Much as my love for Poch is *legendary* round these parts, and tbh always will be, I cannot forgive him for his abject failings in the market - failings which have left Jose with a mountain to climb that should've been a molehill. I tip my cap in Jose's direction for managing to bring in 2 players - Reg and Pierre - who have actually improved on the players they were meant to be replacing. Haven't seen that since we signed Victor Wanyama in 2016. I'll say that again: It has been 4.5 years since we managed to sign a player who actually improved on whoever they were replacing. When Poch was finally allowed to spend he essentially blew £130m on 3 players who haven't even come close to reaching the impact of Dembele, Eriksen, and to my mind - once you add in the ****load of money wasted on Sanchez, Aurier and Moura (another £95m) - is unforgivable. However, this does not explain why players as poor as Sanchez and Winks have somehow worked their way back into the first team, how a player as limited as Sissoko is being given increasingly more complicated job descriptions, or how despite having a bloated squad we're still over-reliant on the same players we've always been over-reliant on. All that's on the current manager.
I agree the squad management has been dire, I’ve said that numerous times in recent weeks and it’s something Jose’s gonna have to change sooner or later before he runs Kane and Son into the ground and then he’ll truly know what “we’re ****ed” means. Sissoko at CM is fine - and by fine I mean for the current situation. We don’t have a first class number ten like Eriksen so Ndombele is now playing there and as Lo Celso is made of glass and Gedson is toilet, Sissoko and Hojbjerg is the best pairing we can make. Though when he’s chucked to RW or in a three man midfield with Winks and Hojbjerg, that’s when we all know the manager’s just asking for trouble. You know my feelings on Winks. I feel I can just laugh it off now and give a sarcastic thumbs up to anyone who tries telling me or themselves he’s worth keeping around. How he’s managed to get back in the team I’ll never know. As for Sanchez... It doesn’t matter who gets picked at the moment, all three senior CBs are turd. Rodon needs to be thrown in, even it I’ll come with inevitable mistakes, let the guy have a chance to make the position his own because it’s unlikely he’ll be any worse. Lamela’s another, our fanbase love clinging to micro positives in average players. If they’re not convincing themselves that Winks is anything but dreadful, they’ll tell themselves Lamela’s mentality is amazing and that he’s a game changing sub - yeah because today showed that just like numerous others in the past. He’s a decent player who’s incredibly injury prone and should’ve realistically been sacked off years ago. Think it was just today someone pointed out he’s been here seven and a half years, yet they didn’t point out he’s only been fit for about three and a half years and has probably only been top drawer for about two.
Transfers at Tottenham are a problem to attribute. Managers only get some of what they want and also get players that they didn't particularly want. Levy and Hitchen do a lot of recruitment work that the manager gets to live with from reading between the lines of comments from Poch/Mourinho. I've no doubt that Poch didn't want Lucas or Aurier. He didn't want Dele either, that one being down to Levy/Pleat. Vincent Jansen, N'Jie, and N'Koudou were all said to be his personal picks, that the club's scouts didn't rate hugely. Ndombele was definitely on him, too. With Jose, it's been widely reported that he didn't see the need to sign Bale and wasn't the primary mover for Reguillon, either. I'm pretty sure that the club had identified Hojbjerg (and quite possibly tapped him up) before Mourinho arrived. He also really didn't seem very keen on Bergwijn's signing.
We didn't sign any new players for over a year. 1 player in 3 windows. Once we did spend, we spent late as usual. The new signings got injured, because of course. And Pochettino got 3 months. It's clear there were deeper problems with the squad than I think most of us realised at the time but lets not pretend it wasn't inflicted by the rest of the club, more than Pochettino. I didn't like a lot of his negativity in his press conferences but he was absolutely spot on, looking back.
And it was because of Poch that we didn’t sign players. It was more or less confirmed by Levy in one of the THST meetings then by the likes of Ally Gold and Dan Kilpatrick. Poch was turning down tons of players because he was too stubborn to accept alternatives if his first choice wasn’t obtainable. He allowed the squad to rot because of that stubbornness.
