Credit to Poch for formation change

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Yeah he learnt from other teams coming unstuck playing 2v2

Don't need the extra body in the middle as Watford are not a passing team

That said we were awful second half and could easily have lost.

Diers passing was nonsense all day

I am not so convinced personally Deeney normally plays a bit deeper and I wonder if having Dier in his normal position may have negated that.

At the end of the day we won so as such the change worked but I am not convinced that we would not have won anyway with our normal line up

I have not seen the match, so can only go by the comments on here.
Seems we were lucky to win? Is that right?
And Erik Lemala put in a great show.
I'm glad about that, he's a fine footballer and doesn't deserve the stick he sometimes gets here.
Did Son do enough to convince fans he can be a substitute for Kane?
And wot was going on down the left wing?
Also, it seems Lloris saved our bacon again?

Looking at a match stats, seem we had much more of the ball? Did we not do anything with all that possession?

Dier quite often drops back to help his CB's out even when we play a back four, particularly when the full backs push on its a nice option we have and being a former CB he does it well.

That was a real tough game against a good Watford side and their strikers cause problems to every team.

It was a nice surprise to see poch break out the 5-4-1, the only other formation his idol bielsa plays very rarely other than the 4-2-3-1. I would like to see this adopted more in certain difficult away games.

That being said I'm not so sure it was necessary as deeney does not play fully up top against the "big sides" he does against smaller sides.

We did not deserve the win Watford were better at points with 10 men but we take it and hopefully we will be bang up for Everton.

Sounds silly but we have to keep winning to stop a gap forming between us and Arsenal I firmly believe we are the only team able to stop them (it will take a huge amount of luck just like today)

Nice analysis Analog. Enjoy your posts-certainly know your stuff

LLM

I think we did deserve the win just about and lets give credit for the superb save Lloris made on his goal line.

Watford deservedly had a player sent off and before that happened we were the better side.

We had our poorest spell in the whole game when we had a one man advantage.

Finally i don't think we need to have a huge amount of luck to catch Arsenal, they are good but not great and its their fault they lose games 4-0 something we don't.

I said on the Poch strengths and weaknesses thread that he doesn't seem to know when a player is off form and I suggested Son for Christian because I think Son will play better and will be many a match winner for Spurs. He made the change today but I was surprised it was Carroll who was pulled off. Clever move. But Son should start.