Romero is injured we have only lost 1 match that he has played in this season so in his case he is not to blame for last night in any shape or form.
I think he’s just annoyed me with his reds this year. Unnecessary…and think with the general poor discipline from a few players has put the wider squad under strain and led to this cycle of injuries across the board.
Vardy wouldn't start for an elite club and so isn't the sort of player we need to sign to improve relative to Man City. He is however miles better than Walker-Peters, Edwards, Clarke and probably Foyth. None of those players would start for us currently and only Foyth would improve the squad.
By the way, I never said that you had to be at an elite club to be a good player. But if no big club tries to sign a player they probably aren't the best.
I blame Chelsea. They've pissed on more of our parades than any other club. Stopped us getting CL football when we finished 4th. Ended our title challenge in 'that' 2-2 draw. Pipped us to the title in our best ever season, despite scoring fewer and conceding more. Effectively ended Victor Wanyama's career at the age of 24. Injured Micky and Maddison to totally derail our first season under Ange. They are the worst thing to ever happen in the long history of football.
They don’t have to be the best, our squad though would be considerably better with them in it over some of the players we’ve signed for a lot of money. The original tweet highlighted that we’re essentially spending loads of money on players that aren’t better than what we could’ve had at the club if we just gave them chances and why we need to start providing a platform for the likes of Donley, Phillips, Dorrington etc to ensure that we’re not saying the same about these in years to come.
I blame every CB on our books who isn't as quick when making a defensive recovery as Emerson - especially Dier as he's got glacial pace and the peripheral vision of a photocopier ...is it worth noting there's a theory doing the rounds that Ange didn't want to start Phillips or Dorrington to force the issue of lacking sufficient CB cover, which is based on the logic that if Phillips started (as he does have the recovery speed Dier doesn't) and had a good game that might shift CB cover to the backburner in much the same way Tanganga having a good game against the Mansourites ended our interest in Tomiyasu?
At one level I agree with you because the difference in standard between squad players isn't very big at all. Essentially the ten worst players in our squad are probably between the 500th and 1000th best players in the world. What we need to improve is for those players to be replaced by some in the range 200th to 500th. But judging which those players are is close to impossible. So the right strategy is to discard any player in the 500 to 1000 range and bring in someone you hope will be better but you are likely to be wrong half the time. I reckon three of the four players mentioned are barely in the top 1000 with Foyth likely being around 500. But the 1000th best player is almost no discernible difference in quality from the 750th or 1500th. So it would make no difference in practice if we had those players instead of 4 of the current ones but we would have lost the chance of getting someone better.
With this theory you may as well disband the Spurs academy though because no young player will ever immediately be someone considered in the 200-500 bracket when there are thousands of footballers already playing regularly at senior level, not even Kane would’ve been when he ended up displacing Soldado and Adebayor. I also don’t think it’s as simplistic as saying there’s a set 200-500 that are necessarily better than those in say 501-1000. Different players can excel in different systems. Even right now using us as an example I’d say Hojbjerg would be considered significantly higher in a ranking system than Sarr but Sarr is 10x better for Spurs in Ange’s system and thus looks a far superior player.
Could we have mitigated a lot of the damage with a few easy decisions? Dier's clearly not an option, but what about Tanganga or Lenglet? Should we have kept either or both of them? What about Reguilon's fairly pointless loan to Man Utd? Would he have done a job as cover?
I suspect that if you do the stattery, attackers have far more actual/ opportunities per game to win the game, than defenders do to lose a game.
The top 100, maybe even the top 250 are the best of the best. They are the unique talents that stand them aboveall others. Between the 250 and 750 level you will have players that will excel with a particular style of play and so be 'elevated' to an elite level. They may retain that level within a different setup or maybe their reputation keeps them safe. By definition therefore, there must be players who would grow into elite players within a different system. Not sure where the four mentioned would sit in that list tbh, but I would maintain that Foyth at least had the makings of a top 500 player within the right system.
Draw the histogram for your thesis (the "bins" on the x-axis going from #1500 to #1) for a population of 100000 players.
Agree RE Foyth. I think he and KWP would definitely be improvements on some of the players we have/ have signed in recent years. I’m surprised no one has actually snapped up KWP after Saints went down, he’s better than almost half the RBs in the Prem in my opinion. Edwards is also almost certainly going to get a big money move soon too. If we allow Perisic to leave for free in January and potentially sell Gil (still think he’ll have a good career but probably not here) then I’d take Edwards in a heartbeat. Think he’d be great in Ange’s system.
I'd have included Edwards with Foyth had it not been for question marks over his attitude etc. However, that being said I'd be more than happy for him to return. Just glad it's not my money that would be wasted having to pay the big bucks to get him back!
I hope, before I leave this mortal coil, that I get to witness some kind of karma for Chelsea. Ideally relegation from the football league and going bankrupt would be lovely
Relegations definitely. Wouldn’t want them going bankrupt/ bust though as there’d be more fun trolling them in the lower leagues than there would be if they had to fold. Let them exist… but by being really, really ****.
