The need for a RWB who can fulfill the role and Conte will select, is desperate. We are an Eric Dier injury away from real problems at CB and without Kulusevski, we lack for creativity. Hopefully, we get them in January...but even if we don't...and things end badly this season, I'm still for backing Conte going into next season.
I think Gil could be the alternative to Kulusevski but this stubbornness Conte has about his strength is preventing us from seeing so. Both have that drop of the shoulder style of play that sends opposition players in the opposite direction and both can whip in a ball nicely. Definitely need another RWB, although again, playing Spence is surely a better short term alternative than the other two? It’s these sorts of decisions that keep holding us back, as it means Emerson/ Doherty keep letting us down and Lucas Moura runs into blind alleys and fails to meaningfully impact a game. Our right hand side when these players play is a black hole yet Conte persists with it despite having alternatives - that almost certainly can’t be any worse. I’d imagine it’ll be in the summer the club start properly looking for a long term keeper. Hugo will have a year left by then so the new keeper has time to not immediately need to be a hit and the transfer of the number one shirt can take the needed time. Meslier and Sanchez would be my picks on that. Edit: Defintely hope we try and make Lenglet’s move permanent at the least, him and Davies are very decent options at LCB and he can cover at CCB if need be. Another proper CCB would be nice though.
Personally, I share your view on Spence. Gil, I remain less convinced by...but I'm going to take on faith that Conte and Paratici will solve the issues for next season, if they can't get them adequately resolved this January. No more buying the wrong player, just because we can get them. There's been far too much of that prior to Paratici. If it takes time...then so be it. If Conte will sign for 2 more seasons, I'm prepared too wait and judge him next season when he should have something approaching a team that he wants.
Very interesting debate in light of Antonio's first anniversary with the club. It has certainly been less combustible than I thought it would be. In that regard I think Fabio is the perfect foil between Levy and the manager. Where are we at? It's a peculiar one. I always use the 16/17 team as the yardstick by which to measure team quality. It's actually a very useful method to gauge where we are up to in this latest 'project'. Here's the issue: Apart from the players who are still at the club, I don't think a single member of our current team gets into that 16/17 XI. Maybe at a push Kulusevski gives circa 2016 Son a run for his money, but it's a slim call. This comparison alone shows how far we still need to go until we can challenge for the title again. Rose, Walker, Toby, Jan, Wanyama, Dembele, Eriksen, Dele of that vintage all walk into the current starting XI, and to my mind that is quite a cause for concern. The flipside is that while I rate 22/23's starting XI far below 16/17's, the overall squad balance and depth is incomparable. We had an extremely narrow pool of players and it showed in the fact that we crashed out of Europe and the Carabao pretty early on. What we have currently are a number of players with the potential to match their 16/17 counterparts... Romero has the potential to match Toby. Kulu has the potential to match (and better) Dele. Bentancur has the potential to match Dembele. Hojbjerg has the potential to match Wanyama (and is actually quite close to doing it, based on his form so far this season). Add to that Kane and Son and we are currently in possession of 6 outfield players who with time and the right coaching, could probably challenge for the big prize. That leaves the remaining 4 spots, which aren't a secret to anyone: LWB, RWB, CCB and LCB. Those are the areas that now need attention. If we can bring in 2 in January (I'd say CCB and RWB are most pressing) and another 2 in the summer (although Udogie could well be a revelation at LWB while Lenglet could rediscover his form at Sevilla), we could in theory be on par with the 16/17 starting XI in terms of balance and quality, albeit with a better and deeper overall squad. This is why I make Conte 100% right in saying we need another 2 windows before we are ready to mount a serious challenge. It also shows that he is more realistic and less affected by hubris than Maureen, who was telling anyone who would listen we'd be able to mount a challenge much earlier on in his Spurs career.
