Tottenham vs Liverpool - Premier League (19/20 - Game 21)

[Shaggy]

This looks like it could be a good read

[ame]https://twitter.com/JackPittBrooke/status/1216634823009284096[/ame]

[Norbs]

This looks like it could be a good read

https://twitter.com/JackPittBrooke/s...34823009284096

If only we knew someone who subscribed

[dom9]

****ing cheapskates.

[Saveloy]

Mechanical is a dirty word in football but it should not be. Not when the team that looks like breaking all the records in the English game — the Treble, the Invincibles, 100 points — is also the team that has been the most thoroughly and intensely coached.

There is a common misconception that attacking football means trusting the players to express themselves, while defensive football means telling them what to do. That the most important measure of a manager is his prescriptiveness, and that the more detailed the instructions, the more restrictive he is. Everyone who wants to see good football asks for the shackles to come off.

But in modern football, the opposite is true. The best football, the type played by Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City or Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, is the most rigorously planned, drilled and co-ordinated. Those two managers have spent years teaching their players the complex attacking patterns and synchronised movements that allow them to cut through every team in the country. That is why they can never be frustrated by opponents who just sit in and defend, why they are racking up points totals beyond the reach of anyone else.

That has been the story of Liverpool’s remarkable season, just as it was for City when they hit 100 points the season before last. The players have learned their manager’s instructions so perfectly that they have the appearance of a machine, every part in harmony with every other. And that was always the plan.

Liverpool assistant manager Peter Krawietz said in Raphael Honigstein’s biography of Jurgen Klopp that the priority from Klopp’s second full season onwards was the players learning “agreed procedures” to unpick opposition defences. “The point of coaching is to try to make football, a game based on many random events, less random, to force your luck in a sense,” he said. “A coach’s job is to practise these sequences to instil an idea, repetition and situations, to increase the chance that they will work under real live conditions, when there’s pressure and an opponent interfering.”

There have been moments this season when Liverpool have played as if they have eliminated the random element from football entirely. When their dominance has been so complete, not just over possession but over every movement in the pitch, that anything other than a Liverpool win was inconceivable. Like their 4-0 win at Leicester City on Boxing Day, the best display in the league this season. Or their 2-0 win over Sheffield United 10 days ago, the most one-sided.

Saturday’s game at Tottenham Hotspur was not like that. The result was never inevitable, and there was plenty of randomness involved. Liverpool could very easily have not won. And when Son Heung-min received Lucas Moura’s pass in the box, or when Giovani Lo Celso connected with Serge Aurier’s whipped cross, it felt momentarily as if Tottenham were certain to equalise. With a bit more luck, they would have done. And then everyone would be hailing Mourinho’s pragmatic genius for grabbing a result here.

That, more than anything else, explains the difference between Klopp and Mourinho. Klopp wants to plan his way out of the randomness of football. Mourinho is more willing to accept it as a fact and work around it. So while the modern manager — Klopp, Guardiola, Antonio Conte — coaches players in ‘automisations’, pre-planned moves and patterns, Mourinho does not.

Of course, Mourinho is rigorous when it comes to defensive coaching and shape and set-plays. That is how he had so much success earlier on his career with Porto, Chelsea and Inter Milan. But he has never been a coach for those intricate attacking patterns, telling his forwards precisely where to go. Instead, Mourinho’s approach has always been one of ‘guided discovery’, letting his players find solutions for themselves, trusting that they know his principles and what he wants from them. They just have to fill in the gaps.

Early in Mourinho’s second season as Real Madrid manager, when his team were performing exceptionally well, Mourinho said that it was down to his work coaching “attacking movement and occupying space” during their summer tour of China. The Real Madrid players — according to Diego Torres’ book The Special One, which is sympathetic to the squad — could not believe their ears. The players complained among themselves that they had been given no ideas what to do in possession, that all the solutions came from themselves, and they even joked about Mourinho’s “Peking Manual”, a non-existent dossier of his attacking plans.

Eight years on from that incident, Mourinho is still open to the same criticisms. His teams do not show the same level of co-ordinated attacking play that their top rivals do. Mourinho instead relies on harnessing the randomness of football and hoping his players will find a way through. This performance against Liverpool was the ultimate example of that.

For the first 70 minutes here, Tottenham had to make it up on the hoof. With no Harry Kane, there was no focal point in attack. Playing a defensive 4-4-1-1, Aurier on the right wing, they let Liverpool have the ball. Spurs had a vague idea to use their pace in behind, and their best moments came on the break, Son charging forward after robbing Jordan Henderson, Dele Alli running onto a Toby Alderweireld long ball. But there was never a clear plan when they reached the final third and three times Spurs players shot weakly from distance when they might have passed.

But the longer the game went on, the better Tottenham got. Especially when Lo Celso and Erik Lamela came on with 20 minutes left to add more energy and thrust. This was guided discovery in action, the players trusted to find solutions and eventually finding them, when there was just enough time left in the game and it was still in the balance. Harry Winks, Moura and Dele all improved in the second half, as Spurs got agonisingly close to the equaliser, but not quite close enough.

