For some reason when I browsed this thread, I thought I was browsing "Spur's team for next season." And I also thought we needed to switch out Vertonghen and Walker. When a player comes back from a long term injury, there's a tendency to assume he'll be back to his best immediately, when more often than not that's not the case. He's back out again, indicating he was never really fit. Chiriches and Dier were better. That's a good point. I like most of them individually, but as a group they've been poor. Two years ago, Vertonghen might just have been the best CB in the business. He was just plain poor last year. This year it's been a bit of both, but more good than bad. I have trouble arguing with that team.
It's as if we can never get the whole defence to be on form at the same time for a period of games. Jan in his first year was great, second ****e, third a bit of both as you say. Rose was ****e last year and great this year. Kaboul pre-injury was superb and has since been ****e since. Walker first full season was great, second ****e, third decent, fourth ****e. Ever since we had that back line of Corluka and Benny as full backs, with two of Woodgate, King and Dawson in the centre, where we broke a club record of fewest goals conceded at the Lane (think it was something like 9 or 10 I think) we've just never been a strong collective unit.
You do wonder what's going on. In my macro/idiot's analysis, letting goals in is to some degree the price of scoring them, and I'd much rather have a team that does both than neither. However, there have been problems other than that. When things hit their nadir during the 4-3 game, I tended to blame Bentaleb and especially Mason for leaving the back four exposed constantly. They were watching our defenders try to defend one on one while doing nothing more than offering an outlet which was not required when the ball found the back of the net. But the back four themselves have screwed up more often than they should have, clearly. And, finally, it was interesting to hear that the right side with Lamela and Dier looked decent last game, while the left did not, due to Chadli not tracking back. So there's another issue: maybe we have the dilemma of wanting Chadli for his end product, which really has been very good for an LM who was out a fair amount, but not wanting him for his poor defensive work, especially when this reportedly resulted in Eriksen trying to cover for him. Keeping Eriksen as fresh as possible should be a high priority. It seems to me there were only a few games where he really ran the show, and we were much the better team for it. In his highlight videos before he came here, what stood out was his dribbling, decision making and passing when he got the ball in fairly deep positions. One reason he stopped being a real playmaker may have been the need to track back. Add it all up, and selling Chadli may at least be worth thinking about, especially as we could get at least 15 million for him, I think. There are a number of other players who could play on the left, including Townsend, Lamela and Rose.
I would say our right side looked more balanced than the left against Newcastle only because Lamela and Dier pretty much stayed at their posts throughout the match, whereas Rose was more aggressive and Chadli wandered a bit more, which led to his goal to be fair. That said Lamela was awful, even when he worked hard to get the ball back he seemed to give it away and for a player who we have praised for his technical ability his touch was cack. Dier can do a job at RB but no more, and Fazio at right CB didn't use the ball very well IMO, losing it on a number of occasions, whereas Verts was looking far closer to his best at left CB. The left flank personnel were more effective all in all, if a little more unbalanced, but that effectiveness has to be put down in part to Newcastle's mostly dire play and inability to take real advantage of having Eriksen running back towards his own goal as much as anything else.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm saying Lamela's been consistently bad getting the ball forward. Earlier this season he had a tendency to dribble it into a clump of players and lose the ball. Lately he's tended more to lose the ball by passing it. On the other hand, when he's had a chance to make the last pass, and, I think, the second to last one, he's been very good, strangely enough. My reasoning is that he should do better if he played farther forward.
