Thank you for Tom Huddlestone, probably the best player we've ever had at City. Can we have Jakey Livermore on a perm to please, another firm favourite.
Just watching the game on Football First and what a performance from Tommy. So pleased to see him doing well.
What a performance, the guy deserves all the plaudits as he isn't fully appreciated for his ability. If he carries on this level of performance I'll love to see Tom Huddlestone play for England, he is perfect for International football.
One of the many, many things I've had to moan about this season is the absurd decision to sell Huddlestone for 2m less than Nacer Chadli cost us. ****ing insane and an indication that for AVB physicality and negative aspects of the game would always trump trying to get the most out of pure footballing ability. Right now there is not one player that springs to mind as a particularly good passer of the ball at Spurs. Tommy is in a different league, on that front, to every one of the "galaxy of world-class players" that we're currently, er, enjoying. Any sensible manager (England included) would be trying to accentuate the positives from his game and not worried so much about his lack of pace etc. Shame we never had a sensible manager when we sold him for a song. Good luck to Tommy - hope he's found somewhere that appreciates and enjoys his talent.
don't worry, us hull fans have songs for him! absolute privilege to see such an incredible player of the ball at our club! shocked we got him
We all knew what Hudd could do in midfield but latterly for us he was looking off the pace and myself (and I think a few others) didn't think that the team could afford him the run of games to come back into his best form when he wasn't a guaranteed starter anyway. Also it was looking like we would have somewhat of an embarrassment of riches in the midfield area so his loss wouldn't be too keenly felt. Nobody on here (I think) was glad he was sold though and we all wished him the best but I think that under the circumstances it was best for him and the club to sell. However purely from watching MOTD highlights it seems that he's now fully up and running and the whole division is seeing his excellent passing ability and vision. But it also seems that you've got him leaner and meaner than ever, he looks like he's tracking runners a bit more and using some of his strength, hell, he even looks reasonably mobile sometimes! Playing with Livermore in that form can't harm him either, they're a good foil for one another it seems. In hindsight that was bad business for us but it was a very very good move for him and for Hull obviously.
My guess would be that the conventional wisdom in the club hierarchy was that Huddlestone was not dynamic enough to play in a box-to-box role like Paulinho and not defensively strong enough to justify selection in the more defensive role ahead of someone like Sandro. Which leaves him 3rd choice for a place in the 2 in AVB's 4-2-3-1 behind Sandro, Dembele and Paulinho, and 4th choice I would suspect behind Capoue. I think his physical limitations (which he seems to now be somewhat overcoming) meant that he wasn't a player favoured by AVB, and therefore when a reasonable offer came in the club sold up, in their interests and in the player's. AVB/Levy may well have preferred to sell up and just buy an alternative at a slight loss rather than to persevere with Thudd. It'd be great to see Thudd playing like this for us but I don't think he'd have had the opportunity to get going like this under AVB, a coach who I believe did not rate him enough to let Thudd play his way into his current level of performance, and therefore under those circumstances the club was right to let him go. I supported his sale at the time not because I didn't rate him but because I didn't think he would get a chance to play - and I still believe he wouldn't have under AVB - and therefore it made sense to cash in.
"So why didn't we loan him to Hull?" At the tail of last season he had made "all or nothing" noises to the club. If he didn't figure in AVBs' plans, the club were right to let him go to a PL club where he is guaranteed to start/play regularly. So you cannot begrudge him that. He had been so unfortunate with his injuries since the 2010 season as to not get the chances to play himself back into the Spurs fold.
Have been saying this from the beginning. He would be the key player in the 442 we've been playing. Eiriksen and Holtby don't have the range of passing needed for the deeper role. With him, I think we would have handled West Brom's tactics comfortably. As it stands, we should switch to 4231 to take advantage of what Holtby and Eiriksen cando.
We could have told him AVB would be thrown to the mob, Levy would have no choice but to appoint Harry junior, that he would try to placate the fans with a 442, and that the stage would be set for Hudd to reprise his CL winning form. Though maybe this is the wisdom of hindsight.
I think that is perhaps the case. Thudd would be very useful now but not as he was over the summer in AVB's team up to a few weeks ago.
There are mitigating reasons as to why Spurs sold him. In hindsight, it looks like a great bit of business on our part and not such a great bit of business on Spurs' part. That's football, though. That's life. It's the perfect example of how genuinely talented English players can be wrongly overlooked in favour of supposedly superior foreigners though. Shameful, really.
To be fair I think he'd have been sold if he was any nationality, being English has less to do with it in this case. It was to do with the limitations of the individual player under his circumstances at that particular point in time, and the usefulness of the player (in the manager's opinion) to making the team play football better the way the manager wanted them to. He's now doing very well in a team playing very different football to AVB's Spurs and having had a long run in a team where he is one of the main men. He wouldn't have got that under AVB. To call it a shameful selling is harsh, he wouldn't have fit the system AVB was looking at using and he needed that run of games to get physically into shape and to get into form. Of course AVB's way of playing was hardly working out but thats a very different discussion, he was never going to change it to accommodate Thudd so he was sold. Harsh on the player perhaps but I doubt he is too bothered now.
The Hudd didn't fit AVB's system but would have made a wonderful Plan B. However, AVB didn't want a Plan B so the Hudd had to go. And as AVB didn't have a Plan B, he had to go as well. Simples. Just hope we have a sell on clause.
