Yes he was **** that day but I've not noticed many game changing mistakes. Hojbjerg certainly stops a lot of attacks to counteract his mistakes. One of the reasons I keep going on about him is that I honestly can't tell whether his mixture of brilliance and rubbish is better or worse than Winks doing neither. It's also very hard to judge the things that don't happen. Eg Winks is in the right place and the opponents are forced wide and it comes to nothing, Hojbjerg is way out of position and they score but it doesn't look like his fault.
You’re probably the only person/ one of the only people that sees this “rubbish” aspect of Hojbjerg. He was arguably our best player in the first half of the season and then his form dipped once Jose decided he pretty much had to play every minute of every game. Once we got knocked out of Europa his form picked back up again, don’t think that was a coincidence. He’s also the best candidate to replace Lloris as captain next summer if he doesn’t sign an extension. Winks on the other hand is quite possibly the worst central midfielder we’ve had in about 15 years, excluding players like Gedson who barely kicked a ball. He’s utterly atrocious, literally offers us nothing. The fact Sissoko’s contributed nearly three times as much as he has is damning.
Those aren't terrible stats. Those are selective stats, because if we're comparing them to players in their same position then we have stats such as Moussa Dembele - 249 games, 10 goals, 12 assists Eric Dier - 139 games (as a DM) 6 goals, 7 assists Sandro - 106 games, 3 goals, 4 assists Sissoko is not and never has been a better playmaker than Dembele, yet the statistics make out that he is
Hence the “stats don’t always tell the whole story” line… But the fact neither Sissoko or Winks aren’t known for anything AND have less than favourable stats, especially the latter, it somewhat tells you they have no place at this football club.
Sissoko has many caps for France who have been one of the very best international teams over that time. He certainly isn't a bad player. As I said we've had top four form when they've played together over the last three seasons which is better than when others have started. Hojbjerg played every match and we finished seventh.
Hojbjerg isn’t perfect but compared to Winks and Sissoko, he is like Makelele and Kante rolled into one
We had top four form despite of them (minus Sissoko 18/19 where he was very good) not because of them. We had an actual defence when they were playing whilst we still had prime Eriksen for about a year during their partnership too.
The reason our defenders looked better when they played might actually be because they got help from the midfield. Their most recent run of starts was the last few matches of the 2019 20 season after lockdown when Eriksen wasn't around.
Winks playing over 170 is worse I’d say. Sissoko’s contributed nearly three times as much as him, imagine how **** you’ve gotta be for that to happen?!
No it was simply because the defenders were good back then and we had players like Eriksen controlling the game for us. Now we have defenders that can’t defend, playmakers that can’t create and then Hojbjerg is left trying to cover everyone. If it weren’t for Hojbjerg, especially in the first half of the season, we’d have likely finished 3-5 positions lower than we did.
Kane has been in the team every season. The biggest change last season was Hojbjerg replacing Winks. In fact it was the only consistently different change.
Because the manager installed the wrong mentality in the side once we were winning, trying to defend leads and playing in a defensive style when our better players were so obviously better suited to playing on the front foot.
The point with Winks is that his role is intended to get hockey assists, namely he pings the ball out to a runner who then lays it on a plate for somebody coming through the middle, which is what Modric and Rakitic do (and also the reason why I was suggesting we nab Rakitic on a free last summer and just tell Winks "Watch what he does") Obviously they both have better numbers than Winks (I mean there's seasons they beat his goals/assist tally in La Liga alone...) and while some of that can be said for the quality of the teams they play for or the fact they're both simply better than Winks, it also points to the regression that's come from him playing like somebody afraid of picking up another ankle injury as much as it is him being miscast as a DM for three years And this goes back to the attitude of "Our squad's fine, no need to tinker" which was definitely starting to set in during the summer of 2017, because we could have either picked up somebody who can play in that role which would've kicked Winks up the backside or we could have committed to introducing Skippy into the side beyond a few drip-fed appearances in 2018-19 as both would have refreshed the squad a bit and saved us three seasons of screaming when we saw the Winkssoko pivot making yet another appearance
Mourinho was also the manager when Winks and Sissoko were picked together at the end of the previous season. When we were going at 2+ points a game. Our decline in form last season actually started when Winks was dropped.
You should try touting that round the other teams' boards, maybe you can convince them. May even get some decent money for him.
Dier replaced Vertonghen and Sanchez, while Reguilon replaced Davies to a large extent. Ndombele also replaced Sissoko and Eriksen dropped out completely.
