I don't think anyone is lying but they are certainly looking for 'facts' that support their views. And I am as keen as you for us to be the best club in the world. I just trust Levy and Poch to get us there more than I trust any of you lot! So I naturally look for indicators that I might be wrong rather than them. For example, I think we can all agree that having 9 players in the late stages of the World Cup plus Son being away was eventually going to tell in tiredness and injuries. And if we had replaced Aurier, Vorm and Wanyama with three better players we would have been better off. But that is with perfect hindsight. Every one of those players would have been ahead of Sissoko and Llorente for keeping before the season started.
Good point. Except that won't affect our performances. What goes on here also goes on in the stadium. Much more moaning than encouragement.
Klopp wanted consistency. They have delivered. we're gonna have a party we're gonna have a party we're gonna have a party when we win in Madrid.
Maybe in your seats there is, in my area of park lane most of us are half cut and just there for a sing along. Must admit I nailed it with my seats though, ended up sitting with so many fellas I’ve seen in the pubs over the years, no word of a lie most of the songs that get started in park lane lower centre are from us lot. Makes the game that much more enjoyable for me.
Yep, most will probably agree. But again, we didn’t need perfect hindsight for that. We could have mitigated that risk much better.
An acceptable number is to demonstrate improvement year on year, however slight. The PL is so awash with money and so gruelling that anything else is regression no matter how many times we mention Sissoko's improvement. It is regression. Stand still in this league and you get eaten alive. That we live to witness Arsenal and United fans openly discuss whether it is time to just bite the bullet and accept that they are now merely top 6 sides is proof of that. And the fact is - intriguingly - we have certainly seen improvement year on year in our CL campaigns, going from group stage flops to knock out round nearly men to finalists. In a directly inversely proportionate relationship to this in the PL we have accumulated fewer points year on year and have an increasingly poor record against the top 6 in the same time frame. A have a lot of respect for optimists on our forum such as yourself, PS, RCL and others Vim, but it is lazy and patronising to imply that us pessimists will only stop moaning if we win all 38 games and seal the quadruple. Piffle. It's the same lazy and overly generalised argument I face on the transfer thread where somehow calling for more activity and sooner is interpreted as demanding Levy spends £200m net every window. Nothing of the sort. The only reason some posters are perceived as pessimist and come across as miserable is that it hurts to see the club we love do so many things so very right yet fail persistently to fix the things that can be and often are the difference between being the also-rans and an established side regularly winning major trophies. This summer will be key, there are no two ways about it. United and Arsenal need to overhaul half their squads and Chelsea begin a 4 window ban. Pool and City currently have significantly better starting XIs than we do but if we act quickly and sign no more than 2 or 3 key players we can close that 27 point gap by some distance.
FYI, if any of you thought I was being pessimistic this season, wait til Bobby chooses my avatar for the next few months and then you’ll see just what a moody and moany **** I am.
This is a forum, and a lively one at that. There are bound to be people with different opinions yes some of us moan, some of us are very upbeat and there are plenty who have a foot in both camps. I like to think that I am a glass half full sort of person, and try to look on the positive side, but I can remember occasions this season, when our performances have left me raging. A good example ironically was the first champions league match v Inter, the matchday thread was not a happy place and many of us were concerned that lessons from previous campaigns were not being learnt. Fast forward 6 months to Ajax this week and there is almost universal acclaim for our achievements that night. We are football fans, but most importantly we are Spurs fans, we don’t need reminding of how bad things might be, we remember the 1990s. But we must not stand still, thinking that we have arrived in the promised land, we did that to a certain extent in the summer and our team has been running on empty in the league since early March and needed reinforcements. The top 2 look some distance away right now, when at one point in the season we had hopes of at least staying in touch, I agree that we have won a lot of matches, but the number of defeats must be a concern, just turning half of those defeats into draws has us comfortably 3rd, turn them into wins and we stay in the title race. But amazingly our season is not over yet, one thing I think I can guarantee is that if we do win in Madrid this will be a very happy place.
Well i think we mitigated the risk pretty well by NOT making signings and instead relying on our squad togetherness to deliver more than the sum of the individuals. I hope we keep most of the squad next year too. I think players like Trippier, Winks and Dier, once fully fit and rested might surprise us as much as Sissoko did. Wanyama, Aurier and Lamela worry me more because they seem too injury prone. If our medical staff think they will stay fit I might keep them but Wanyama and Aurier plus Vorm probably could be replaced by someone better. So I would be happy with three signings.
Squad togetherness is definitely one of the strongest attributes at our club. However, I don’t think that 2 or 3 signings would have affected that. Take Dembele as an example, he knew his days were numbered, and a replacement coming in to gel with the team before his departure wouldn’t have damaged morale, IMO. Injury plagued players are definitely a cause for concern. We aren’t in a position to keep those players on payroll, and should definitely be looking to address that, having seen another season of the same players with more problems. Not only does it cost us financially, but we need as much available quality in our squad depth as possible. I do think there’s one or two others who don’t fall into the “injured” category that we also need to look at though. Without going over names again, there’s a some we could do with shifting who we’d get decent money for, and could look acquire better replacements with the cash.
Seeing the situation as needing to be fixed is, in my opinion, wrong. We are improving at a faster rate overall than any club other than Man City. Doing more of what we have been doing is more likely to make that continue thsn doing anything else. This season has been better than last. We are effectively in the same place in the PL. We got to the semi final of the other donestic cup and we are in the CL final. Next year, with our best players having a summer rest and not having to cope with Wembley we should be better again. If we can strengthen too that's good but most players we are linked with are not really better than what we have
I wonder which hacks will try and make something of Danny Rose not being there? I wonder how few of them will ignore the fact that (according to FootballDotLondon) he missed the game through illness, coupled with a tweaked hamstring?
But there's also this idea that players not playing in our team are better than certain ones already here. Don't people think that if Winks was playing for Villa in the Championship he'd look pretty good and someone on here would probably say we should sign him! There's always a bonus from knowing what you've got rather than gambling on what you're going to get. Only certain clubs can do that and if they get it wrong simply buy someone else.
The problem we have this summer though, is the likely departures of Eriksen and Alderwiereld on top of any business we already needed to do. For me, it just highlights how additions over the course of the last season would have been really beneficial. Im worried about lots of incomings and departures all in 1 go. That’s very difficult to pull off, and also hasn’t been successful for any club who’ve done it.
