AVB chould throw them a curved ball and play  4-4-2 with Soldado and Defoe upfront from the start. If they are happy to let us have the ball then being outnumbered in the middle shouldn’t be a problem and if this does become a problem then Defoe can occupy their deepest holding midfielder when we haven’t got the ball.

Tempo

Regardless of formation, our build up for me in the last third is too slow, we really need to speed it up and play the ball into our forwards quicker. Soldado has shown he can link play with his assists on the edge of the box but he as with most strikers are no real use to anyone without service. Playing the ball side to side is safe and keeps possession but doesn’t hurt the opposition in fact it helps them get set again in their already rigid formation.

Squad:

When playing against lower opposition I do feel Dembele must play at the expense of Sandro because we do need players who are comfortable on the ball and can drive the game from midfield especially when space in the midfield is tight. Vertonghen, Chiriches and Kaboul are all happy to bring the ball out and go into midfield which forces the opposition to step out so I would start any of those three at Centre back to push our midfield higher up the pitch. Kyle Walker could also do with taking a page out of Danny Rose’s book and being positive in the last third because he tends to get into promising positions and then always play the ball backwards which is very frustrating especially when he has options in front of him.

We’re 4^th in the table, 3 points of the top with lots of reasons for optimism so let’s start by out singing the Hull fans on Wednesday night. COYS!!