Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal

With respect, I’m not sure many real nailed on top players who could come in and do it straight away were seriously available to you. Simons seemed a really sensible purchase. Might still be eventually. Really good but not yet elite Prem players like Mbuemo and Eze were getting better (financially at least) offers and the fees for the likes of Sesko and Gyokeres show what the market is even for players who are no guarantee.

 

Is it though?

We’ve been pretty much a graveyard for young talent for quite some time now. It’s not helped that some of the young players have been pretty useless too but either way we just don’t seem to produce and/ or develop many.

I reckon in the last 10 years (since Kane basically) we’ve only helped develop about 2-3 young players into decent first team calibre ones.

 

Is one of them Harry Winks?

 

Yeah I'm also scratching my head trying to come up with 2-3 players.

 

It's not a good record DH but we do not carry the same attraction for players as our would be rivals therefore we have to take a gamble on getting the talent before it develops and goes to a bigger club. We should be able to pick up a top class left winger because there are maybe 1/2 a dozen out there, but strikers much more difficult. I'm sure you know better than I do who is available but most will go to our top 3 clubs and Chelsea.We are scrambling until we get somwhere. It's a vicious circle.

 

Eze cost Arsenal £67.5M
Spurs paid £51.8M for Simons
Ouch!

 

That’s partly because we restrict ourselves when it comes to attracting players.

The guy that annihilated us today could’ve been in our shirt had Levy and co not pissed about. Instead we wasted weeks in negotiations, lose out and then end up with Simons who so far has been an absolute disaster, something I half predicted too due to the trend of Bundesliga attacking mids or wingers flopping in this league.

But so many of the youngsters we’re targeting are either crap or don’t get a look in. We’ve spent almost £100m on Odobert, Tel and Gray… bonkers. That could’ve gone on two Prem proven players.

 

The fact that almost half that period coincides with Poch's utterly baffling belief that it was better for U21 players to train with the first team than actually play football really needs to be called out more than it is

Conte literally using the U18s as training cones is rightfully called out, because Jesus ****ing Christ that was embarrassing on all manner of levels, but at least he sanctioned loans for the U21s so they could actually play first team football before they were legally allowed to drink in the US

 

I haven't lost faith in Oderbert Tel and Grey, time will tell. Pun not intended. I am not convinced we could have landed Eze because I think Palace would have alerted Arsenal had we tried to do it under the radar.

Where I think we royally ****ed up was when Poch got us to the CL final. That was the time to invest heavily in the playing staff but was that Levy or was it actually Joe Lewis? We had arrived but never took advantage, that was when we could have sold the idea of joining the club to top players. Redknapp's time was similar having luckily uncovered Bale and Modric we failed again to capitalise by sacking Redknapp. These were the two periods in ENICS time when Spurs were about to fly and they clipped our wings. The 'New Lewis's' say they are going to invest, we will see, starting with the January window. Perhaps they really do want the glory!

I think ,most important right now is to stick with Frank, he is a bright guy. I think he still has a bit of the Brentford mentality (no offence intended) he has to come to terms with what Spurs is and I am hopefull he will get it. Again the January window will tell us lots.

 

I wouldn’t say I’ve lost faith in Gray but I think the manager certainly has little faith in him. Odobert and Tel are terrible though, I don’t see anything in either to think they’ll prove good players in time. They’re basically the next N’Jie and Nkoudou.

We should’ve invested long before the CL Final. We found ourselves in a position of strength under Poch but never capitalised and then after the CL final we got it terribly wrong with the Ndombele, Lo Celso and Sessegnon signings.

I’ve been disappointed in Frank so far. He’s shown little of being the strong tactician I saw at Brentford. I’m not advocating for him to be sacked, far from it but performances like we’ve seen in our two biggest games so far this season will end up getting fans - and the board - against him and there’s already lots of fans on social media that are turning against him. Like I said earlier, performances like today can result in eventual sackings for a manager.