Last month, Tottenham went to Wolverhampton Wanderers, were dominated for most of the game, but rode their luck and nicked a 2-1 win. This time they made another big late push but ended up on the losing side, just. That is how fine the margins are when you play this way. Never controlling games but hoping that if they hang in there, the key moments will break their way.

This was not Liverpool at their best, but it was still clear that they were on another level from Spurs. They attacked with a synchronicity that is their trademark, the front three combining and switching, and if Roberto Firmino had scored in the second minute the result would have been very different. Tottenham were heroically heading and blocking everything that came their way in that first half. And when the opener came — a throw-in move, Henderson’s quick press, Mohamed Salah’s cool head to set up Firmino — it was a little example of their integrated style.

The game ended up far closer than many expected, but it was still Liverpool’s coordination that made the difference. Mourinho’s plan that his team could stay in the game while they grew into it did not quite come off. Against anyone less good than Liverpool it would have done, though, and this was probably Spurs’ best game under their new coach.

Mourinho’s football has been incredibly successful all over Europe, and was at the cutting edge of the game not very long ago. Maybe it will be again one day. But of these two approaches, instruction or intuition, action or reaction, driving randomness out of the game or merely trying to ride it, which is the football of the past, and which is the football of the future?

[Shaggy]

Cheers mate. Enjoyed that. It's ****ing marvellous all this, innit. We've been waiting for this for literally decades.

[Lecter]

Last season I went the match with my dad and I cant remember which game it was but we were talking about our attacking plays being "choreographed"

We must have tried the same move about 5 or 6 times in the space of about 30 minutes and eventually it culminated in a goal

There was a match a few weeks back and Milner kept making the same run everytime Trent got the ball. Salah would drop off and Milner would dive into the space and once the ball was played to Milner, Salah and Firmino would then attack certain positions

Sometimes the telly doesnt adequately show the runs off the ball but we do have attacking plays that are frequently displayed in games

[Irishnev]

Last season I went the match with my dad and I cant remember which game it was but we were talking about our attacking plays being "choreographed"

We must have tried the same move about 5 or 6 times in the space of about 30 minutes and eventually it culminated in a goal

There was a match a few weeks back and Milner kept making the same run everytime Trent got the ball. Salah would drop off and Milner would dive into the space and once the ball was played to Milner, Salah and Firmino would then attack certain positions

Sometimes the telly doesnt adequately show the runs off the ball but we do have attacking plays that are frequently displayed in games

That was supposedly Buvac’s strength by developing drills to create the seemingly ‘off the cuff’ attacking plays. The choreographed moves you refer to is almost like rugby set pieces and depending on where the play is they go for the specific move

[Buzzo]

This is one of the biggest take homes for me from the game I went to this season. I definitely could see the set move approach, particularly for the first 30 mins. You could see how the team is trained to move in a certain way given certain scenario's. You could see how the team worked with the left flank, right flank, centre and defence all linked. When Fabinho got the ball the team moved in different ways depending on where he received the ball. The same with Bobby. The same with every one really.

It definitely gave me an understanding of our under rated midfield and how they fit in - in attacking and cover scenarios. I agree, it is very similar to Rugby set moves with the team having obvious (to them) triggers.

It is (was) incredibly impressive to see. I have never seen a football team so orchestrated.

[baitman]

@ Buzzo

You can see things so much better in the ground.
Telly football follows the ball but you dont see the players covering space, tracking runners off the ball, guys moving and taking defenders out of position and possibly making space for others, etc.

[Buzzo]

@ Buzzo

You can see things so much better in the ground.
Telly football follows the ball but you dont see the players covering space, tracking runners off the ball, guys moving and taking defenders out of position and possibly making space for others, etc.

Would be great if you could have an option to choose camera angles.

Fixed position behind the goals would be amazing. With spider cam moving up and down with play.

[greenturnip]

Given all the tech we have and bandwidth I'm surprised we don't get more choices as a viewer...especially given what Sky/BT charge...

[Buzzo]

Amazons coverage showed promise.

[Norbs]

Would be great if you could have an option to choose camera angles.

Fixed position behind the goals would be amazing. With spider cam moving up and down with play.

BBC had stadium VR during the world cup didn't they? It can't be far off from being an option on Sky

[Cormack74]

Would be great if you could have an option to choose camera angles.

Fixed position behind the goals would be amazing. With spider cam moving up and down with play.

Given all the tech we have and bandwidth I'm surprised we don't get more choices as a viewer...especially given what Sky/BT charge...

It's years since I binned off Sky but when I had it, there was a choice of about 4 different camera angles plus the player cam for live games. Does that not still exist?

[Buzzo]

[ame="https://youtu.be/tHIPjsCJvpM"]Inside Tottenham: Spurs 0-1 Liverpool | TUNNEL CAM from the Reds on the road - YouTube[/ame]