Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal

With respect, I’m not sure many real nailed on top players who could come in and do it straight away were seriously available to you. Simons seemed a really sensible purchase. Might still be eventually. Really good but not yet elite Prem players like Mbuemo and Eze were getting better (financially at least) offers and the fees for the likes of Sesko and Gyokeres show what the market is even for players who are no guarantee.

 

Is it though?

We’ve been pretty much a graveyard for young talent for quite some time now. It’s not helped that some of the young players have been pretty useless too but either way we just don’t seem to produce and/ or develop many.

I reckon in the last 10 years (since Kane basically) we’ve only helped develop about 2-3 young players into decent first team calibre ones.

 

Is one of them Harry Winks?

 

Yeah I'm also scratching my head trying to come up with 2-3 players.

 

It's not a good record DH but we do not carry the same attraction for players as our would be rivals therefore we have to take a gamble on getting the talent before it develops and goes to a bigger club. We should be able to pick up a top class left winger because there are maybe 1/2 a dozen out there, but strikers much more difficult. I'm sure you know better than I do who is available but most will go to our top 3 clubs and Chelsea.We are scrambling until we get somwhere. It's a vicious circle.

 

Eze cost Arsenal £67.5M
Spurs paid £51.8M for Simons
Ouch!

 

That’s partly because we restrict ourselves when it comes to attracting players.

The guy that annihilated us today could’ve been in our shirt had Levy and co not pissed about. Instead we wasted weeks in negotiations, lose out and then end up with Simons who so far has been an absolute disaster, something I half predicted too due to the trend of Bundesliga attacking mids or wingers flopping in this league.

But so many of the youngsters we’re targeting are either crap or don’t get a look in. We’ve spent almost £100m on Odobert, Tel and Gray… bonkers. That could’ve gone on two Prem proven players.

 

The fact that almost half that period coincides with Poch's utterly baffling belief that it was better for U21 players to train with the first team than actually play football really needs to be called out more than it is

Conte literally using the U18s as training cones is rightfully called out, because Jesus ****ing Christ that was embarrassing on all manner of levels, but at least he sanctioned loans for the U21s so they could actually play first team football before they were legally allowed to drink in the US

 

I haven't lost faith in Oderbert Tel and Grey, time will tell. Pun not intended. I am not convinced we could have landed Eze because I think Palace would have alerted Arsenal had we tried to do it under the radar.

Where I think we royally ****ed up was when Poch got us to the CL final. That was the time to invest heavily in the playing staff but was that Levy or was it actually Joe Lewis? We had arrived but never took advantage, that was when we could have sold the idea of joining the club to top players. Redknapp's time was similar having luckily uncovered Bale and Modric we failed again to capitalise by sacking Redknapp. These were the two periods in ENICS time when Spurs were about to fly and they clipped our wings. The 'New Lewis's' say they are going to invest, we will see, starting with the January window. Perhaps they really do want the glory!

I think ,most important right now is to stick with Frank, he is a bright guy. I think he still has a bit of the Brentford mentality (no offence intended) he has to come to terms with what Spurs is and I am hopefull he will get it. Again the January window will tell us lots.

 

I wouldn’t say I’ve lost faith in Gray but I think the manager certainly has little faith in him. Odobert and Tel are terrible though, I don’t see anything in either to think they’ll prove good players in time. They’re basically the next N’Jie and Nkoudou.

We should’ve invested long before the CL Final. We found ourselves in a position of strength under Poch but never capitalised and then after the CL final we got it terribly wrong with the Ndombele, Lo Celso and Sessegnon signings.

I’ve been disappointed in Frank so far. He’s shown little of being the strong tactician I saw at Brentford. I’m not advocating for him to be sacked, far from it but performances like we’ve seen in our two biggest games so far this season will end up getting fans - and the board - against him and there’s already lots of fans on social media that are turning against him. Like I said earlier, performances like today can result in eventual sackings for a manager.

 

I suppose a Spurs fan today must feel like a Democrat after losing the election to Trump!?

 

The two who actually turned up today, Palinha and Vicario have both spoken well post-match.
If this was a one-off then it would mean a lot more. But it isn't.

We know that the squad isn't good enough, but application and effort are non-negotiable and an Isthmian League side would have fought harder than most of our lot today.

Another performance like that on Wednesday and/or next weekend and there will be some serious questions asked of both players and especially the manager.

 

Another gripe I have about the notion that signing youngsters is a good strategy:

It would be if we actually showed an ability to pluck said youngsters out of relative obscurity and steal a march on rival clubs to land them before they start showing up on radars.

Lucas Bergvall, Luka Vuskovic and to a lesser extent Pape Sarr and Destiny Udogie is what I'd have in mind as being well worth a flutter. This is exactly what the likes of Brighton, Bmouth and Brentford have done so effectively for years.

But can the same argument be made about most of our other 'young' signings? Johnson and Odobert were already PL players when we signed them. No one else wanted to touch them. Tel came from one of the biggest clubs in the world. Simons started at Barca and PSG. These are hardly unknown players plucked from obscurity. They were all right there up on stage and the whole world knew about them, but no one else wanted them. And therein lies the problem.

There is nothing to celebrate about our strategy. It is insanely expensive and flies in the face of all available evidence.

 

The biggest issue with Redknapp's tenure is he was flirting with The FA at just the wrong time, and that ultimately cost us CL football at the end of the season via the most irritating means imaginable

At the very least it would have likely secured us Eden Hazard, who was top of our wishlist but only willing to join a club who could offer CL football...the CL football which Chelsea had at our expense thanks to Redknapp pissing it away

 

Redknapp's final year was a Levy Masterclass writ large.

Summer window brings in Scott Parker for £5m (good signing), then does nothing else beyond Adebayor on loan and Friedel on a free transfer.

Then January comes around are we're sitting 3rd in the table and within reach of mounting a real title challenge, and he gives Redknapp Louis Saha and Ryan Nelsen on short term contracts.

 

Today wasn’t about Redknapp’s or Poch’s failings. Today, and current season, are down to Thomas Frank.

He’s new and still learning about our squad. We have been limited with injuries so he can be excused somewhat for that.

But he’s too focused on defensive matters. I agree he needed to tighten our defence but he has gone too far and it has unbalanced the team.

Playing 5 defenders and 2 defensive midfielders left our team unbalanced, and not for the first time. He has dropped Sarr, despite him starting the season very well. We have no-one in midfield who can retain the ball. Bentancur and Palhinha are there to break up the play, which they do but as soon we get the ball back, we lose it again.

Our forwards are crap, excluding Kudus but the one who is capable of scoring goals is Johnson. So surely Frank should be finding a way of fitting Johnson in and utilising his strengths.

We do need to overhaul our forwards but our players aren’t as bad as we think. Frank needs to rethink the set up and work to their strengths. The team’s strengths aren’t playing in a team with a 5 back and 2 DMs.

Today was Frank’s failings, not our managers from 10-15 years ago!