Spurs team following the T.W. and prospects

I think overall we have to be pleased with the recent transfer window, don't we? Is this our toughest midfield since the days of Dave Mackay?

At last it appears that Daniel Levy has found the manager he always wanted and hopefully the manager the fans have wanted too. The signs are strong and it certainly looks like Levy is giving Mauricio Pochettino strong backing following our biggest net spend for some time.

When you consider Wanyama, Dier.Sissoko and the soon to be returning Dembele and lace that with Deli Alli, Vincent Janssen and Lamela we are not a soft touch anymore.

All of our competitors have strengthened and of course the media is considering Manchester as the only City with prospects of winning the PL,but in the mix must also be the usual villains, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. Everton too, despite losing out to us in the Sissoko stakes must be taken seriously I think. One other team and they are the current champions of course, Leicester, who really have strengthened despite losing Kante. I wouldn't write them off at all.

The most competitive PL ever? Quite possibly so where will Spurs come in this race of multi millionaires run by billionaires?

In our favour we have perhaps the most settled first team in the division with the possible exception of Leicester. We have a very big season of experience behind us and a Manager and squad who will be even more determined having smelt the heady heights in finishing third, which as we all know should have been second.
The Manchesters on paper are of course very impressive but if you saw City in the second half against West Ham you witnessed the same syndrome from them as recent seasons when the opposition take it to them their heads can go down. United are a big threat of course but they are still a team in need of a gel with a captain who looks prematurely aged.

I still see this as potentially a huge season for Spurs and although we have the CL to cope with (and enjoy) our squad looks capable, and logistically it's much easier than the Europa with more time between games as well.

It's a good time to be a Spurs supporter.

 

I concur with the sentiments...and yes, definitely a good time time to support Spurs. However, I'm still expecting to get annoyed with Spurs throughout the season!

 

ALWAYS a good time to be a Spurs supporter.

 

City are adjusting to Guardiola's style of play and their fitness levels aren't quite there yet.
They start very well and will put a lot of sides away early, but they seem to flag quite badly in the second half.
Their bench is quality though, so they can manage a lot of it quite easily.
Stones' injury put them off a bit and allowed West Ham an opportunity to get back into the game.

Our squad's looking pretty decent, but there are still a few holes where we're relying on youth players for depth.
Carter-Vickers looks like a real prospect and we can cover at centre-half with Dier or Davies if required, but it's still a bit of a risk.
The domestic cups might be a big chance for some of the kids to impress from the bench, if we rest players again.
Given our participation in the Champions League, I think that Pochettino will have to leave most of the side out for them.

 

Ramos 2 from 8

 

I think your manager has been very ruthless in identifying those players he thinks aren't good enough for the level you want to perform at and in shipping them out. As a consequence, your squad is thin on numbers for the amount of games you have now you are back in the CL. Whether that proves costly or not depends on fate - injuries, in particular.

It's difficult to gauge where Spurs (or any other would be challengers) stand at this point. In the past, there have been one or two teams (more recently three, maybe four) who are head and shoulders above the rest. This season, there are probably eight teams who could contend for the title (and domestic cups), all of whom are fairly unknown quantities because they are either going through a process of rebuilding or haven't yet performed consistently at the top level for a long enough period to judge whether they have the pedigree to succeed or are just a flash in the pan.

I'd confidently predict Spurs to finish between first and eighth.

 

What sticks out for me is how, at least on paper, we have personnel on the books that mean we can do a better job of mixing and matching the team based on our opponents.

If we need some brawn we have Sissoko, Wanyama, Dembele, Dier, Janssen, Wimmer and Davies
If we want to attack with pace we have N'Koudou, Son, Alli, Lamela, Walker and Rose
If we want to tie our opponents in knots with passing and skill we have Eriksen, Lamela, Kane, Alli, Dembele, Dier and Vertonghen

As long as we don't totally misjudge it, as happened a couple of seasons ago against City where Poch set us up to deal with Aguero only for Dzeko to start and do a number on us, then things could be a whole lot more interesting than the Moronho vs Guardiola narrative the papers assume this season will be.

 

And then he was gone.

 

And all was happy again.

 

It is interesting to compare our second team with Chelsea whose squad cost about double ours.

