Yep I get what you are saying there. I truly feel that this is the one club I despise above all others but I do have a couple of friends who have been supporting them since the mid 60's and they have a similar opinion of their "newer" fans. Indeed, one always asks where they were when Chelsea were in the old 2nd divison playing the likes of Oxford Utd in front of about 5k supporters!!
Tanganga seems destined to retire by the age of 28 the way things have panned out in the last couple of years
Shouldn't you be more concerned with the rumours about Trippier and Joelintons dirty little secrets and escapades in the Vermont hotel than our club
Plenty of clubs have done that when a youngster has surpassed expectations Case in point, Saltypool were looking for a CM due to Paul Ince and Jamie Redknapp taking it in turns to be injured, but put that on the back-burner when they gave Steven Gerrard a few run-outs
They don't have to be in that bracket when they are young but you should be able to find out enough about them while they are in the Academy to know if they have the potential to move into it. I don't think Walker-Peters, Edwards or Clarke showed that potential at Spurs. All of them look OK at a lower level but there ought to be nearly zero top 500 players in the Championship and very few playing in Portugal. As I said, Foyth is probably at the 500 level and we may have missed out slightly there.
I don't agree with that at all. The top 500 players in the world have skill sets that will work in all systems. Lower ranked players can be made to look better than they are by systems, at least for a while, but they never excel. I don't think Højbjerg has ever been in the top 500. I actually think he is the worst player in our squad and might be below the top 1000. Sarr isn't in yet top 500 yet but has the potential to be much higher and I would pick him over Højbjerg for any system.
No one can ever know if a player can be in said bracket until they actually get a run of chances - and that there is Spurs’ problem of the last 6-7 years, we don’t give our youth chances and it’s why so many leave for nothing or peanuts and we later regret it. Walker-Peters is a better RB than Aurier, Doherty and Emerson but because we never gave him the chances we wasted around £60m on three inferior players, two of those we ended up letting leave for nothing they were that bad. Edwards would also have a place in this squad had we not binned him off. There was a time we prided ourselves on youth development, including producing one of/ if not the greatest English striker of all time, yet we’re now a graveyard for them.
That’s just patently not true. Mane struggled at Bayern Munich, Hazard was awful at Real Madrid, Di Maria was poor at Man Utd, yet all were excellent elsewhere and regarded as some of the top 50 in the world, let alone top 500. So there will be plenty of other scenarios of other players inside the top 500 that will have struggled in systems that didn’t suit them. That is a wild statement too, he is comfortably inside the top 1000 players at present. Lo Celso, Emerson, Sessegnon, Dier and Richarlison are also far worse players than Hojbjerg. Add in Ndombele too.
Mane, Hazard and Di Maria all struggled because they were in decline...nothing to do with systems. Hazard particularly was just lazy at Madrid. It's just my opinion about Højbjerg. Our decline in league position is exactly correlated with his arrival though. Doesn't prove anything of course but our massive improvement this year also happened when he wasn't starting.
You're missing my point. It doesn't matter if KWP is better than the players you mention...he is never going to be good enough to make a difference to our performance. So we had to try others. Without much success until Porro but that doesn't make the strategy wrong.
Di Maria was about 26 at Utd, nowhere near declining. He spent 7 years at PSG after that stint. Madrid paid £100m for Hazard, they wouldn’t have paid that if he was in a decline. Mane was also still in his prime heading to Bayern, similar age to Son and he’s not on a decline, at least hopefully not anyway. I can understand not rating Hojbjerg, I’ve said since the start of the season he’d struggle in Ange’s system but to say he’s the worst in the squad is way OTT. There are considerably worse players here at the moment.
He would/ would have though. Because prior to Porro’s arrival we had three awful RBs, each got progressively worse and that feels a crazy thing to say after how erratic Aurier was. You mentioned above about Hojbjerg causing the decline in our fortunes but signings like that were far more detrimental. The two worst that really set us back though were Ndombele and Lo Celso, because after needing a refresh to a declining team we signed two players for near £100m that couldn’t even displace Winks or Sissoko, whom were initially backups to Dembele and Wanyama. That financial hit hurt this club for years.
I agree with you here. Although in hindsight KWP should have been kept and it might have saved Spurs wasting some serious money on Aurier, Doherty and Emerson The others are no great miss imo.
I thought KWP was poor when he was with us. Surprised to see so many of you thought highly of him from his time with us.
I never thought that he got a real chance to prove himself. Would've suited our wingback period very well though, in my opinion. Suits his strengths, while minimising his main weakness, which is his aerial ability. Good at running with the ball, good engine and he's comfortable on either side.
I completely understand what you, and others, are saying. It’s evident that he’s doing well at present. I recall he was capable of running the line but as for his defensive attributes, I thought he was quite poor. Mind you, I said the same about v Porro but I rate him highly. Perhaps you’re right in that he wasn’t given a fair chance.
I agree. Bags of talent but always looked a bit too lightweight for the demands of the EPL. I feel the same watching Gil tbh. Both players are brushed off the ball with ease. Truth is very few players of a 'slight' build have had successful careers here. I can't speak for other PL clubs but only Lennon and Modric spring to mind - although the latter's childhood involved witnessing his grandfather's execution by the Serbian rebels who then burned the family home to ground, after which he and his parents spent seven years on the run, so the fact he is tough as nails isn't a surprise.
At the start of the 2017/18 season he played against Newcastle away and won player of the match. Then was dropped. In his next appearance he again won player of the match. He was again dropped. Never seemed to be trusted after that ... think Aurier coming in killed his chances of moving onward and he never really impressed after when he played for us.
