Match Day Thread Spurs v Leeds

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Spurf said:
I thought we were going to see the real Richarlison at the beginning of the season which he started with a couple of spectacular goals, but no he reverts to:- How as professional footballer who can't control a ball, who usually loses the ball and falls over did he get so far in the game? When you think how hard it is as a young talented footballer to break through. To even get to League 2 standard is difficult and makes you amongst the best footballers. He must have had a period when he was good to get to the PL. Anybody know about that. I was always mystified by Darren Bent who managed to be a 16million transfer to Spurs (huge money at the time) on the back of a good season at Charlton, but Richarlison must be where he is because occasionally (very occasionally) he scores fantastic goals. He runs about a lot, I'll give him that and he comes across as a decent human being but HOW did he get this far in football HOW?
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He’s just a hard worker and a lot of the time hard work can get you far in football.

As for ability, most of us on this board knew he was never good enough to play at the level Spurs want to be at as a top six side. Same goes for Solanke, marginally better footballer but even less clinical than Richarlison. Richarlison averages a premier league goal every 3.6 games, Solanke 4.1. Both are basically bottom half/ relegation calibre strikers and it shows. I’d say you need a ratio of around 1-in-3 at least for a top six striker. We’ve had our fair share too:

Sheringham - 2.8
Keane - 2.7
Defoe - 3
Berbatov - 2.4
Kane - 1.5
 
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Spurf said:
I thought we were going to see the real Richarlison at the beginning of the season which he started with a couple of spectacular goals, but no he reverts to:- How as professional footballer who can't control a ball, who usually loses the ball and falls over did he get so far in the game? When you think how hard it is as a young talented footballer to break through. To even get to League 2 standard is difficult and makes you amongst the best footballers. He must have had a period when he was good to get to the PL. Anybody know about that. I was always mystified by Darren Bent who managed to be a 16million transfer to Spurs (huge money at the time) on the back of a good season at Charlton, but Richarlison must be where he is because occasionally (very occasionally) he scores fantastic goals. He runs about a lot, I'll give him that and he comes across as a decent human being but HOW did he get this far in football HOW?
Click to expand...

I was surprised at the Richarlison hype after that game and said at the time I doubted he'd score a dozen goals this season.
As things stand he's proving me right.

I think it's because he's Brazilian.

If he was a bloke called Richard Ison, he'd be playing for Accrington Stanley and working as a plumber during the week.
 
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There was a bizarre moment right at the end of the game where Gillet was prancing around telling Danso to retreat about half a foot to take the throw-in from the precise place the ball went out, something he'd neglected to do all game.

Gillet is straight out of the Clattenburg School of 'Look at me everyone, aren't I important'.
 
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Dier Hard said:
He’s just a hard worker and a lot of the time hard work can get you far in football.

As for ability, most of us on this board knew he was never good enough to play at the level Spurs want to be at as a top six side. Same goes for Solanke, marginally better footballer but even less clinical than Richarlison. Richarlison averages a premier league goal every 3.6 games, Solanke 4.1. Both are basically bottom half/ relegation calibre strikers and it shows. I’d say you need a ratio of around 1-in-3 at least for a top six striker. We’ve had our fair share too:

Sheringham - 2.8
Keane - 2.7
Defoe - 3
Berbatov - 2.4
Kane - 1.5
Click to expand...
Interesting figures DH and it prompted me to look at the figures for our top strikers back to the Double Winning Team.

Bobby Smith 1.5
Greaves 1.4
Clive Allen 1.6
Linekar 1.7
Klinsmann 1.8
Archibald 2.5
Crooks 2.6
Chivers 2.1

Proving your point overwhelmingly DH.

Clear isn't it if Spurs are to improve, above all we need a proper striker to the standard Spurs have had from at least 1955. We can improve all we like in defence and midfield but if you don't have a top striker with a scoring ratio of at least 3 we will not get very far.
 
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Citizen Kane. said:
There was a bizarre moment right at the end of the game where Gillet was prancing around telling Danso to retreat about half a foot to take the throw-in from the precise place the ball went out, something he'd neglected to do all game.

Gillet is straight out of the Clattenburg School of 'Look at me everyone, aren't I important'.
Click to expand...
Yep - saw that and thought it completely ridiculous at the time.
All it did was waste some of the 13 minutes....
 
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Spurf said:
Interesting figures DH and it prompted me to look at the figures for our top strikers back to the Double Winning Team.

Bobby Smith 1.5
Greaves 1.4
Clive Allen 1.6
Linekar 1.7
Klinsmann 1.8
Archibald 2.5
Crooks 2.6
Chivers 2.1

Proving your point overwhelmingly DH.

