It is, what it is...

Hi all, gutting result last night but the boys gave their all and you can't fault them for falling short. I thought the game was interesting from a tactical viewpoint and like a few others think Allegri (from the school of Italian masterclass tacticians) got the better of Poch.

Throughout the first half the game was slightly in Spurs favour, although it was a tight affair with neither team creating much. Son vs Barzagli was the biggest advantage for us to punish them, and despite the South Korean playing well, there is a case that he should have done better against a 36 year old CB playing out of position. I also found interesting the tactic of Marchisio to man-mark Dembele out of the game, something that no other team in my memory has tried before. Moussa couldn't cope with it and struggled to get going.

Yet we were comfortable going into half-time and looked the same in the early stages of the second half. Yet the experienced Juventus side knew how to play us and each player tactically took a yellow card for a hard challenge to kill any momentum we gained. After a very soft yellow on Dele, despite him taking a real kicking, you could see he was deflated and at this point it was the perfect time to take him off and bring on Lamela & remained in our 4231 formation.

After Juventus killing our momentum through fouling, Allegri then identified that he could beat us with pace on the wings through the use of their quicker full-backs. Davies & Trippier where then rendered useless for the rest of the game. At this point, we should have changed to a 433 and used Son/Lamela out wide to pin their fullbacks back and stop their attacking momentum.

After their two quick fire goals, Lamela for Dier was the wrong option. As shown by little glimpses from Son the best way to beat them was to run through them - and Moura was the right option in this situation. That being said, moving Eriksen (who was absolutely phenomenal, what a superstar) to midfield was the right option as his exceptional passing range controlled our tempo for the remaining minutes.

The Llorente sub, although to late, was the right tactical decision from Poch and we looked threatening once again - yet a little bit of poor fortune was the difference.

It was a learning curve, and Poch's tactical nous is what is holding him back from reaching the upper echelons as a manager. All in all we did wel over the 180 minutes and lost to an expert side, there is no shame in that and the shear number of Spurs fan who stayed after the game to applaud the players off showed how much we appreciate the effort they had put in.

COYS