Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Burnley

For what it’s worth I still believe Tanguy can go extremely far but as of right now, he deserves every bit of criticism for his lack of application and fitness.

Hopefully this individual regime does pay dividends down the line, we need it too as well because we’re not a club who can afford £55m mistakes.

Ndombele has said in the past that Sissoko helped him to settle into life at Spurs/ England, maybe spend a bit more time with him because whilst Sissoko doesn’t have the same amount of talent, the guy is a physical beast and whatever he does in training or possibly more so what he does outside of it clearly works from a fitness standpoint as he can run (and I mean run!) for 90 minutes and barely break a sweat.

 

It's as if the club were so desperate to replace Dembele that we bought a player who is in some ways a mirror image in playing style - but ignoring all the warning signs!
But breaking the bank on not only an unproven talent, but also one with so many warning flags does appear an act of financial recklessness.
If he doesn't pull it around - and tbf to the lad he must be given some time - then we will be looking at a black hole in the accounts when/if we try and offload him.

 

Hmm. I disagree. I think Pochettino was prepared to work on/with him with a long term focus and to up his work rate. That made him a good signing for us at the time. The completely finished article at that age simply isn't coming to Spurs.

Mourinho, for arguably good reason in this instance, has less patience. However, we've seen Mourinho willingly watch Salah and Debruyne exit his club on his watch, no doubt for similar reasons.

Look at those players now.

I have enjoyed Jose's articulate way with words up until now. To say, "I don't want to say it" and then say it is just annoying to me.

There is also a way of expressing the same thing effectively and directly to the player without being a whiny bitch about it to the press. What good does that actually do?

We all know how good N’dombele is. We’ve also seen Dier put in lots of horrid performances and still be praised by Mourinho every time. We’ve seen his confidence somehow change in the last couple of matches, in a different position, proving that that method of support worked, even when it annoyed us watching.

Aurier? So many opportunities, mishaps, but patience proving helpful in that case too.

What exactly is the difference here?

 

Logically? That Dier and Aurier are putting in the miles in training and Tanguy isn't. That's the simplest explanation.

 

I assume we were well aware of NDombele’s previous ‘nonchalance’ and that Poch & co. being notoriously hard physical taskmasters believed they could work him into shape. Similarly if he does have a long term physical issue there must be a workaround.

Then again maybe he just can’t/won’t step it up. The increase in level for a player of his obvious footballing talent is psychological - he has to want to get fitter, work harder, improve his all round game. It’s a cliche but if he’s going to star in the PL then he’s going to have to do this, he can’t just stroll around the pitch like in Ligue 1. Players like Tarrabt turning it around shows that these things can change but often it takes a lot of time and perspective for players to realise they’re wasting their talents.

When it comes to Mou I have no doubt he’s aware of the character of NDombele before his arrival here. The mans been around the game long enough and word gets around. And he’ll have presumably been briefed by the club on previous efforts to motivate the player. Calling him out like this in public is surely the last resort. He’s been on the ‘global nutrition plan’ for a couple of months now and that was a more ‘soft’ public note of dissatisfaction that surely followed discussion behind the scenes.

There might be a whole lot more going on behind the scenes for the player that we don’t know about but right now he’s at a club that will do everything we can to get him fit - he can even sleep at the training ground and get personalised nutrition and training regimes FFS. But he has to want to do it and seeing him on the pitch sometimes makes me wonder if he really wants it.

 

Ok. This makes sense, but if that is the case why not say that. "He needs to train harder to improve his levels." Done. To blame the entire first half on him is harsh. Even typically Spurs critical MOTD pundits agree this.

This is where Mourinho must earn his money IMHO. Develop the player. Inspire the player. Mould the player. I hope this actually is the last resort, and I hope it works. We have the captain of his national team in our squad and arguably the 'best' manager who still does it.

All I'm saying is, If Pochettino can do what he did with Sissoko. Mourinho being 'world class' should be able to work wonders with N'Dombele.

No excuses.

I can only hope this is part of said work. I guess we'll see.

 

I agree it was harsh but the message you're describing is the one we heard two months ago, and there has been zero improvement since. I don't agree with how Maureen has gone about it either, but I can certainly sympathise with his frustration. He is in charge of a squad in urgent need of a makeover at a club that has a fraction of the resources he is used to working with. And he is quickly finding out that the most expensive player in his team is (currently) a dud. As DH said last night, imagine if we'd avoided Tanguy and signed Grealish and Tielemans instead for the same price. The season definitely pans out differently and potentially the only sour point is that we wouldn't have signed Gedson. I'll make this point again as it is a crucial one: we only spent so much time and energy on Gedson because Tanguy has been so ****. There really is no other way to dress this up.