Vorm = Begovic
Trippier > Aina
Wimmer < Luiz
Carter Vickers < Zouma
Davies > Alonso
Wanyama > Mikel
Sissoko > Chalobah
Son = Pedro
Carroll < Fabregas
Nkoudou > Moses
Janssen < Batshuayi

Not much in it.....

 

I've really enjoyed the lack of attention and acknowledgement we've received from our transfer dealings. Merson has slagged us off as per while Danny Murphy says we done poorly with our transfers. Yet if you asked any Spurs fan, 95% would tell you we've got exactly what we wanted and some! Personally I was delighted with our signings.

Improving our first XI wasn't essential, improving our options however was. A number of times last season we looked a bit lost when a key player like Dier, Kane or Dembele weren't involved, so bringing in the competition and cover for those guys has been excellent.

Wanyama seems to have already slotted in as if he'd been here for years, to score on his home debut helped cap a great first few games for the club, he'll provide excellent cover and competition for Dier.
Janssen has also slotted in easily, his work rate is immense and he's a nightmare for defenders to deal with, should have had two goals by now but the goals will come and hopefully he'll push Kane all the way to be the club's top scorer.
Nkoudou - or GK as he likes to be called - will add the pace factor that we've missed since Townsend/ Lennon. His eye for goal that he showed at Marseille is also a welcomed addition, especially as we sold a good scoring wide player in Nacer.
Sissoko is an enigma, his price tag raised a **** load of eyebrows and his form at times for NUFC was questionable but there's no doubt that when he's firing on all cylinders he's a top player and provides great competition for Dembele as well as the attacking mids. If the rumours are true in that his £30m deal is based on him being at the club for the full five years, then suddenly it doesn't look so bad, paying £6m a season for a good player will be essentially be peanuts for our club.
Lopez comes as someone for the future, at 21 he's a baby in goalkeeping terms and even though his deal is currently a loan, I think it's inevitable we'll turn that perm later in the season. I presume Poch sees him as potentially Hugo's heir down the line, so bringing him in now to learn the lingo and the English game, plus having him train with two top keepers should do wonders for his development. Spain's produced/ producing some fine keepers so hopefully he'll add to that impressive list.

As HBIC also pointed out, the added players have given us great options to approach games with different styles. We can go with pace, power, technique or a mix of all three depending on the opposition.

I see no reason why we can't equal or even better last season's performance and with Champions League to look forward too, it should be an exciting campaign!

 

Good fair assessment though you may end up reversing the highlighted one, Moses has started the season very well and if he can keep it up will be important for them.

 

The one issue that we all have a nagging worry about is whether we have sufficient depth in our squad. I've looked at squads of the other teams likely to challenge around the top 8-10. There's no doubt that we are lacking in senior professionals compared to some of the sides we are competing against. We number 20 senior pro's and don't fill our 25 allotted squad places, whereas CIubs like Chelsea, United, Citeh, Liverpool, Leicester and Arsenal do. That said, players crop up like Lucas and Sakho at the Mousers and Debuchy and Jenkinson at the Gooners. These players are there because their clubs couldn't shift them and no other reason. The only player that might apply to at our place is Tom Carroll the rest are the manager's pick and after 2 years, it's his squad.

There's no doubt that we've decided to move on anyone our manager believes isn't going to help him win things. I strongly support this. We may have decided to spend all we can afford on quality and gamble on numbers? I will support this quite happily. I'd rather we spent all our money on the best 20 players we can afford than had 25 and 10 less able ones in that group. Whilst it's no bloody good having talent that doesn't get on the pitch and bench, if we still have money in the tank for players that we haven't spent, then I will be miffed. Prices are going to keep rising in the next 3-5 years, there's no point in saving in such a market. Invest and trade up.

It may be that we've decided to give CCV, Winks, Edwards, Harrison and the like a chance in the cups. This is potentially a mixed blessing. It's great if the lads can help us get to the latter stages of at least one cup. However, we are overdue a win in something and I don't want to sacrifice our ambitions on any more fronts after the 'Dortmund Declaration' last season. It's the corollary of having made the decision to stop loaning out the cream of our Academy and these lads need games in really competitive football.

I think we are still light of some goals from the 3 behind the striker based upon previous statistics for those players. Ideally, I'd have liked to bring in one extra player for that role. We could have gambled on Yunnus Malli for less than £10m (I know, it's becoming an obsession) and flogged him on for the same if he didn't do the business or train on. However, there's a good possibility that our existing players can improve this with application and better movement in the box. If Harry Kane or Vincent Janssen get injured then going with 2 strikers may be a decision we could regret but we're not in a position where we can support endless top drawer wages.

