Morning all, Transfer window is done and dusted so we know what players are now available up to January at least. I think we've done great business, it's surprising to remain upbeat despite selling the world's 3rd best player. We've got a lot of competition for positions now, many of them international calibre players. So with that in mind, what are your expectations for the season now? For me, top 4 is an absolute must now, there really can be no excuses for failing to finish there. I also think we should be early favourites for Europa. I say early as it depends on which failures drop down from the Champions League. League Cup/ FA Cup will be treated with respect by Andre, I'd love us to win one but that's not expectation, just an added bonus.
I think we will nab 4th, but it will be close. I don't expect top form til maybe january but i think we'll still be in there before then with the players we have. I was away the last 4 days, did we just let BAE and Carroll go out on loan?
I can see us hitting form in about 5 games to be honest. Paulinho and Capoue settled quickly. Chadli has shown a few flashes of ability but needs be consistent throughout 90 mins. Lamela and Eriksen will slot nicely into our style of play I think and it only leaves Chiriches to get a chance so we can see what he can do. And yes, both gone to QPR.
Oh, we did get Eriksen! Excellent. I had a quick look over the weekend but internet reception was so **** i gave up and didn't see anything about him. I saw Lamela was on the bench so knew that was confirmed. How bad was Capoue's injury? Sounded bad on radio
Haha yeah Eriksen was announced Friday night after Chiriches and Lamela (Friday was a great day ). It looked awful, I think everyone including AVB thought it was a break or ligament damage, luckily just a sprain and he'll be out for 4 weeks, even better is that 2 of those weeks are over the international period so he won't miss too many games.
Cracking (pun not intended). I often wish more of our players were "injured" over international break.
I expect somewhere from 7th to 4th. I'd give us a less than 50% chance of getting 4th. More like 30% right now. I think Arsenal have improved and we're still in the middle of taking two steps back to hopefully move three steps forward. We've just lost too many quality players in the last year. Who in the team now is better than any of VDV, Modric and Bale? I wonder who will be happier come May - us who binged in the toy shop this window and have new, shiny plastic everywhere whilst discarding boring old favourites in the process (whilst one was forced from us), or Arsenal who have simply added one world-class player to a team that was already fourth and kept what they had last year? Was the AVB job description something along the lines of: "We know Madrid etc are gonna take our best players off us in the next couple of years - see what you can do"? I may up my probability higher than 30% if we get on a run but Arsenal just know what it takes to keep getting there. A run of performances, not just results. And I sort of can't see that happening right now. But I guess that a lot will change over the coming weeks as players settle in. To be fair there are so many variables right now that this thread should really be seen simply as a gauge for whether people are optimistic or pessimistic. Got to say that, bar the thumping of some seriously crap team in the Europa, I'm relatively pessimistic.
I still think Spurs are in with a chance of finishing 3rd! I think Mau Utd will drop a few postions this season, and whilst Arsenal look good, they will inevitably suffer from injuries with no real depth in their squad and will drop some big points. Spurs haven't scored in the PL from open play, but they will inevitably happen soon. Spurs have only conceded one goal (against a strong Arsenal team at home) and despite the weakness down Spurs left flank, I think Spurs are a very strong physical team and will be hard to beat. Once Lamela/Erikson and Holtby are bedded in and get some game time, Spurs attacking play should be very good with Soldado as our striker. I also think AVB recognises there will be some games where playing two strikers will be better (he did this in the latter part of last season) and thus at least for some of our home games, SPurs should start scoring freely. Let's not allow the Arsenal game to allow for negativity although this should provide a good wake up call to AVB that there is room for improvement. On the whole, I remain positive Spurs should be aiming for 3rd, 4th at the very least and I think they will do it.
I don't understand this 'aiming' for 3rd or 4th' attitude. We've probably still got the 5th best squad but its got a lot of quality and we should be able to win most games against the bottom 12 clubs and do OK against our main competitors. Take one game at a time and try to win it. We won't always succeed but I think we could come anywhere between 2nd and 6th depending on how it turns out. Our net spend is zero and everyone in the top 4 last year strengthened so anything better than 5th is a bonus.
