Any ideas?

Thought I would put this up so not every thread gets turned into a

thread!

The problems are clear.

1. Just 2 away wins since 20th January (Feb and April) and 2 draws and 10 losses.

2. Knocked out of a cup by a league 2 team.

3. 19 points lost from winning positions in the last 13 months.

4. Throwing away leads against Arsenal, Olympiakos, Leicester and Bayern Munich...all in the past 5 weeks.

5. Only 2 clean sheets since April... 18 games!

6. Failed to score against Newcastle, Liverpool, Ajax, city, west ham, Colchester and Bournemouth ... 7 no scores in our last 15 matches.

7. Constant rumours of splits behind the scenes.

8. 15 league loses 45 matches.

Anyone got a clue what needs doing?

 

I can’t support players with no pride anymore...their is a handful I’ll back the rest can **** off...I won’t be backing them. I want Alli out of the club along with Eriksen and our back line...they can score winners from here on in....I won’t cheer them at all. Alli tossing Gnabry off after that is unacceptable. However Spurs fans are ****ers...they all booed Hossan Ghaly because he dared to throw the shirt on the floor when he got subbed after coming on and didn’t want him wearing the shirt again. Yet it’s not disrespectful what Alli was doing but the fanboys will let that one slide because they only notice obvious things

Poch needs to learn from his mistakes(he won’t) and he just hasn’t so maybe he has reached his potential

Levy needs to get serious about building a team(he won’t) or **** off and sell up to someone who won’t sell my hat to buy me a pair of shoes on a rainy day...stadium blah blah bollocks...he didn’t back Poch when he needed it...Poch putting out mercenaries and snakes in our starting XI is because ENIC did not back him enough. Cue the Levy fanboys reminding me that Levy didn’t pick the team...short sighted observations.

So for all I care they can all **** off the spineless ****s and **** the next poster who reminds me about our bastard shiny new stadium


Disgusting from top to bottom. Won’t be paying for no official merchandise...Levy can **** off the robbing

There you go...them are my clues to what should be done...yeah it won’t happen but I’m pointing fingers at everyone on every level at our club for their contribution to a lacklustre standard...we are the only team in the top 6 to not have won anything since Poch came. Our fans accept that...they are part of the problem too...Hopefully some of them pissoff with ENICS next project too.

 

I think ENIC's long game has always been to sell the club after the stadium was built, but at a time when the club was at the peak of its potential value. It is interesting that a few rumours starting circulating towards the end of last season that a big fish from the States (I forget his name) was interested. My gut feeling is that had we won the CL, ENIC would have gone public with it and tried to sell. But we didn't. And now the club's image both on and off the pitch is taking a battering. Were it not for the fact that United and Arsenal are so ****e, I would be petrified that we'll miss out on top 4 this year. We really are that bad thus far and will only get worse as the season wears on, fixtures and injuries pile up and the many want-out players inch ever closer to their exit windows. I do worry that the likes of Leicester or even god forbid Wet Sham could mount a real challenge in the league this year, so to say nothing is for certain is an understatement.

That said, it doesn't matter which way you cut the pie or which manager is in charge of serving it: this squad now needs urgent, heavy investment in key areas and won't be able to rely on player sales to finance that. Elsewhere, I've called for us to sell Alli and after watching another mediocre big game performance from a supposedly "big game player", I stand by that. But I am conscious that whereas 2 years ago he'd have gone for well over £100m, now we'd be lucky to get £60-70m. And I don't think that'll be nearly enough to cover a predicted gross spend of circa £190m.

The January window will reveal ENIC's hand. If they are serious about restoring the club at the very least to its reputation of a few years ago, thereby laying the turf to sell up, we will see multiple players sold at below value sums and huge deals to bring the likes of Dybala or Bruno in. I don't expect endless business in a traditionally quiet window, but realistically to have any chance of finishing the season strongly and not leaving a mountain of work for the summer, we need a minimum 3 out, 2 in (preferably CB and AM). If that doesn't happen, I'd say the writing is on the wall for Poch.

