Some of you are too pessimistic and some of you are happy clappy mofos...what you need to do is vote RCL for Mod... Dammit ... wrong thread
One thing that does have to be said about Doherty is how, whenever he receives the ball, this happens Receives ball > Pause > Look at exactly where he's going to play the ball > Play the ball And by complete coincidence the opposition players are always able to block his crosses and intercept his passes And it's that middle section which is a problem, not just because it slows down our play and give opponents time to close down the channels, but because I can't recall him doing that when he was at Wolves so the only reasons he's doing it is either because he's having to mentally remind himself what system he's playing in or he's been sapped of all confidence and questions his every move on the pitch Or, you know, a combination of the two...
If we want top four and to challenge to win the league our team needs to be composed of players who average at least 10th best in the world in their position. Otherwise Man City and Chelsea will be much better than us and Man Utd and Liverpool at least as good. I would say Kane and Son are probably top 5 currently and most of the rest are below 20th. But getting payers in the top 20 is very hard. Most of them already play for our competitors and of those who don't it is extremely hard to be sure that the ones we buy will be the right ones. I'd say that all of Tanganga, Romero, Sanchez, Reguilon, Sessegnon, Skipp, Lo Celso, Dele and Gil have a decent chance of improving into the top ten. But only if the team plays well. Rodon, Scarlett and Divine might too.
The biggest problem was that the players hadn't had much practice playing with each other. So there were little flashes of effective combinations from time to time but mostly it was a choice between playing at a place slow enough not to misplay passes, but also slow enough for Pacos de Ferreira to always be a step or two ahead, and misplaying. The second problem was that Pacos de Ferreira were set up for it, up for it, and technically good. The third was Spurs' players becoming invisible. Every time I looked, no matter where the ball was, they were outnumbered at least 2:1. The only player I noticed playing well was Gil, who was rewarded by getting penalized for an offside when he was two yards on, and a foul when he didn't touch the other player. Well, I thought it was a good idea to try the completely rotated 11, and I was wrong. That is the problem with taking a risk: it doesn't pan out sometimes. In any case, this certainly has been a classic week of backing Spurs. Beat Man City and lose to Pacos de Ferreira. Nuno's certainly getting his triumph and disaster work in early.
No, they need to average the best four in the Premier League in their position. Dual positions like CB and CM can comprise of players in the top eight. You can also get by with a few players being one of the best six in their position too, though too many of them likely means you finish between 5th or 6th and not top four. There can be 20+ other players better than them outside of the Premier League but it won’t matter as they can’t affect the outcome from another country. Harry Maguire would be a perfect example of that, he's probably one of the best 4 or 6 CBs in the Prem right now yet wouldn't make the best 15, probably even 20 around Europe. Under Pochettino for about four seasons we pretty much met this criteria, especially in three of those four years. Lloris, Walker, Toby, Jan, Rose, Dembele, Wanyama (and Dier), Son, Eriksen, Dele and Kane were all players who would’ve been regarded as one of the best four or six in their position in the Prem. Nowadays we don’t have anywhere near that. Kane and Son are the only two who’d meet that criteria. Lloris at a push could possibly squeeze into the top four but more likely top six. Hojbjerg and Reguilon would probably challenge for a best six spot, whilst players like Skipp, Rodon and Tanganga can potentially do so in time. I won’t include the new signings yet as we simply don't know for sure how they’ll do in the Premier League. Everyone else at this club doesn't come anywhere near being one of the best six in their position, with many likely coming below 10-15. This is why getting rid of many of the dross is just as important as getting new signings in. For as long we have the likes of Dier, Aurier, Doherty, Winks, Sissoko, Ndombele etc weighing us down, we as a team/ club will find it tough to move forward.
Actually we are not too far apart as I reckon more than a third of the world's best players play in the PL. But the issue isn't players like Winks who barely played last season so can hardly be responsible for our league placing. The issue is that the players who did play are not good enough because we buy too many average players instead of a small number of better ones. The latter is more risky as mistakes cost more.
I certainly agree we’ve bought too many average players, it’s another huge reason why we’ve regressed and why Paratici was hired because Levy and Hitchen plus the manager weren’t doing a good enough job of identifying the right players. As for players like Winks, he’s absolutely part of the problem, bad players will always be part of the problem. He’s not good enough for a team like Southampton, let alone Tottenham, yet he’s in his 5th or 6th season now. We’ve been holding on to absolute dross for far too long whilst many of the good players we used to have are either at other clubs or have declined, further adding to the problems. The club’s been a mess these last few years and only Kane and Son have stopped us falling even further.
