Mourinho...how long will he be given?

I would love us to have a second striker who, on merit, would get into the team when Kane was injured. But I don't think it is easy to get a player who is going to be selected ahead of Lucas Moura who scored some really crucial goals for us last year.

 

I do have expectations. Something has got to our players such that they are lacking confidence. Mourinho was never good at tactics but he is a psychologist and should be able to motivate our players to get closer to where they were just over a year ago

 

My expectation is currently that we'll be poor in the first half, concede the first goal and lose much more often than we'll win. It's not because we don't have good players but we're not getting the best out of the talent that we have. It's not just about having some good players (which we do) and patting them on the back, the manager needs to set them up to achieve a result. Recently, we've gone on the pitch like a bunch of Sunday league players, who have no idea how to play as a cohesive unit.

The continuation with a 2 man midfield, when we don't have the players to make it work, is just rank poor management. Add in continually starting Dier, Eriksen, Aurier, etc.and not giving enough time to Foyth, Sessegnon, Tanganga, etc., and we've got a team that is failing to reach its potential - and it's predictable, as soon as you see the line-up.

Once he united players, but Mourinho lost the dressing room at Chelsea and couldn't motivate the group that he had at United after a high water mark of 2nd in his 2nd season. The club invested a huge amount on new players and their wages (far more than we're going to spend) and they didn't make top 4 in 2 of the 3 seasons that he was there. I'm not seeing that as a comfort blanket that he can get what's needed out of this group.

It was a punt to employ him and I don't think it will come off.

 

On the contrary, I somewhat hope he does, because if he can persuade about 75% of this squad that they no longer want to be here and ask to leave, I'd shake his hand.

Kane and Son (though the latter needs to fix up) are the only players I'd lose my **** at if we sold today. Obviously the new boys/ Tanganga don't count in this though.

 

They were who I meant. It was in relation to this from CK about trusting Mourinho with the futures of our young talents...

Most of the rest are due to leave soon, for varying reasons.

 

Ah gotcha. To be fair the new boys seem to be in his plans I'd say, Tanguy's injuries have been infuriating but I think Jose sees his quality. Gio is now getting more game time and Gedson already made his debut after having been here for just a couple of days. Sess is probably the only one I'd like to see more of but I'm confident his time will come.

In terms of our youngsters, Tanganga is probably preferring life under Jose than he was Poch if truth be told. For as much as I'd like to see Parrot in the squad, I won't hold it against Jose for not selecting him because I do think it's a message to Levy of "sign me a ****ing striker!". Skipp is looking like he'll be sent on loan and I'm happy with that, I'd have liked to have seen him given a chance but neither Poch or Jose have done so, so I can't exclusively criticise Jose for his lack of playing time this season.

 

All I know is that New Year, New Decade, New Calm Happy Clappy RCL will go into retirement when Rose, Aurier, Eriksen and Dier all start on Wednesday v Norwich

 

Just wait til you see Wanyama is captain on the day, then!

 

I would take Keane over the Dele every day of the week, different types of players admittedly, but for me Keane was excellent and always turned up, as did Jermain, Dele as is well documented here has turned up sporadically for some time now.

 

Up to now, Mourinho has been searching for his best XI out of who is available, he probably thought our squad was better than it actually is, but by now it should have dawned on him the extent of our problems. Hopefully Mourinho now knows who to use and who to replace, but unfortunately such is the extent of our injuries, he is being forced to use players he would rather not. I have little expectation that Levy and Lewis will cough up enough money to fix us sufficiently and so won`t be surprised if this Mourinho marriage ends up being a short one.

 

With regards to Jose and his tactics/ selections at the moment, for as much as there are a few things that irritate me, I do feel he needs to be given his own personnel before we make too many big criticisms or judgements. He's probably switched around a bit as he's been trying to see what his best XI may be.

The only selection decision I can say that's actually annoyed/ annoying me is dropping Dave Sanchez to the bench of late. He's been our best CB this season (despite a fugly performance against Boro) and so I don't quite get the thought process in benching him, especially as he's the future too.

Foyth, Skipp, Parrott and Tanganga all barely got game time under Poch this season so clearly both managers either don't rate them enough or feel they were ready. Though it looks like Tanganga has broken through now - and I think Jose's been keen to make this happen for a while, his first training session video we saw, you could see him say to Tanganga "you marked Cristiano, yes?" (with regards to the pre-season game vs Juve) and then says to one of the coaches something along the lines of "make him known".

Dier's early favouritism has dwindled. Not played in the last four league games, played just 15 minutes against Brighton and his last start was against Chelsea where he was subbed off on 45. He's only started the Boro FA Cup matches in this spell.

Rose has featured very sporadically. He's only started three games and one of those was the dead rubber vs Bayern, although it was weird to see him start vs Pool.

Eriksen playing as much as he has has been odd, although I think due to the amount of injuries we're getting (especially Tanguy, who's the only other legitimate creative outlet in the side at the moment) I guess Jose's felt he needed to play him and hoped he'd find his old spark, which obviously hasn't been the case. Hopefully we get the Inter deal done so we can all move on.