Until then, as I have said on countless other threads, we should be playing the "I Give A Toss' XI as soon as most if not all of its members are fit and available. At its core are our best players and a young, hungry base who - we are led to believe - are the future of the club:

Hugo
Foyth Dave Dier/Tanganga Davies
Sissoko Tanguy
Son Lo Celso Sess
Kane

It might not inspire fear on paper, but if you took that team and added a world class CB and upgraded the inexperienced Sess with a player of Dybala's ability, it suddenly becomes a very, very tasty line up. Two players. £130m. That's now ENIC's minimum required spend to my mind.

 

We’ve stagnated, is the main issue. Not enough renewal of the playing squad until it was too late and you could argue that the coaching staff have gotten stale in their methods as well.

As for how to fix it, well we obviously need more ins and outs. We need a DM and a CB and probably a RB and an attacking player to go alongside Kane and Son in the frontline wouldn’t go amiss either. The DM and the RB need to be starting XI quality and the CB can’t be too far off - more of a Dave than a Foyth.

As to whether Poch is the man to knit this all together still, well, that’s his challenge. For the first time I’m having serious doubts about his ability to motivate this group and his tactical and game management choices have been under scrutiny for some time now and deservedly so. He has a lot to fix and I want him to be up to the job - time will tell if he is.

 

And if ENIC show nothing?

Are we collectively going to extend it to the next few windows because after all they deserve it blah blah...useless ****s have landed 1 trophy under their tenure

Ive seen it before so I’m calling it a “yes” as in yes nothing will happen and the fans will just lap it up with excuse after excuse

 

Poch has been throwing the word regeneration around for months and clearly tried to get rid of several players in the summer. He knew/could see all of this coming. The mistake was trying to do it all in one transfer window but the lack of anything in the previous ones led to that.

 

Alli OUT

I won’t accept his attitude at the end..done for me

I don’t care about that goal at Palace

 

We had a system that worked and personnel that performed well in it. We no longer select either.
The manager needs to stop pissing about with his stupid diamond and revert to the successful tactics that he used to have.

 

The whole back four (Aurier, Toby, Jan, Rose) don’t want to be there or are not wanted by the manager. You would hope they would remain professional and give 100% until they get their move away but that clearly isn’t the case. Poch shouldn’t be picking them at all but for some reason keeps persisting with them.

Eriksen is another that is clearly distracted and not performing anywhere near the level he should be

Alli - words fail me as to how **** he has been, he doesn’t look like he cares or can be arsed. Get rid of him ASAP I say.

Sissoko, Winks, Davies and Lamela are good solid players who at least try but ultimately not good enough if you want to be winning trophies and you can only get away with having them if your star players are on it and obviously ours haven’t been on it all calendar year.

Kane and Son - I just hope we keep hold of them and they don’t decide they want out because they’re the 2 we need to have any chance of anything positive.

 

It’s a vicious circle....Poch is picking snakes because he has no choice thanks to the owners ignoring 2 transfer windows...it’s shocking how lightly the actual people playing the game and have an on field influence get off in all this.


I want Alli to ****ing get out!!!

Schmeichal and Neville won so much together...that day they lined up against each other and as much as we all laugh at the weasel faced Neville...he thought **** you and turned his back on Schmeichal in the dugout....****ing winner

Then we get that ****ing tossers like Alli playing with Gnabrys nutsack at full time smiling etc? How the **** can you smile after that? No professional pride...makes me sick

**** Alli...**** his contribution from now on...I’m not supporting him...done with him...poncy bastard. People pay 3 figure sums to watch our players behave like that? No respect...in my world you get none back if that’s the case.

Sell him...get someone else in theres enough suckers to fall for his hype to get us a decent fee

 

It doesn't help the current situation, but Levy needs to look at the whole system, in my opinion.

