To be fair - and Spurly can correct me if I’m wrong - by structure I’d imagine it’s about having an idea or a plan and committing to it. I’m looking around at a number of other clubs and many seem to have their **** together, even excluding some of our rivals, clubs like Brentford and Brighton are doing stellar work, Brighton especially are following a clear model as evidenced by how easy they’re finding it to replace key players and the Potter to De Zerbi managerial transition was seamless. Without sounding snobby, I as a Spurs fan shouldn’t really be jealous of clubs like those two. These last few years it’s felt like the club’s made impulsive or knee-jerk decisions, both with managers, signings and footballing identity and it’s resulted in a mess on the pitch, which is now extending to a mess in the stands. It’s a real low point at the club at the moment, personally as a fan I feel very little connection to it right now and especially to most of the players.
Our first team may be an absolute mess at the moment but our U17s just put in a very un-Spursy performance in the Premier League Cup final, smashing Forest 5-1. Forest actually ended the game with 9 men but we played some top stuff. Mikey Moore scored a bit of a wonder goal and Oliver Irow’s second of the night was a brilliantly worked goal between him and Donley down the right flank. Well in, lads.
r/soccer is devastated, as this means they will have to spend a lot of time and effort trying to come up with a second Tottenham joke
Here is a graph of smoothed league performance. Which is the club that is run by people who know nothing about football.
Liverpool will smash us to bits at Klanfield in a couple of weeks time and they will probably finish above us also.
The interesting thing for me is, even though it doesn't say who the teams are, you can guess Light Blue: Sheikh Mansour Team Purple: Arsenal Blue: Chelsea
Whatever the realities the perception over the last 3 or 4 years has been that Spurs are making poor decisions both in management and players. It's difficult to criticise going for Mourinho and Conte but the realities of these appointments have been very different from the expectations, nevertheless I don't see that as grounds for major complaints against the board. The ambition was clear but the decisions alongside these appointments were flawed. In hindsight both these superstar managers were wrong for Spurs. With player purchasing I think we all have serious grounds for complaint. I had only seen Richarlison a handful of times playing for Everton and I thought at the time he must be good if we've paid 60 million for him. I looked forward to seeing him come on for Spurs and set the place alight but it's never happened. OK he's been unlucky with injuries and selection but even so, 60 million? Then we buy more attackers and midfielders that the manager doesn't play. Players like Bissouma, Spence and Gil have not been given much of a chance so there is hope that these may in the end be good signings. Bentacur and Kulusevski were both excellent signings IMO so I would say that Paratici has done alright, except that we have needed a creative midfielder and two defenders for a long time and this should surely have been addressed. You have to except that the right players are just not available all the time BUT is this because we are looking at ready made stars instead of players who are not so obvious. Other PL clubs like Brighton and Brentford seem to unearth them why don't we? We have more resources than them so I think that is genuine grounds for complaint. I get the impression that Spurs think their glamorous new stadium should be filled with glamorous managers and players. We need to get back to looking at quality and suitability and forget the 'big' name stuff because it has not worked. We need to stop behaving like Man United and perhaps look at Brighton and Brentford and even Newcastle all of whom have built effective teams with players who were not that well known and certainly would not be described as glamour signings, at least when they signed them. Every time we buy a player from another PL team, that is a failure because we should have found him BEFORE he joined the opposition.
On your last point , why do you think that is true? What processes can you put in place to get a,100% record in identifying and buying players who are going to improve. I can't think of any and have yet to see any evidence that top four quality players can be identified by such a process.
My evidence is players signed by top 6 clubs from other PL clubs further down the pecking order. Brighton, Southampton, and now Brentford have consistently produced or found players that clubs like us now covert. Leicester's team has been plundered by Chelsea and United for example. You can't get this 100% right no club can but we can do much better.
No one has a 100% record but you can certainly alter things to improve your chances of success. For starters with us, don’t pay world class fees for average players, the majority of Spurs fans knew Richarlison wasn’t a £60m player yet the club went through with it. Now in mid-April we’re looking at a forward with zero domestic goals and is the frontrunner for biggest flop of the season. Play players correctly, and even just playing players would help. Lucas Moura, a player who’s consistently let us down for 4 years now still gets game time over players like Danjuma and Gil even though they’ve impressed when they’ve had their chances. We sign Bissouma, a player considered one of the best CMs in the Prem and play him as a DM. Spence is one of the country’s best prospects and could barely buy game time whilst two of the worst footballers we've had the displeasure of watching continued getting chances. Having a proper footballing philosophy would help too. No one knows our style of play so it’s no surprise new signings find it hard to settle and gel (when they play), they’re coming into a team that doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing. Whilst you look at clubs like City, Arsenal, Brentford, Brighton etc, all those have a clear style of play and sign players to fit that style, which is why they’ve largely had successful signings in recent seasons. We have been our own worst enemies for a while now.
