That is the question we are all keen to know the answer to. If not, he better learn quickly , hopefully he deputies have ideas where he may not.
I think Jose has a plan and I have faith in him to execute it. He's not spoilt for choice at FB at the moment and for as ****ing stupid Aurier is defensively he does offer an outlet going forward and I think we may have to adapt a "we'll score more than you approach" because we simply cannot keep a clean sheet to save our lives and so setting us up to defend only negates our attacking strength. Get Tanguy back, get Gedson up to speed and get Bergwijn in straight away. Let's go for it. I'd personally want something like: Hugo Aurier, Dave, Toby, Davies* Tanguy, Gedson, Gio Lucas**, Son, Bergwijn *Tanganga for the meantime. Unfortunately, despite preferring a left footer in the role, I don't have faith in Sess there at the moment, he can't really defend and he's been extremely disappointing going forward. Tanganga offers nothing on the front foot from that side but he can defend and so if it covers Aurier going on an adventure, so be it. ** When Kane is back fit, Lucas dropped with Son moved to the right.
It's not the quantity that matters, it's the quality. To get something out of this season we need to be performing at two points a match minimum which means in the top 3 in England and top 10 in Europe. You simply can't do that with the 100th best striker on the pitch. It's much more likely with three better players working together.
Liverpool are the best side in the country, Europe in fact, their second choice striker would struggle to make the XI of most teams in the Premier League and in many top sides in Europe yet he provides a solid outlet as a second choice, he would roughly come between the 70th-100th best strikers in Europe. Having someone who specialises in a role is far, far better than asking someone to play in a role they're not used too.
I don't usually watch this guys vids but this one is a much needed balanced view of the window. I recommend it if you want to feel better about the lack of certain signings. He has some good insights.
We remain miles apart on your last point. Players are not that different in skill set. I simply don't agree that the 100th best 'striker' should be picked ahead of a better player. Tanganga has looked fine playing at RB and LB and he has no experience of either position.
Mourinho clearly disagrees with your point of view, as do I. He said he wanted a new striker, we were interested in Giroud/ Piatek/ Willian Jose, we even had a last minute bid rejected for a 32 year old playing in China (Eran Zahavi) that hasn't really played in any top league for a sufficient amount of time during his career. Jose seemingly would've preferred him over a makeshift striker and so would I. None of the players listed are better players than Son/ Dele/ Lucas but they're certainly better strikers. Plus, by playing any of Dele, Son or Lucas as a striker it means their natural position becomes weaker. So essentially we replace Kane with someone inferior and who isn't a natural in the position whilst also weakening ourselves in the natural position of whoever takes Kane's place. Tanganga did look fine playing RB against Middlesborough. He had a difficult time playing LB against Watford's Sarr and whilst he was solid against Southampton, he offered no outlet down the wing due to not having a left foot. Being 'fine' is ok but at Spurs we should want more than fine. Compare Tanganga playing out of position at LB/ RB to a prime Danny Rose/ Ben Davies or Kyle Walker, or even Trippier minus last season, and the difference in quality is huge.
He's agreed to work for Daniel Levy, who hasn't ever given a manager what he wants. If he was expecting different, he was a little bit more than naive and it's why many of us thought it was a bad appointment. Managing away from Chelsea or United or Real Madrid involves being able to get more from less. We're paying him to produce results from what he's got. If he can't or won't do it, Levy will sack him, so whether we blame him for it is pretty much irrelevant.
I agree with most of that but we don't have unlimited funds. If the choice was between paying out cash for a striker or buying Berwijn, I am not surprised we did the latter. Son, Dele and Berwijn seems a reasonable front free.
You don’t need unlimited funds to buy a backup striker/competition for Kane though. Son and Dele are good players and Bergwijn seems a good prospect but none of them are proper strikers
We couldn't afford Piatek or Alcacer? We had £70m+ available for Dybala in the summer. Where did that go?
That’s being saved for the summer when Jose will be given big money to get a striker, centre back, defensive midfielder, left and right back
I’m not asking Spurs to break the bank though and I don’t think Jose was either considering a player like Giroud would’ve cost less than £10m. We had money to spend beyond the Bergwijn deal. We just, in typical Spurs fashion, left it so late to get a priority signing sorted that we ran out of time. We had 31 days plus the time from the summer window to plan ahead to get a second striker in and we failed to do so. The manager was let down after openly saying he’d like one. He will now likely face criticism if Spurs fail to adequately score enough goals. I made a joke of it the other day but I really do now hope we make an offer to Ade.
