Moussa Dembele

[Citizen Kane]

He's an enigma, this one. Put in a cracking performance yesterday after a number of 'meh' turn outs. Do we stick or twist back to Dier?

I think essentially dropping our best player so far this season in lieu of a player who puts in one decent performance every few months would be lunacy, but then there's the dream of playing them next to each other and both on form would make us nigh impregnable through the midfield areas.

A number of posters have suggested this and pushing Alli up next to Eriksen, and I'd agree that the youngster is probably better playing further forward where his trickery and confidence could be crucial to a goal-starved front line.

Having watched yesterday's game, my opinion on Dembele is that he isn't, contrary to the popular belief, a 'big game player'. Rather, he's a player who's a bit like Parker in the respect that both preferred loads of time on the ball, and both utilised the famous one-footed-360-degree-turn-to-end-up-back-where-you-started move on plentiful occasions when under pressure.

Parker flourished in our Harry for England season because our game was played at such a frantic pace that he didn't have a choice but to get a move on with intercepting and releasing the ball. The tempo of our game was such that he couldn't take the 4 or 5 touches he would've preferred. Once AVB came in and our tempo slowed almost beyond recognition, one of the most reliable players in the PL suddenly looked a liability, giving the ball away with alarming regularity and seemingly incapable of doing more than passing short distances backwards or sideways.

I acknowledge that the loss of the Modric outlet was a massive shift, but still I see a lot of similarities in Dembele's game. From day 1, he hasn't scored or created nearly enough for a player of his natural talent, and always seems desperate to take that extra touch to reassure himself. As a result, the only time he looks effective is when we're up against top opposition who are going to play at a high, confident tempo. In such scenarios, Dembele comes into his own as the man mountain he can be, and without the time to pirouette endlessly on the ball, starts to rely instinctively on his considerable natural talent. But when we're up against lower quality opposition, he has the time and space to slow things down, often to the chagrin of the fans and his team mates, and he simply looks less effective.

Just my thoughts on this enigma of a player. Keen to hear others'

 

[PleaseNotPoll]

He's frustrating as hell. Immensely talented, but his decision making's appalling at times.
Sticking him in alongside Dier could be exactly what we need, though.
Both are strong, physical players, but they're also competent and skillful.

I'd love to see how he's coached. He's one of those that never seems to change his approach.
Beats four players at a walking pace, then checks back when he gets into a good position and kills the momentum.
Perhaps playing a deeper role will mean that this isn't as relevant?

 

[PowerSpurs]

The Sunday Times gave him a score of 5 for yesterday making him our worst player!

I'm more and more of the view that more or less all players valued between £10m and 20m are approx the same standard

 

[Citizen Kane]

The Sunday Times gave him a score of 5 for yesterday making him our worst player!

I'm more and more of the view that more or less all players valued between £10m and 20m are approx the same standard

Interesting point PS. Come to think of it, no-one beyond Eriksen, Lloris and Modric signed in that price bracket have gone on to be revelations...

 

[The Huddlefro]

Dembele gives you a limited amount and is fairly consistent in that. He rarely loses the ball but also rarely does anything constructive with it either - the classic quote on him is that he can take 2 or 3 players out of the game in the blink of an eye, but then he lets them straight in again. For all his physical strength he rarely contributes as well in defence as Dier has done so far this season, and the latter is more progressive on the ball too. I think he's a player who will rarely lose you a game but will rarely win one for you either. Play Dembele and Dier together and we'll be very solid indeed, but utterly unthreatening in attack. In a 4-3-3 he'd probably be a good operator with an enforcer alongside him and a truly creative player in there too, as he provides a balance between the styles and a slightly unorthodox way of playing, but we don't play like that and actually I don't think its worth changing that and building a team around him at this stage.

He doesn't have the versatility to be as effective as the other options have been as one of the 3 behind a striker. And playing in the 2, he doesn't have the vision to get the team moving like Alli or Mason does, and he doesn't have the defensive nous to operate like Dier does. Effectively I don't think he does any one thing well enough to justify selecting him ahead of any of the other players who can fill more of a defined role and provide more balance to the team, say Dier or Bentaleb as the more defensive minded midfielders, and Mason or Alli as the more creative in the 2.

