Realistically the issue with Poch's last eighteen months is he was trying to improve a team that didn't exist anymore Much as I hate to keep pointing the finger at the one player, because in this case it really isn't their fault, Ndombele is a perfect example of this: if we signed him in the summer of 2017 he'd have gone straight into the team in Dembele's role and thrived, because the team was structured to get the ball to Dembele and let him wreak havoc as the CBs and the DM were all drilled to just roll the ball to him and let him create space - but by the time Ndombele arrived the structure of the team had changed as we were now leaning more to rapid counterattacks which required the ball to go out to the flanks while the midfield pairing needed to be more rounded (which Winkssoko wasn't, but that's another conversation for another time) Realistically what we needed to sign that summer wasn't a Dembele replacement as Dembele's role was obsolete, instead the pivot we needed was a Parker/Carrick-type DM and a Modric-type CM so we could dictate play from a mid block and spring counters quickly from the centre of the pitch, with Lo Celso at the tip where he'd be making late runs into the box when we had the ball and hassling opponents when we didn't Instead we tried to do both, and as a result neither worked
I know I'm not going to be most popular on here for expressing this but... For the passed two complete seasons, the sports media has helped Spurs to inflate Kane's worth. Should've cashed-in when the chips were down.
I simply don't believe that there is any way of getting a large sustainable edge in recruitment because I don't see how it could work. I find it even harder to believe that we currently have a negative edge in signing players because if that was true then doing the exact opposite would give us a positive edge. So it is much more likely that we've been lucky followed by unlucky. Or more strictly that signing top four players is really hard because there are not many about so recent performance is not as bad as everyone thinks. There is almost no doubt that if you spend £800m on the squad you will get a team that will win trophies. If you can only spend half that you will likely end up between 3rd and 6th.
I'm not sure why you don't, we had a way of gaining an edge on competition for years as we bought low and sold high with primarily young players that had high potential. It worked, for many years, and allowed us to compete with those massively outspending us. Leicester are more or less doing that now and they've finished above us two seasons on the trot. Dortmund hoover up the best talent in Europe and sell for mega profits whilst always remaining competitive in the Bundesliga and enjoying occasional success. Ajax utilise both scouting and their academy. Porto for a spell made fortunes due to signing promising young Europeans and South Americans. RB Salzburg snap up very promising talent. Even look at clubs like Brentford, they've utilised a method that's allowed them to punch far above their weight when you consider clubs in the championship have had more backing. Luck will play a part but so does good scouting and having a clear vision - something we've not had for a while. We're never going to spend £800m in a set small period of time either, we're not in competition with City who can do that. We're in competition with the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal, Leicester and now possibly West Ham to get either the remaining top four spot or solidify a top six one and we don't need £400m to do that with the right module.
Of those you mention, only Son offers creativity. The rest are either dross (Bergwijn/GLC) or more defensive players.
You have picked players signed from 2007 (Rose) to 2016 (Dele). We also had real flops in that time. In the past two years we have not anyone of Dembele, Lloris, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, Dier (from 15-18/19), Dele (from 16-19), Eriksen, Rose (14-17) or Walker. Our full list of signings since January 2018 are: Ekete Ndombele Clarke Sessegnon Lo Celso Vorm (rejoined) Bergwijn Gedson (loan) Devine Hoejberg Hart Doherty Ferguson Reguilón Omole Rodon Paskosti Lavinier Bale (loan) Vinicius (loan) Gollini Gil Romario Sarr Royal Way too early to judge this years signings but out of the other 20 (3 loans) only Bale, Hoejberg, Devine and Reguilón could not be called disappointing. None of them were great. One (Devine) is too young to judge. One was underused (Bale) and both Hoejberg and Reguilón have been hit and miss. That list shows that some was very broken with our transfer policy.
Today underlines what most of us knew before the season started. Our squad depth is pretty much non-existent - a mix of youngsters and players who just aren't good enough. I'm confident once we get Romero up to speed our transition from defence to attack will get quicker, he is brilliant on the ball and confident carrying it out from the back. It is crucial now that Nuno does everything he can to get Ndombele back on board. Even if it's for 60min cameos and only one game per week, he is by far and away our most talented midfielder and his presence literally changes our entire set up for the better. By this, I don't mean chuck him in and let him play his way into form. Tanguy isn't like that. He's a modern day prima donna par excellence and needs his head straight before his legs will work. I was worried that Sissoko and Aurier leaving would be the final straw, but clips of him in training this week seemed positive. He looked happy to be there and was moving normally rather than his usual half arsed dragging his feet around like he's just climbed Kilimanjaro backwards. Sports psychologist, open bribery, pig with an apple in its mouth like Reguilon got...I don't really care. Due to the pattern of our transfer dealings and the current make up and balance of the squad, he is comfortably the third most important player at the club after Kane and Son. Getting him to knuckle down and contribute will be a huge challenge but one that Nuno has to rise to, or I fear we will finish lower than we did last season. We'll concede far fewer goals, but we'll struggle enormously to score them, especially with a less than fully focused Kane up top.
Shield your eyes, children, here's a pass map please log in to view this image I believe the word "yikes" is best placed for this one, because it looks like the entire team is passing it between one another on the halfway line to see how long before Harry Kane gets the hump and grabs the ball before stomping down the tunnel, although nobody seemed to have told Reguilon However, I know a few of you are probably thinking "Yikes" about what appears to Winks piggybacking Dele on the pitch, but that's skewed by Winks going off for Davies after the sending off and Dele dropping back into midfield rather than how they were playing. The real reason to say "Yikes" is that, even with that in mind, Dele averages out as receiving the ball deeper than Winks ever did - meaning he was hardly receiving it when playing on the left wing (although, again, the position change might skew that, as it's impossible to tell the traffic between Winks and Dele due to them occupying practically the same space) On top of that, when you look at Palace's passmap, they played almost entirely on the flanks so, in theory anyway, that should have allowed us to try and get some measure of control in the centre, rather than what we actually had which looks like a time-lapse of all my deaths when I'm having a particularly bad Celeste run please log in to view this image The real facepalm, though, is there's plenty of lines from Hugo to Tanganga, Reguilon and Lucas - yet a routine short pass is what led to Dier going off injured, because today really was determined to take the absolute piss Honestly, there's little data to be mined from this due to the positional changes making the data almost impossible to read in places, which somehow fits today's ****show, and if you're desperate for some good news I'll point to the Emerson/Hojbjerg/Lucas triangle on the right as at least that combination worked - although it would have worked better if a few of those passes were misplaced into Zaha's groin region at full blast...
I don’t expect it from Skipp, that’s not his job. The other two stats for goals/assists don’t read well and I don’t count sideways passes or dribbling and losing the ball as creative. Spurs desperately needed a creative player and have done for a whole but for some reason it wasn’t addressed. Bryan Gil could eventually be that guy but the present time worries me.
The more I watch of us, the more I wish we’d not loaned back the lad from Metz. He’s compared to Zidane. Even if he’s only 1% Zidane right now, he still walks into our squad, and probably our first 11.
Might be wrong but am pretty sure that they only agreed to sell this summer because we agreed to loan him back. This meant meant we won the chase for him. If we hadn't done this we'd have had to battle it out next summer for him.
