Winks. Winks is doing better than I expected and fair play to him but he's still not a top four calibre starting midfielder, for as much fans wish him to be. Dier and a new creative CM is what I think we need going forward. Sissoko can play in place of both of those at times in a rotational role whilst Winks is someone you use in "lesser" games or cup games. Dier is one of the elite DMs in this league, for me there's only three better - Kante (who's actually more box-to-box these days), Fernandinho and Matic. We need an elite level CM to partner him.
Newcastle...pretty average...scored due to keeper mistake....won Crystal Palace...bloody awful...lost Chelsea away...pretty awful 1st half...average second...lost Watford...average ....2 late goals....won Leicester...average ... lucky they missed a penalty ...won Fulham...average ...late goal....won Dortmund...aversge 1st half excellent second ...won You're blinded by your goonerism it seems
Have you actually been watching? With the exception of the 2nd half v Dortmund in the 7 matches we played without Harry we were poor -outplayed for long periods in the league by Fulham, Watford, Newcastle and Leicester - Yes we won all 4 but we didn't play well in any of them, we lost to Chelsea and Palace in the cups the Palace match being possibly the worst we have played for 3 seasons. We probably were not as bad tonight as were at Fulham or in the Leicester match, but Chelsea have that extra quality that meant we paid for the errors that the other sides didn't punish.
Our best performance this year was the Man Utd game we lost when we did everything but finish. Kane played throughout. The only comparable performance without Kane was the second half against Dortmund. You are letting results blind you.
I can't remember his last good performance. When fit and on it, he's a good player...but he's no right to start ahead of Lucas right now.
I'd say Chelsea at Wembley was our best, they were unbeaten at the time and we completely bossed them for 90 minutes, Dortmund was a close second although that was purely the second 45 minutes. We did play well against Utd though, just couldn't score for ****.
Our form will improve with him or without him because it is all of them not playing well that has caused the drop off of performance. The defence did not make mistakes because Kane was playing. There were several defensive mistakes as well in the the recent games that we won. It was just that in the last two games the opposition were sharp enough to take advantage.
Started the season on fire... but the fire has well and truly been extinguished. Love the guy but he's someone that needs moving on in the summer. 5/6 years in, few flashes of brilliance but become too unreliable both with fitness and consistency.
Thats quite a few wins there rcl. And the losses are in the season cup killer that you wouldnt want to be part of anyway and the season cup killer too with no sonny boy
Thought the first goal was Toby's fault...if he shows more strength against little man Pedro..then Lloris doesn't even come into it. We didn't nip it in the bud because a player didn't do the basics right. 2nd goal was pathetic communication and it's no surprise Trippier was involved. The mentality is all wrong for a team considering itself to be challengers for titles....the finer details matter.
You’re right, Kane being marked by 2, should free someone else up. But the players it should free up are the wide ones, as the CD’s should be pulled closer together, keeping our oppositions FB’s more narrow as a result. But Trippier and Davies are nothing to worry about, so it causes no problem. Rose on one wing, and Walker down the other would have made such a difference in games this season. We have got to address this in the summer, because we’ve been so limited since Walkers departure. Bringing up the transfer issue is fine mate, it’s a genuine argument. we’ve been talking about it all season and how it relates to our performances whether we win or lose. @littleDinosaurLuke hit the nail on the head a couple of pages back. Squad depth and quality just isn’t there. It’s why we see the same thing every season. Whilst I don’t think Winks is amazing, he’s the least of our worries right now. Maybe he’s not a top 4 midfielder, maybe he will become one. But **** me, there’s some players in this squad who have had long enough and shouldn’t be anywhere near a team with top 4 aspirations. Their time is up. You listed a few in one of your previous posts. We’ve got to improve on them this summer, but the reality is we won’t be able to do that much business in one go, as we have left too much to do, as you also said. Not to mention that too many wholesale changes could be hard to implement. Anyway, the priority right now, however we possibly can, has got to be getting out of this performance rut before the form becomes even worse. We have to beat arsenal at the weekend, otherwise we have even bigger problems.
The problem with that argument is that we don’t have top 4 aspirations, we are actually established in the top four. This means one of two things: the players are better than you think or Poch is getting them to outperform. If the former then it is difficult to sign better players and if the latter it is dangerous to destabilise the squad.
Methinks had Kane not been playing we'd have scored first giving us forward momentum. Drop Kane and Sonny will open up again.