I bet he looks fantastic on the training pitch and in all the small-sided stuff they do there, and I'd love him on my 5 a side team because I think he is that kind of player. But in a real game situation he too often plays it safe and he doesn't contribute well to the balance of the team. There were reports last week that he is being chased by Napoli for the Winter window - I'd take the money without a second thought and put it towards another striker or winger. Dembele is good at what he does, but he doesn't do nearly enough of the right things.

 

[Citizen Kane]

Agreed. The only players I'm currently more desperate to see the back of are Fazio and Townsend.

 

[PleaseNotPoll]

All of his contributions towards yesterday's game:

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Best? The tackle and subsequent nutmeg in the second half. Worst? That shot...

 

[Spurf]

I wonder if Dembele just lacks confidence! Very occasionally he has used his ball retaining skills to good effect in the opposition box. Given his undoubted ball holding skills forward movement towards the goal 'COULD' be devastating but we rarely see it. Hoddle might try his magical woman on him.

Mousa Dembele sounds like a sticky desert and they often disappoint.

 

[O.Spurcat]

Yesterday shows what he is capable of, but he has been so average for so long that I am very hesitant to think he can do this on a consistent basis.

 

[lennypops]

At the start of the summer transfer window I think I said that Dembele would be the first player I'd sell (though if I did that would've been an over-sight - Fazio/Chiriches would have been ahead of him in my mind. Maybe I was only talking about midfielders). I'd have held onto Paulinho or Stanbouli before him purely because, unlike with those two, we know what we have in Dembele and it's just not good enough. Also we'd get very good money for him.

Really funny how Huddlefro mentions 5-a-side teams because I was having the exact thought watching him on Saturday. In fact I quickly decided that he'd be the first name on my team sheet (Lloris, Dier and Kane obviously pick themselves and the last spot was unfilled, in case anyone was wondering).

As I said on the match thread - that game against Liverpool was perfect for him - tight spots, always surrounded by opposition players. It's the core of the enigma of Dembele that he seems to do one of the hardest aspects of the game so consistently well - an aspect that would suggest that anyone capable of it would have a very, very useful skill set (touch, control, strength, dribbling). Yet if we've a lot of the ball and plenty of time he's basically useless.

I'm convinced that it's purely psychological with him and shows how much the mental aspect in football is key and yet very intangible. Give him the ball at his feet and a back four a few yards in front of him and he doesn't seem to know what to do. Surround him with three opposition players and he looks superb! It's so frustrating.

Ryan Mason is a player who, to my imperfect judgement, seems to have a really good footballing brain. He manages to make things happen not due to any amazing attributes but just a sense of what's needed and when. An example is that Mason goes past players due to his decision-making and ability to sense when an oppo defender has sold himself one way or the other - it's never due to a magical bit of skill or any lightning pace. I noticed it a lot when he first burst into the team - he managed to take people on and find really effective forward passes without ever seeming to do anything very flash.

 

[Spurf]

Ryan Mason is a player who, to my imperfect judgement, seems to have a really good footballing brain. He manages to make things happen not due to any amazing attributes but just a sense of what's needed and when. An example is that Mason goes past players due to his decision-making and ability to sense when an oppo defender has sold himself one way or the other - it's never due to a magical bit of skill or any lightning pace. I noticed it a lot when he first burst into the team - he managed to take people on and find really effective forward passes without ever seeming to do anything very flash.

Yes I agree lenny, many really good players are not at first obvious because they don't do 'tricks' or make very visible wonder passes. It often becomes more noticeable when they are NOT playing and their contribution is a gaping hole where they should be. I always found it difficult to see what Bryan Robson and Gerry Francis did for example, that made them great players but England always performed better when they were playing.

 

[NSIS]

I've always been a big fan of Dembele and I was delighted when we signed him. I have to admit that he's blown very hot and cold for us recently though ( mostly cold!). There's no doubt in my mind that there's a very talented footballer in there. Why it doesn't present itself for us so much, I'm not sure. Maybe he doesn't suit our system?

He did look very good on Saturday though. MoM by a long way, and worth thing in that position again.

 

[lennypops]

Interesting point PS. Come to think of it, no-one beyond Eriksen, Lloris and Modric signed in that price bracket have gone on to be revelations...

Berbatov?! And Bale was originally sort of in that bracket til we bought out the other half of his fee(s). Not to say the general principle isn't true, mind.

 

[lennypops]

The Sunday Times gave him a score of 5 for yesterday making him our worst player!