I wouldn't get too caught up on net spends as a sign of strengthening, expensive mistakes are made all the time and players prices fluctuate all the time. Chadli and Eriksen were bought cheaply as they had expiring contracts, for example. Bale on the otherhand was bought very expensively which was taking into account a lot of off the field factors so whether we'd sold him for £50mill or £85mill we still lost the same player despite the difference it makes on our net spend. 4th is a must simply because the longer we stall in this position the more we miss out on CL football and the more we struggle to keep hold of our best players. AVB may have lost a top player but he's had the luxury of being able to sign the players he wants regardless of the price being asked for and whilst we might struggle in the early stages with all the new players there's no excuses for the course of the season, we've got excellent strength in depth everywhere except left back so tiredness and injuries simply shouldn't come into it. There's also money that we can spend in January should we need it so as far as I'm concerned it's 4th or failure.
"I don't understand this 'aiming' for 3rd or 4th' attitude. We've probably still got the 5th best squad but its got a lot of quality and we should be able to win most games against the bottom 12 clubs and do OK against our main competitors." If you were to beat all the bottom half teams that would give you 60 pts and a GD of +20. I reckon I could live with that and getting the final 16 pts and a GD of +10 from the other 18 games.
I was thinking this the other day. While our squad is now pretty deep we don't really need to rest our "first team" i don't think but if you do i thought you'd be better going first team for all bottom half teams to try as best you could to double all of them. Then you play smart with the top half teams. Problem is, apart from the usual suspects, you don't quite know who are top half and who are bottom half early doors.
The final PL table position is all that matters to Levy. And come the end of the season, the points total matters more than the teams the points are taken from. Or are people going to say Spurs if finish with a CL slot on 76 pts, they should decline that reward because they didn't take at least 4 points from the Goons this season.
Personally, while its nice to beat Arsenal i actually have nothing particularly against them. At least they not ruining football by being run moronically. If they doubled us and we finished above them i'd be chuffed.
SOS, if you posted this before the Arsenal game, you would have had a few people say "if we beat Arsenal then we're title challengers", funny as them posters seem to have gone missing? maybe waking up to reality isn't always a place some like to be. But going onto to our realistic expectations, top four is where we have to finish, after all, isn't that why we sacked Redknapp? to bring in a more younger manager, a new system which could take us forward and allow us to progress and in all honesty I don't see much progression other then finishing 3 points more then Redknapp based on Bale turning himself into the welsh messi, as aside from that I see a disjointed boring team which relied on one great player to mask problems with AVB and his tactics. This year as we know, we have sold our best player and its not realistic for a club like ours to sell Bale and replace him like for like, as we're not a champions league club and instead have to look at the second tier of players, players that could be great, players that have great potential but aren't the finished article. So when you put together a team of players with potential it really does take time for them to form a team unit, but that is why the manager is so important as he has to not just get results, but allow the new players to develop and settle but looking at our line up agaisnt Arsenal, we had Townsend, Chadli, Paulinho, Capoue, Soldado and Dembele as our midfield/attack. Dembele is the only survivor from last year, and if we look around europe and the teams which are successful, they don't tend to have a complete overhaul and expect instant success...unless you're Pep at Barca! However the club in reality has to be in the champions league, but we have Man City/Chelsea/Man Utd/Ourselves/Arsenal and Liverpool all competing for these positions within the top four, three of them teams will break away into a title race leaving us, liverpool and Arsenal to fight for 4th, and which team is playing catch up? Ourselves, which team is relying on players to gel and form a team unit while picking up points? Us. We have made things hard for ourselves, but thats our problem and I hope we can finish 4tth but in all honesty I wouldn't be surprised if we finish 5th or 6th and that wouldn't be acceptable.
we lost to ARSENAL at the EMIRATES. Whats the big deal? I really don't see how the result over the weekend changes anything about anything. Theoretically our 4 toughest games are away to City/Utd/Chelsea/Arsenal. Unless you are expecting to go through the season with less than 4 defeats you shouldn't be surprised or disheartened at losing one of those games. If we had beaten Arsenal we wouldn't have been any more title challengers than we are now. Similarly we are just as much in the hunt now we've lost it. 3 games in for crying out loud
It doesn't, but that's the point, people who have had issues with AVB had these issues last year, pre season and after the first two games. Its the fans who said "if we beat arsenal" that need to wake up and realise one game means nothing.
All managers have strengths and weaknesses and they all make mistakes. I think AVB is an upgrade on Redknapp but its still a tall order to finish 4th when there are five clubs with a bigger budget. We've swapped a wonder-player for a deep squad and I think we've got a chance of 4th or better but I won't be too disappointed if we end up 5th because that is still punching above our weight.
