Many people said at the time that the large Spurs contingent at the World cup would come back to bite us later in the season....They were right.
Our players have hit the wall after the World Cup, as everyone said they would. Mentally and physically drained.
We always look out of our depth the deeper we go into a competition. and there always seems to be excuses to tie us over for another season...you could just see the regression but no it's all because of the other side factors...poor diddums need a rest...WC...stadium...blah blah blah. Limited squad quality and a manager who is obviously repeating some pre set mantra seems to be a problem for me. It's easy...Levy get your money out for PLAYERS (before I get a list of people reminding me we have just got a new Stadium) 3 years ive been saying that the team will break up, get older aspirations of individuals might change if we don't push on...our team has regressed and I expect it to regress further in quality since I have zero faith in Levy being brave in the transfer market Poch needs to be careful or he might start to lose his appeal if he wants to remain at the reigns of a club that seems to be stuck at the same cross roads at the same time of every season. Plus I don't really give a **** that we got relegated in the 70's...what a pathetic attitude 40 years on...it's laughable and weak..like a comfort buffer. I remember watching the Hillsborough disaster at the end of the 80's guess I should be glad everyone just makes it home at the end of the game, never mind the win.
Nothing of the kind. As long as I have supported Spurs, there has always been one piece of the puzzle missing that has prevented certain teams reaching the greatness of the Double side. In the 80s, it was defence (back four + CM) that negated the superb attack. In the reign of Arry, not having a 20+ PL goal per season striker when the MF was serving up opportunities all over the place. And now, an on-pitch leader in MF a la Danny or Dave, who will lead by example with their own performance, and can calm/cajole the team into getting the job done regardless of how tired you feel or hard done by the ref you believe you are.
Someone like that might not want to lead a bunch of snowflakes though This set of players have to show some balls themselves too. Or I can imagine how if we did buy a CM player and he flops everyone will blame him when the truth is a good General needs good soldiers not just numbers.
Here is the problem : there is no Danny or Dave out there. More disturbing is that after 5 seasons not one in the squad has risen to the surface to attempt to be that leader. So is Pochettino willing to find a technically less competent MF player for the starting XI who will more than compensate for that with on-pitch leadership ?? Similarly, would he be willing to recruit a Davids type player for the starting XI, who may not be up for 90 mins for many games, but has the experience and leadership needed for certain games ??
We thought we had that player in Dier...he seems to have stopped developing aswell. Something needs shaking up
Why do people think we need more leadership or a better attitude? Didn't anyone watch the Man City QF 2nd leg? The reason we are not getting trophies is simply that we face teams who are as good if not better than us as we get to the quarter finals onwards. Making this squad better is harder than people think. Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd have been trying ti better our league form for three seasons now with little success.
He is too headless to be that leader. Kane IMHO is closest to the required attitude, but he plays in the wrong position to be the on-pitch leader. I am more surprised/disappointed that neither of Jan or Toby have risen up to this challenge.
I'm waiting for the day Kane has had enough...building a matchstick team and expecting him to be our saviour won't cut it for ever.
It doesn't even have to be a CM. We could easily put a strong leader into our back line. A Vincent Kompany/ Sergio Ramos/ Georgio Chiellini/ Thiago Silva would whip these boys into shape from the back (not that any of them would join us though, but that's the type we could do with).
I'm not sure that we couldn't have improved the squad relatively easily this season. We went into the season knowing that Mousa and Victor were ravaged by injuries. We could have taken Gomes on loan or Dendoncker or a number of other options. No, they're not as good as the 2 that we had were in 2016/17 but they would have been significantly better than they were this season. Given Eric Lamela's injury problems, maddeningly, we passed on Tielemans, also a loan option. Improving on Kane, Eriksen, Super Jan, etc. probably is impossible at our stage of development but we're light by 2 or 3 players and that needn't have been the case. Most annoyingly, we could have done it with minimal outlay and within our wage structure.
In addition to that, we knew what we had with the likes of GKN and Janssen, so we could have taken a punt on some squad players who couldn’t have been any worse than those two, either.
Because getting up for the big games is to be expected, even for teams outside the top 6. There isn’t a team in Europe I don’t think we couldn’t beat on our day. But Elite teams carry that attitude into every game. If we played like we did in the City games for 38 games a season in the league, we would be champions. Teams who do this have it drilled into them both by managers and by leaders on the pitch. We are clearly lacking the latter, and for the former, Poch needs to show he can motivate players who have become established stars, not just young players gunning for their future in the game. Making the team better is definitely difficult, nobody disputes that. It needs to be a combination of good management and canny recruitment. Neither is easy, together it’s difficult. If we get back to the roots of what made us successful over the last few years I’m sure we can largely solve the recruitment problem, but the big question mark is around Poch stepping up - just as he claims our stadium and the completion of ‘phase 1’ of this project has taken Spurs to the next level, he needs to take himself to the next level too.
This is our major failing. We knew our first 11 would struggle in the second half of the season following the World Cup and we knew that we didn't have the back up players allowing us to rotate. We needed to invest in back-up.
GKN was just stuck into the hole left in the squad. He was never a proper option and we should have been willing to stick him in the U23's if necessary to bring in someone who was. It was so predictable that our players who went deep into the WC were going to tire. Having half a dozen significant outsiders or sick notes in the squad was an obvious and unnecessary risk that we're now reaping the result of.
Power is it because football fans have a sense of entitlement and a need to boast about their team. Games won during the course of a season seem not to matter as soon as we lose. The outrage expressed suggests too much reliance on football in the first place. Watching a game like yesterdays is always disappointing but it shouldn't be an excuse to trash the team and the manager. The result yesterday could have easily been quite different if their goalie had not made 5 terrific saves. That suggests we are creating chances without problem but the mantra has been that we can't finish.
If only we had somebody capable of doing exactly that...but some berk keeps insisting we sell him because talkBALLS said so
Lets have this conversation AFTER the next two games. Whilst it doesn't look good following yesterday, throughout this season Spurs have pulled irons from the fire having looked knackered in one game only to produce a top performance in the next. The moaning is surely premature when we are still competing in the Semi Finals of the Champions League. If you don't think that is already a great achievement then I will write you off as an entitled spoilt brat.
