In general absolutely, £40m is very generous. Though as PNP said it’s likely bollocks when looking at the source and the fact we’re so short on CG players. If say the rumour was true, I guess a lot would depend on how big Jose feels the squad needs to be from a Europa perspective. Winks, Kane and Rose are our only senior CG players and with Rose likely to leave, if we sold Winks too we’d only be able to have a max squad of 22 players. That may be enough, especially as players like Tanganga and Sessegnon qualify as U21 and we’ve got academy players like Cirkin and White who Jose said are being promoted to the first team squad but it’s still very doubtful Winks gets sold.
that'd be a great move. you get 40m and you'd weaken city. imagine winks taking the place of any of their midfielders. Skipps more than an adequate replacement for winks
Admittedly Jose usually goes for a physical bigger player, which is why (sadly) Sissoko won’t be sold, but imo there’s a place in the squad for Winks Yeah but every squad needs basic good professionals, Liverpool’s midfield on top paper doesn’t stand out but they’re a solid unit
every good team needs squad players who are good professionals. However if that squad player is a saleable asset at 40m, thats a no brainer.
If he wasn’t club grown then yeah take it and get into another basic professional. But as repeatedly mentioned, Spurs are already short of club grown players and Rose is basically finished so even more reason to hang on to Winks
how many need to be club grown though? 3? how big are the squads 22? (i don't know). i think you can just chuck 3 club grown youths in the your squad and have 19 proper players in the squad or however many it is
You can have 17 players from anywhere plus four homegrown and four club-grown. U21 players don't count.
Sissoko is a more effective player than Winks. It’s nothing to boast about but he offers more to Spurs than Winks does. Though it is worth remembering that in 18/19 Sissoko won our Legend’s POTY award and a good number of fan’s felt he could’ve won the fans POTY. What he lacks in technique he somewhat makes up for in physical aspects, he’s more defensively sound than Winks, he covers Aurier’s runs and he does get the ball forward more than Winks. Winks is such a pointless player for this football club. He doesn’t bring anything to the team that someone else already does as part of their game. A basic good professional is the bare minimum requirement, it shouldn’t be seen as a plus. Liverpool’s midfield works really well because their system is based on creativity from the fullbacks. We don’t have that system.
I think I feel about Sissoko as you do about Winks Winks could play in that Liverpool side imo, maybe he’s not the right type of player for Spurs right now but hopefully Jose can find some use for him rather than sell him
FWIW I don’t think Sissoko is good enough in general either but I’d just rather him than Winks as I think he has a couple attributes that can be useful due to his pace and power. He’d probably be more suited to Pool’s style of midfield but he’d still be well down the pecking order. Henderson is their leader, Wijnaldum and Ox are better whereas Fabinho is a really good DM.
Winks is heading towards 100 appearances for us, he has scored 2 goals and has 2 assists to his name, I realise that he is predominantly a deep lying midfield player, but to put the assists into context that's the same number as Stuart Nethercott managed in half as many games! And I am generally in the pro Winks camp, and hoped that he would push on but he has gone backwards in my opinion, however the HG/CG issues and the early season fixture situation will mean that he will be needed. He has been better in Europe and for England so I am hoping that he will deliver in the Europa for us.
I think he looks really good playing for England, better than he looks for us. However I'm certainly not as down on him as many. The problem is that if you're not looking at a flair player it's really easy to find things about them you don't like. After all it's the brilliant assists, the tricks and the goals that stand out. If that's not normally part of their game then it's hard to measure their contribution. I would argue thought that most teams need players that don't necessarily appear to contribute, but simply by being there make the rest of the team better. I remember arguing on the old 606 about our old player Michael Brown, who really split opinions. It's also hard to support an argument when someone is demanding stats like goals and assists. All I could say that IMHO we played better when he was in the team. And it is hard to quantify, but not every individual has to be a star for the team to work - in fact a team of stars rarely does. Are there therefore going to be problems with Hojbjerg? He'll get support to start with, but are then people going to say he doesn't contribute enough (ie contributions that can be measured)?
I don’t think we’ll see that with Højbjerg, especially if he contributes to breaking up play like he did at Southampton last season, where he led the league in ball recoveries. With Winks I think it’s debatable if we play better with him or not. His attributes as a player suit us better in some European games and when he plays for England but he’s not good enough across the board to play that role in the PL where the pace and intensity is so much greater. He’d also benefit from playing alongside more solid midfielders, but then again who wouldn’t. If PEH can screen the defence better than Winks (not hugely difficult) and also contribute to progressing the ball to the opposition final 3rd quickly and accurately then he’s a significant upgrade. Ultimately stats aren’t the be all and end all, most fans who watch a team regularly can tell who makes them play better and who doesn’t. Dembele and Modric would be our two most recent examples of players like this (though these days there are all kinds of progressive passing and dribbling metrics that if they had been curated back when those two were in their primes, would have shut up the stat obsessed crowd too). You can use stats to ‘prove’ anything with the amount of data collected on the game these days so I’m wary of using them definitively.
The thing with Winks is that what he really demonstrates is the decline of The Press and Dembele If he was in the team between 2015-17, when we were pressing hard from the front and had Dembele smashing holes in the opposition, he'd have had all the time he needed to pick out the Modricesque passes he's looking for but only really gets the time and space to do so in European games But with the team easing off and eventually dropping The Press by the end of 2018, coupled with Dembele being unable to play to his previous high standards - further exacerbated by Sissoko lacking the skill to perform in that role effectively and Ndombele hitting the ground limping - he didn't have the time and space he needs so instead became Tom Carroll with a gym membership
It's not really surprising he plays better for England though when the general standard of international football isn't as good as the Premier League. Of his six caps, the only top side he's faced is Spain, the rest includes Kosovo, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Lithuania and the USA, all of those are Championship calibre teams at best. He isn't being judged on flair or stats alone, I think TCM was just highlighting how statistically poor he is, however it is pretty damning when Moussa Sissoko chips in with more goals and assists and he can't pass nor shoot to save his life. We all know stats haven't always told the whole story though, Mousa Dembele was gash statistically, Luka Modric was hardly great either yet I personally consider him the best player to played for Spurs in my lifetime. My personal issue with Winks is that he doesn't bring anything to the table. If we class him as a CM, he doesn't create, he doesn't control a game, he doesn't get the ball forward and he doesn't add any goal threat. If we class him as a DM, he doesn't protect the defence and he doesn't have the physicality like Wanyama/ Dier had in the role to be that "bully" destroyer type. Hopefully that's what Hojbjerg will bring.
In all fairness that game against Spain I’m pretty sure we won and he was excellent. That was the game where Dier smashed Ramos, IIRC. But that aside I agree with your points.