Oh for sure, most of the blame lies with the owners and Levy not strengthening from a position of strength. We only started to address gaping flaws in the team once older players (Moussa, Jan, Rose, Wanyama etc.) had either started to naturally decline or been decimated by injury. We all agree our lack of transfer activity post-2017 was criminal. I was just pointing out the fact that whenever Poch was actually allowed to spend big, he screwed it up. In reality, his legacy was built off of 2/3 superb windows right at the beginning of his tenure, and a crop of youngsters all coming good at exactly the same time. Obviously he still had to coach all that into a system and style of football and did so superbly, but I'm not convinced he had the experience or knowledge to take a top 8 side he'd worked into a top 4 side and improve that team further into a trophy-winning side. That was really the point I was making. None of our signings post-Wanyama seemed to do that. They either caused us to visibly regress (Sanchez, Aurier), or they need years before consistent results will be shown (Gio, Tanguy, Sess), or they are never going to be good enough to be anything more than squad fillers (Lucas). That smacks of either a manager not getting the players he wants, a manager not actually fully understanding which players he needs, or both. And it is probably both in all honesty. Either way though, Poch definitely lacked the ability to take us into the promised land. He could only lead us to the borders. It took me a long time to accept this, but after reflecting on our demise in his last 12 months, his over-reliance on certain 'favourites' even when they were cack, his running certain players into the ground, our constant failings in semi-finals and finals, and lastly - his personal failings in the one window he was finally allowed to spend; I grudgingly accepted that it was the right decision to sack him. So it is refreshing to see Reguilon and Hojbjerg, who have improved on what came before them. Although tbh Pierre is still miles off of prime Wanyama in terms of bossing the midfield.
So which is it? We've got a terrible squad managed by an idiot and the only way is down. OR If we had played more positively we would have held on to leads and would be clear at the top of the strongest league in the world. Both of those things can't be true. Actually the truth is somewhere in between. We've still got a squad which is top 4 capable but we make too many errors which have led to goals being conceded. Getting better players than we have is a tall order though for reasons I have stated previously....so we need the coach to get more out if them. I don't really like him as our manager because the style of play doesn't suit me, but I think he is doing a reasonable job on average. At peak Poch we had Son, Kane, Dele, Dembele, Alderwiereld and Lloris playing at levels that would have put them in or close to a World squad. Now it is just Son and Kane. Dele is still capable and Mourinho is missing a trick there. Ndombele and Lo Celso could be top players if they could stay fit for long periods. It doesn't really matter which other players get picked as they are all of similar standard.
I don't agree that our lack of transfer activity was criminal. I think Poch had the right attitude to signings. Only buy players who you are sure have a chance of improving the team or are young and can be developed. Even then you will be wrong more than half the time. I don't understand why Hobjberg seems so highly rated.....in terms of points under Mourinho we have fewer when he plays than before we bought him.
Up until this point, I'm fully in agreement. Like pretty much every squad in football, there's areas of strength and weakness. City's defence isn't the strongest, especially when counter attacked. Liverpool's midfield is functional but not overly creative. United can't defend all that well. Their managers are setting up to compensate for the weaknesses and get everything out of their strengths. Our "idiot" is setting up to accentuate our weaknesses...not selecting most of our forwards...and flogging our 2 best players into the ground. He's not even bringing the squad players on after 60 minutes in games to spread the load. We score, fall back, become exhausted chasing shadows, make defensive errors, concede goals and then try to attack to rectify the problems we've created for ourselves. It's predictable and pathetic and I want him out.
