Thought Nuno needed his own thread. I had a vague memory that we started well in the league and we hit a real sticky patch so looked it up. We beat West Ham away followed by a win over QPR. We were then thumped at home by Liverpool, drew with Sunderland, lost at home to wba then drew with Arsenal. We then seemed to click winning 16, losing 4 and drawing 3 of the next 23 league games. I have no idea if Nuno can produce a similar turn around (I suspect not) but I thought the comparison was interesting.
If we’re comparing Nuno’s start to Poch, then yes you’re right and I’ve been banging this drum on other threads for the last week or so. We didn’t get the pressing right for at least half a season when Poch started with us, and it took even longer for us to adapt to dominating possession and breaking teams down, rather than relying on pressing other teams into mistakes and countering them. Nuno will take time to get his ideas across to the squad and it also looks like a lot of players are lacking fitness, not just the usual suspects like Tanguy but a lot of players coming off little injuries or international break disruption. I want Nuno to settle on his ideal starting XI and just play them as much as possible in the league for the time being. If that includes Tanguy then so be it. But they all need time to play together in a certain way and the best way to get fit is matches. I don’t see any other solution.
The interesting thing with Poch's first season is that, for the first couple of games, he set us up so Eriksen, Lamela and Chadli were constantly switching positions which is how we overwhelmed QPR so effectively (and I'm still irked by MOTD no-selling our 26-pass goal in that match and saying QPR were so bad it was possible...), but almost immediately afterwards it backfired because in the Liverpool match the three of them were running into each other in our attempts at getting back into the game and we soon made our attacking three more rigid in their positioning Why do I bring this up? Well, simply enough, Nuno's system is based on attacking down the flanks and only attacking down the flanks, and at some point we are going to need to add a ball through the middle to the tactical plan for obvious reasons - and with both Lucas and Bergwijn out (seriously, Turkish ref, thanks a bunch...) that is something we have to consider considering the alternative is to have Kane and Lo Celso lining up behind Son as happened on Sunday And, of course, this also brings up the difference between adaptation and change: Poch adapted his system after the Liverpool loss and, while it took a while to regain momentum, bloody hell did it regain momentum - on the other hand, Villas-Boas changed his system overnight because the football was less than thrilling and ended up annihilating the shape and giving Hugo PTSD as he was picking the ball out of the net a hell of a lot of times as a result So that's what Nuno's task is: work out a way to rejig his system, not just in case of injuries/suspensions/unscheduled two week stay in Croatia, but also to do so during matches because as Sunday showed we were matching Chelsea in the first half and they were able to introduce Kante and adjust their shape to snuff out what worked for us in the first half and we weren't able to make any changes to regain momentum or push back theirs, and that's something Nuno does need to do
Poch was a coach on the up. Nuno is probably at his peak and his peak isn’t all that. I don’t see things as early days and that they will improve once players get used to his methods and style as I don’t think he really has a distinctive style.
Something else to add: just how many of our players are lacking match fitness at the moment? Off the top of my head the following players missed significant portions of preseason, if not the entirety of pre-season Harry Kane Gio Lo Celso Tanguy Ndombele Davinson Sanchez Ryan Sessegnon Pierluigi Gollini* Cristian Romero* Brian Gil* Emerson Royal* While understandable for players who arrived during our preseason, the fact so many key players are several weeks behind their teammates' fitness levels due to missing preseason through injury or interviews with Gary Neville is certainly an issue because if our progressive midfielders start to flag at the 60th minute mark, who do we bring on to replace them? That's realistically the issue with starting both Lo Celso and Ndombele on Sunday, as the liklihood was always that they'd both start to flag between the 60th-70th minutes, and while Gil could be brought on to replace Lo Celso who could replace Ndombele? Technically nobody, as the options available were Skipp or Winks, neither of whom operate in the same way Couple that to Rennes taking out our entire roster of right wingers a few days earlier, Nuno does have an issue on his hands which for some reason will be his or Levy's fault, such is the Route One nature of our fanbase's ability to read a situation and work out the causes of it these days
I have my doubts about Nuno. I think he's all we could get after 9 weeks of being turned down by most...and then, understandably ditching Gattuso and mystifyingly pulling the plug on Zorro at the very last minute. He'd probably do a decent job (although not as good as Poch) if he had the players that we had in 2014. What wouldn't Nuno give for... a 28 year old Hugo Kyle Walker Danny Rose a 21 year old, fully fit Ben Davies a 28 year old Super Jan a fully fit Eric Dier Etienne Capoue - he may be limited but he'd be a fixture in our current 4-3-3. Mousa Dembele Ryan Mason Nabil Bentaleb - then probably a current Skippy equivalent Christian Eriksen Nacer Chadli - I wasn't a huge fan, but he'd see Bergwijn permanently benched a 23 year old Lamela a 21 year old Harry Kane From our current squad, on current form and attitude, only Sonny would definitely get a game. PEH would probably get in, as would Romero (it's early to say how good he is/isn't...but Kaboul had gone and Chiriches and Fazio were god awful). Poch had the building blocks of a really competitive team. Bolt on Sonny, Toby, Dele (as was) and Big Vic and that team ran some great European teams ragged. Nuno's never getting anywhere close to that.
YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW! I was quite a big Chadli fan and never really wanted us to sell albeit I appreciated he didn’t wanna play backup to Son. He popped up with some big and crucial goals for us. Silky bastard too. Definitely better than Bergwijn and Lucas.
Sorry. He had so much talent... ...but he looked lazy to me. I loved Glenn Hoddle...but Stevie P and Robbo were my favourites.
I am pretty sure that Nuno has had higher finishing positions in both EPL and La Liga before joining us.
One obvious point is that Nuno's plan does seem to rely on having a marauding player on the RW, much as it did at Wolves And what's the one thing we currently don't have thanks to that ****e ref against Rennes? A RW of any description, so the options available to Nuno is to flip his system so we have a marauding player on the LW given we haven't run out of wingers there (yet...) or play one of Son or Gil on the RW and hope they can replicate that (or, if we're desperate, throw Markanday in for a few games) Unfortunately the current fix, at least judging by Sunday, is a Christmas Tree with Sonny up top with Kane and Lo Celso behind, which mainly serves to help people post misleading infographics on Twitter
In the past maybe but my point is, he’s not a coach on the upward trajectory like Poch was. Nuno has peaked and let’s be honest his peak wasn’t impressive
Nuno’s MO at Wolves was to get in a load of Portuguese players with the same agent. Beyond that, what can he do? Untried and untested with the players available to him at Spurs - especially established stars, one of whom clearly fancied out of the club. It’s a learning curve for him and likely to be a rollercoaster- as it’s proving so far. Under Poch there was an identity - a clear strategy, formation,way of playing etc which was successful and should have resulted in some silverware at some point. No Spurs manager will reach that level again without considerable rebuilding and a period of continuity with a settled team of comparable quality.
Paolo Fonseca's been doing the media rounds this week, and two things stand out i.) The club really should have done a better job after Paratici came in and put his foot down saying we should withdraw our contract offer (or the HMRC stepped in and said "Hmmm...", whichever theory you subscribe to) ii.) Oh boy, there's a section of the Lunatic Fringe who have already turned on Paratici...
Obviously it’s too soon to turn on Paratici but after a lot of hype, he didn’t really deliver much in the transfer window. The squad is still unbalanced and there are still several players who need to be sold asap.
If getting a decent league position on a budget is what youre after then he'll do well imo. Beyond that im not sure but i quite like him and how he speaks, i also liked his wolves team at times so i hope he gets you back in a position to have the pleasure of me visiting often again
Define decent? I don’t think this current side with Nuno will do any better than 7th over the course of a season and even that means finishing above 1 of Arsenal, Leicester & West Ham which I’m not confident about right now
Well the top 4 is sealed already this year by us city utd and the chavs so 7th to 5th is decent this season imo and i think he can get that for you, beyond that going into next i cant say. And the goons wont be near 7th this year, battling it out with everton for 10th/12th
Yeah top 4 is a closed shop right now. Can’t see anyone getting close to it. Leicester and West Ham could easily finish 5th and 6th this season. Arsenal have one big advantage and that’s no European football to worry about. I’d happily take 5th right now but imo 8th is more likely than 5th because I just don’t see how Nuno gets this Spurs team playing good football. He was negative at wolves and I think he will play the same way at Spurs.
He had/has a very big job to do and I think that he got off to a fairly decent start. I wasn't happy with the transfer window overall, but his signings look respectable enough. Romero, Gil, Sarr and Royal all look like smart acquisitions, while Gollini's a tricky one. Back-up keeper to someone like Lloris is going to be a hard sell and it's only a loan at the moment. He hasn't particularly impressed me though, barring the penalty shoot-out. We didn't do enough business and our squad's severely unbalanced. The coronavirus has had a big effect on the market, though. I'm not completely sold on Paratici, but I think he's done pretty well in a tough position.
