Royal at LB is going to be painful. Maddison deserves to be dropped. I hope this means we're pushing Kulu into a more central position, which I think could actually be his strongest with the right coaching. Glad to see Richarlison start. Never in my life did I think I'd be writing that, but here we are.
I'm glad Maddison has been benched it might be a wake up call to him. That might be unfair but I feel he may have been compromised by all the fawning of him in the media.
He said that was his favoured position in that recent interview, might give Maddison the kick up the arse he deserves atm
I think he's just not back 100% from being injured. This is probably true of a number of our other players, most notably Bentancur.
I'm not sure. To me I look at the midfield and see a group of three players who don't seem to understand their roles in the team. It doesn't seem to matter who we play there, they spend too much time either chasing the ball or getting in each other's way. Whereas we continue to score goals at a solid clip and continue to see moments of genuine brilliance from the CBs and FBs, it's been a long, long time since any of the CMs produced something memorable, which is worrying. It's the glaring weak link in the team imo.
Like PNP, I do think the midfield issue is more fitness related than anything else. Maddison and Bentancur have been spoken of at length and the latter especially is expected to not be 100% until next season but Sarr’s form has also dipped since the news broke out of him having been carrying a back injury for a while. Bissouma’s the only one without valid reasoning for being as poor as he’s been, so annoying too because I really do think he’s a top player, he showed as such in the first couple months, **** knows where that form/ level’s gone.
I think that we started the season well with a slightly different system. I've not seen the heatmaps that would confirm it, but it looked like a 4-3-3. That worked and we were playing a fairly central pair of wide midfielders with a central one. In recent weeks we've been using a 4-2-1-3, which is similar but not the same. The roles of the midfielders changed and the deeper ones aren't working out. We don't have any holding midfielders or deep-lying playmakers. There's no Makelele or Rodri. No Carrick or Xabi Alonso. We've got a bunch of what I see as box-to-box midfielders. I think Sarr, Bentancur, Bissouma, Hojbjerg and Skipp are all suited to that role. Any one of them alongside one of the previously stated positions would work. Two of them together is just a bit of a mess. The situation wasn't helped by having Son as a lone striker. The inverted fullbacks meant that everyone was in the middle, but nobody was in the box.
I have mixed feelings about Mikey Moore making the bench. It's a good sign that Postecoglou will consider youth players. I'm not sure that he's ready yet though and he's just back from an injury.
As much as I’d be intrigued to see him given a chance, I highly doubt he’ll get off the bench. And if he does it’ll be a Donley-esque 45 seconds or so.
Why is it taking Spurs players so long to get up to speed after injuries? Doesn’t seem to affect any other club. Bentancur and Maddison have played a lot of games since their injuries.
