Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v West Ham United

We're in a bit of a bind. The way we handled the situation was correct, I thought. City's arrogant approach to the whole thing was unbelievably insulting. Selling him for £30-40m short of his actual value was never an option, regardless of how disinterested he now looks.

By the time City ate some pie and put in a reasonable offer, our main targets (Martinez and Vlahovic) were long off the table.

It was a huge mistake not to bring in a backup striker. We basically went into the season assuming Kane would stay a) injury free and b) 100% committed. Both assumptions naive in the extreme.

He should go in January but probably won't. Levy won't risk the uprising that will rightly come from selling a key player midway through the season. But it is precisely the example of a risk that so often reaps dividends. The type of risk we used to take before we lost our balls roughly 4 years ago.

Either way, we need to show real ambition in the Jan window. 3 or 4 players need to be moved on and we need a ST and CM at a minimum. I'd even consider trying to end Sarr's loan term early as the current squad balance is unsustainable and, I should add, is on Paratici to fix. Gil and Gollini were all well and good on paper but were absolutely not crucial signings and we are suffering the consequences of using what little we could do in a stagnant window to bring in surplus players.

 

We need new owners.

With each passing week it becomes more obvious.

We largely shop at the same level as the likes of West Ham, Villa and Leicester, despite being the much bigger club. To achieve success on our budget and get an edge over those teams, we rely on one or two players to give us an advantage. We had those in Kane and Son. Now it is pretty clear we only have Son.

But to rub shoulders with the likes of Chelsea, Pool and City, we need nothing short of a miracle. The perfect collection of players under the perfect manager. We had that under Poch. We have since seen how hard it is for lightning to strike twice. We've gone from quick fix to quick fix but truth be told there is no quick fix. We are very fortunate that we stumbled across 3 PL managers who hit that spot and got us punching hugely above where our budget suggests we should be punching. Every appointment and most players signed in between the Jol, Redknapp and Poch eras have been chasing that lightning again but all we've really done is chased our own tails in circles.

 

I know we need new owners...their philosophy has stunk the place out long enough.

ENIC/Levy know nothing about football...the team isn't worth the extra risk but like Brian said yesterday...it seems like it's ok to go over budget by a good few hundred mill in the name of property development.

ENIC out.

 

Honestly lads, unless some of the bigger clubs start underperforming/we stumble across some overperforming managers, I think both Arsenal and Spurs are - for the foreseeable future - going to be fighting for a Europa League/Conference League spot.

It may not happen instantly, but we're soon going to have Newcastle, Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man Utd that all have the propensity to win the league. Then there's the likes of Leicester and West Ham who don't appear to be going away. Then there's ambitious owners at Everton and Aston Villa who will be looking to fight for Europe too.

Whether it's down to oligarchs, state-subsidies, being a financial juggernaut or exceptional management, there is going to be more competition at the top than we've seen before.

Right now, both you and us (moreso us IMO) are the most vulnerable in falling behind and becoming a permanent midtable side.

 

I still disagree with the idea that Kane isn’t trying or isn’t motivated. His defending from the corner was awful but why he’s marking their most dangerous asset from that, I don’t know.

Where’s the same criticism for Son though? Who was even worse than Kane yesterday? Or Lucas, who now makes it 0 goals and just 1 assist in all comps so far? He’s never scored enough anyway though, shouldn’t be a starter but often gets free passes.

Our forwards in this system are being hung out to dry. Dane Scarlett’s also being wrecked by it too but because he’s young he’s getting the “not ready” line when realistically he’s just getting absolutely no service, I don’t think Scarlett has had a shot on target in any of his appearances.

It’s damning just how **** offensively we are under this manager. We could’ve sold Kane, signed a £70m striker and £20m backup in the summer and yet it wouldn’t have made a single bit of difference, they’d have already started to have been labelled a flop by fans and media when they’d be getting the same service as what our current forwards are getting.

I’d rather bring Mason back than persist with Nuno. Bloke’s football is horrendous and no one is benefitting from it, no one.

 

Perfectly summed up:

 

After the Newcastle buyout, I'm sure Levy's main worry will be that the Magpies might build an even better stadium than us with an even longer bar and thereby win more design awards than we have.

 

In all comps:

Kane - 12 games, 7 goals, 1 assist.
Son - 11 games, 4 goals, 1 assist.
Lucas - 11 games, 0 goals, 1 assist.
Scarlett - 4 games, 0 goals, 0 assists.
Bergwijn - 7 games, 0 goals, 1 assist.