Poch and our scouting/medical team have to shoulder full blame for this situation tbh. As much as I loved the guy, to scout a player for 2 whole seasons and still fail to see this coming is a disgrace. You don't gamble £55m on a hope that a player will eventually change their entire lifestyle and mentality. You need that player to hit the ground running, figuratively and literally.

 

Poch was world class for a time as well. He turned Sissoko around sure, but that seemed more like the player just needed some love. He moved here, played mostly out of position and drew the ire of the fans. Once he got his head sorted and played in his preferred position we saw very different levels of application and a more similar player to the one who was an important force for France in the Euros.

Poch didn’t get NDombele going and Mou hasn’t yet either. Other figures from his past have commented on his issues with application. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

 

We signed Ndombele on July 2nd therefore during pre season...and Poch’s intense regime had all summer and then through till mid October...today TN barely manages 30 minutes...how did he pass our medical? How is he still on 33% fitness having had a pre season with the infamous Poch regime? Did we sign a player who was on 0% PL match fitness and Poch bumped him up but he needed more intense training? Come on...Jose might not be everyone’s cup of tea but he sure as hell knows how to train players...he’s won the lot across the world...as if all his players just toss it off in training.

TN needs to sort himself, it’s on him...I reckon he passed the medical because he was happy to bust his nut to pass it. He did what was necessary...now he is not doing what is necessary. He has previous for it...what more does anyone want to see as evidence that the bloke has a tendency to stroll a bit? He needs to have a word with himself. Bergwijn needed the grand sum of **** all to settle and Jose didn’t feel the need to babysit for months on end...that method worked out well as Bergwijn is defo bustin his nuts for the badge.

 

Tonguy under poch was not a success hence he rarely started , had mystery injuries , one of the things that Poch's teams were known for was their fitness , how he passed a medical is a miracle

 

I've no idea if Ndombele will react well or badly to being criticised in public. I wonder if Mourinho gave any consideration to the issue or whether throwing the hacks off the scent of his team selection and our appalling first half performance was a factor?

We all share his enormous frustration but we don't have the luxury of just writing off flawed players. Particularly when they are our most expensive signing. Before anyone says it's more anti-Mourinho bias, Pochettino did the same to Vinnie in calling out his training habits. It didn't work for him either but at least he wasn't picking the bloke to start games at a time when his lack of fitness and fight was so obvious. Gedson Fernandes should have started yesterday in a midfield three. Skippy and Ndombele alone was a bizarre selection.

The nature of being a good Spurs manager is to get more out less, because less is Levy's stock in trade. Having realised that Foyth can't play at centre half, Foyth was being turned into an asset at right back last season. Eric Dier was converted into a decent holding midfielder when we couldn't get anyone else. Under performing players like Vertonghen and Dembele were challenged to get their **** back together and go again. Rightly or wrongly, the budget is small and the managers need to compensate by fixing problems without.

Now that the cards have been laid on the table for all to see, Mourinho and his team need to reconstruct Ndombele, even if it's only enough for us to sell him without taking a complete Soldado on the deal. If he can do that, then he's acting like a Spurs manager has to.

 

I’m not willing to completely write Tanguy off yet and as Brian says, we as a club don’t have that luxury. While I’m not forgetting that he had a near complete preseason with Poch, he’s almost certainly not going to go to the Euros this summer - I expect him to be sat down at the end of the season and be given a serious regime to deal with during the off season. He should be turning up for preseason fit and ready to go if he’s serious about making it in the PL.

I assume we won’t sell him this summer - next season has to be his final call. I’ve written him off for the remainder of this one tbh, and expect to see more of Gedson until the end.

 

He’s already put him on a unique fitness regime where he has people watching him all the time etc according to what was said about a month or so back trying to help him acclimatise to life in London and PL football

This is bullshit even for a Sunday league player and he Jose gave it the beef it of the doubt by laughing off the question but he’s at it again against Burnley...maybe some players need to grow up and stop throwing managers under buses. He needs to take a leaf out of our other new recruits books

the blokes running about like he’s won a competition for over 40 Dad’s

 

Might have hit McNeil's arm there. Maybe. Hard to tell...
**** from Lloris, though. Should be holding that.
The young winger had a very good game and there'll definitely be people testing Burnley's resolve in the summer.

How many times did our defenders make **** clearing headers in this game? Needs to be stamped out.