I wonder how much of Paratici's January planning is based on Barca/Los Ladrones/Bayern/Juve paying big for somebody coming off the World Cup and needing to balance their books
Antonio Conte on Dejan Kulusevski "The fans were happy but I was first to be happy. Kulusevski, he missed a lot and Moura missed a lot. Richarlison is missing a lot. Now we lost Sonny. When a club like Tottenham loses all these important players it’s not like the other clubs". "I hear someone say every team has injuries, yes but it depends which players you have injured. Tottenham can’t afford to lose all these important players. I think so. If you ask me whether we are able to manage the situation I think we are doing this". “We are managing the situation in the best possible way. We finished Champions League first [in the group] and for many people that was normal despite last season, Conference League we dropped out in the group". "I think that we have to be calm and assess very well the situation of Tottenham and see what the situation was one year ago. Otherwise I repeat we risk losing enthusiasm and passion. We have to know that to stay in this position now there is a project, there is a vision, the club knows very well the way to try to improve, but we have to be enthusiastic, everybody, because for me if I don't find the passion and enthusiasm , ok we can work a lot but for me the passion and enthusiasm is my fuel. I need to have this. It’s very, very important for me".
First Conte calling it a ‘project’ (just another way of saying don’t expect anything but keep paying the highest ticket prices around) and now his assistant saying this. He should just admit that the ends justify the means and that’s all they care about. Spurs are awful to watch most of the time, we don’t expect the team to play like prime Barcelona or even Man City but realistically the team won’t win trophies so the need for entertaining football is paramount or it all just feels pointless
I really weren’t expecting them to be making so many excuses lately, along with waffling some utter horseshit. As for using up a lot of energy, that’s hardly a surprise when they’re playing the same 13/14 players whilst a good bunch of others have either had nothing or a few rare 85+ minute introductions. They then seem surprised when players are getting injured and even then are rushing players back which aggravates injury - see Romero and Richarlison for that, plus the comments the other day on Lucas. There’s also been a number of interviews/ press conferences now where they’ve subtly confirmed that the first half is tactical, it’s nothing down to the mentality of players, we’re being told to sit back in the first half and then try win the game in the second and the maddest thing is that probably results in more energy being used than if we tried a more balanced approach over both halves, because the amount of energy we use going into overdrive via desperation in the second half is overcompensating for the lackadaisical first half. Just absolute madness at the moment, it really is.
I reckon we are at the ‘pointless’ stage of the rebuild under Conte. It’s never going to be smooth…even under a manager who plays ‘free flowing’ football. 2 thirds of the season left. The Goonz don’t worry me too much…maybe I’m being naive and they are doing a Lesta…but I doubt it. I do believe we can win things realistically and never console myself on free flowing football as an alternative because then you can lose sight of the actual goal…silverware. I think we have as a club…let’s knock it about a bit…that’s why everyone cant forget Redknapp and obsess over Poch…not me though. I’m prepared to go through **** to get to the light…I’m at a stage where that’s worth it instead of playing it safe…we don’t live forever…I want us to try allsorts to win silverware. You think realistically we won’t win anything but I approach it like…realistically we need to build something which goes deeper than the starting XI at our club because we don’t have the right frame of mind as a club to ‘achieve anything’. Need to back Conte, he’s no Nuno. This guy has a formula that wins, he’s proven that. Requires time though…as much as he did great at Chelsea….it was still Chelsea…a winning machine, so his tinkering there imo won’t have been as difficult and painful as it is with us to solve and the culture of the club was win win win unlike ours so an easier hot seat to get into. This summer gone I said we will regret not buying another CB when we look back at this season…I’m already right. That’s what needs solving and that needs a chairman with bigger balls than Levy or maybe a few more windows…because current options at the club are not great…just different names to maybe tinker with. I get it tho…we are not easy on the eye. There's always players every manager doesn’t fancy. Conte isnt far off with his weekly choices, you can’t hang him because he wont play Spence. Conte will bring more success to us than Spence…so I’ll take that on the chin because I think he deserves backing for the bigger picture. Reckon he will sign a new contract after the January window…makes sense…might keep Levy honest. I always get the impression that some of our fans think the squad over the last few years has been a swashbuckling manager short of achieving silverware…I think the managers have always been a quality squad short of achieving silverware…Conte trying to rectify that in a manner that achieved him success at Juventus, then built a team at Inter to overthrow that very Juventus.
