If he had no choice but to play them, why didn’t he insist on more signings in the summer or walk because he knew the squad wasn’t strong enough to compete. These excuses are weak, boring and repetitive now.
Guess it depends on what the long term goals are. Right now I’d just take a short term rebuild with an attacking manager. Even with some who stick out like a sore thumb, there’s enough good players in the squad to play a decent brand of football. I’d say any semi-competent attack-minded manager could at least get Spurs playing in a manner that’d make us enjoyable to watch. We’re winning poorly and losing abysmally, literally zero enjoyment watching this football team.
I don't think our summer activity even came close to matching his hopes and ambitions. We were certainly impressed but then we'd been starved of transfer window success stories for many years so we're easy to please. But the harsh reality is that aside from Perisic who was free and Richarlison, I have my suspicions Conte didn't particularly want any of Spence, Lenglet or Bissouma. Add to this Ally Gold's recent revelation that we actually held back on spending close to £50m of the 'war chest' in the summer for reasons to do with shares and dividends in the calendar year that I didn't fully understand, and perhaps we do have a manager who is secretly deeply frustrated with the lack of ambition at the club. Make no bones about it, the summer window was above average but that is by our frankly abysmal standards. In reality, we took a team that barely scraped 4th and won nothing and summarily failed to improve the starting XI in any position. That is shockingly weak ambition and if I were Conte I'd also be pissed off.
Why didn’t he walk then? If he thinks (correctly) the current squad isn’t good enough the why would he stay?
Either because he genuinely wanted to prove himself (something that might well be waning now that the Juve job is almost inevitably going to be free soon), and/or because he had reassurances that January will be a serious window with serious ambition shown (something Ally Gold has also hinted to a few times, stating quite openly that the expectation is that we have a minimum £50m still to spend and then some). I'd go straight in for Trossard, Tielemans and Skriniar - all out of contract in June, and then splash the cash at RWB. That would be a magnificent window.
They’d all be welcomed by us as fans but two of those wouldn’t be guaranteed starters here. That’s essentially very similar to the types of signings we made in the summer. Not sure it’d represent serious ambition and/ or a magnificent window, certainly not in Conte’s eyes anyway if he’s expecting guaranteed starting calibre players, Skriniar is the only one who offers that.
Agreed. I'm being realistic and to that end I don't expect us to better our accomplishment of last January which was to sign 2 players who walk into the first team and improve it. Skriniar plus a top RWB would do just that. It is exceptionally rare to find even one player in January who improves you let alone two, so I've drawn the line there. And fwiw I think Trossard would be an upgrade on Perisic at LWB but we won't go there this evening as I doubt you're in the mood for another Perisic posters on the wall debate CCB and RWB are beyond urgent rn.
They’ve both got pros and cons over one another. Trossard has only just really started finding top form over the last 12 months though, Perisic has been at the top end of the game for about a decade. Trossard would definitely be an upgrade on Sessegnon though but as you somewhat said just the other day about how micro upgrades aren’t what we should be looking for, if we’re to have a huge window, for as good as Trossard is and how we’d both take him, he’s not elevating Spurs like Bentancur and Kulusevski did. CCB and RWB should be our priorities in terms of first XI strengthening but I’m not sure what top CCB is gettable at the moment if Skriniar pens a new deal with Inter, which I feel he might.
Another terrible result, but not one that’s surprising in the slightest. I’ve said before that I believe the players are briefed to play the way they do. Hence the sudden change in performance after half time in many of our games this season. - and last night stank of an “it’s only the carabao cup, we can’t cope with this fixture congestion” attitude from everyone involved. And that applies to other clubs too, judging by those who went out last night. so why didn’t we just play the reserves? IMO Conte was thinking about himself with that selection. Despite other fringe players being available, he stuck with most of the same players as a way of making a point about the January transfer window. It was an opportunity to give certain players a rest, but it was a better opportunity to stick to his guns and prove to Levy that the overall squad needs surgery. Which, to be fair, is true. as others have said, it’s a cup competition and yet another trophy opportunity missed, but this season is just ridiculous. Something has to give. I’m more annoyed that we didn’t rest literally everyone possible to give us the best chance of maximum points from our remaining games before the World Cup. anyway, onto Leeds. That’s a must win, or I’m not gonna hear the end of it in my household.
Djed “not ready” Spence with a cameo that was more exciting to watch than anything we’ve seen from Emerson or Doherty this season. Forgotten what it’s like to see a RB/ RWB capable of actually running at pace with the ball with actual intent. Probably the closest thing we’ll get to another Walker and yet our manager prefers persisting with players that are debatably professional footballers.
The aggravating thing about last night is it was a lose/lose situation which we managed to make worse If we played a heavily-rotated side and lost, at least we rested a few key players If we played the regular side an won, we'd have won but bolted four more matches to the congested post-WC period Instead we somehow managed to get 90 more minutes into the legs of several players yet lost, sapping more confidence and momentum as a result. When the best we can say is that at least Harry Kane came off on 60 minutes that underlines the problem
I think there's an element of 'he's not in the current team so he must be better' factor going on. Not saying he doesn't have a bright future, he does. But he also didn't release the ball as early as he might have done a couple of times, and I think there may be issues with him playing with Kulu as I think he was taking up a lot of positions Kulu would normally do.
Agreed. The problem isn't entirely Spence's lack of playing time. If Conte says he isn't quite ready for the absolute top, I'm inclined to believe him. The problem is far more due to our holding on to two donkeys and not going big for a top RWB in the summer. We have to rectify this in Jan, it is killing our team. Royal and Doherty need to be binned and a player in the prime brought in to share the role with Spence.