 

And yet every clip compilation of Ndombele this season shows him closing down opponents, intercepting the ball and picking off loose balls, for example here's the supercut of his performance against Norwich in December

But because there's a five second snippet of him not closing down an opponent in the Wolves game, apparently this means that Ndombele never closes down opponents in any game - which is simply bollocks, and more than anything else the bloke who originally posted it regrets doing so

More than anything else, the response seems to be based on the fact that all he had to do was press the square button and he'd have locked onto Neto and kept pace with him...which is perfect advice for playing FIFA, pretty **** advice for playing in a sphere known as "reality" - and that's a common failing of the Twitter/Reddit crowds, as they can't tell playing football in FIFA from playing football in real life, as explained by this bloke

Does Ndombele deserve criticism for being out of position when making his first attempt to close down Neto? Yes, yes he does as that gave him half a yard to start dribbling with - but the point is he actually closed him down, he didn't stroll around waiting for somebody else to deal with the problem like Paulinho would, nor did he shrug and give up after his initial challenge failed like Capoue or Zokora were often guilty of

More than anything else about that clip, though, it exposes several players failing to do anything about Neto, notably Winks failing with two challenges in the same passage of play (the first one is what brings Ndombele into play in the first place, the second shortly after Neto goes past Ndombele) and yet nobody is using that clip to bash Winks, and why is that? Oh right, I know why that is: because the Narrative is that Ndombele can't be arsed to defend so ignore literally every other player in that clip failing to defend

Seriously, do people not see how they do talkBALLS' work for them sometimes?

 

This isn't really about developing Ndombele though. On talent alone he's arguably the best in the squad, he cost £55m for a reason but if he can't get physically fit that's on him. It shouldn't even really be an issue, a professional footballer in this day and age should be in peak physical condition. It's the basic requirement and expectation in my opinion.

He's been put on an individual regime and no doubt on a certain diet too but ultimately this is a "you can lead a horse to water..." situation.

Jose is open for criticism in many areas, I've already said he was wrong for not playing Gedson at any point yesterday whilst the 5 CBs and a DM was pretty much a piss take but a player not being physically fit and not working hard enough in a match isn't on the manager. We're massively depleted and running on fumes as it is, we need everyone to put a shift in and as of right now, Ndombele isn't doing that.

 

It depends on the circumstances

For the most obvious example, the various times Harry Kane hasn't been physically fit yet is starting matches was definitely on Poch as he rushed him back into the team rather than giving him a few more weeks to work on his fitness before reintroducing him into the team, just like Rafa Benitez pumping Fernando Torres full of painkilling injections to keep him on the pitch is what caused his dramatic collapse in form

It's pretty clear to see that Ndombele, Dele and Dier have all been lacking fitness for large chunks this season and it's been affecting their performances, but there's an obvious way to avoid this: don't have them play constantly if their fitness is an issue. Case in point, Eric Dier has only really started to look like a fit player in the last couple of games yet he's been a regular starter since November and has had some appalling performances due to being clearly unfit in that time, notably against Chelsea and Villa, just like Dele's had some bad performances since the turn of the year after he hit the wall

This is the issue with our approach: we're trying to brute force players back to fitness and that's simply not workable, as there isn't a standardised timescale of a player going from unfit to fully fit, but we act as if there is - and it's hardly a new thing, as Poch was guilty of doing the same with Kane, Dele and Son at various times

 

That intensity isn't good enough...that snippet sums him up. It's backed up by the lack of starts...his lack of fitness in every game in the context of a 90 minute game and the fact that his past mentors noticed the same attitude in him.

Would you want that from your teammate whilst you run the same distance tracking back but with intensity and intent? Sticking your foot in whilst he just strolls along? Not even at Sunday league level.

Stop making excuses for him just because it allows you to have another stick to beat Mourinho with

 

I agree to a point. All I’m saying is, earlier this season when N’dombele was pulling up trees and Dier was stiff like a tree, nobody called Dier lazy. No public ridicule. No talk of his diet. Even when he was pulled off at half time. He was protected. He even, now, plays in a position more suited to his new ‘pace’.

We’ve seen the Tanguy do much better with us also, yet for some reason he’s now not worthy of similar protection, his problems are the subject of outward discussion often and he is negatively compared to others in the squad.

Both were recovering from injury.

I smell something off about the way he is being perceived and handled.

 

Its just typical Spurs isn't it - Eric Dier starts to look like a footballer again and the likelihood is that FA will ban him for rest of the season.