That and there’s just no improvement from our perspective. The repetitive nature of our play just makes it easy to read. No variety and we didn’t add any quality over the summer either to help air out some of the issues. Apologies for sounding like a broken record now but I really do think we’re in for a rough season.
Yeah I actually think most of what you’ve said about Ange for a while has been fair. A shame in a way though because I genuinely do like Ange as a bloke, it’s sort of like having an Aussie Redknapp in charge as he’s got a lot of charisma but charisma won’t win you matches in the Prem. I’m still hoping he can turn things around and find the right tune but it’s tough to see where the improvement’s going to come from.
The one thing we need is a bullying presence through the middle While we have players who can harass defenders into making mistakes (Son, Solanke and Richy all do that) but having someone who can smash their way through them would negate teams packing the middle, be it a Drogba-like CF or a Dembele-like CM
If only we had a whole summer window to find such a player. I hate how we’ve left Ange high and dry though, he’s not blameless by any means but certain tactical issues can be decreased with added quality. I really thought this summer was going to be a big one for us… I was extremely wrong!
TBH I don't think it's 100% on the club, though Ange would have signed off on loaning out Veliz for the season, for example, and he's certainly the sort of physical CF that some games call for - and also the sort of striker that was the Plan B for his tactics at Celtic I get why the loan was arranged, given he needs minutes due to the lack of playing time he had on loan last season after his injury, but you have to wonder if Richy not wanting to move to the oilfields (not that he should be judged harshly for that) caused a domino effect that necessitated Veliz being loaned as he wouldn't have been guaranteed minutes with Solanke and Richy both at the club
I looked at your front three today and thought that Johnson is still quite raw, Solanke isn’t really good enough and Son is in decline. You have a lot of possession and get into good positions, but don’t carry the threat you should in front of goal for aforesaid reasons. And teams have worked out Vicario.
Do you think he did enough last season to deserve the sort of window you're talking about? I'm not so sure. In prioritising young potential over established stars, the club is hedging its bets in case Project Ange falls on its arse. The next manager will theoretically have an extremely talented core to build around. Aside from the fact that I don't think any manager apart from Pep or Ancelloti could attract that calibre of player to Spurs, not least of all without CL football to offer. Ange has my support but all he earned last season was the right to complete a second season. There were far too many serious concerns especially with how we totally collapsed from March onwards to warrant calls for him to be given hundreds of millions to spend.
Vicario won’t improve ever…this is his lot. Ange looks like a man out of his depth we play with no fire, just knock it about like a practice match till we lose it with a whimper around the opposition box vey hard watch
Yes - to a degree. I gave him a 6/10 for his performance as manager last season as I felt he done par for the course but I did feel there was a potentially exciting platform/ base to build upon. For one reason or another we’ve not built on said platform and for me that will now set us back in development by a severe margin. I worry it will be so severe that Ange doesn’t get long enough to rectify it… we’ve all been fans of this club long enough to know how our board operates, the manager will always be the fall guy regardless of how many times the board lets us down.
Lightweight. 3 and half hours there and 4 hours back (thanks Duxford air show..) for my first game of the season. To be honest I thought it was a bit flat for a NLD, not many chances and the goal had a certain inevitably about it. Vicario is simply not commanding enough, likeable bloke but sorry not up to it for me. I agree with the rest of your post though, poor decisions over the summer and the pressure will only now mount on Ange, especially if it goes a bit t*** up on Wednesday at Coventry! I just thought the play today was far too predictable and slow. Aside from the inability to be able to actually take players on and put a decent cross into the opposition box, I still believe major surgery needs to take place on that midfield. Oh and let's not start on the p****** about at the back every time we have a goal kick... To add insult to injury I finally returned home to find the fridge has packed up. Nice expensive day tomorrow then.....
I feel like the word predictable has become my most used word on the forum in the last 6 or so months. It just feels like everyone knows what we’re gonna do now and the only teams that can’t stop it are the really **** ones like Everton… can we not just play them every week?! Sorry to hear about the fridge, mate. On the bright side, it means a couple takeaways are in order!
Agreed...but ange inherited a squad with players from Pochettino, Jose, Nuno and Conte eras. He's has had to get rid of Sanchez, Dier, Sessengon, Lloris, Ndombele, Lo Celso, Winks, Royal, Skipp, Peresic, Tanganga, Hoejberg and Gil ... all in a calendar year. I think some are underestimating the rebuild process ... we still need rid of Reguilon as well BTW. That's 13 Squad players which is an enormous turn over...plus we lost Kane. IMHO Ange needs time to get his own squad and gel them together. I don't see anything positive in sacking him or getting on his back tbh.
Would rather Mickey Mouse than Werner ... I know it's only a loan but genuinely don't understand why he's at the club
What genuinely dumbfounds me is that after seeing how bad he was the first time round, we thought “**** it, let’s do it again!”.
His directness is a better fit for Angeball The issue is that with Mikey Moore expecting more minutes it's created a bit of a logjam, which only got more pronounced with Odobert coming in during the summer. Moving Deki centrally relieves this issue a tad, but we have six wingers all expecting to feature in some capacity An argument can be made for a similar issue up front with Solanke and Richy
We should just give our all to winning the Europa much easier to win that than the PL Let’s just plod along in the league…coz that’s what we are plodders
