Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Vitesse

Nuno probably made too many changes tonight and maybe should have only rested 3-4 players instead of the whole line up from the weekend.

 

Tonight's no surprise.

There's no ambition within the club - not in the boardroom, not in the coaching staff nor in just about the entire squad. The most ambitious person at the club wants to leave...

 

Ah well, at least we didn't lose 6-1

 

Which is surely what we’re trying to do, but we have no quality in CM or striker beyond the PL starting XI and it badly shows. If we had even one player who could stand with Højbjerg and Skipp then we could probably get away with rotation a bit more often but the cupboard is so bare. Winks is consistently not good enough in a game played beyond walking pace and Gio doesn’t fit in a double pivot, he plays in a 3 for Argentina or as a 10. The striker situation has been discussed elsewhere, and it’s a joke.

 

There's no way that any professional looked at our squad and thought it was balanced, though.
Nobody on here did. It's wonky as ****.

 

Couldn’t agree more. GK and defence aside, it’s so unbalanced it’s ridiculous. Everyone wants to play as a 10 or on the left wing. We have one striker, one RW, and 3 CMs (one of which is Winks) and literally everyone else is a 10 or LW. I get that selling players is difficult but it’s crazy.

 

As I said a day or two ago, if the plan is to win the home ties and draw the away ones, there's one obvious problem with this strategy: if the starting xi doesn't inspire confidence in being able to shut out the opponents, then it needs to have at least one goal in it to balance out any mistakes

 

Bet the club are regretting charging £25 for the remaining 2 home games in this competition...who is gonna pay that to watch dross like this?

 

Am I wrong though? Or are you gonna tell me Winks, Dele, Sanchez etc are good players?

You may not give a toss but I’d like us to try and win a trophy again, only been about 13 years since the last.

 

Tonight's game was so bad that it aged Dane Scarlett by a year just by being part of it

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Been a long time since Spurs had a cohesive plan of any type

 

I don't think it's a bad as that.

Swap Scarlett (who simply isn't ready) for the backup striker we should have signed in the summer, then replace Winks for a proper holding midfielder and Dele for anyone and our B team actually isn't a bad side.

I don't think we're a million miles away from having decent squad depth. The issue is as PNP has said there are certain areas of the squad that are over stocked while others are totally neglected.

I think the single biggest issue is the step down from our squad players of last season.

Vini > Scarlett
Bale > Gil/Bergwijn
Lamela > Dele

Whereas in other areas we've stepped up...

Tanganga > Doherty
Rodon > Toby

 

I don't think that the players are ****. We've just got a squad that doesn't make any sense.
Most people would've selected the XI that we used against Newcastle, barring one or two players.
That leaves us taking a good look at what we've got as backup and it's a nonsense selection.

Two inverted wingers, one of which was just back from injury and the other on the wrong wing.
Two defensive fullbacks, both of whom play a fair amount at centre-half.
No holding midfielder and only one central midfielder, making the midfield extremely fragile, at best.
What's left? A kid up front and a very dodgy looking reserve goalkeeper.

There's definitely individuals that we can improve on, but the main issue is balance.
Espirito Santo will get plenty of stick for that game and he'll deserve it.
None of us could come up with a side that made any sense from those players, though.

 

I agree if Vinicius and Bale were still around then it would make things a lot better but the club decided not to buy either and then didn’t go for alternatives (you could possibly argue Gil was the alternative to Bale but that’s a stretch)

I don’t just mean numbers, I mean quality and game changers. Kane and Son aside, who in that squad can change a game or win a game? Possibly Ndombele but his fitness record and mobility leaves a lot to be desired.

 

Some of them are though, especially the ones I’ve listed.

In five years you can probably just about count the amount of good games Winks has had for Tottenham on one hand.

Some fans still think we’re back in 2017/ 2018 when they think of Dele.

Sanchez is a walking disaster, near enough each game he makes a mistake, Rodon bailed him out of it today.

Then there are others who just aren’t cutting it. Bergwijn hasn’t been good since his first 5 or so weeks when he joined. Lo Celso should’ve played further forward today but had a very below par game - again - but for the nice bit of play to Gil. Gollini isn’t looking like a solid deputy…

I 100% agree the balance is off and I also say the manager is utter pants but ultimately there’s a lot of relegation or bottom half standard players playing for this club. We’re meant to be a big six club… we certainly don’t feel like one.

 

I think that even our worst players are getting exposed by the lack of balance and poor tactics, though.
I called out the defence and midfield selection yesterday morning, before we'd made it:
https://www.not606.com/threads/tottenham-hotspur-v-vitesse.396461/#post-15275901

Who was supposed to provide width today? Who was supposed to protect the back four?
Chucking together a side with fitness issues and confidence problems is difficult at the best of times.
When your team selection doesn't make any tactical sense, then things probably aren't going to go well.

 

Even at the best of times when have some of these players stepped up on a consistent basis?

Winks has been around the best side we’ve had in the Prem and stuck out like a sore thumb.

Once Eriksen and Dembele left Dele got exposed for the fraud he is.

Sanchez only ever looked solid when partnered with Vertonghen.

Bergwijn went a whole season last year scoring a solitary goal and is yet to bag this campaign. I had high hopes for him but he’s been so poor he makes me pine for Moura to play, who himself isn’t of the quality we need as a starter.

Lo Celso’s in his third season and still can’t get in the first XI despite costing us £42m…

There’s so much mediocrity ingrained in this team that balance or no balance it’s likely going to produce little results or satisfactory performances. Made so much worse with a B-tech Mourinho in charge of them.

 

I think we’re facing a number of issues. We managed to get some players out of the door finally over the summer but we’re building towards 433. We then found that it just wasn’t going to work. We probably just about have the players (theoretically, if not in practice) to play it - Winks and Skipp can hold and then the other two positions are split between Gio, Tanguy, Dele and PEH. But for any number of reasons it wasn’t working.

Nuno has rightly pivoted to 4231 and now the midfield is messed up because we only have 2 players who are any good who can play in the pivot, and neither of them are very creative.

 

Given his ability when they were in the team, perhaps we should've replaced them?
He's dangerous when we used as an attacking midfielder making runs behind the defence from deep.
Now we've got nobody picking those runs out and we're using him far deeper, where he can't play.

Instead of that, we've bought other players in his position for a load of money.
Then we did away with that role completely and moved them all into other ones that they're **** at.
Now we're wondering why it's not working!

 

He played in the ten/ attacking midfield today and dropped a 0/10 performance. Not for the first time either, he’s probably been moved around at times to try and get him to find his place in the side but his place isn’t at Tottenham anymore, it’s at Norwich, or if he keeps this form up, back at MK Dons.

Instead of trying to replace players with like for likes we should look at the best available players in a position and implement a system that suits them.

Expecting B-tech versions of Dembele and Eriksen to do what Dembele and Eriksen done is only ever gonna leave us frustrated and disappointed. Just as getting the B-tech Jose has done.