Clear isn't it if Spurs are to improve, above all we need a proper striker to the standard Spurs have had from at least 1955. We can improve all we like in defence and midfield but if you don't have a top striker with a scoring ratio of at least 3 we will not get very far.
Click to expand...
Without bothering to do the research, I'm pretty sure that you can expand that across the board for all successful teams.
Yes, there will be rare times that you pick up a piece of rock and carve it into a Kohinoor diamond, but in general they have to be a diamond when you start off.
The fact that Spurs purchased at great expense both Solanke and Richarlison (partly with a view to managing an anticipated departure of Kane and Son?) was either an act of supreme stupidity or arrogance in believing themselves to be some sort of Alchemists.
Either way, they were acts of incredible self-harm.
 
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Dier Hard said:
He’s just a hard worker and a lot of the time hard work can get you far in football.

As for ability, most of us on this board knew he was never good enough to play at the level Spurs want to be at as a top six side. Same goes for Solanke, marginally better footballer but even less clinical than Richarlison. Richarlison averages a premier league goal every 3.6 games, Solanke 4.1. Both are basically bottom half/ relegation calibre strikers and it shows. I’d say you need a ratio of around 1-in-3 at least for a top six striker. We’ve had our fair share too:

Sheringham - 2.8
Keane - 2.7
Defoe - 3
Berbatov - 2.4
Kane - 1.5
Click to expand...

In the case of Teddy, it shows how stats do not convey the true picture

If I put him in a team served by the best attacking
MFs any of the others had behind them, his strike
rate / total would be closer to Kanes' than Defoes' .
 
Spurf said:
Interesting figures DH and it prompted me to look at the figures for our top strikers back to the Double Winning Team.

Bobby Smith 1.5
Greaves 1.4
Clive Allen 1.6
Linekar 1.7
Klinsmann 1.8
Archibald 2.5
Crooks 2.6
Chivers 2.1

Proving your point overwhelmingly DH.

Clear isn't it if Spurs are to improve, above all we need a proper striker to the standard Spurs have had from at least 1955. We can improve all we like in defence and midfield but if you don't have a top striker with a scoring ratio of at least 3 we will not get very far.
Click to expand...
It’s almost heartbreaking to see the strikers we’ve gone from to what we have now.

Spurs may not have the trophy cabinets of the Utd’s and Liverpool’s of the world but we’ve prided ourselves on good football and we’ve been fortunate to have seen some exceptional footballers, especially forwards/ strikers.

Watching dumb and dumber up top each week genuinely hurts. Even more so knowing they cost us £125m.
 
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Dier Hard said:
He’s just a hard worker and a lot of the time hard work can get you far in football.

As for ability, most of us on this board knew he was never good enough to play at the level Spurs want to be at as a top six side. Same goes for Solanke, marginally better footballer but even less clinical than Richarlison. Richarlison averages a premier league goal every 3.6 games, Solanke 4.1. Both are basically bottom half/ relegation calibre strikers and it shows. I’d say you need a ratio of around 1-in-3 at least for a top six striker. We’ve had our fair share too:

Sheringham - 2.8
Keane - 2.7
Defoe - 3
Berbatov - 2.4
Kane - 1.5
Click to expand...
This is where missing the current meta in spite accidentally playing it for 3-4 years comes into play

Most teams at the top end don't have a single source of goals, they're set up so there's 15-20 GA contributions from the entire front three, with Norbert's front three of Firmino, Salah and Mane being the most obvious example of this where the CF scored the lest amount of goals of the three of them

Ever since the Conte era, however, we keep cycling back to making the team based around one focal point: be it Conte trying to make Harry Kane a Trad 9 that he simply wasn't which nullified Son, Ange's square ball spam which mainly turned Brennan Johnson from a pacy winger into Clint Dempsey while Son played as a trad winger, or Frank's cross spam that didn't even work given Tel is a much better crosser than Odobert yet Frank consistently started Odobert over him

And the last part is what I don't get: the logical conclusion is Frank was hired off the back of the numbers Mbuemo and Wissa put up last season, yet the tactics he had us playing seemed the exact opposite of anything that would get wide players into scoring positions
 
The RDBD said:
In the case of Teddy, it shows how stats do not convey the true picture

If I put him in a team served by the best attacking
MFs any of the others had behind them, his strike
rate / total would be closer to Kanes' than Defoes' .
Click to expand...
More than likely, his figures without those though still shows him to be the the exact calibre of striker you’d want.

Richarlison and Solanke meanwhile are absolutely not. As I said to Spurf, it’s almost heartbreaking having to watch these two every week.
 
Dier Hard said:
More than likely, his figures without those though still shows him to be the the exact calibre of striker you’d want.

