Is he snorting again? When asked why he spent hundreds of pounds a day on cocaine the Merse replied to keep him awake at the bar drinking lager top! Words fail you sometimes!
Thought this was an interesting article about how we kept Ozil & Sanchez quiet for most of the game. Shows the shift that Lamela put in. http://cartilagefreecaptain.sbnatio...sis-erik-lamela-mesut-ozil-north-london-derby
I've seen some Goon describe us as the worst set of fans for breaking a couple of sinks at their stadium. Because that's apparently much worse than tearing down hoardings, assaulting stewards and singing antisemitic chants...
It’s funny how Lamela almost can’t win even now. Every article about him I see always begins, well, of course he was never worth the price Spurs paid for him, but... So I’ll say it. Lamela has been worth the money we paid for him this year. He’s on pace to have 12 goals and 9 assists in all competitions. He’s won us quite a few points. He may be the best defensive forward in the PL. That is worth the price.
I think Lamela seems like a lovely guy. He works incredibly hard for the team and seems to be really happy when we score and win. I bet he's a manager's dream to work with. But for a forward to have their overwhelmingly main asset their energy in tackling back is far from ideal. When he picks the ball up he slows to a leisurely jog and never does anything special with it. He's not got much pace at all, no right foot and his shooting is rare and not of a very high quality. BUT having said all that I think he's done bloody well this year and Poch should take great credit for getting the effectiveness out of Lamela that he does. I just don't think Lamela has shown the skill or creativity that a forward should. Ever. Having said that I'd stick with him for a while longer because his attitude and efforts merit it. From a certain perspective it is a bit depressing, though, that five years or so ago we were celebrating the skills of VDV and Huddlestone and the like wishing to overlook their fitness and energy levels cos they did what fans pay for - showed levels of skill that were way beyond the average player and which hurt the opposition teams. Now we celebrate the tackling back of "defensive forwards" and "defensive number 10s".
Lamela's work rate combined with VDV ability on the ball would be one hell of a player. I was one of Lamela's biggest critics but i'll hold my hands up an say he's improved the last couple of months but as mentioned above we didn't pay 30million for a guy with good work rate, I still don't see him as a game changer which is what he was bough for
The problem with this argument is that similar could be said about Modric given his statistics playing for us... 2011-12: 5 goals, 4 assists 2010-11: 4 goals, 3 assists 2009-10: 3 goals, 6 assists 2008-9: 2 goals, 5 assists ...indeed, I recall Chav fans explicitly stating that their offer of £22m was not only fair but over the odds based on these statistics. Yet the point is that Modric wasn't the game changer, he was the one who set the pace of our game so other players could change it, which is why Xavi is considered one of the best players of the past decade while Chris Brunt is not. It may be wrong to compare Lamela to Modric directly, after all we're still looking for a Modric-type player to dictate our play from midfield three years after he left, but it is right to say Lamela is as important to our system as Modric was to Redknapp's, just for different reasons.
Agreed. Whilst Lamela is steadily redeeming himself this season, to put him on par with Modric is stretching the imagination a bit HBIC. When Modric was out or bizarrely playing on the left wing in that Harry team, things regularly went to s**t. Conversely, I could see any one of Son, Alli, Dembele, Njie or Mason in the line up instead of Lamela and I'd still be pretty confident of our chances. Only Kane and Eriksen are as crucial to this team as Modric was to Harry.
Players like Eriksen and good strikers like Kane are always essential in a successful football team but I think MP has constructed a team ethic that means we are not so reliant on individual brilliance as the the kind of teams Harry constructed. One of Harry's greatest abilities is 'spotting' the players in order to make his teams more effective. In other words and generalising a bit, Harry picked the players to fit the team, while MP makes the team to fit the players.
You strike me as me pretty knowledgable about your football CK, and I tend to agree with most things you say. For what it's worth, I'd have a different view on some of the points you've raised there. In terms of Harry's squad, I certainly don't think it was all down to Modric. In the early part of his reign, the defence was key, with Corluka, King, Woodgate and Ekotto, from memory all playing key roles. Lennon was also excellent during Harry's first couple of seasons. Later on, new defenders such as Walker and Gallas were also vital, and for the second half of his reign, clearly Bale was key as well. In terms of the current squad, I'd say that after Kane, Alderweilder was our most important player. Lloris is key too, and whilst they have decent deputies in Mason and Bentaleb, I'd say Dier and Dembele are rapidly becoming vital parts of the team. I also think Son can become a star if he stays fit. Even the first choice full backs, as the only ones we have with an extra turn of pace, are pretty vital to the team the way Poch's plays imo. In fact, I'll be honest and say that I wouldn't put Eriksen in a list of our half dozen most important players. For me, Modric was good technically, but what really made him such an important player was his mobility, awareness, and reading of the game, which often made it seem like we had 11 and a half men. Eriksen doesn't have that gift for me, and whilst he's probably technically on the same level as Modric, I wouldn't say he was technically outstanding. At the best of times, he's not threatening genius category by any means, and he has many pretty anonymous games. In fact tbh, it wouldn't surprise me if Protchard had the ability to turn out to be an upgrade if he can ever get fit and get some experience. Just to throw something else in to argue about (!), as I recall Modric did pretty well in the left for a while !
