a) What about the owners of Man City? b) You don't need to poach owners of another club (that never happens) but get owners in who are new to the sport and who genuinely have the funds and desire to invest in the club.
great post. but it makes you ask so many questions about those at the top making the decisions, and the lack of cohesion there appears to be between them. It’s like they’re all singing from different hymn sheets when you break it down like you have here. total mess.
I'm not sure it's a total mess. If anything, the direction of the club is clearer than it has been at any point since we left WHL, at least to me that seems to be the case. Levy brought in Paratici with a very clear brief that is already obvious if we trace the patterns of the three windows we've had under him: - Scouting out young prospects and grabbing them before loan farmers like Chelsea or City do. - Improving the quality of the wider squad with players who are surplus to requirements at their previous clubs. - Improve the first XI with genuine 'ready to go' quality. The last one has proven to be the most challenging for three intertwined reasons: 1) We are not financially doped. 2) We still have PTSD from Ndombele and Lo Celso so are much more cautious about splashing big bucks (I guarantee you if Richarlison wasn't PL proven we wouldn't have sanctioned that much money to sign him). 3) We haven't and aren't making enough money from outgoings to ease the pressures of points 1 and 2. Again, I find it difficult to blame Levy for these points. I for one would stop supporting us if #1 came to pass, #2 is perfectly understandable and #3 is the result of past failings, some of which are Levy's fault, some aren't, but fact of the matter is we have at least 7-8 senior players still officially employees of THFC who need to leave the club permanently but no one will bloody buy them! In light of this challenge, it is crucial that the manager gets the most out of the top two 'brief' points above: young prospects and utilising a broader, deeper squad to maintain freshness and protect better players from fatigue and injury. Conte has failed atrociously on those last two points, which in turn creates a vicious cycle highlighting our struggles to improve the actual first XI, which in turn is really hard to do because of points 2 & 3 above, which in turn leads to more pressure, which in turn is precisely the pressure Conte keeps moaning about, etc. etc. rinse, wash, repeat. If our intention is to keep him until the end of the season, we'd best collectively pray for a second coming of Kulu and Bentancur because if we don't manage to pull off a similar coup we are screwed. Or rather: the manager is screwing us.
Even with Prem experience, I still find it absolutely baffling we spent about 70% of our budget on a player that doesn't improve our first XI (well, Son's form may say otherwise) when there's actual positions where a £60m signing could've been game changing for us. It's like there's a fine line between being happy the club will back the manager with an expensive squad player but then also borderline stupidity at spending so much on someone that doesn't improve the first XI when there's areas of concern. With almost half the season gone, I think we'd have to admit that it's leaning more towards the latter at the moment. Richarlison's a decent player and in a way I'm happy he's here (would've rather gone for Zaha) but decent players shouldn't cost £60m, exceptional ones should. I can't help but feel we could potentially worsen our PTSD of big spending with this one.
I said it a few weeks ago, and I think it's probably still true: last season it seemed that our approach felt like an agreement between Conte and the players about how we would set up to play games, but this season seems more like Conte saying "This is how you will play" and the players have to fit that, in much the same was Villas-Boas' first and second seasons were vastly different And here's the thing about that: we did not seem to be doing that at the start of the season, as against Southampton we were set up exactly like we were during last season's run-in and similar can be said for the Chelsea game...and it's after the Chelsea game where we started to see the more rigid systems and sometimes baffling tactical choices initially creep in (i.e. Davies as LWB and Perisic as a LW against man Utd when we were playing 352) but they've slowly become standard (such as Skipp always seeming to play as a RW when he gets subbed on) In that regard Conte is more flexible than the ubermensch, as his tactics were so inflexible most people on here could set up to play against us and expect to do well considering the passmaps frankly looked like photocopies of one another, but the issue is that Conte is mainly managing to sabotage himself not due to his system as variations have been seen, but his in-game management is not falls into one of two categories: either being reactive to things which have already happened (usualyl opposition goals) rather than making changes before those happen, or not reacting at all to the point where there's usually a few sarky comments in match threads when he finally makes a substitution in the 78th minute Admittedly criticising Conte for forgetting he has subs available is a tad hypocritical considering a few of us on here used to also make cracks about Poch not dipping into his subs until the 85th minute in some games, but considering that one of the main criticisms of the last year or so of Poch's tenure was his squad management falling off a cliff (although, in retrospect, there were signs his squad management was slipping from around 2017) so we've stumbled back towards the second half of the 2018-19 season
I agree it was at least £15-20m more than I would've paid for him, but now that he's here I'm going to sound like a broken record: Let's utilise him for his strengths (when he's not injured) rather than shoe-horning him into unfamiliar positions or roles. His performances for Brazil show that he is far better as a central striker than a wide attacker. Stop playing him as one and stop playing Kane in a position he hasn't really occupied in almost 3.5 years. Set us up with four in attack: Kulu and Son (Perisic on current form) either side of Kane as a #10, and Richarlison the point of the spear. That attack is frankly terrifying on paper.