Three of our forwards without a single goal this season…

 

There is no way we can compete with teams that do not run on normal business practice. We have to accept that. As long as teams are allowed to be run in that fashion the only hope we have is to get better players by paying less for them than these illegitimate teams, and that is about as unlikely as it sounds. And as we are only allowed to bring in legitimate revenue about the only thing we can do to redress some of the deficit is to invest in a new major revenue generating stadium.

Oh, hang on a minute. We did that. ENIC and Levy did that by the way.

So now we have to invest (more) wisely. But that stadium wasn't free, as much as many on here seem to want to ignore this expenditure. It will take a while to be the cash generating asset it could be, and a year being empty of football crowds and all the other events hasn't helped.

And I'm not claiming the football hasn't been poor. But we also have had a very bad run of ref decisions. And that's not an excuse it's a fact. A lot of teams get points they don't deserve, so why not us? But the situation isn't as bad as most claim. Are West Ham that much better than us? Did they tear us apart? There were plenty of occasions where our final ball failed yesterday, and had one of those been better this would be a different conversation. Although even if we had won it probably wouldn't be!

 

Hate to say it but I agree with this. The only edge we have over you - and it is quite a big one - is the multi-functionality of our stadium and the cash it will eventually generate.

However, there is definitely a fear that by the time said cash is generated, we will be a footballing irrelevance. Newcastle will have established themselves as a force and for all we know, some other oligarch or oil sheikh will have swooped in and purchased another PL club, making it 6 teams that are almost impossible to compete with.

There has certainly been precedent of teams deemed 'too big' to fail doing just that and either taking decades to return to some semblance of competence or actually fading permanently.

 

Like he said, we need new owners.

 

You need to understand what in play means. It doesn't mean ours to lose.

 

I think on the new owner front, it won’t be in a couple years but at some eventual point most of the established Premier League sides will all be owned by “super billionaires”.

It’s how the game is going, Newcastle getting bought by one says it all. They’re a **** club with overrated fans and yet they now have the richest owners in football. Eventually I think it’ll be similar for many teams in the league and then across Europe in more time to come. There’ll be more PSG’s and Leipzig’s just as there’ll be more Newcastle’s, City’s and Chelsea’s.

 

Pass map time

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The most obvious thing that stands out is there's a lot of arrows going into Ndombele, most obviously Hojbjerg, Skipp, Lucas and Reguilon, but there's not exactly many arrows coming out - or, to put it another way, not a lot of arrows coming out in directions where he hasn't received the ball, with that dinky little arrow to Son (which is thinner than the ones from Skipp and Reguilon) being the only one

And that's not the only lack of anything that stands out, as the lack of traffic from the CBs to their respective FBs obviously stands out, yet at the same time isn't a surprise given how often the crossfield ball to Reguilon from both Dier and Romero missed the target, which based on this looks like a tactical decision - as opposed from the crossfield balls from Emerson to Skipp, which I initially thought was a graphical glitch

What this demonstrates is that our midfield is good for retaining the ball when we have it, but the problem is that it isn't any good at breaking lines - and this has been a long-term problem since Dembele went into rapid decline, because we remember how isolated Kane and Eriksen looked towards the end of Poch's tenure, and because our midfield can't break lines that puts the onus on our FBs to create space, but if the FBs are having an off day or if we're using either Davies or Tanganga who aren't naturally attacking FBs that puts the focus on the centre to break lines, and that's when we come back to the centre bogging down our play because of how static players are when transitioning from defence to attack

You can see the difference when looking at West Scam's passmap

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While the Rice/Soucek pairing isn't holding onto the ball as much, what it is doing is finding players who are moving the ball forward as Rice is regularly getting it out to Cresswell and Fornals while Soucek is getting it to Johnson, and getting it to Johnson is the key part given how often he's finding Antonio when coming up from RB, while in comparison Emerson is finding Hojbjerg and Skipp and nobody else

And this also underlines the other issue: look where Son is on the map, effectively occupying the same space as Kane when realistically he needs to be further to the left so that Reguilon can link up with him while also leaving an out ball for SKipp and Ndombele, which would also spread out our attacking play and stop it getting bogged down in the middle because ultimately our shape looks like an ever-narrowing triangle, and that's easy for opponents to contain

 

It's his normal job at corners and he's usually good at it. Mark at the near post and try to head it away.
He just decided that he was going to stand there yesterday, for some reason.

