Moyes & Tactics....

BigBlueBalls · March 10, 2012

Well done today to Moyes, gets a lot of stick about tactics and substitutions but he shackled Bale with Coleman in front of Baines and it kept Bale out of the game for 80 minutes, Modric hardly got a sniff being buzzed around by Felli and Cahill. Thought we setup and stuck to the game plan well, and considering Coleman hasn't played much recently, same for Osman and Jelavic it was also nice to see Jags make a come back and also get a run around.

Heit shackled Adebayor really well, a good couple of firm challenges went in that in old fashioned gamespeak would have been known as 'reducers'. Howard hardly troubled except for the Saha chance.

We put performances of dogged determination and a bit of flair in back in the day when it was Carsley protecting the defence and it was Bent scurrying round up front. That season we were all about the one nil wins.

Singing the blues indeed.

Connor · March 10, 2012

Well said Mate, Very true. Even though Cahill isnt scoring hes putting very encouraging performances. Mr Point For England had a good game also.

Brennan · March 10, 2012

RoystonsLeftFoot said:
Well said Mate, Very true. Even though Cahill isnt scoring hes putting very encouraging performances. Mr Point For England had a good game also.

....you serious ?

Pretty much every ball he tried to play was wrong or went out for a throw in. I thought he was woeful.

RFUS · March 10, 2012

Hmmm, I thought first half he got it spot on. We took the game to them whilst also taking their key players out of the game, to give ourselves the ability to dictate the game. It worked.

Second half, well I expected a "backs to the wall" thing but straight from the whistle? Had Saha shot a few inches to the left would we all be praising the plan?

He's obviously got a lot of faith in his back line but asking them to defend non-stop with no outlet or plan once you're in possession beyond "give it back to them" is a gigantic ask. Especially against Spurs. We pulled it off and fair play, but that was the longest 50 minutes of my life!

Connor · March 10, 2012

Four Quid in the Odeon. Guess what it was ?

harryjam · March 10, 2012

Brennan91 said:
....you serious ?

Pretty much every ball he tried to play was wrong or went out for a throw in. I thought he was woeful.

I counted 7 times within the first 18 minutes he gave the ball away.

harryjam · March 10, 2012

I don't think Moyes got it that spot on tbh. I think it was more than Spurs were disjointed and had bad tactics than we had brilliant ones. Soon as they got Gareth (I Can't Stay On My Feet) Bale on the left they looked a lot more dangerous.

Brennan · March 10, 2012

First half was good, but the second half we lost all creativity and attacking menace, which you can't really afford to do against a team like Spurs.

We were lucky not to concede, make no mistake.

Oh, and i thought the subs were a bit baffling to be honest. Good initial team selection though.

Brennan · March 10, 2012

harryjam said:
I counted 7 times within the first 18 minutes he gave the ball away.

I swear 'FFS Neville' is the catchphrase of the Upper Gladwys !

somuchfun · March 10, 2012

Moyes got it spot on but we would've benefitted from having a few players on later who could've kept possession a bit more.

RFUS · March 10, 2012

Brennan91 said:
First half was good, but the second half we lost all creativity and attacking menace, which you can't really afford to do against a team like Spurs.

We were lucky not to concede, make no mistake.

Oh, and i thought the subs were a bit baffling to be honest. Good initial team selection though.

It's usually one or the other, isn't it? Haha!

The starting line up was a good one. I was so happy to see Nev out of midfield and Ossie in there -- and what a difference it made. Fellaini had his best game of the year in my opinion, which should do away with the "Gibson gets the best out of him" myth. It was obvious that it wasn't that, rather just that when Gibson didn't play it was Neville alongside him. Every midfielder will play worse with Neville next to them.

paulbefc · March 10, 2012

Agree with OP. He got it pretty close to bang on. If you can park the bus and hold on, which we've proved we can against the absolute best, then why not? Guarantee that if we hadn't they'd have torn us a new one as our quality dropped quite a bit in footballing terms, second half and they'd have had a lot of space and chances either way. Thought sticking Coleman on whatever wing Bale was on worked terrifically. So many other managers don't bother with that kind of tactic.

BlueLlama · March 10, 2012

We have been very good recently. Moyes generally gets this type of game right - it is when we line up at home to Wigan the same way we do to Man Utd that he seems lacking.

But yes today was spot on, especially having Coleman swapping over wings to protect the ful backs from Bale

RFUS · March 10, 2012

"The result, not the performance was satisfying. We got a result but we can play much better, certainly than we did in the second half.
"We were partly architects of our own downfall in the second half when we kept giving the ball away and gave Tottenham encouragement to keep coming forward and throwing men forward.
"In the end we had to say â€˜if we cant keep the ball we are going to have to try and keep you outÂ´. Thankfully we did that."

Moyes himself has acknowledged that we didn't get it right in the second half, from a performance standpoint.

Which is encouraging to be honest. I'm glad he's come out and said that; it shows that he's under no illusions. You can't give the ball away like that and take that amount of pressure for 45 minutes. It rarely pays off!

But again, fair play to Moyes for realising that and saying it. Here's hoping we play like we did first half against the sh*te -- if so we'll stuff the bastards.