So yeah, as I said, Dave's dropping of late is the only one I'm both baffled and annoyed by. Everything else I feel there's a valid enough reason too or has since been rectified.

 

I feel like I find myself saying this roughly every six months but...

I'd still take Defoe back at Spurs, even if he is a footballing grandad now

 

Thank God we didn’t get Eddie ‘The Beige’ Howe

Half of you were clamouring onto him as the replacement for Poch not long ago like he is the next best thing after sliced Pep

 

It's telling that to make our performances and results look less dreadful, The Special One is now to be compared with Eddie Howe.

That ain't good. Not good at all.

 

The issue is that context soon causes those reasons to unravel

Foyth's the best example: he made one mistake against Norwich and he gets banished to the bench, seemingly never to return - yet Aurier's been far more damaging to our defence in recent months, either by leaving a gaping hole at right back or a gaping hole in central midfield due to Sissoko covering for him (which Lucas should be doing but doesn't) yet he consistently gets selected. We've also seen some blunders from Verts and Toby in that time yet they still get plenty of starts

Skipp's lack of playing time continues to baffle considering that we're once again using Winks as a DM which he simply isn't, and more than anything else the issue in our games is that by the 60th minute mark our central midfield starts to crack under pressure and desperately needs fresh legs, but until Gedson arrived we never bothered trying that even though we had various options (including Skipp) on the bench. Also, as people keep bringing up the Juve game in regards to Tanganga, it's worth remembering that Skipp played 90 minutes in that match and more than acquitted himself

In terms of Parrott, that's simply Steptonho playing chicken with Levy by saying how much we need a striker...while not even giving one a spot on the bench, which doesn't strengthen his argument with either Levy or the fans because not only are we aware Parrott needs some first team minutes but we're also aware that there's reports of various Bundesliga clubs sniffing around him, so refusing to even give him a spot on the bench not only harms the team which could do with a focal point in the 75th minute as Lucas simply isn't a forward and by that time has usually faded out of the game so isn't much of a winger either but is also keeping Parrott in the same limbo between the first team and U23s that Poch was regularly criticised for keeping KWP and Skipp trapped in that saw the likes of Edwards, Griffiths and Bennett jump at the earliest opportunity (although in Griffiths' case he's probably wishing he didn't...)

 

These were also struggling for game time under Pochettino so I’d say that suggests they’re not doing enough in training to convince either manager. It does beg the question as to what Dier/ Aurier/ Winks are doing though but I suppose being a more senior player is what’s working in their favour, even if it probably shouldn’t.

What I hope Jose will do that Poch didn’t is either send these young players out on loan or sell them.

Skipp certainly needs a loan, he’s still very young and just needs regular football to begin maturing both physically and mentally. A good loan may be enough to convince Jose he should eventually be ahead of Dier/ Wanyama/ Winks.

KWP is finished here I’d say, can’t get in the matchday squad and even Tanganga has risen above him in the RB pecking order judging by the selection for Boro.

Foyth is in a similar boat. I’d prefer he got a loan but also wouldn’t be against selling. Tanganga has leapfrogged him in the pecking order at both CB and RB. It’s hard to see an immediate or even long term future for him now.

Parrott I think will sign a new deal, a lot of talk on twitter that he will. Hopefully he then gets a loan whilst we bring in a senior striker to deputise for Kane.

 

The thing with the tail end of Poch's reign is he'd dug in and was effectively trying to force results with the same group of players, which tends to happen when a manager realises their head is in a noose and are trying to reverse the tide - the issue being that Poch was dooming himself by trying to get results with players who couldn't be bothered, with Eriksen and Rose the obvious examples of this

Last season he was drip-feeding Skipp into the team in a similar way that he did with Winks a few years before, giving him starts in both FA Cup matches as well as the league games against Burnley and Leicester, plus some 15-minute cameos against Bournemouth, Cardiff, Huddersfield and Everton in games where we were home and dry by then. Based on that you'd have expected Poch to have a similar approach this season, instead he had one start against Colchester, a couple of 89th minute cameos in the league, and fifteen minutes against Red Star - and that, more than anything else, underlines where Poch went off the rails as instead of trusting youth as he had done throughout his career instead he was trusting senior players, even the ones who had downed tools

KWP is likely finished this month, considering the talk has gone from a loan to Palace to a sale to Brighton in recent days, with him supposedly wanting a fresh start. I can't blame him, to be honest

The stubbornness about Parrott is not only aggravating in terms of squad selections, because why the hell wasn't he on the bench for the Boro replay (let alone any other game) but the Lunatic Fringe have started pretending that he doesn't exist so they can sound the foghorn once again, because acknowledging he exists means they can't slag off Levy for not having a striker on the bench

 

I don't know which striker we're all waiting for?

It seems that we're only in the market for loans. So that counts out Piatek and pretty much everyone else.

We're not getting Cavani...we just aren't.

So, it's Benteke......

 

Or Slimani