The issue at the moment is the market's hyperinflated, which is why some truly absurd fees are being quoted such as £105m for Enzo Fernandes...wait, just heard SpursWeb screaming something about £30m again...while the fee Monster Energy Dusseldorf are quoting for Josko Gvardiol's is similar to what people bought entire football clubs for less than a decade ago From that standpoint, while I wouldn't call the £60m for Richarlison a bargain, at the same time I would suggest that we got him for a pretty good price considering Chelsea paid £70m for Wesley Fofana That being said, if we spent that £60m on either a DM that could keep a charging rhino from crossing the halfway line or a Modric-like CM (although given our midfield's lack of press resistance, that might not have worked as expected...) then things would be very different, because if we could assert control in the centre of the pitch for the first time since Dembele's legs went our tactical approach would be markedly different and, hopefully, the results would be too
I'd be wary of playing Kane as a permanent number ten. I get that on paper having our front four in the same XI is an exciting prospect but Kane is our best goal scorer, we'd essentially be needing Richarlison to be as good as Kane was when he had Eriksen behind him to make it worthwhile and do I see that being the case? No I don't unfortunately, Richarlison just simply isn't as good as Kane and we don't know how Kane will be solely as a number ten, rather than a nine-ten hybrid.
4 more league games this month(palace, city, Fulham away and the NLD at home) Can anyone honestly see us getting any points from them? They say January is a depressing month anyway but this could get tough! Just try and ride out the rest of this season without getting to angry.
I don't think you've used the best examples to compare with Richarlison here though as Gvardiol is quite possibly on course to become the best CB in Europe within the next few years and similar could be said for Fernandez in midfield. You're paying through the nose but you're also buying immediate quality as well as potential world class ability, as well as considerable longevity. Fofana is looking a risky signing based off his injury record but if he overcomes his injuries he's another with huge potential ability. When it comes to Richarlison, he's still young enough at 25 to get longevity out of but he's also at an age where he's not likely to significantly improve and he's currently the fourth best forward at this football club (Son's form may change that statement). So we've paid what is essentially a game changing fee for a non-game changing player, where realistically we probably could've signed a similar calibre player for about £20m less and/ or spent that game changing fee on a player that will actually be a game changer for us.
Conte will be gone soon enough, it was all always going to end this way. Any pleb on the street could foresee that. He only works well with unlimited funds. I’m not massively into the ENIC out thing. They have created a fantastic business which in the long term will translate into footballing results. Conte was given £180m this summer. If he had the additional £60-70m for an additional player or two that he is bleating on about, I don’t think we’d be sitting too far off where we are now. Like Mou, he doesn’t fit the culture of the club. That’s what the club need to do better, stick to attack minded managers. That’s what we want as we know with our current spending power we are usually vying for 4th spot Vs. The other top 6. …and we’d take watching great football to achieve that rather than have this defensive minded coaches who at best achieve this (or 2/3rd). But when it goes wrong…and we end up 5-6…that’s when it get’s toxic. In my opinion, rightfully so. This is a sport and a business, suffer the consequences if you **** it up on the salaries they’re on. All in all, we’ll continue to be one the biggest clubs in world football for decades to come. So let’s appreciate that too.
I can see where you’re coming from in both posts regarding Levy, in the sense he’s to blame for some things previously, but not so much in much more recent times. It’s a fair assessment IMO. where I’m coming from with it being a mess, is that the chairman has quite rightly taken a step back and hired a DOF. Great. But the DOF has been tasked with making signings that fit with our strategy/policy, yet at the same time we have hired a manager who is the total opposite and requires a cheque book and ready made players. so we’ve ended up in a situation where we’ve got Players who aren’t getting a game because they don’t suit the managers requirements. And we’re finding out very quickly with conte, that, as you’ve said, he’s a 1 trick pony, who potentially doesn’t have the ability to adapt to this philosophy. One could also ask whether some/most of these players are good enough regardless of the managers stance on them. Which then asks questions of Paratici’s acquisitions. Not to mention the key positions that have been neglected for too long, and needed sorting as an absolute priority. There just doesn’t appear to be any alignment, and the direction of travel is still very unclear for me, as I can’t make sense of any of it.
We'll not finish top 4 it's not really our aim but it's nice to be up there for a while. A couple more years and we might have a real go I think. Hopefully we help soothe you on Tuesday night but it's unlikely with wood and longstaff playing
Badly need upgrades on these players - Lloris - New GK Tanganga - Maguire Sanchez - Bastoni Emerson - Porro Sessegnon ( Udogie coming in next season ) Lucas - Maddison Gil - new LWF That's 6 top players that need to come in over the next two windows. Would leave us with this squad - New GK , Lloris, Forster Romero, Maguire, Bastoni, Dier, Lenglet, Davies Porro, Spence, Udogie, Peresic, Doherty ( can cover both WB positions ) Bentancur, Hojbjerg, Bissouma, Skipp, Sarr Kulu, Kane, Son, Maddison , Richarlison, LWF
After the match Conte was quoted as saying "I'm not disappointed because the performance was a good performance. From the start to the end, I have seen the right commitment, the right intensity, the right desire to get three points, to win duels, to press high, to run,"
My point was that there is no way of testing whether an untried new owner has either the funds or a genuine intention to invest. So it's a leap into the unknown. Obviously a billionaire Spurs fan who has nothing else to do with his wealth would be a great outcome but I don't expect there are many in that category.
