I'd argue that this is down to the systems we use and the personnel not being suited for them. We also have a few players that just make up the numbers when we defend. Son's a fantastic forward, but he's basically a training cone when he's defending. He made one key intervention on a break against Palace though, to be fair to him.
It's more about when and where you tackle. Ours have encouraged dropping deep and not engaging high up the pitch, for the most part.
I mean if we're playing Liverpool, Arsenal or Man Utd, attempting tackles is asking for VAR to look the other way...
Do not believe the Mike Dean stuff had any bearing on the subsequent team form, but Pochettino should have gone for him in public regardless of the financial penalty (the credit in the bank on officials was already well in the black) .
This is up there with one of my main reasons not to take Poch back. His judgement in starting a PL season with just one recognised striker and having spent £130m elsewhere was appalling, especially having seen how our results dropped off with Kane absent throughout the spring until the CL final when he returned prematurely. We paid a heavy price for this mismanagement of resources when Kane and then Son both picked up long term injuries under Mourinho, our season only being slightly saved (ironically) by the lengthy COVID delay that allowed them both to return to fitness for the last run of games.
The 'You know what you are' incident was only a symptom of far wider ranging problems. It was highly uncharacteristic of Poch to get that aggressive, even though he was probably more than justified as Dean is a collosal clown. I think what we saw then was a year's worth of pent up frustration, the dawning realisation that a squad neglected for a full year and with multiple players (Rose, Wanyama, Dembele etc.) literally on their last legs just did not have what it would take to last the distance. So the decline started in earnest with our decision not to strengthen from a position of strength in the two windows of 18/19. We exacerbated this with abysmal recruitment in the summer of 2019, compounded it by sacking the manager who had earned both the time and money to at least see his investment reap dividends, replaced him with his footballing opposite, failed to back that opposite either, sacked him a week before a cup final, spent two months to replace him with Nuno, failed to back him too etc. Etc. It's been more of a sheer cliff than a slippery slope but the Dean rant was the tip of an iceberg that Poch and our CL run kept well hidden.
And how easy it is to find a competent striker. Just like a GK. Most modern teams only use one front man nowadays which means there are plenty knocking about like Llorente or Vinicius who you can bring in on loan or for tuppence who are exponentially better in a bind than playing someone else out of position to compensate. Llorente didn't contribute much, or often, but what he did was invaluable. His goal at the Etihad, his role in helping us keep Ajax to 0-1 when we were missing Kane and Son, his performance in the second leg including the flick on for Lucas' third goal...for £10m we reaped £60m in prize money.
I would always have Son near the half way line, even if the opposition were throwing everything but the kitchen sink. If I was more confident in the Spurs defence / MF to play a decent out ball, I would even consider doing the same with Kane.
Good keepers and good strikers are so hard to find. This is why the club needs to do everything they can to keep Kane as long as possible.
Maddison has been linked a few times since Conte left Seriously, how much of our collapse can be pinned on Conte being offered Maddison last summer and saying no - even though his system all season was so clearly geared towards a five-man midfield?
Just saw a post about the most disappointing players in the Premier League this season. It had a request for suggestions for each position. We could do that with our players alone! Whoever takes over as manager and/or DoF has a lot of work to do. There's no balance to the squad and we've got quite a lot of dead wood to shift. Not many clubs with money around, either.
It's quality that we lack, not balance, apart from DM we have all sorts of players. There is no chance of shifting our transfer mistakes...but it makes little difference to the economics so shouldn't be a priority.
Given your analytical approach to the game, I'm wondering how you've assessed that. I disagree. We don't have the players for virtually any system. Our squad makes no sense. I'm repeating myself again, but the midfield is all box-to-box players, basically. We're halfway between wingbacks and fullbacks and use neither correctly. We're overloaded with players who want to play as left-wingers, yet have a standout player there.
Basically I think we've got two to four squad players of the right quality and about 20 average ones and 8 promising youngsters. If we had 10 players who cost twice as much as the 20 average ones I think the youngsters would be enough to fill out the squad and I think we would be doing a bit better. But as I've said before, it's not actually surprising that the 6th most expensive squad finishes around 6th on average because whoever you buy you lack the quality that the more expensive squads should have. As far as I can see from the data, if you test against null hypotheses that money, manager, transfer skill and tactics don't matter, the only one that stands out as clearly failing the test is money. I can't actually prove that because it's hard to design the tests on anything except money and long winded to get the data on money.
Our wider squad has four wing backs, three full backs, six centre backs, and plenty of everything else except for DMs. A new coach could buy a DM, choose what formation to play and we could then loan or sell the unused players and sign some better players to replace the weaker ones.