Using the famous ps 5 year season average (not as famous the ps 20 year record) but the pool have had more ppg, more trophies per season and higher finishes so as a neutral i don't think its close at all that pool have been far better than spurs
Of the four clubs you mention, I had a quick look at their last forty signings starting a couple of years back. Of those 160 players I make it that 16 were sold to the "top 6" sides. None at all from Brentford by the way. I don't think one in 10 signings being good enough is a model we can use. It's hardly surprising that if you sign a lot of players of PL quality and they then get playing time, some will develop into very good players. But we need to get 3 or 4 top 6 quality players a year and we certainly can't sign 30 per season.
Surely City have entirely changed their style this year? They have been playing three at the back but no wing backs. Richarlison is odd because the Brazil manager picks him ahead of Gabriel Jesus but he looks nowhere near as good as him in the PL. But otherwise I agree that our usage of new signings has been poor.
I start from the point of the relative success of these clubs so let's look at the figures that you have found. I assume you are describing Brentford, Brighton, Leicester and Newcastle. So if we knock out Brentford who haven't (yet) had any of their players poached by the top 6, mainly, I would assume because they have only just arrived on the top division. I would expect their players to come under closer observation from hungry eyes with a certain forward probably already on one or two lists. Newcastle are unlikely to need to sell any of their players unless they want to because they too have just arrived as contenders and will soon be established as a top 6 club themselves. So we come to just two teams that have lost 16 players to the top 6 so that is getting close to half their signings which is a whole lot different to the picture you painted. I in 2.5 signings is a high strike rate but all of this is playing with figures, which is not my scene. My point is, as I said at the beginning look at the performance results of these clubs and given their smaller budgets it says to me that they have done a much better job than the top 6. Chelsea? 600 million and 9th? I rest my case
I think @Dier Hard's point about a clear footballing philosophy and style of play is the single most important and most likely factor to improve a club's chances of getting more transfers right than wrong. For starters, it makes the scouts' job a hell of a lot easier if they have clarity as to what profile of player they should be looking for. They will also look at certain teams in certain leagues who play a similar style, as those players are more likely to adapt tactically. One of the reasons our squad is such a mess at the moment is not because we haven't spent money. We've spent plenty, but under 4 different managers who use three different formations and (broadly speaking) tactical systems. And so while in all honesty I couldn't see them ever flourishing for us, I do have a degree of sympathy for the likes of Sess, Tanguy, Doherty and Lo Celso who were obviously signed by a specific manager who valued their profiles with a specific vision in mind, only for said manager to be gone within 3-6 months of their signing to be replaced (or not) with a new manager who values different profiles. I think this is what helped our early windows under Poch be so successful. We had a clear, unified vision from top to bottom, a strong network led by Mitchell and a desire to back the manager. It felt like we were hand-picking players for pre-determined roles, like a good casting director selecting a cast for a script. Dele, Dier, Toby, Son, Davies, Wanyama and Trippier all came in and adapted very, very quickly. If anything, we were perhaps frustrated with Poch for his insistence that new signings had to undergo 3 months of his strict fitness regimen before they got regular first team football. Things started unravelling when due to the new stadium we tried doing things on the cheap - Sissoko, Aurier, N'Koudou and Lucas spring to mind. Then we stopped spending entirely. Then we started again in a serious way but sacked the manager who'd spent it 3 months later and thus began 4 years of patchwork squad building. In the years 2014 - 2019, the only true 'flops' were Sanchez and Janssen - and in all honesty he latter wasn't even that expensive, I'm just counting players who were more than £20m which even today is a significant sum (Lucas is redeemed thanks to *that* night in 'Dam). In the years 2019 - 2023, we'd count Sessegnon, Ndombele, Lo Celso, Bergwijn, Richarlison and Royal...and the jury is very much out on Porro although time is on his side.
It was Southampton you mentioned not Newcastle. And each of the three has sold 4-6 players to the top 6 out of 40 signings each so it's nowhere near one in 2.5. My point isn't about whether they are doing better than their peers. It's about whether they have an edge in identifying top 6 players that Sours are missing. I see no evidence that they have as only one in ten of their signings makes the grade we need.
