Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Newcastle United

Read my post again. They did offer it but 7 weeks after they should have offered it.

Kane very idiotically mentioned a sum of £100m in that car crash interview with Man City Super Agent, Gary Neville. He'd plucked it out of thin air but City very idiotically took it as gospel, hence the opening offer of £75m + £25m in add ons or players.

City then very idiotically paid Villa £100m for Grealish, while still clinging to a belief that a Kane was worth the same.

City then very idiotically missed out on Messi and then Ronaldo. They then panicked and with 6 days left, finally submitted a suitable offer.

Now, either than sequence was guided but rank incompetence, or its aim was to purposefully unsettle the player and club, and leave us in a position where we'd be going into the new season with Dane Scarlett as our first choice striker.

City didn't do this to Villa simply because they don't yet see them as a threat.

You of all people should understand this logic as it is exactly what happened when United spent all summer tapping up Berbatov before finally submitting a suitable offer on deadline day which meant we replaced a world class player with Frazier Campbell and a packet of Starburst.

 

I love Oli Skipp.

Just thought I’d post that… again. Will probably post it again in a day or two.

 

Name change incoming?

 

Tempting.

Skipp a beat.
Oli! Oli! Oli!
Hertfordshire Busquets.

 

Top trumps : release clause > unsettling.

If the converse had been true (Kane on release clause and Grealish not) ,
then Villa would have been subject to an attempted unsettling saga.

 

Noliver N'skipp

 

Pass map time

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First of all, nobody tell Rob Newman's straight man about how Skipp, Hojbjerg, Ndombele and Lucas have created a swastika in midfield, because we know how he'll overreact to that...

However, the fact there is so much traffic between our central players is interesting, since beforehand our were based on quickly getting the ball out wide and hitting teams on the counter, but with the midfield getting so much of the ball you can see very different patterns emerge as we are still getting the ball out wide - but we're doing it much higher up the pitch, as you can see Ndombele playing in both Sonny and Lucas in the final third, wheras in the 433 days they were being played in much deeper

Also interesting is the amount of traffic involving our CBs, not just moving the ball up to Skipp and Hojbjerg or their respective FB, but also how Dier seems to be the out ball for our CMs and Reguilon to relieve pressure. The former because, again, most of last season our CBs only passed to Hojbjerg while Sissoko/Winks/Lo Celso/Ndombele never received the ball, which was obviously a tactical choice and made us far too easy to pressure into mistakes, the latter on the other hand strikes me as a little odd as Romero is so much better at passing the ball than Dier is...with one exception, as Dier is often looking to play the ball over the top as opposed to Romero's passing which is based on buildup play

More than anything else, once again this demonstrates Hojbjerg's changing role in the team: under the ubermensch he was a DM, yet under Mason and especially Nuno he's being used in a similar role that he's used in the Denmark team as he's where our play transitions from defence to attack as you can see he's retaining the ball when moving it onto Skippy, dictating wide play when it moves out to Son, Lucas, Emerson and Reguilon, and buildup play when moving it on to Ndombele, which underlines why a Hojbjerg/Skipp pivot is what we need to use going forward because, while it lacks the flash of the various Dembele pivots, it both moves the ball forward and keeps hold of the ball when required, which are two things we haven't had for far too long

 

You missed the Newcastle pass map, which demonstrates how much they targeted our right-back:

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Their tactics seemed to involve two things.
Playing it long to Joelinton out wide or giving it to Saint-Maximin and hoping he could do it himself.
He nearly managed it once or twice, too.

Good luck to anyone trying to work out what formation that was supposed to be.

 

It was Newcastle v Tottenham, not Norwich v Man City.
Tyler sounded like we'd shot his dog.

 

In other words, nobody told Steve Bruce that Aurier isn't our RB this season - but if they're playing Villarreal those tactics might work, assuming they've rotated Foyth out of the side

As for the formation, it was listed as 4141 which at least explains Hayden's position...well it would if he was 10-15 yards further back and had the CBs passing the ball to him at any point in the match, instead of running around in the centre of the pitch like a headless chicken

 

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Unfortunately

 

I'll never forget watching him in this game...

He was, head and shoulders, the best player on the pitch. His reading of the game is soooo good, that, insane as it sounds, he's pretty close to being our most important player right now. With him in the team, we can allow Hojbjerg free to play his natural game and may be able to accommodate Ndombele or Lo Celso in a team that isn't wide open...hopefully (we'll find out in the next few PL matches).

 

We desperately need backup for him in January.
He can't be expected to play every game and works best with Hojbjerg.
Anyone else we've got as an option there will work best with a holding midfielder.

The problem is, who would want to join us to be in that position?
Maybe we could attract someone like Boubacar Kamara of Marseille?
Seems to have fallen down the pecking order this season and only has six months left on his contract.
Athletic, versatile, young, comfortable on the ball and potentially inexpensive.

 

I really wish that the club's management agreed with this as much as I do...but Sarr will be arriving next summer, so I'm thinking that it's probably unlikely. No doubt, we'll play Skipp into the ground, rush him back from any injury and save a few million, in the short term, only to rue it down the line.

 

From what I've seen of Sarr, which isn't very much, I'd see him as the Hojbjerg in that pairing.
Get in Kamara and we'd have the 2 of the 4-2-3-1 sorted for quite a while, if it works out.

 

A Sarr/Skipp pairing looks like it should be fantastic and hopefully, Hojbjerg will be put under real pressure by that possibility.

Which midfielders we buy and sell next summer, should be a pointer as to whether there's a footballing brain directing transfers, or whether we're still buying players based upon who Levy thinks is a bargain and will be cheap on wages.

 

We look so much better as a cohesive unit without Dele in the team. I'm glad Nuno seems to have figured this out relatively early on and acted accordingly.

He's made his fair share of iffy judgement calls but he has also sussed out Sanchez, Doherty, Dele and Winks within weeks of his arrival.

Eric Dier next on the list and things are looking promising.