It's difficult to identify a single player who has improved under Anges stewardship. Spence, Gray, Bergvall have certainly impressed - but again difficult to assign that to anything Ange may have done. The list of Unimpressed/ Regressed is almost every other player in the squad!
You’ve been very generous with some of those. Bergvall is probably the only player who’s both impressed and improved under Ange. Spence (and Kulu who you didn’t mention) has impressed. The rest have either been injured or had poor second seasons. The players that have struggled or regressed under Ange is vast however: Son, Richarlison, Werner, Maddison, Bentancur, Bissouma, Sarr, Dragusin, Porro and Udogie have all either regressed from previous seasons or failed to impress in general.
Gray is a little bit of a grey area (excuse the pun!) for me. He’s done phenomenally admirable to fill in at a role that’s alien to him at such a young age but it’s hard to say he’s impressed as a CB in my opinion, though he’s not expected to impress either so I simply don’t judge him on those performances. I’d love to see him given chances in midfield but seems Ange disagrees. You can see his ceiling is massive too, it’s a shame we’ve not seen him play in his preferred role.
I forgot Kulu Definitely impressed, but not necessarily improved. Certainly not significantly on his form at end of Conte's term.
I'm not sure why people are saying that Bergvall's improved under Postecoglou. He hasn't played for us under any other manager. He looks like he's got the potential to be a fantastic player, but we knew that when we signed him. As all the hype told us at the time, we had to beat Barca to his signature.
You're right, but the simple fact of his versatility at such a young age is very impressive. Stepping in to a basket case team, out of position/s and still looking the business is such a positive for the future. Just hope it's at Spurs...
I’m judging him on his improvement over the season, he was puffing badly and struggled in a couple of early Europa games and was barely playing in the Prem. It got to a point where a lot of the fanbase across social media (myself included tbh) felt a loan in January would be better for him. He’s since become one of our players of the season though so thankfully the club didn’t listen to me and others!
Recent matches would certainly have Bergvall ahead of Gray as our young player of the year, I have been impressed with Archie playing out of position but he has been competent without being outstanding, though his calmness and clear ability do suggest he has a talent to be nurtured and hopefully he will get the chances he needs in midfield. Lucas looks a truly outstanding prospect who is already delivering at a consistent level beyond his years.
Compare his first handful of appearances to now, there is a noticeable improvement Of course how much of that is him adapting to the English game is up for debate
That's exactly it, though. He's a kid playing at a much higher level than he was. I don't see improvement, I see adjustment. Bergvall and Gray have stepped up to the plate very well and look very mature. How much of that is down to the manager and how much is just their quality?
The defence is far too exposed in games for a number of reasons. I don’t think any centre back would look good at Spurs the last two seasons.
The only player I will stick my neck out and suggest improvement under Ange is Porro, given he was Aurier 2.0 under Conte An argument could be made for Sarr, but that's due to regular playing time first and foremost
Porro, like a lot of other players, has been rather up and down. He looked very good at one point and now gets exposed a lot. His early deflection onto the post showed both extremes. Had no idea that there was a player behind him, but did well to stop the shot.
I give Porro the benefit of the doubt this season as he's been run into the ground, in no small part as Spence wasn't even included in the Europa squad at a time where giving him a few starts would have been a smart idea
I also think that the system makes that position virtually impossible to play well. Even Spence looks better on the left.
Porro has certainly graduated from Serge Aurier to Kyle Walker ...though this season he's more like the Kyle Walker who, eight years after the fact, still can't admit he was tapped-up
He looks a lot like a player who was signed to be a WB in a back 5 and is now struggling to play as a FB in a back 4 (with a non existent midfield). Makes sense.
Luck was the wrong word to use but the reason statistics works is that it allows for uncertainty. That's why there are tests for statistical significance. They tell you about the confidence level you have in the data. You can use them to determine if there is a genuine trend of whether it would occur by chance. It's impossible to imagine that uncertainty plays no part in football when there are usually one or two decisions per game that are completely random from the officials and various incidents where whether a goal is scored depends on differences of a mm on where a boot hits the ball. The whole point of statistics is to eliminate the uncertainty from the decision taking...ie to tell you whether the data is actionable or not. The most common mathematical failing in humans is to see patterns where they are none. Things like publishing which lottery numbers are 'hot'. The data is not actionable because it can't predict the future by definition if the number selection is truly random. It could detect a biased lottery though. So what I meant by luck is a pattern of results that appears to be actionable but which tests tell me is likely to have occurred randomly. If you make any sort of decision based on believing that that data is actionable then you are making a serious error. So luck is not an excuse for failure but statistical analysis can tell you if what looks like failure might just have happened randomly.
