Big Ange made a Big Mess of that Chelsea game; that’s the real Spurs truth

Ange Postecoglou is getting a lot of love for his tactics v Chelsea but they were suicidal. Mails on that and lots on VAR here.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com

Big Ange made a big old f***-up
Let’s just quote the man with the magic hat, Chelsea legend Cesc Fabregas: “Football is F**ing unbelievable”

Lots will be said (and even more will be thought) about the game we just witnessed. An “advert for the best league in the world” Jamie Carragher said, without bile or spit leaving his jowls this time.

I’ve watched, listened to and read the post match analysis across multiple media/multiple platforms… and something is amiss.

Ok ok fair enough. Losing your best performers (aside from Vicario. What a keeper by the way! Wow. ) is a huge slice of bad luck. Note: As a Chelsea fan, I can relate. Today we went in to a game missing 7 first team (squad) players. Our lowest number for a match in the last 12 months).

But a team lost their heads, lost players to avoidable red cards, and STILL defended with a ridiculously high line – despite having a possibly 3rd or 4th choice centre back partnership! AND… lost by 3 goals at home. Turns out, that was the manager’s call.

We all love big Ange. Genuinely. I’m a Chelsea fan and I hate how likeable the guy is.

But come on!!

Everyone knows how weak Chelsea are – in strength and mentality. He could have told his team to camp out, nine men, low block. Possibly could have nicked a point. Stayed undefeated. Given his squad untameable impetus.

What he did was the opposite. He gave Chelsea three points by insisting upon the high line, even with 9 men. He even admitted it in his post match interview. And… he’s being PRAISED for it!?!?

Imagine Pep, Klopp or Arteta doing the same. They would get crucified for (at worst) naivety or (at best) a superiority complex. But all post match chatter has Spurs as “heroes” and big Ange the same.

He died on his own sword, yes. But that doesn’t make him more hero than idiot.

I could say more about my own team, or the scandalous referees/VAR but I’m sure others can fill that quota.

All hail big Ange: the man who effed it up by being stubborn but still reaps the support of the masses and media.
Ash, CFC, 3 point lane

READ: The media is loving Big Ange instead of evil Mikel Arteta after 4-1 Chelsea defeat

…Well I’m sure this morning’s sack will bulge bigger than Santa’s (yes it’s that time of the year). What a match for the neutral, I’ll not be one of those who shoves in a 15-paragraph mail to you. Besides the obvious VAR discussion (which I thought was pretty much spot on last night) for me it’s this deifying of Ange Postecoglou. Now he is a breath of fresh air, common sense and balanced view point. It’s not hard to like the man. But!!!!!! What the f**k was that high line last night?

Carragher and many of the media have been praising him for his bravery, but actually it was sheer stupidity. Chelsea as inconsistent as they have been, they like to play teams who play on the front foot. It’s noted that their best performances came against Liverpool and Arsenal. But conversely their most frustrating has been against teams such as Forest and Brentford that sit in a low block and do not come out. Looking for that one break away or dead ball goal. So what possessed Ange to play a high line with two substitute CB’s, one being a near 30 year old Dier, who let’s be kind isn’t the fastest.

What is also lost in this crazy match is that Udogie’s sending off comes as a direct consequence of that high line. Chelsea broke and Spurs facing a 3 v 2 were initially let off by poor decision making from Sterling but what Udogie was thinking with a player running toward the touchline when he made his lunge was anyone’s guess. Eventually tiredness took over and Dier in a foot race over 40 yards time and again with Jackson eventually capitulated.

Mad, Mad game. Most enjoyable of the season.
P Didi

High, high, highest
Replace Sterling and Jackson with Doku and Haaland last night and the Spurs’ scoreboard wouldn’t have enough room for the away goals.
G. Thomas, Breda

This is not the end of Spurs
Spurs fan here.

I don’t actually expect us, or anyone other than the two clubs who can afford to buy PGMOL to win the title, but we are still one point behind the top and there are seven months to go.

To say “It’s probably the end of their title challenge” is like saying, when Liverpool beat them on Boxing Day was the end of Leicester’s challenge. Months and months still to go. Ask again in March.

Kind regards
SE

…Eric Dier is getting ready to embark on a narrative redemption more pronounced than Cousin Richie in Season Two of “The Bear”.

