Analysis of the goals conceded against Real Madrid (5/4)


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Firstly a few general points on how the game went:

  1. It was unfortunate that Lennon dropped out, although if he had been ill since Sunday it’s rather odd that we didn’t have a better Plan B in mind – Redknapp brought in the wrong player in my opinion, not helped by the fact that we had limited options (I’ve long said that Walker, Townsend, O’Hara, Bentley needn’t all be out on loan).
  2. Having made Jenas the replacement, he could have kept the other midfield players in their normal positions and asked Jenas to get up the right flank as much as possible to force Marcelo back. Instead, we ended up with Bale wasted on the right for the first quarter of an hour or so, and Modric towards the left.
  3. Crouch’s sending off was annoying in so many ways. Firstly, what was he going to achieve, at best, from the first tackle? Possibly a throw-in if it had taken a ricochet, but more likely it would be a Real Madrid throw-in. Having got that ridiculous booking, he was walking the tightrope, but all he needed to do was play sensibly. 
  4. After Crouch was sent off, we kept firing long balls for Bale to challenge for in the air. Firstly, he is good in the air, but not great. And secondly, he’s just been out for a long spell with a bad back – surely this is not going to be particularly helpful to him?
  5. Bringing Defoe on was pointless; he’s in bad form, has not got a good history of playing the lone striker role and, regardless of these, we didn’t play to any of his strengths.
  6. Even at 2-0, we were in the tie, but Redknapp was not pro-active. We needed to keep the ball better, and also to use players that could score from nothing to at least attempt to nab an away goal – he perhaps should have brought on either Pavlyuchenko or Kranjcar for Jenas, Modric or Sandro.
  7. When Corluka went off injured, Redknapp once again made a substitution which required a further positional change. Why not just use Jenas at right back and bring on a more attacking player?

Adebayor’s first goal

Real Madrid win a corner, and Spurs have six defenders against five attacking players.

Gallas has Khedira.
Corluka has Ronaldo.
Dawson has Ramos.
Sandro has Pepe.
Jenas inexplicably has Adebayor.
And Crouch has – the near post area?

So instead of asking one of our bigger players to mark their greatest threat, we waste Crouch by asking him to mark space. I look mainly towards Dawson here – as the captain he should have got us organised.

The ball is decent enough, and Adebayor gets up easily above Jenas to head downwards.

Jenas tries to make it difficult for him, but it’s a total mismatch.

Even then, I’d guess that Modric would clear this off the line 7 or 8 times out of 10. However, he gets his feet in a mess, and it goes in off his ankle.

Adebayor’s second goal

Having defended the next fifty-odd minutes reasonably well, we make a schoolboy error and react slowly to a short corner.

Marcelo receives the ball from Ronaldo and, whilst Jenas does his best to close him, he does not get tight enough to stop the ball coming in. Notice at this point that Gallas and Sandro are picking up Adebayor and Khedira in the box, whilst Dawson has rather bizarrely positioned himself behind Assou-Ekotto at the back post.

In fairness to Dawson, this shot shows why – there is a runner from deep who he has one eye on. Still, I personally think that he should be a lot closer to Adebayor than he is.

As Marcelo crosses, Sandro is ball-watching and neither he or Gallas are touch tight to their men.

Adebayor really attacks the ball, whilst Gallas is left flat-footed and rooted to the spot – he has not read the situation at all well.

This shot shows just how poorly adjusted he is. Whether his injury was holding him back we’ll never know.

It’s a fantastic header from Adebayor, right into the corner beyond Gomes, but so easy for him under no pressure.

Di Maria’s goal

The third goal was the real killer blow, and the only goal of the game which we probably could not have done much more about.

We are fairly well set to defend this move, with plenty of men back, and only one attacking player near the box.

As the ball is played out to di Maria, we have three players around him.

Assou-Ekotto could certainly be tighter, but di Maria has a lot to do from here as he steps inside.

The finish is sublime – powerful, accurate, and well beyond Gomes’ reach.

Ronaldo’s goal

As mentioned earlier, I was quite baffled by the Bassong for Corluka switch, and this goal partially explains why.

As Kaka weaves his way into space in the box, we have plenty of defenders in the box. Dawson has taken up a decent position, but Bassong seems to be caught in two minds. He’s neither marking his man…

…nor marking Ronaldo. When the cross comes in, Ronaldo has plenty of space to watch it into his path, and drill a shot on target.

That said, this should be a routine save for Gomes at his near post. He’s slightly unsighted, but it’s not even in the corner.

