Shame he is just on loan.
We're recalling him in January.
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One of the many, many things I've had to moan about this season is the absurd decision to sell Huddlestone for 2m less than Nacer Chadli cost us. ****ing insane and an indication that for AVB physicality and negative aspects of the game would always trump trying to get the most out of pure footballing ability.
Right now there is not one player that springs to mind as a particularly good passer of the ball at Spurs. Tommy is in a different league, on that front, to every one of the "galaxy of world-class players" that we're currently, er, enjoying.
Any sensible manager (England included) would be trying to accentuate the positives from his game and not worried so much about his lack of pace etc. Shame we never had a sensible manager when we sold him for a song.
Good luck to Tommy - hope he's found somewhere that appreciates and enjoys his talent.
We all knew what Hudd could do in midfield but latterly for us he was looking off the pace and myself (and I think a few others) didn't think that the team could afford him the run of games to come back into his best form when he wasn't a guaranteed starter anyway. Also it was looking like we would have somewhat of an embarrassment of riches in the midfield area so his loss wouldn't be too keenly felt. Nobody on here (I think) was glad he was sold though and we all wished him the best but I think that under the circumstances it was best for him and the club to sell. However purely from watching MOTD highlights it seems that he's now fully up and running and the whole division is seeing his excellent passing ability and vision. But it also seems that you've got him leaner and meaner than ever, he looks like he's tracking runners a bit more and using some of his strength, hell, he even looks reasonably mobile sometimes! Playing with Livermore in that form can't harm him either, they're a good foil for one another it seems. In hindsight that was bad business for us but it was a very very good move for him and for Hull obviously.
So why didn't we loan him to Hull?
One of the many, many things I've had to moan about this season is the absurd decision to sell Huddlestone for 2m less than Nacer Chadli cost us. ****ing insane and an indication that for AVB physicality and negative aspects of the game would always trump trying to get the most out of pure footballing ability.
Right now there is not one player that springs to mind as a particularly good passer of the ball at Spurs. Tommy is in a different league, on that front, to every one of the "galaxy of world-class players" that we're currently, er, enjoying.
Any sensible manager (England included) would be trying to accentuate the positives from his game and not worried so much about his lack of pace etc. Shame we never had a sensible manager when we sold him for a song.
Good luck to Tommy - hope he's found somewhere that appreciates and enjoys his talent.
My guess would be that the conventional wisdom in the club hierarchy was that Huddlestone was not dynamic enough to play in a box-to-box role like Paulinho and not defensively strong enough to justify selection in the more defensive role ahead of someone like Sandro. Which leaves him 3rd choice for a place in the 2 in AVB's 4-2-3-1 behind Sandro, Dembele and Paulinho, and 4th choice I would suspect behind Capoue. I think his physical limitations (which he seems to now be somewhat overcoming) meant that he wasn't a player favoured by AVB, and therefore when a reasonable offer came in the club sold up, in their interests and in the player's. AVB/Levy may well have preferred to sell up and just buy an alternative at a slight loss rather than to persevere with Thudd. It'd be great to see Thudd playing like this for us but I don't think he'd have had the opportunity to get going like this under AVB, a coach who I believe did not rate him enough to let Thudd play his way into his current level of performance, and therefore under those circumstances the club was right to let him go. I supported his sale at the time not because I didn't rate him but because I didn't think he would get a chance to play - and I still believe he wouldn't have under AVB - and therefore it made sense to cash in.
We could have told him AVB would be thrown to the mob, Levy would have no choice but to appoint Harry junior, that he would try to placate the fans with a 442, and that the stage would be set for Hudd to reprise his CL winning form.
Though maybe this is the wisdom of hindsight.
There are mitigating reasons as to why Spurs sold him. In hindsight, it looks like a great bit of business on our part and not such a great bit of business on Spurs' part. That's football, though. That's life.
It's the perfect example of how genuinely talented English players can be wrongly overlooked in favour of supposedly superior foreigners though. Shameful, really.