Let it rip chef.
Andrew, Woodford Green

VAR from home
Really enjoyed last night’s VAR match. Just a shame it was spoilt by the occasional football interruptions.
Michael

VAR worked well, to be fair
Say what you want about VAR, and say what you want about the delays it causes, but last night, that was exactly what VAR was brought in to do. All decisions correct and what played out was fair and square under the rules of football.

I do hope we don’t get any Spurs fans complaining today. I am sure they are frustrated that they just got spanked at home and had their first team potentially decimated, but thems the breaks, chaps. The game may have been a freak, but the result is inarguable and you did it to yourselves.

And yes, Postecoglou might have shown a little bit of naivete with his game management, but so what? How many times does a manager have such a conundrum to solve in his career?

We’ll now find out what Spurs are actually made of, especially if they have lost Madison for a while, but I suspect a bit of Spursiness will ensue, because Spurs gotta Spurs. And I also expect a lot of Spurs fans will be gnashing their teeth at hearing about how Spursy they actually are. Again.

And what is the result of all the outrageous fortune over the weekend? City top. I doubt that is going to change. What a shame, just as it was starting to get interesting.
Matthew

VAR from the worst solution
The solution to all (most!) the VAR debates? The VAR is only allowed to watch the replay in real time. No slow motion, no freeze frames, just as the referee has seen it. So many things look worse in slow motion. The Havertz one is a good example – a wreckless foul but the image going around of his foot “hitting” Longstaff is false as he actually missed and caught him with the trailing leg.

If VAR is there to spot clear and obvious mistakes then we shouldn’t have to slow it down or freeze frame it. Once we get to that point we get these ridiculous situations where we are looking for the precise image that will support our view. The game is played in real time, it is refereed in real time and should be VAR’d in real time.
Alastair Campbell

VAR has jumped the shark
As an Arsenal fan – it’s been a mixed weekend. Last night should have made me feel a little better but it didn’t. It lead me to a conclusion on the internal debate I’ve been having over VAR.

I wanted it. I wanted justice. Fairness. Accuracy. But we don’t have that. Decide for your self why. I think it’s a mixture of incompetence at the PGMOL and the desire to make football a soap opera at the EPL, sky et al.

But it doesn’t matter why. The fact is – this is worse. I’d rather the swings and roundabouts of dirty, imperfect football played with my emotions. This is just soulless. Pathetic. It’s a clown show. If the authorities can’t apply the laws – then just let the lads play. Stay out.

I think this was the weekend that the PGMOL and the soap opera producers jumped the shark. The product is the lesser for it.
Johnno

…Well that game was a bit boring wasn’t it?!

There is too much to dissect from the match itself but I wanted to talk about the impressive comments from Ange Postecoglou regarding the real problems with VAR.

All VAR has done is to drive the arguments about referee decisions to a microscopic level of analysis that is impacting matches negatively. As Ange said, if we just accept the decision and get on with the game, things might improve from the absolute shower that it is at the moment. One alternative he alluded to is the possibly of games being refereed from a TV screen entirely which would definitely not be a good thing!

A great example of the reason VAR will never work is the comparison between the Romero challenge and the one from Curtis Jones a few weeks back. Very similar in their nature but ultimately it’s a subjective decision. There will be many people (mainly but not exclusively Spurs fans) arguing that Romero got the ball and followed through accidentally. That’s not my view, I think he went with intent put in a hard tackle on/injure an opponent.

And there will be plenty of people (mainly but not exclusively Liverpool fans like me) who will say that Jones’ foot bounced off the ball and that there was absolutely no intent to injure. We will never agree from one decision to the next, sometimes because of loyalty to our team and sometimes because we just all have a different view of things.

VAR cannot solve this problem. The referee has made “a” decision. That’s it. Accept that he’s made it and that’s the end of the matter. As Postecoglou says, in 26 years he’s had plenty of decisions go with him and plenty go against him. That’s the attitude everyone needs to adopt and, in the highly unlikely event of that happening, I am certain things would improve.
Adam LFC (no pithy comments about “these things levelling themselves out or anything)

…From your 16 conclusions on Spurs v Chelsea:

‘In its own intrusive and irritating way, VAR almost enhanced the experience of this one as we all pored over slow-motion replay after still image after slow-motion replay’

But that’s not true, is it? We didn’t ALL do that. Over 60,000 of us in the ground, most of whom who had paid good money to be there, had to spend around 20 minutes of our evening watching a purple screen informing us that a decision may or may not be about to be made.

