Well, that was an absolute ****e performance from Poch. Yes, from Poch. We all saw, after the first half, what a complete liability Chirinches was, so Poch must have seen the same. Did he substitute him at half time, or half way through the second half, or at any time before, eventually, the twat ****ed up? No. Yes, Chirinches was a disgrace, tonight, but Poch was far worse... he was an utter clown.
Fair enough about Soldado, Bajan, but it was a funny game for him. I swear I only saw him once, and when I did, he dribbled the length of the field, layed it off smartly, and nearly got on the end of the ensuing cross. Lacking any other reasonable explanation, I assume he was kidnapped by Zombies for almost the entire length of the game, and this was the one time he managed to escape. It would also explain why Paulinho and Chirches, who looked bright and lively at the beginning of last year, seem to be walking around in a daze. Notice how the club tried to cover up Ade's Zombie bite by calling it malaria. I'm telling you, we'd better buy http://zombiesurvivalguide.us/the Zombie Survival Guide before it's too late.
The frustrating fact is that, if you were to study every touch throughout their current Spurs career, out of the Boys of 2013 I'm pretty sure you would see that Soldado actually looks the most quality. He seems like he has sparks of invention about him, he does not lose the ball needlessly that often, his touch and distribution seems pretty good... OK - the finishing has looked a bit nervous for almost his entire time here but most other aspects of his game indicate to me that he's a quality player. He's just a quality player that has no idea how to integrate into this team and has ridiculously few touches every game, it seems. It's not like watching a Darren Bent or a Rasiak. You can see that he's a good player. He's just not really delivered anything more than a 7/10 performance for us yet. And off the top of my head I can't think if he's even done that. To be fair I think a striker would have to be properly World Class to really look dangerous in this team. They'd have to do almost everything for themselves and be happy to receive inaccurate passes at pace, cos that's what our midfield specialises in. And is it me or does he seem to have that little bit of nastiness about him that many top players have? Just the way he reacts to decisions, fouls, goals, misses, bad passes.
Your so right even it sounds incredibly bonkers . There is something there but with a team blessed with mediocrity perfected , sadly we will never see it.
Definitely a quality player. As far the World Class player you call for-that would be Bale I believe. Nastiness: I was sat (unusual in itself as I usually stand in 35) west upper(south end) so during the first half directly behind the lino who was getting a lot of stares from Soldado...
he might be a good player,but we need one the can score goals,doesn't look like he can,not for Spurs anyway
I doubt if Gabriel Batistuta (probably the best out-and-out goalscorer i've ever seen) could get much above 10 in a season playing in the team as it is now.
before my time, but from what i've seen he looked a more complete player rather than just a pure onion bagger
Poor performance last night, Besiktas had a number of chances to put away and Lloris was on form to deny a number of them. Chiriches is playing his way into a January transfer, but not to a bigger club. Shocking defending again, that's 3 games now and 3 terrible performances. Thought Fazio looked good, Bentaleb too put in a shift and Kane was great in the first half and finished his goal well, not really much more the guy can do now to warrant a place in a league XI, he's outperforming the other two strikers by a mile. Need to win our home games though if we're to progress into the knockouts and quite frankly last night wasn't good enough. On the flip side, atmosphere was great, I had a lot of my Fener mates come and they loved it, they also brought a couple over from Istanbul for their first games in England so it was great to meet them and hear their stories of games back in Turkey. Enjoyable night for me but disappointed with result and performance.
I've said it once and I'll say it again. The fact that our best player is our goalkeeper is a real problem.
Is it because he relies on touch and subtle movement as opposed to the speed and strength that most of the successful strikers in the PL seem to have?
yeah he was better than people give him credit for,but in the penalty box he was lethal,and he didn't go down,his first game,against Spurs, he left Blanchflower and couple of other defenders on their backsides before rounding the keeper and putting in the net
Chiriches has been eyed up by a bunch of big sides and he's played successfully in European campaigns, so I assume that there's a player in there somewhere. Still recovering from a fairly long-term injury and missed pre-season, but he looks absolutely ****e at the moment. I'd be tempted to leave him out altogether and stick him in the U21s for a while, but it might damage his confidence even more and completely break him. Veljkovic must be watching his performances and wondering why he's not being given a chance to take his place. There's a bit of a break until our next non-Premier League game, which is our home tie against the Greeks in our group, Asteras Tripolis. I'd start sticking him in at right-back in training and put Dier in his natural position in the middle, alongside Fazio. It might be a role which he's more comfortable with over here, as his aerial ability wouldn't be called into question as often and he'd spend more time on the ball. He can definitely play a bit, but he dwells on it far too much for a centre-half and gets caught out. Assuming no injuries or drastic changes, I'd go for this: Vorm; Chiriches, Dier, Fazio, Davies; Lennon, Stambouli, Dembele, Townsend; Kane, Soldado. Friedel, Naughton, Veljkovic, Bentaleb, Eriksen, Ceballos, Akindayini.
I think the problem is the competition - and I raise all the old arguments again about too many games, too much chopping and changing of players, lack of motivation (what does the EL matter? if you get to the final, have a go, but are you going to bother in October?) etc. Bring back the UEFA Cup - straight knockout over two legs; make it a bit more exciting and halve the number of games and teams. If the dross who finished 3rd in the Estonian League want to play in Europe, give them their own competition - like a European Johnstones Paints Trophy.
Its been mooted on here by others and I now want to echo it (lucky you eh?), but Soldado looks like he could be a tidy no. 10 for us. Think about it - seems to work reasonably hard, good technically, plays some lovely one-touch stuff sometimes and there is a finisher in there somewhere too which can be an asset. It'd be a big call to make to play him there though, and it'll probably never happen.
To you fans who were unlucky enough to miss Greaves I will say this.Messi is the second coming of Jimmy Greaves. As for last nights match,the question I ask is:- will Paulinho, Soldado and Ade and a few others be on the clear out list in the summer? We are paying them for doing very little.I wonder what the score would have been if Brad had been the goalie....