He gets it horribly wrong, and we find ourselves with a mountain to climb.

A generally poor performance, not helped by Crouch’s idiotic dismissal. Many of our big players underperformed – particularly Gallas, Modric, van der Vaart – meaning that we struggled to keep the ball. Instead we relied on Bale to beat two or three men at a time and, in fairness to him, he put in a decent shift and was a menace. In fact, Ramos should have been at least yellow-carded, which would have kept him out of the second leg. We have left ourselves a real mountain to climbin the second leg, and it will be interesting to see how Redknapp approaches the game in terms of personnel.

Join the conversation

  1. Corluka, Dawson, Gallas, Bale

    Lennon, Thud, Modric, Kranjcar

    Vdv, Pav
  2. Di Maria goal was the only one that couldn't have been saved.
    The two headers were poor marking and Gomes should have saved the fourth.
    It's the sort of shot he usually gets down well to but as Ronaldo shoots he seems to be back on his heels.
    Fair analysis.
    Harry does us no favours by accusing the Real players of being responsible for Crouch's sending off.
  3. anon ..wow lol that team is so slow it a shame a team of turtles cud run them of the pitch,sandro is a must as he atleast offers some power and pace in the tackle, krank,thud,corluka dawson all very very slow players, then vdv and pav mor slow players with no fight and strength, we need a mix pace and power aswel as guile also bale is just returning from injury do u think he cud realy play defense and tackle clear head etc???
  4. Harry's protecting his players.
    My line-up would be 1-4-2-3-1 for the first half to keep a clean sheet and try to get a goal or two.
    Gomes/Kaboul(Gallas), Dawson, Gallas (Bassong), BAE/Sandro, Hud/Lennon, Modric, Bale/VDV.
    Keep this into the first fifteen mins of the second half, but tell front four to press hard. If we haven't got any further goals then bring on Pav for VDV, Krancar for Hud and moving Modric back alongside Sandro; alternatively, use Hud as a sweeper and keep a back three of Gallas/Dawson/BAE (taking off the right back).
  5. Windy excellent analyses except Gomes could have saved all the goals let me tell you why. If you look carfully he touches the first goal onto Modrics leg and he then Modric got is legs in a muddle . I warned you on your blog the day before that we where short on Height and if Huddlestone never played we would get hammered. When Crouch got sent of this is what Harry should have done took Ekotto of put Bale left back Huddleston in the middle and Pav for Sandro and the second half bring Defoe on something like this Corluka Dawson Gallas Bale Modric Huddlestone van Pavlyuchenko. We could not of lost two more valuble players than Crouh and Lennon this meant we had no height and no out ball with both of them missing this meant Marcelo and Ronaldo had licence to do what they wanted. What gives me a glimmer of hope is this Bale still not reayd to give is best yet he still could have scored and should have got behind then three times the ref wont be has lenient this time and i think we could see some of there players going of . And with Huddlestone and Lennon plus a 442 we could do a Newastle or better but Gomes needs to start getting is Tentacles stretched and start saving us starting against Stoke. Back to the other three goals the looping header was just like Fletchers and the one against Twenty he has a habit of following the ball across the goal and getting wrong footed the goals are 8ft high and long Gomes his making them 11ft by wondering of is line look at where he is when Dmaria hts is shot over is six yard line like Robbo started doing and he got beat from distance also He has bean doing this for a while but the last few games he has bean lucky the last one was the worse. This is what he needs to do start commanding is Area stay on is line unless he omes to clear and stop folloing the ball across goal or he will keep getting wrong footed also keep is weight on both feet so he an dive either way and we have a chance. Gomes Gallas Huddlestone Dawson Bale Lennon Van Modric Rose Defoe Pavlyuchenko a good ref loads of Luck and all wave blue and white Hanky's. God bless us windy we need a Hurricane performance in Harry we believe. Davspurs has spoken
  6. Regarding your initial points:
    1) Disagree. Walker is much better off having an entire season of football. Next season we will see the benefits with him in a lillywhite shirt. O'Hara wants to go, let him go. Townsend? To make his debut at the Bernabeu in the quarter final of the CL? Think not. It was not Harry's fault that Bale, Lennon, Niko, Pienaar, Palacios were ALL injured at the same time. Besides - you forget that the CL has a named squad too. Naming Bentley may have meant that we would not have had say Pienaar available.
    2) Mostly agree with you there
    3) 100% agree.
    4) Not good for his back, but damage limitation (score-wise) must take priority. We could not keep possession.
    5) Disagree. Defoe was the only choice. He is less lazy than Pav, and has more pace. Vdv had to come off before he gets sent off too (silly yellow, Real Madrid reject, fired up). Defoe not ideal no, but is was the right thing to do. If Lennon or Bale were fit, then they would have been better outlets up front.
    6)Harry clearly said that Kranjcar was not fit. This is why he was not proactive. With 11 men you can wing it. With 10 men, and unfit subs the right thing to do was to limit damage. We nearly kept it to 3-0. Pav is not the kind of player that you can rely on. He'll play in return leg.
    7) Agree that the positional change was not good, because we moved Ekotto (who did well) from his spot. But it HAD to be a defender. There was 7 mins left. Backs to the wall. Bassong should have just tried to defend right back and plug gap. Anyway, people are overly critical of Harry in a truly difficult situation which 97% of it was out of his control. Shaktar & Inter got worse beatings than us. Not sure why people are getting on Gomes' back for the goals. The last one was not great, but can anyone imagine his mental turmoil of that for 87 mins?
  7. When Spurs had an early corner RM put Abebayor on Crouch. Why didn't we go for same match when defending the first corner we conceded? Using Crouch as the six yard box cover person is a good tactic against the likes of Stoke especially if under pressure late in the game but surely early parts of games are about personal battles. If JJ had been the six yard box cover and had been beaten by the ball would Crouch had lost the header against Abebayor so easily? Letting in such a poor early goal left a mountain to climb and just as the players were getting back a bit of confidence Crouch was dismissed. Would have thought Dawson wwould have looked forward to a tussle with Abebayor and seeked him out for attention. Was Gallas fit? He didn't get off the ground all game.
  8. Thanks to all for comments.