He ticked the second box (young and likely to develop), but very much missed the first (improving the team here and now). Haven't seen that box ticked since Wanyama's signing 4.5 years ago. That is a huge problem, no matter which you you slice it. Other teams (Liverpool and Leicester immediately spring to mind. With a bit more time, Everton, Man Utd and Soton can join that list too) have managed to make immediate improvements to their first teams during that time. Why haven't we, despite eventually spending upwards of £250m? Maybe our recruitment department is broken beyond repair? If you plotted a graph and made the x-axis players signed and the y-axis success of signing, you'd see a sharp downward plummet from pretty much the moment Paul Mitchell became Steve Hitchen. The latter was the person who came across the worst in that whole documentary. Seems hyper-cautious, pessimistic and defeatist - not attitudes a club with our aspirations wants or needs. I tend to agree about Hojbjerg. Definite upgrade on Winks but so far haven't seen much more than that. Has some games where he's everywhere but others (such as yesterday) where much of the game just seems to pass him by. In his defense I don't think playing alongside Winks is helping him as they both occupy similar areas and perform similar tasks, so we end up with two half-baked (and confused) cakes.
Yeah I’ve said it before but Liverpool’s recruitment has been the best I’ve seen from a club, have to admit. Their signings over the last 2-3 years is what’s made them one of the best teams in Europe having initially been a team in our shadow for the best part of a decade. Even when I laughed at what I felt was overspending on the likes of van Dijk and Alisson, they’ve actually proven to be perfect value for money (won’t say bargains as that’d be a bit OTT). Michael Edwards is probably the best in the business right now, or certainly up there with the likes of Campos and Monchi at the very least. We’ve somehow managed to go in a horribly downward trajectory with our signings over a similar/ longer period, with Hojbjerg and Reggie the exceptions as CK has stated.
I'd say Leicester's has been even more impressive. They've managed to confront the twin perils of having their best players either poached by bigger clubs or declining with age, and have replaced those holes with young, exciting talent representing excellent value for money. Maddison, Pereira, Soyuncu, Tielemans, Praet, Justin, Fofana and Castagne. Or Sanchez, Aurier, Lucas, Clarke, Tanguy, Gio and Sess. I know which list I'd prefer.
Leicester’s is certainly more impressive than ours but Liverpool went from CL hopefuls and a team we were often finishing above to CL, Prem, Super Cup and Club World Cup winners thanks to their recruitment. What’s annoying about Leicester’s too, is those I’ve highlighted in bold in your post are players that were well on our radar that we passed up on. We can add Maguire to the list too as another.
Yes but who were the players he was offered? Levy's plenty good enough at managing his public image, as we saw with that ****e All of Nothing series. I wouldn't take what he hints at, or leaks, as a fair reflection of things. We know what Pochettino wanted from what he consistently said in press conferences. He wanted new players in early for preseason. The players who hit the ground running for us under Pochettino were Dele, Wanyama and Toby and they all had a full preseason with us. You'd think they'd all been at the club for years the way played for us from the start. Son and Sissoko, for example, both looked completely different players for us once they had a proper preseason. I'm saying this with hindsight, of course. I wasn't too concerned when we didn't sign any players that summer and I generally supported Levy getting in the right players late and at a better fee. But looking back, there was huge pressure to get the summer '19 window right. Tanguy was a good start and it's not Levy's fault that he had all those issues but after that we spent the rest of the time negotiating for 2 players we identified before the start of the window, trying to turn Dybala's £40mill image rights into £10mill and failing to sort out Toby and Eriksen's futures. It was a shambles for something we had most of a year to plan. *early relative to the season start.
We've got a decent squad with some exceptional players that isn't being managed to it's peak. We attack sides and take the lead, then sit back and let them get back into it. It's stupid. We all expected Fulham to equalise yesterday. You can go back through the thread and see people predicting it. Mourinho's not doing a terrible job, but he's overreacted to the West Ham result and it's having the reverse of the intended result. We're trying to be too tight at the back, it's inviting pressure and we're failing to kill off sides that we have demonstrated we're better than. If we held about half of the points that we've thrown away, then we'd be top. It's ludicrous.
I get that people have deeply analysed the issues but the most important issue is that WE ARE SO FECKING TEDIOUS TO WATCH FOR AT LEAST ONE HALF EVERY GAME
That's tedious, but we're also **** at it a lot of the time. When we're playing against City or the like, I get it and it generally works. That doesn't mean we should be doing it against everyone, though.
