Tumbled as being minus a football brain Leaving Lennon on the bench and playing Townsend is beyond an insult to a proper player Townsend is beyond saving
Les Ferdinand was mentioning that Spurs fans are quick to criticise young players. This article confirms Les is right.
All managers/coaches jump at the chance of crediting themselves when young players make it into the first team and Les is no exception. That Harry Kane and Ryan Mason, and Bentaleb were rested from a first team game, is a big compliment to our youth structure. Sherwood had a major impact into this, as to a lesser extent did Les Ferdinanad. It's not been quite the same in the youth set up since the both of them left and Les is quite entitled to say what he says IMO.
So just how many chances is Townsend. to get come on he has pace and a total lack in the decision making department brainless
That's irrelevant to your original point...ferdinand...a player supported by US...slagged US off by lying on live tv... he said we would chant soldados name last season if Kane hadn't scored...implying that we were against Kane yet this season were calling Kane one of our own...his point was to imply we were 2 faced ... you said this in your original post on this thread... you wrote Les Ferdinand was mentioning that Spurs fans are quick to criticise young players. This article confirms Les is right. only the op had criticised Townsend when you commented so God knows how this proved Ferdinand right like I said this point was and still is bollocks...we did not turn on kane or anyother young players...so your point about him being right is also bollocks... your point about youth prospects being given a chance and people claiming credit for it is true...I have no issue with anyone claiming credit for giving young players a chance...but i have a big problem with us being lied about by an ex player and coach...glad the lying bitter twat is welll away from us
Nice to give youth a chance but being honest this is our frugal owners last throw of the dice . Mid table is as best as it will get but still a achievement of sorts . Townsend academy or not has been sadly , unbelievably awful . If Lennon is our last hope then we are up the Swanee without a paddle .
Whenever I see Townsend play it always seems like he wants to be the hero but doesn't have the quality to achieve it. The constant cutting in and shooting, the head down and charge just screams of a player who wants to be great but never will be.
OS has this right. I think Townsend has the potential to be a far better player than Lennon. Anyone who saw him play for England last season would say he has already had two much better matches than Lennon at that level. But he is still young, has never had a proper run in our team and people expect too much when he does play. I truly believe that if we kept eight or nine older players and 16 of the younger ones and gave them a run in the team to get confidence we would end up with a really strong squad in 2 or 3 years time and would do little worse in the intervening period. Our objective ought to be turn three or four of Dier, Rose, Davies, Bentaleb, Carroll, Mason, Pritchard, Ceballos, Townsend, Lamela, Eriksen and Kane plus some of the development squad into top players.
Townsend frustrates the hell out of me, as most of you will know. HOWEVER, i'm wondering whether the "head down, have a shot" tactic that seems to be the one thing in his armoury is not because the rest of the team are not providing good enough alternatives. When left with two options which one should he pick? 1 - lose the ball as defenders converging and no team mates providing options 2 - have a shot Its not as if ANY of the rest of the squad are doing a better job of what we WANT Townsend to do is it?
Can't judge him on last night, the pitch looked awful. He can be very exciting on his day, but his decision making does need to improve.
I think it's more a case of Lennon being rested than Townsend. I know ITK should be taken with a pinch of salt but apparently Lennon was supposed to start against Palace but had some muscle tightness, which would be little surprise as it was his 3rd game in 6 days and he hadn't played much this season before that. Townsend's decision making is very frustrating, he's got lots of ability but he needs to add variety to his game and learn to give the ball to other players. Too often he gets the ball halfway up the pitch and considers it his responsibility to run it 40 yards taking it past any defender in his way and too often he thinks it's his responsibility to cut inside and shoot. He needs to start getting his head up and assessing the opportunity as he just doesn't seem to see other player's runs.
Kane, Bentaleb and Dier are all younger than Townsend and they don't get criticised - mostly because they're not incredibly wasteful when we're going forward, while Townsend either shoots tamely at the keeper from thirty yards or aims for the floodlights from twenty.
He seems to want to run before he's learned to walk properly, metaphorically speaking. Whilst it would be wrong to try and change or discourage all of his natural aggressive, attacking instincts, he does need to learn to engage brain before foot quite a bit more.
Townsend's problem can be easily solved in my opinion - stick him on the ****ing left! When Townsend burst onto the first team scene, it was his marauding runs and no fear drives down the left that got us fans excited, sure even like he does now his lack of passing at times is/ was frustrating but the guy had/ has the attributes of a tricky out and out winger. It'd be nice to see a run of games where we have two wingers in Andros and Azza play on their natural sides, I'd bet that our striker(s) would have a shed load more service and likely result in a few more goals in games. Think to under Harry, we had Bale left and Azza right, playing in crosses to the striker with Rafa supporting him, that was when our football was at it's best and we were known throughout the country as the most entertaining side while also picking up a decent number of points, I'd love for Poch to just keep it simple for a few games instead of the "high press, inverted winger" stuff, clearly our players can't (or maybe won't) adapt fully to it, time to try something new (or old come to think of it).
He was on the right in the two England games and looked fantastic! If we aspire to be a team that wins something rather than merely entertains then we have to play in a more sophisticated way - almost none of the top teams use traditional wingers. I'm not sure how long our players will take to adapt but giving up now will lead to more misery long-term. Wingers going past on the outside and putting in crosses looks exciting but rarely leads to an actual goal. I suspect all the top managers know the stats on this and are playing the systems that actually work best. Top-level sport of any sort is decided by very fine margins between competitors who have quite similar levels of skill. You need to get an edge anyway you can and playing a sub-optimal system is not the way to go about it.