I'm more and more of the view that more or less all players valued between £10m and 20m are approx the same standard

Goes to show how little journalists know about half the stuff they opine about. I would back anyone on here to have a better knowledge of Spurs and the players than 90% of journalists. And when they can't even notice stuff that is right there and manifestly *exists* (a footballer player actually playing football in front of them) then why the hell do people believe what they say about transfers? Half the time they're apparently able to read the minds of chairmen, managers, players, their families, their agents. They can sense, for example, when a manager merely "considers a move in the market" which must be an incredible talent to have.

 

[NSIS]

The majority of journalists are basically whores. Paid to write whatever they think will sell whichever rag they write for.

 

[Citizen Kane]

Most journalists don't watch anything beyond MOTD. There's no way they could watch more than around 15minutes of each game and manage to write a column for late Saturday night so that it can go to press at 5.00am Sunday morning.

I always enjoy laughing at Garth Crooks' team of the week as it's abundantly clear that he picks the majority of them based on some stat he's read about the game like 'Did you know that Dejan Lovren made 7 interceptions - 2 more than any other player this week?' ...completely ignoring the fact that Lovren's overall performance was as useful as a tomato with wheels.

Back to the topic at hand though...

What is intriguing about Moussa is that the majority of his good performances have been operating as a player that we 100% didn't mean to sign. Whether you saw him as a replacement for VDV, Modric or something in between, when he arrived we were well stocked in deep lying mids with Parker and Sandro and Livermore coming through too.
He was without question signed because of his impressive goal scoring and creating stats at Fulham. Maybe we just use him incorrectly, but from the day he put on a Spurs shirt it was as if he'd forgotten what his best role was supposed to be and what earned him the plaudits across the capital, and we've basically spent the best part of 3 years trying to help him find a new role.

 

[Spurm]

He was without question signed because of his impressive goal scoring and creating stats at Fulham.

Huh?
No stats on his creating but he certainly did not have impressive goal scoring stats at Fulham

 

[Citizen Kane]

Huh?
No stats on his creating but he certainly did not have impressive goal scoring stats at Fulham

Quick google of that and...you're right! We've been conned, I say!

No idea why but I always had it in my head that he scored a dozen or so screamers a season at Fulham. He got 5 goals in 62 appearances playing as an AM!

What the hell did we sign him for?!

 

[Spurm]

Quick google of that and...you're right! We've been conned, I say!

No idea why but I always had it in my head that he scored a dozen or so screamers a season at Fulham. He got 5 goals in 62 appearances playing as an AM!

What the hell did we sign him for?!

He only played more attacking under Martin Jol. Not sure how well that worked if i'm honest, wasn't paying too much attention. He always looked a decent attacking player at Fulham despite the goal stats though.

Traditionally i've always defended Dembele and i've always enjoyed watching him bumble (i've no other way of describing it) his way passed players, often multiple players. But, like Townsend, the lack of end product is starting to wear very thin now.
I didn't see anything spectacular from him at the weekend if i'm honest.

 

[Citizen Kane]

He only played more attacking under Martin Jol. Not sure how well that worked if i'm honest, wasn't paying too much attention. He always looked a decent attacking player at Fulham despite the goal stats though.

Traditionally i've always defended Dembele and i've always enjoyed watching him bumble (i've no other way of describing it) his way passed players, often multiple players. But, like Townsend, the lack of end product is starting to wear very thin now.
I didn't see anything spectacular from him at the weekend if i'm honest.

In truth there wasn't anything spectacular from any of the 22 players on the pitch, with the possible exception of Mignolet once or twice. I think the praise he's earned is because a lot of us were nervous that we'd be left exposed without Dier, but Moussa stepped up to the plate and put in a monstrous performance, breaking up play and disrupting their channels of passing umpteen times. Being as it was that we didn't need to see an end product from him as it clearly wasn't what he was on the pitch to do, that particular point was (rightly) overlooked.

In terms of creativity, he combined magnificently with Dempsey in his 2 seasons at Fulham to produce what were without question the American's best seasons of an otherwise bang average career. That creativity has been sorely lacking at Spurs, although no-one can quite work out why as we're talking about a player who can and regularly does take 3 opposition players out of the game with one moment of skill and strength, thereby theoretically opening up acres of spaces to launch attacks from.