Son was absolutely awful yesterday and he should've been subbed off.
Moura was far too deep and central. Not sure the overall stats do him justice, though.
He's had a lot of hockey assists and at least one defender kicking the ball in his own net to prevent him scoring.
https://juststream.live/AngersEncyclopediaShakier

The obvious issue with Moura is that we don't have anyone else that can play well in his position.
Gil was appalling there against Vitesse and Bergwijn isn't much better, whenever he's fit.
Sessegnon's played a handful of games there, but his fitness is an even bigger issue.

 

The pundits did actually make a case for Kane by saying he didn’t see it. I’m not defending it but just pointing out that it did seem a snap reflex action from Antonio and I don’t think he knew much about it himself. However Kane still needed to be far more alert. Though if Reguilon didn’t piss about this wouldn’t have been a talking point.

Lucas has never been a good enough option for a starting player. He’s lived off the semi final and some. He’s great against Europa standard opposition but we saw the difference last season when you have a top player there in Bale and an average one in Lucas. Give Gil starts on the left and let him grow, stick Son on the right, he's more than capable over there to the point where there wouldn’t be a huge difference in his play, if at all.

As for Son in general though he isn’t getting anywhere near the same amount of criticism as Kane and yet he has less goals in all competitions. Not that I think either really deserve criticism but I just disagree with Kane being constantly singled out, this is all on the manager and his dog awful game plan. Not a single player in this squad is benefitting from Nuno’s management.

 

Kane's getting more stick because he basically didn't turn up for the start of the season.
We won without him and Son was key to those wins, then we started losing as he strolled about.
Smashing up Pacos, while still barely getting out of first gear, shouldn't excuse that.

Son was worse than Kane yesterday, but he's earned some goodwill with his performances.
His attitude has been excellent and he's generally played well.
Kane's attitude has been appalling and so have most of his appearances.

 

Son hasn’t played well in the grand scheme of things though.

A good performance against City and a great one against Villa is all he’s done so far. A freak goal against Watford in a game we were poor in, nothing against Wolves, was injured for Palace but two awful performances from him and everyone against Chelsea and Arsenal and he was poor against Newcastle and West Ham.

The attitude thing is being massively overstated.

Fans are just pissed at Kane because he wanted out whereas because Son committed to a new deal everyone has him on a pedestal. Both have been massively below par this season, or more to the point, being ruined by the manager’s system.

 

This could drag on so feel free to just ignore

The Players
My biggest irritation with players is they think/behave or give the impression that if a manager passes them off, then they are justified in playing badly.

Other than Lloris and Skipp, I struggle to name a player who comes out of this season with any credit so far.

As for Kane, he is no better or worse than the rest but the reason he is getting stick is cos he acted so disrespectfully to the fans with his behaviour last season. It also grates with me that he consistently praised JM even as we completely imploded. He seemed fine with him as manager even though we were going down the toilet as the season progressed.

The Manager
I saw us play Wolves and thought they played well. Others said to me that those matches were more or less the exceptions and Nuno was actually a very conservative manager. This has very much proven to be the case.
How on earth can the club release a statement saying we are going back to our footballing DNA and then employ a light weight version of JM/ Santini and bloke in a coat?
On top of conservative football he appears unable to inspire both senior and junior players which is quite an achievement tbh.

The Club
They have alienated a huge amount of match day going fans as well as fans who can't go to games.
They charge a huge amount for season tickets, a small fortune for individual games plus over £40 for one hotspur plus memberships, £35 for on hotspur memberships and have the nerve to charge a booking fee for tickets even though they are electronic tickets.
They shamed the club trying to furlough non footballing staff in Somerset to save a pittance and disgraced the name of the club by signing up to the ESL.

On and off the pitch, the club is making itself look stupid.

There will be a very negative fan reaction next Saturday unless we play really exciting football and win. Personally, I think there is more chance of me winning the lottery than that happening.

Levy and the board will only have themselves to blame.

It is just two and a half years ago that we opened the new WHL, got to the CL final and broke our club transfer record...if anyone had described what was to come no one would have believed them.

Nuno has to go imho ... but he won't cos it leaves Levy with no where to go.

Levy needs to be told to stay away from all footballing decisions but he won't be cos he is a major player in ENIC.

No idea how this solves itself but I fear this is gonna get way worse before we see any improvement on the pitch.

 

They probably will. They could stump up less than 1% of their savings and still get some change. The new owners might get tired of Newcastle though and relocate their club/franchise to somewhere else. Give enough money to the PL and there should be no problem.
I asked some time ago if any of the ENIC out people could provide a list of suitable buyers but haven’t seen any suggestions yet.

Edited to include the word ‘out’ after ENIC