There’s no disputing the result and clearly it’s unlikely I would be bothering to write this if Spurs had won- but honestly, VAR in its current form is killing the game for the fans. Why don’t the people in the stadium get to see the same replays as everyone else?

Presumably the first response to that is that it could incite the fans to abuse referees further if they see it and perceive the decision to be wrong. But I just can’t agree with that; it’s hardly as if the crowd last night weren’t giving Michael Oliver heat in the absence of seeing the many replays that everyone at home or in the pub was treated to.

It says it all that at one point both fans joined together to sing “F*** VAR”. Some games it will benefit your team, others it won’t- but it can’t carry on like this forever.
Kieran, Spurs, London

Hamstrung
From a match where there was so much to be discussed, I want to mention one issue that was not discussed. The Van de Ven hamstring injury – it was a result of players going cold during the long VAR stoppages. It is something I always thought would happen, maybe it has already happened before. But stopping the game for such long periods is going to put players at risk of such injuries.

Just another point for Jonny Nic to add to his long list of VAR peeves.

Oh, and well done Ange. That is the way to talk after losing a match.
Jim (THFC)

The truth is that it was VAR from controversial at Newcastle
If I look at some of the emails sent in to the mailbox, and at Arteta’s rant and Arsenal’s statement, I don’t see any more strength to the argument than they disagree with the referee’s decisions. Was anything objectifiably wrong with each of those decisions? In isolation each of the decisions made against the three different elements of the goal were in the first instance subject to the view of the referee and his two assistants. The Liverpool/Spurs thing was an incorrect application of a process, which meant an incorrect decision was left to stand. No wriggle room was there. This is different in all respects.

The ball out of play: from one angle yes, from another no, all of the ball over the line…maybe, live on the telly it looked out, but with no conclusive proof other than blurry, poorly defined angles. Ultimately the refs called it at the time the way they saw it, which is what happens for every decision.

The foul: on first look Gabriel looked to have made a right hash of trying to diving header the ball away. He was stooping/diving first before Joelinton exerted any pressure on him, but that’s my opinion as a spectator, clearly the referees saw it the same way, several of the pundits agreed with that interpretation, so again this is subjective. In slow motion and in reverse it looks like a push, but at the time it happened was it obvious enough to not give the referees the benefit of the doubt over saying it wasn’t a foul? There were multiple other pushes and physical contact points, as there are in every game, which were/weren’t called a foul. So again, you disagree with the ref on this particular decision made/not made, but is it 100% wrong?

The offside: for the life of me I couldn’t see why this was the thing they spent the longest on, versus the ball out of play which looked out of play live, so much so I told my 7 year old son not to get upset when the goal was ruled out. Now on the one hand VAR has made so much of these decisions being millimetres off or onside, that this is the expected level of review. On the other, every time this goes against your team its ludicrous and not what the offside law is there for. So, once again, you are left with simply your disagreement about the decision the assistant referee made on the pitch. I honestly could not see why they thought it was offside, but again that’s my opinion, but it is opinion, not fact.

And was it handball…it goes from his chest to his arm then off the defenders back, but his arms are in front of him, this is again a completely subjective decision. The ball bounced up and hit Saka’s hand very clearly in one open play sequence, wasn’t given a foul. This happens multiple times in a game, not all are fouls, so again you only have your disagreement to go with.

I guess my point is that VAR was introduced to correct egregious errors such as goal/no-goal, but its been distorted and perverted to a point at which all subjective decisions made must but scrutinised and changed to suit whichever point you are arguing for. Much is the same with current politics but that’s best left to other websites. These are ten-a-penny incidents which we all disagree on multiple times during a 100 minute game. I’ll grant you its unusual to have four back-to-back in one sequence leading to a goal, but look hard enough and you’ll always find something missed at some point that you can say was pivotal in letting something else happen.

It’s football, it’s a game, this wasn’t a final, something else will go your way another day.
James, Leeds

16 late conclusions on the weekend
1) As much as it was funny to see Arsenal lose in hilarious fashion, officials have some explaining to do with how Bruno Guimaraes managed to see the final whistle. Was it bias? Probably not. Corruption? Definitely not. But I feel the on field ref was a coward hiding behind perceived incompetence, which seems to be a theme with premier league refs these days.

2) I condemn referee abuse in every way and it is good to see a crackdown in dissent in recent times. However, referees absolutely must be held accountable for their mistakes. The standard of refereeing is so poor and inconsistent now that it sets a bad example for their peers and juniors. In this kind of high stakes job, every mistake is impactful, referees need to understand that and show effort to minimise their mistakes.