I'm pretty damn happy with what we've got and in comparison with what MP inherited 2 years ago, it's a bloody miracle.

 

The obvious suggestion is that Carroll stayed in order to meet our HG requirements.

At present the rules state we should have a minimum of eight HG players in a registered squad of 25, and at present we have six (Kane, Walker, Rose, Davies, Trippier and Carroll) in a registered squad of twenty - although if we have the exact same squad this time next year we'd have eight HG players in a squad of 22, as both Alli and Winks will be registered HG players.

 

Carroll isn't an awful player to have around to be fair. Physically limited but a decent footballer and he seems to get what Poch wants from a player in his team. Mason was the better one to let go as he's not physically much better than Tommy and was always going to command a bigger fee.

 

To me, we're still short of a centre forward.

Other than that, the options looks great.

Time will tell.

 

For me, the most important theme to emerge this summer (in actual fact it began to emerge last year too) is that Levy finally has a manager who he trusts implicitly. Previous transfer windows were consistently dogged by background political intrigue with questions of 'whodunnit' hovering over every single player we signed. This was a sordid trend that began in earnest towards the end of BMJ's time at the club (culminating in his shocking departure) and persisted for the best part of a decade. We never truly knew who was pulling the strings and making the calls. Was it the manager? The DOF? Had Levy overruled them both? Was it Pleat? Our most tragic window in recent history was of course the Bale money debacle. Say what you will about AVB and he had plenty of shortcomings, but a promising young manager who had just secured our (still unbeaten) record points haul on the cusp of losing his best player should've been given free rein with that money.

The level of clear-out seen under Poch has been unprecedented. The writing was on the wall last summer when he was allowed to sell on probably half a dozen players at a loss or barely breaking even - notions that in previous years would've had Levy breaking into a cold sweat. I know I was vociferously critical of the way we went about it, but truth be told if Jeremy Peace had blinked, our net spend last summer would've been enormous too. This summer took in to another level though. For the first time, there was no drawn-out haggling and penny-pinching. All 3 early targets were indentified and secured early with reasonable offers put on the table. Even the GKN was down to the power shift at Marseilles more than Levy's traditional pontificating. A number of sources even claim that we ended up paying less for him than the deal agreed with the previous owners! What struck me about Sissoko was that we tabled a bid, and from the moment Everton came in with a showroom display price match, every cell in my brain thought we'd pull out and call it a day. But we persisted, and persisted quickly. The manager had identified a player he wanted, and our bid increased by £14m in the space of 3 hours. It was unprecedented. And for all the hack journos and opposition fans saying that we've been 'ripped' off, there has been one summer in 14 seasons under ENIC when those words could justifiably be used: 2013-14. Our track-record has been cautious and sensible in almost every previous window; I don't see why this one will prove to be any different.

 

Just to totally clarify - a club doesn't *have* to have a minimum of 8 HG players (?). Rather, out of a squad of 25 the *maximum* number of overseas players is 17. So you could have 1 HG player and 17 overseas and register a squad of only 18 over-21 players if you wanted.

In short - there is no minimum number of HG players only a maximum number of overseas players (17) and an overall maximum number of over-21 players altogether (25).

Unless it's changed. Mind you I just tried looking this up and even in articles where it had been made clear that the rule is about a maximum number of overseas players rather than a minimum number of HGs they still mentioned the phrase "minimum 8 home-grown players" which is rather confusing.

Or has the rule changed? Or am I not getting it?

 

This is fairly typical of the articles I found in that it actually says two very different things within a few short paragraphs:


"...clubs must include eight home-grown players out of a squad of 25.‪

A home-grown player will be defined as one who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the Season during which he turns 21).

Clubs will be able to supplement their squads with unlimited additional players under the age of 21 on 1st January in the year in which the season commences.

Changes to the squad list of 25 may be made during the period of a transfer window.‪

Chief executive Richard Scudamore confirmed: "As of next season clubs will be required to have a squad named of up to 25 players, of which no more than 17 can be over the age of 21 and not home grown. The definition of home grown is trained for three years under the age of 21 by somebody in the English and Welsh professional system”."

 

They are saying exactly the same thing only worded differently.