We can't compete financially with a lot of the clubs around us at the moment, so we need to do things differently.
Our plans need to be long-term and emulate the likes of Dortmund, Atletico and Ajax.
A top quality Director of Football has to be appointed and our academy needs to be overhauled.

The stadium and training ground have progressed the club financially, but we haven't kept up on the pitch.
Our transfer business wasn't a priority and it showed. Levy took his eye off the ball.
He should've appointed someone else to deal with it and oversee the squad and academy.

 

We continue to be in a weird spot, which surely has something to do with making deadwood nigh impossible to shift: we aren't offering wages that would have the player accept they need a pay cut and/or have us subsidise their wages if they want to move like deadwood at Man Utd, Chelsea etc - but at the same time we're offering that bit more than someone like Bournemouth, Watford etc and the players aren't willing to drop their wage demands to a midtable level

That became especially apparent in the summer, most notably with Wanyama rejecting a move to Brugge even though he surely knows he's finished for us, while Danny Rose's proposed moves to Watford and Newcastle collapsed at the first hurdle for similar reasons

 

I can churn out a list of individual errors in big games. Bad habits game in game out like the latest trend of conceding soon after scoring and conceding just before HT

That is not tactics that is poor mentality from those on the pitch

List on request

 

Our mentality has gone to ****. We had a reputation for sticking at it and winning games with late goals.
The squad lacks sharpness, unfit players keep starting games and the squad isn't being used correctly.
Ndombele isn't up to speed yet, as expected, but he's being thrown in at the deep end and struggling, for example.

Sessegnon and Lo Celso are supposed to be our only injuries, so what's happened to the likes of Foyth and Walker-Peters?
Our U23s aren't getting results and our best youth players aren't getting games in them, either.
It seems that we either run players into the ground or leave them out entirely. It's ridiculous.

 

It's pretty unlikely that amateurs like us will have ideas that are better than those of Poch and Levy. Improving any endeavour to the extent we already have is hard. Keeping it at a high level is harder still.
It does seem weird what we've done with our full backs and central defenders. Unless we were expecting to play Foyth and Sessegnon with Sanchez and Dier as our first choice defence and last night's backline was supposed to be the back up.
If we need to spend 250m to sort the squad out then we can afford it but buying 4 or 5 new players will likely lesd to only two being the top performers we need.
We are forced to make at least one defensive change next match. Perhaps we should change all four.

 

I generally agree with that. But getting such a person won't be easy. There are few people with proven success in such a role.

 

Add to that our track record with DoFs
Arnesen worked well with Jol (although Santini stubbornly ignored him) before getting tapped-up by the Chavs
Comolli went rogue in a bid to force out Jol so he could work with Ramos, which worked out well for everyone involved...
Baldini completely failed to understand that he wasn't supposed to accept the first big number other clubs thought of

 

And we should look at this as a long-term problem.
Bringing in the right man is just one step. Having contigencies to replace them is essential.
The same should apply to our academy coaches. Is Wayne Burnett an aspirational choice?

 

The softcore option:

Persist til Jan (though hopefully changes to selection and formations are made), shift pretty much everyone we (as in Poch) don’t want. Get signings done. History shows January is a month we don’t do much in, both Poch and Levy need to change that. We had a very good summer (just unfortunately 2 of the 3 have been injured) but the dry 18/19 has massively set us back, something myself and others predicted would happen throughout last season.

Although I must make one thing clear, this is still a very good squad, it’s just massively underperforming and that’s down to both players and manager. The quality of this squad should not be getting smashed 7-2 at home, nor should it be throwing leads against Arsenal, Olympiacos and Leicester whilst it shouldn’t be losing at home to Newcastle.

Hardcore option:

Sack Poch. Hire Allegri. New ideas, new coaching personnel, new players (in Jan) and a manager with a winning pedigree to install into the players. The board, just like in the softcore option, will need to back the manager significantly both with ins and outs.

 

Sacking Pochettino is a form of insanity imho.