Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Brighton & Hove Albion

In the case of a winks upgrade surely the young lad at Norwich maddison would be worth a punt ?

 

I’m in the same boat RE Josh. I’m a huge fan of his and have been ever since his early u21 days. My worry is that for one reason or another, Poch doesn’t seem to trust him in his favoured role, which I find weird considering the amount of oppertunities Winks has had in it.

I’m hoping his Villa loan will have caught the eye, he hit a period of being out the team but for most of the season I’d like to think Villa fans will have been pretty happy with him.

He’s a mega talent and I hope Poch gives him a fair crack next season to prove so.

As for Dembele, watching him at his best is worth paying ticket prices alone but his best days are behind him. If he has a lot of interest in the summer, I think it’s best to take advantage of. Ideally after a good World Cup but if an offer of £30m+ came in for a 30 year old injury prone player, I’d take it.

 

Maddison is more an Eriksen though, mate. I really like him but I don’t think he’d be the answer at CM. As competition for the Great Dane then 100%. He’s the best player in the championship right now in my opinion, even if Sessegnon did sweep up all the awards the other night. Maddison, Sess and Watkins are three players I’d love to see Spurs go for in the window.

 

People might think I'm mad but dunk at Brighton is another player I rate highly if Toby goes he may be the ideal player to replace him or be a squad player to save Jan playing every bloody game

 

Agree with all of them but feel we have missed the boat with sess

 

I saw one incident where Dembele got it from the back, ran and ran, got outside their box..should have had a pop or created the angle for one. Instead he spun on himself and passed it back

WTF

I can't see no method to that madness. I think we are dithering about as a squad. The first team needs some serious challengers...everyone still makes their basic errors in between the moments of genius. Eriksen for all his skill is kind of predictable in set pieces and I wish Harry Kane would **** off instead of standing next to the FK like he's taking it, they are usually dire. That shot he had at goal just before the first half ended..should have passed it but no he wants the golden boot so took a pee roller from 25 yards.

Need to wake up for Saturday and that includes Poch. We are losing our bite in the last 3 games

No good...I may be over reacting, it might just be a case of one eye on the cup and everyone loses to City...but once again for me, it's us that lets us down

Plus I think too many of our attackers are a bit too greedy and that is costing us...everyone wants to shoot, only Eriksen looks interested in playing someone through.

 

We were linked with him for quite a while when he broke through at Brighton. Then bizarrely we signed Grant Hall from them who never ended up playing for us.

 

Yeah probably. Especially as now he seems to have taken the Bale route of permanently moving to LW, it’d be harder for him to get game time in that position than it would be at LB for us I’d say.

Rumours that Barca want him now anyway so that’s us definitely done

 

Another one we should have took a gamble on was dembele before celtic got him at worst we would have made some money on him

 

A lot of my spurs mates are saying Tierney of celtic but haven't seen enough of him to be fair and celtic don't exactly have many hard games to test him out

 

Getting back to last nights game did our players have studs in the boots with all that slipping over.

 

I don't watch the SPL because it's tinpot but apparently he's meant to be really good. Utd have been looking at him, too.

 

This is a fantastic point.

Obviously we're not in a position to go out and sign whoever we want from whoever we want, but there is no question that too many players are coasting as there is no real competition for their places in the team. Coasting players do exactly what you've described: make the same mistakes over and over again in between flashes of what they're truly capable of producing.

I find it hard to bash Eriksen as he's had a largely fantastic season, but why would he feel an urgent need to work on set pieces if everyone else is just as ****e?

Players like Sissoko, Aurier, Lamela, Foyth, Rose, Winks, Llorente...these guys are a country mile behind the players they're meant to be challenging and what's sad is that some of the players they're meant to be challenging aren't even that good themselves.

Moura is a step in the right direction but someone like Alli knows that he is essentially undroppable and has spent most of the season playing like it.

It's a tall order but we HAVE to be more sensible in the market and we HAVE to stop bringing players in after the season has started!

 

A bit of a catch 22. Since we are not offering the wage carrot...what can we entice them with? United thinking of letting Rashford/Martial go. Best thing about them having Mourinho is that he will destroy their youth set up no doubt. However we can't even entertain bidding for them. They are young and hungry and first team material...out of our league for so many off the pitch reasons.

Our squad has been flirting with the top but not quite. When you stand back you can see that the squad needs inspiring a bit more on the pitch. That culminated with a 3rd season in a row of 'almost but not quite' for this squad, feels like to me has resulted in a subconscious slump...we are at that time of the season again where we can attain glory somehow, yet how many times have we been there and how many times have we failed? This squad needs fresh impetus

It might just be a case of, I'm having my usual mid April meltdown...it's the hope that's killing me!

 

We've been linked with Tierney (mainly by the Daily Record) for at least three years, so whenever that chestnut pops up again I file it alongside stories linking us with Badelj or Brozovic, both of whom we've been linked with for six years at this point.

 

Think that's an overreaction.

Outside of the big 6 (Barca, Real, Bayern, Juve, PSG, City), who has excellent competition for places? Even those sides would struggle to replace their very best players.

Take Salah, Firmino and Sane out of Pool.
Hazard, Willian and Kante out of Chelsea.
De Gea and Lukaku out of Utd.
Griezmann, Godin and Koke from Atleti.
Fekir and Depay from Lyon.
Manolas and Dzeko from Roma.

Who steps in and maintains a similar level of performance? No one... Because they're key players and key players don't sit on benches. We can't just drop/ rotate say the likes of Eriksen and Alli easily and expect whoever's on the bench to offer similar. I don't know who you're referring too when saying the first choice option isn't that good but personally I think our strongest first XI is great.

In hindsight, if we'd known Aurier and Llorente would've been poor signings we wouldn't have signed them, while we probably would've signed a LB if we knew how poor Rose would be but at the start of the season there were never any worries about them. Lamela is a great squad player and you won't get many that are of better calibre than him on the bench. Lucas has now added further quality in AM. Dave has more often than not done a great job at the back in Toby's absence, I doubt many other teams could've done so well without their best CB. Realistically the only weak-ish area at the start of the season was CM but again we didn't anticipate Dembele to struggle with form AND fitness like he has. Now obviously we see that improvements are needed for next season in ST (AGAIN! Ffs!), RB and CM, hopefully Poch and co do too.

I do agree on getting business done early but our squad really isn't that bad, a damn site better than it has been in previous seasons and there aren't too many sides with significantly better ones.

 

It's weird, isn't it? I think that they're both suited to the other roles.
Use Winks as back-up and competition for Eriksen and Onomah as Dembele's.
Sissoko's done alright this season, but it seems like a wasted opportunity for the youngster, especially when we're short on homegrown players.

 

Be interesting to see how Winks would do further forward, I've never really thought of it before. I think many may acknowledged the fact I've gone off him a bit (just a bit ) due to his persistence on playing back and side passes but maybe in a more advanced role he'd be more forward focused and enjoy the possibility of racking up some assists. There's no doubting his vision and passing ability is great but he doesn't seem to have the confidence to utilise it from deep.

I really wanna see Onomah given a go at CM for the first team. Most of his chances for us came in B teams and he was played out of position most of the time. Genuinely think he could do well when partnered with Dier and having the likes of Alli, Eriksen and Son in front of him. He's never been afforded that chance at Spurs.

 

True, but we had little hanging on those, especially Newcastle. Clearly finishing above the Goons mattered to us, but not the players it seemed. West Brom I suppose we were still in the title race just.

 

I've read all the previous comments and I'm going down the pub!