3) Ref comms need to be made available, live. That will force referees to speak properly, clearly and decisively. And hopefully that will translate on to their field decisions. The NBA does that and it is great. Even if the players may not agree with the on field decisions, if the refs explain them to the public, you bet the backlash won’t be so severe because more people will understand their logic of their decisions, if there was any.

4) Gordon’s goal is what I call a phantom goal. Nobody can prove that it was legitimate or illegitimate but because somebody decided to allow it in real time that decision was what went. Sort of a “I can’t prove that you are cheating or not so I will go with my gut feeling and say that you are, prove me wrong” situation. Arsenal were hilariously unlucky there and if it this was Brentford vs Sheffield United nobody would be complaining.

5) Saka has finally broken hasn’t he. Maybe referees should consider providing fair protection to him? For England’s sake?

6) David Raya smells of Claudio Bravo all over. He may be the better fit for the coach’s strategy but something tells me he is not going to work out.

7) I actually think Havertz is a decent player. Just not for 65m. He has great attributes on paper but rarely is that seen to be applied or utilised on the pitch, and something tells me that is not down to the coach but the player himself. He does not seem to have the confidence of desire to realise his potential. The anti Jesse Lingard if you will.

8) It’s good to see Newcastle employing the “rough them up” strategy. It worked well against Arsenal for decades, glad to see teams trying that against them again. It was funny to watch.

9) Does nobody ever wonder that maybe, just maybe Ange have been lucky and Tottenham are just having the effect of a new manager’s bounce? His choice of tactics against Chelsea were amateurish. Don’t get me wrong, Ange is a good manager but he isn’t a great one. He showed that consistently while managing the Socceroos. He is great at organising the squad and providing a basic tactic to follow but he has a tendency to try the stupid and unravel in key matches. He can also be very stubborn and also does not have a Plan B. Think back to how the Socceroos played while he managed them and you’d understand. Underdog glory mixed with failed though elevated expectations.

10) Angeball is not a thing. It wasn’t before and it will never be.

11) Eric Dier is not a premier league standard defender, he’s the modern John O’Shea.

12) Five disallowed goals. Five.

13) Gary Neville should retire as a pundit. He used to be good, now he’s just a walking meme.

14) There is no contrast between Arteta’s and Ange’s reaction to their teams’ defeat. They were two different matches that were lost under completely different circumstances. I would say that Ange gifted Chelsea their win through his own stupidity while Arteta overthought and his team were outfought at Newcastle.

15) Pochettino is wasted at Boehly’s Chelsea. Chelsea is wasted at Boehly’s Chelsea. Can’t wait till Boehly goes back to wherever he was from and never again touch a football club.

16) Scary to see that City can still find goals even when the terminator was offline.
Stanley Hudson, Australia (Stewie Griffin w**ks off every night reading the reactions to his trolling posts, people who still don’t understand that need to relax and find something better to do)

Thomas Frank is a genius of a manager
Having just checked the Premier League table after Chelsea’s 4-1 win against Spurs yesterday, they find themselves back in the top half of a table and what a result for Poch and his team, it could turn there season around and Jackson will have gained a good level of confidence from the 3 goals scored too (Did wonders for my FPL team too).

Having seen the teams in the top half, you see the Top 6 in there as well as Newcastle, Brighton and Villa. But one team and manager that deserves most of the credit is Thomas Frank & Brentford. They have only lost 3 games in the league this season and are sitting in 9th place with a GD of +5. Brentford would actually be sitting in 7th place if they hadn’t conceded the two late goals against United a couple of weeks ago too.

Given Toney, their best player, who scored 20 league goals last year is currently banned due to betting, it hasn’t affected them one bit in a negative manner. You see that Frank rotates between two formations depending on who he is playing, but as a typical German his team is bloody efficient whoever they play and probably has the best teamwork out of all teams in the league.

It’s now his third season in the Premier League and has never once been in a relegation battle. If he finishes in the top half of the table again, I would argue he deserves manager of the season. Hardly has a budget compared to other teams and doesn’t moan about it either, no stand out player in that team but they play together as a team.

Teams like United and Chelsea should take note! Spending millions on players just got the sake of it and Brentford are just as good as them in terms of quality on the pitch.
Rami, Dubai