RobSpur for your arse-licking introduction there I think Spurf has a great point here though: MP sends out a team, Harry to a far greater extent sent out individuals - which is one of the reasons why when key individuals got injured under Harry, things unravelled very quickly, whereas we played Liverpool with almost our entire central midfield out injured or suspended and no-one even noticed. Having said that, the obvious argument in Harry's defence is that any manager fortunate enough to oversee a team containing King, Modric, Bale and VDV all firing on all pistons would be utterly daft not to shift the emphasis from 'team game' which it was, as you've mentioned quite correctly, in the early stages of his reign, to 'individual brilliance', which it was when we dazzled the PL for half a season. I've always felt that the measure of a player's centrality to the team's success is only felt when that player is missing. Sometimes you need to play that game theoretically by imagining: would I still feel confident if Player X pulls up in the pre-match warm up and Substitute Y is drafted in? In the case of almost all the players you've mentioned, I think the answer is 'yes'. I'd be confident that Wimmer could do a job at CB, Davies at LB, Vorm in goal, we saw Dembele first hand put in a great shift replacing Dier against Liverpool, Mason at CM, Chadli or Njie at AM. I think that this game stops working in 3 positions this season: RB, CAM and ST. However, the former is more because Trippier has been inexplicably cack, whilst the latter is even easier: we don't have any other bloody strikers! So Kane and Walker are as close to indispensable as you're likely to get at this stage of the season. Which leaves the middle position: Christian Eriksen. A position which - theoretically - has plenty of cover in Mason, Alli, Lamela, Pritchard, even Son and Dembele can play there when necessary. Yet without question whereas we looked functional and solid yet utterly uninspired early on in the season when Eriksen was injured, we've improved exponentially since his return. And yes, he does drift in and out of games and sometimes doesn't bother getting off the coach to start with; but that is symptomatic of a player who after all is all of 23 years old with the burden of carrying most of the team's attacking threat on his young shoulders. Modric wasn't half as important to us when he joined at 23 as Eriksen is now. I watched him very closely against Arsenal. Aside from putting in one hell of a shift, his performance was mesmerising. Whereas we largely shackled Ozil and Sanchez for the entire game (aside from the goal where Ozil was given the freedom of North London to time his cross), they literally couldn't pick up Eriksen for more than milliseconds at a time - and then he was gone. His movement and anticipation of defenders' positions was breathtaking at times. One of the reasons Alli had such a good game was that in front of him, quite quietly and without much fuss, Eriksen was happily dragging Arsenal players all over the pitch. Similarly, one of the reasons Eriksen doesn't stand out is that in a high-energy, high-intensity style like Pochettino's it is always the high-energy, explosive players like Kane, Son, Alli etc. who are more visible. The beauty about Eriksen is that he goes about his business nice and quietly, just like Modric. He'll only make the papers if he scores a 30-yard free kick. But when he does get off the coach, the opposition 9 times out of 10 haven't got a f***ing clue how to deal with him. One of the biggest differences between Eriksen and Modric is that the latter liked - and thrived - playing with the game in front of him. Much like Alonso, Pirlo, Xavi and the great playmakers of world football, he had the vision to size up the movement of every single player in front of him and pick the perfect pass. Eriksen, by contrast, seems to love receiving the ball with his back to play. Watch him in our next game and count how many times he does it. Yes, this is largely because he plays much further up the pitch than Luka. But is is also because his reading of the game is completely different. He's already mapping out the next 3 steps when he receives that ball; so where and how he receives it doesn't matter to him. In this sense, he is far more similar in style to Muller, Iniesta and Gotze. Playing where Eriksen does much further up the pitch with far less 'mapped out' in front of you means that he actually has to have a better reading of the game than a deeper lying player like Modric. This is why we can shift as many players as we like into that #10 position: Lamela, Alli, Mason (although the latter is showing promise in this area) and they simply won't be as effective as Eriksen. To receive the ball with your back to play in what is invariably the most hectic and physically demanding zone of the pitch requires incredible technical ability and awareness. And Eriksen has both in abundance - which is why I would call him the closest thing to irreplaceable in the current team. If by some miracle he stays at the club until his peak years I am fully confident that we will have the most technically gifted player in the PL on our payroll.
Modric is a world eleven player. Bale is considerably closer to world eleven status than anyone else on either his team or ours, with the exception, perhaps, of Lloris or a healthy King. So I don't think anyone we have is going to benefit by comparison to them. If we do have a player who might eventually bear comparison to Modric, it's probably Alli, whose pace and dribbling are already very impressive. To be fair, while he'll never reach that level, Mason's drive going forward sometimes seems a bit Modric-esque. On the other hand, I'll take Eriksen over VDV. Fantastic as VDV was, Eriksen is just about as talented and infinitely harder working. Kane's point about Eriksen playing with his back to the goal makes me wonder if he isn't our best option to back up his namesake. The striker, I mean, not Abel's brother, or the hero of that Orson Welles movie.
I think we should try to remember that Alli is only just 19! He has only just stepped up from playing league one football. Yes, he looks a terrific prospect, but to some extent, that's what he still is - a prospect. If too much is expected of him too soon, too much pressure put on him while he's still learning, It could seriously hurt his progress as a player.