    Anon @ 20:53 - certainly the kind of attacking team that I'd anticipate.

    JimmyG2 - Hadn't seen those comments from Redknapp - very silly. Crouch's challenges were needless and reckless.

    Anon @ 22:07 - Think you're right that he'll start relatively conservatively. I think that's a mistake actually - we're usually strong starters, and I think if we just go for it from the off and get right at them with as much pace in the side as possible, we'll have the best chance.

    Dav - think you're right about Modric/Gomes for the first goal - good shout, I'd totally missed that.

    Anon @ 23:41 - 1. I take your points. Whilst I agree that Walker is benefitting from the loan, we would no doubt have used him a lot since he went to Villa. That to me proves that he should not have gone - we've left ourselves short. O'Hara - again, agree, but again would argue that he'd have played plenty for us. Fine if we have other alternatives, but we don't. Townsend - yes, crazy thought, but he's one of the few players we have with genuine pace, and he could have been included in the B List.
    5. Think it's questionable that Defoe has more pace than Pavlyuchenko - maybe once.

    6. More weight to my point that we have let too many players out on loan.

    I think you're right in many ways about damage limitation, but at 4-0 we're effectively out of the tie. Once they scored their second, it looked like it could end up ay any number of goals, and I was disappointed that we didn't try to give them something to think about to, if nothing else, stop them pushing so many bodies forward.

    Anon @ 07:19 - totally agree with your point.
  9. Glad to see someone actually acknowledging Dawson's culpability in the first two goals, which effectively killed us off. Not only should he have taken responsibility for marking Adebayor, but as captain he should make sure that we are properly organized. To suggest, as many are, that Jenas was responsible for the first goal is ridiculous. Everyone knows that Jenas isn't particularly good in the air, so do you really think that Harry told him to pick up Adebayor at corners! Totally Dawson's fault, with assists from Gomez and Modric.

    I thought that bringing on Defoe was the right thing to do. However, I also thought that, given our situation and the fact that he was only playing 45, Defoe might actually have put a bit of effort in. For anyone to say that Pav is more lazy than Defoe after this showing is a complete fallacy. Defoe must be one of the most useless strikers in the league when it comes to over all team contribution. And while I am at it, please can I ask people to stop claiming that JD has pace. He gets beaten in a foot race by all but the slowest of central defenders, as was clear several times on Tuesday. This is why he is pretty hopeless as an out ball unless he runs the channels effectively, which he rarely does. Some of our problems in the second half were due to JD not really attempting to close down their defenders and failing to make himself available for a pass. He just didn't seem bothered. Probably sulking because he wasn't first choice. In restrospect, Pav couldn't really have done a worse job.
  10. I did put off reading, but great work Windy - makes a lot of sense.
    The petulance of VDV is also a concern, a needless booking and getting frustrated is not going to help in situations that we were in.
    Onwards to Stoke now, where I am determined to dig out my positivity until I see the team sheet ;-)

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