Richarlison and Solanke meanwhile are absolutely not. As I said to Spurf, it’s almost heartbreaking having to watch these two every week.
Click to expand...
Solanke was signed for his intangibles, specifically his ability to force turnovers

That being said, Jonathan David was also on the shortlist and not only is his goal return significantly better (better than 1 in 2 for three straight seasons in Ligue 1), plus he's more adept at playing the CF/SS hybrid role while having the pace which we've been lacking up top since...oh I don't know, since we sold Jermain Defoe to Montreal?
 
humanbeingincroydon said:
Solanke was signed for his intangibles, specifically his ability to force turnovers

That being said, Jonathan David was also on the shortlist and not only is his goal return significantly better (better than 1 in 2 for three straight seasons in Ligue 1), plus he's more adept at playing the CF/SS hybrid role while having the pace which we've been lacking up top since...oh I don't know, since we sold Jermain Defoe to Montreal?
Click to expand...
I think there lies the problem, signing a striker whose best asset isn’t scoring goals is a major issue, especially when you’re shelling out stupid figures that we did. You can pick rare examples of sides who’ve done differently, like Firmino as you’ve mentioned previously but that’s more of an exception than an example to follow I’d say. The majority of top sides right now and over the years will generally rely on their central forward being a significant goal scorer. Gyokeres and Haaland lead the way for their sides. Kane and Martinez across Europe for theirs. Lewandowksi has generally been so for Barca (and Bayern & Dortmund) albeit Yamal’s pipped him this season.

I actually think we signed Solanke for his goals though, we got him off the back of his only one good goal scoring season to date and I reckon we banked on that not being a one-off. I could’ve understood if he were a relatively young striker but he isn’t/ wasn’t. I don’t even particularly rate his all round game either, it’s just that it’s marginally better than Richarlison’s that I think causes people to think he’s got a bit about him. Genuinely two of the worst strikers we’ve had in yonks, I think only Soldado and Janssen beat them to the bottom in the last 20 or so years. I’ll almost cheer the day both go.
 
Dier Hard said:
I think there lies the problem, signing a striker whose best asset isn’t scoring goals is a major issue, especially when you’re shelling out stupid figures that we did. You can pick rare examples of sides who’ve done differently, like Firmino as you’ve mentioned previously but that’s more of an exception than an example to follow I’d say. The majority of top sides right now and over the years will generally rely on their central forward being a significant goal scorer. Gyokeres and Haaland lead the way for their sides. Kane and Martinez across Europe for theirs. Lewandowksi has generally been so for Barca (and Bayern & Dortmund) albeit Yamal’s pipped him this season.

I actually think we signed Solanke for his goals though, we got him off the back of his only one good goal scoring season to date and I reckon we banked on that not being a one-off. I could’ve understood if he were a relatively young striker but he isn’t/ wasn’t. I don’t even particularly rate his all round game either, it’s just that it’s marginally better than Richarlison’s that I think causes people to think he’s got a bit about him. Genuinely two of the worst strikers we’ve had in yonks, I think only Soldado and Janssen beat them to the bottom in the last 20 or so years. I’ll almost cheer the day both go.
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Firmino isn't even that rare in the PL: Arsenal played with Havertz at CF last season, Chelsea have had Cole Palmer up front on and off for a while, Man Utd have used Fernandes as a CF on and off, Liverpool have had Gakpo play CF on occasion - hell, Harry Redknapp had us playing van der Vaart upfront at one point. It's also pretty common on the continent, too, best demonstrated by the period where Dormund had Reus playing CF and Haalan on the wing

The obvious point with this setup is you need two goalscoring wingers to make the system work, even before a CF who can bring them into the game (as I said, an AM can play as an ersatz CF, as Arsenal demonstrated) and this is where we're obviously still in trouble given none of our wide players have scored in double figures in the PL ever (Deki and Kudus both have career bests of 8, for example, while Tel and Odobert haven't scored 8 PL goals between them), so unless we cloned Teddy Sheringham the odds of getting any of them up to 10+ goals a season is minimal

As for Solanke, he was clearly signed for his turnovers as at least one of Alasdair Gold and Dan Kilpatrick specifically mentioned this was what Lange was tasked with finding, while also highlighting that Son and Richy were ranked No1 and No3 respectively for PL forwards forcing turnovers in Ange's first season, and I believe it was Gold who had the shortlist that included Solanke, David and...bloody hell, I'm going to have to use this forum's search function aren't I?

...okay, found it, the shortlist
Federico Chiesa
Jonathan David
Santi Gimenez
Lois Openda
Dominic Solanke
Ivan Toney
Dusan Vlahovic (as Paratici kept pushing for him)
Joshua Zirkzee

What really stands out is how that meshes with the stats for defensive turnovers which Alasdair Gold posted for reasons that would require me to log into Twitter in 2026 to try and find out (so no, won't be doing that)...and also says, ****ing hell, Jonathan David really was the obvious choice there wasn't he?
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