I am in the need for attractive football camp it is one of the very basic reasons for being a Spurs supporter. Over the years watching the team in many different guises with many different managers you never get 'attractive' football all of the time. Exciting games are not the norm they are always a bonus. Games often include magic moments but the all-out exciting games are usually not more than 3 or 4 in any one season. There is a difference between mangers like AVB who create negative football and Redknapp who did produce an exciting brand. Even with Harry and Poch we had boring games. Bielsa at Leeds was a breath of fresh air but of course he lost out to the PL demands of winning above all else. The FA's invention of the PL is the root cause of so much pressure on managers and that's always going to produce conservative tactics as they protect their positions and if they don't? Bielsa shows you what happens. As to Conte his success is based on defence, he's Italian, but it holds the promise of exciting forward play coming out of that defence. Counter attacking is always exciting. I am pleased to hear him say that we need to be patient because that implies that he wants to stay and finish the job. I am happy to accept that this change to Spurs will take time and I can see us moving towards a brighter future with the players that have come in so far. Do not forget Conte's very impressive and fast assessment of the squad when he joined us, and the steps taken to improve it. This is the project that is unfinished.
I thought the opposite about the first half being tactical tbh, hasn’t Conte explicitly said that they haven’t been going as intended? I think it was after the Bournemouth game.
I think a large part of it comes down to mentality. As Spurly said in his long post we’ve had a lot of managers who have struggled with Spurs and this group in the last few years. They’re (mostly) talented managers and we have some excellent players but I do think there’s something in there about not always having the will to impose themselves on a game. We have been so passive in first halves and I think there’s a fear of messing up, ironically if we bought some of the second half fire to those first 45s then we’d likely be in better positions. Conte has also said that this mentality has to be built not bought and doing this, along with building the squad, takes multiple seasons and transfer windows, not mere weeks or months. I’ll go back to the narrative - we’re in the top 4 and won our CL group and given the injuries we’ve had and the pre-WC schedule this is not to be taken lightly. Individual performances, the collective first halves, and Conte’s use of the squad are amongst several things that we obviously need to improve on as the season goes on but while it’s often been ugly and frustrating it’s nearly job done as far as the results in this first part of the season go. A lot more water to go under the bridge though. Not to mention and interesting post-WC January window.
They’ve both mentioned along the lines of how we have to pick and choose our moments to attack. When they say the first half wasn’t to plan I take it purely because they don’t expect to be 2-0 down in recent weeks, they want to play the first half sitting back and ideally not conceding, then going out in the second half. It’s not working though which is why we’ve lost 3 of our last 4 league games because we can’t sustain the amount of pressure we allow onto ourselves in that first half, almost any team will break. Our football for the whole of this season though has been poor, its not just been the last few weeks where results have finally caught up with us, there’s only about 2-3 performances we’ve been happy with. With a bigger and better squad, a full pre-season (which I have to say has seemingly done nothing) and injuries only in the latter few weeks, I don’t think there’s many excuses for how poor we’ve played. The World Cup is almost certainly only going to make matters worse as there’ll be extra fatigue from games not even played in a Spurs shirt, right now I’m pretty much dreading the second half of the season.
You may be right on the first half side of things. And while you’re definitely right that injuries aren’t the whole story when it comes to poor performances, we were missing the whole right side of our attack for a good while, including one of our most influential forwards and the backup to the other two that has meant that we haven’t been able to rest key players either. We’ve been unable to replicate last season’s solidity partially due to Romero missing games but also because we’ve lacked the constant attacking threat that kept other teams honest when they had more of the ball. I don’t share your dread for the resumption. Obviously we have to be hopeful that we get through the WC unscathed by injuries but the likes of Bissouma, Spence and others are going to get a good mini pre season where hopefully any of the issues that have been keeping them from contributing fully can be ironed out and I’m convinced we’ll make a move or two in January too. I have cautious optimism. Always dangerous as a Spurs fan
