Nope. I want us to sign the players that Conte thinks will fit into his system best. If Bale is one of them and proves me wrong I would be extremely happy to be wrong!
The initial rumour has stemmed from Conte supposedly wanting Bale. Bale’s such a good player though he fits into just about any system. All you’ve gotta do is give him the ball and magic generally follows.
That's true but around half the time we don't have the ball and almost any player we have is more useful in those bits of the match. It's quite likely that his positive effect on the ball outweighs playing with ten men when we are defending but it's not an open and shut case.
The moment we start fearing about Bale’s defensive attributes though is the moment we’re looking at the game the wrong way. It’s similar to when some on here used to be critical of the fact Eriksen was a **** tackler. Critiquing players for things they’re not essentially in the side to do doesn’t seem right to me.
When a player disappears for 50% of a match (or, in our case for the period between November 2019-April 2021, 85% of a match...) then, yes, they can be criticised for being a passenger Barren Dent was the best/worst example of this, because when we didn't have the ball we had nine outfield players against the opponents' ten - which also made him a pretty useless out ball for our defenders if and when they did get the ball back, because he was miles offside as he was jogging back towards the halfway line
I think Bale will do just fine if you got him (not sure how other players will feel when he's getting a fat wedge but putting in half the effort) Lets face it Conte has Hazard at chelsea and defending wise it was like 10 men, you couldn't implement a press because he's cant do it properly/keep it up so Bale would very much fit into that category. The only issue being is can bale keep himself fit as he's been a sicknote the past 4 years
There didn’t seem any issues last season and I can’t imagine it’d be so should he return again. Most shouldn’t even have the audacity to complain anyway, a good few are still lucky to be in a job after the performances they’ve put in over the last few years, lol. Bale’s been a sicknote most of his career to be honest. Which sort of makes it even more impressive just how good of a career he’s had. First two seasons he missed about 50+% of our games IIRC and also had issues after that. Had a couple seasons injury free and that’s when he started reaching insane levels and got the Madrid move. Then at Madrid he’s been plagued a lot. It’s the only downside to him really, it almost feels inevitable he won’t last a full season but you just know that if he’s around for about 50% at least, he’ll still make a more significant impact than most who feature in all games.
I’m not sure, seeing the hate Kane now gets for a bad couple months you’d think he’s been as bad as Dele, Winks or Dier over the last few years.
That's less about his form during the season and more about his form when bumping into Gary Neville on a golf course in the summer
And he deserves all the stick he gets for that but the problem though is that golfing day out is affecting people's judgement with on-field stuff. Both he and Son are suffering from a lack of service but he's getting the blame for it due to being public enemy number one, when the issues lie with a previous manager that didn't know how to tell his team to pass forward and also a number of players that don't seemingly know what a forward pass is either. As I type, Kane's just hit his second goal of the night for England, crazy what happens when a man gets service, eh?
The problem with Kane this season is that for both us and England he's been dropping deep looking for the ball and taking himself out of position as a result, and it's been compounded by how leadfooted he was getting forward even compared to a couple of years ago, put extra pressure on Son and Lucas to make up for the slack - and it has to be said that Son was doing so early in the season, but overcompensated horribly for the last month or so as he was regularly occupying the exact same space on the pitch as Kane and leaving Reguilon exposed Similar can be said for England, where he was getting stick for not scoring in the previous rounds of fixtures, yet nobody ever seemed to suggest a midfield trio of Rice, Phillips and Mount is about as likely to lead to flowing football as a managerial pairing of Jacques Santini and swapping Lucozade with Mogadon
Fair enough, but my only objection is the use of the present tense. Not sure he’s that reliable now. Doesn’t seem to play much either.
16 goals in 34 appearances for us last season, granted a lot of those appearances include small cameos but he was capable of playing a lot more. Jose just decided he didn’t like having too many good players on the pitch at any given time.
Being a **** tackler has almost no negative effects though. Eriksen ran everywhere and was always covering someone when we were pressing. Bale just jogs around and might as well not be on the field. As I said, his skill on the ball probably makes up for that but only just.
If being our third top scorer last season only just makes him worthwhile to select then I dread to think what your views are on the rest of the squad, you must have lower opinions of some of them them than I do!
TBF being your third top scorer last season didn't mean much, you had Kane and Son after that someone had to be next
its not so much the tackling about bale, its the running about. Eriksen could do that in abundance. Bale not so much as he doesn't have that level of stamina
It was a bit hit and miss; on the bench a lot, got goals in spurts against lesser teams and I seem to remember he was criticised a lot for some ineffective performances. He has had a number of spells on the sidelines in Madrid in the last 3-4 years. He still had the ability to be a game changer, but seems like a luxury player. This is the criticism of Ronaldo- albeit he plays more regularly and contributes more often, but he still needs hardworking players around him. Spurs (and Utd) don’t need star turns, but hardworking players who will get all those distance covered and similar stats up to the level needed to compete. Being outrun, outpressed and outworked by other teams won’t be overturned by signing Bale.
