Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur Pre-Season Thread 21/22

I think we've pissed him about too much, moving him into different positions and dropping him to the bench too often.
He's also suffered from our lack of creativity in midfield, leaving him to pick it up too deep, plus our dodgy right-backs who are also constantly changing.

 

I actually think he might be better suited playing behind Kane/ in front of the two CMs. There was a period last season where he played more centrally and I thought he looked really good and if you look at his impact in pre-season so far, despite essentially playing on the right, all of his good play has come from central positioning:

Assist for Scarlett was played via a through pass in the the middle.
Practically a carbon copy in the next game for Bergwijn who then teed it up for Son.
He done great work through the middle leading up to Dele’s goal last night.
His assist for Son was also where he came inside from the right and played a through ball with his left foot.
And then his goal came from pressing via a central position.

He’s not a playmaker like Eriksen/ van der Vaart but I think his dribbling, close control and ability to get the ball moving forward can be quite the asset there. Really would like to see it given a go, not sure it will be but it’s something I’d be intrigued to see.

 

I think he’d be interesting as a 10 but not as an 8

 

I think that coming in from the right allows him to exploit space in the middle. It makes him far harder to pin down.
If we had someone that could overlap effectively from right-back and a midfield playmaker, then I think he'd be even more dangerous.
Paskotsi showed some promise doing it, but that's a big ask for a teenage centre-half.

 

He did start as an AM at Sao Paulo, before his pace saw him moved out to the wing at PSG

He's certainly been getting a lot of joy in pre-season moving into the middle to work as an auxiliary AM, and he has the touch to make those bounce passes that Scarlett and Bergwijn benefitted from a useful weapon in the locker, but that being said I'm not completely sold on him being a fulltime AM because if he does he's more likely to be closed down quickly while his current role shifting inside to get a bounce pass off before the defence regroups mainly works because he's come inside and broken the lines before anyone's picked him up

 

His treatment after the CL SF was an absolute disgrace. The only bloody reason we made the Final and benching him was not only an insult but also was more than one nail in the coffin of failure for that game.
I can think of a lot of players who would have taken that treatment badly and left, but he has always given 100%.
Looks to be a great guy as well and very popular in the club. Wish we had more with that attitude.

 

Open training day stream:

Supposed to have started already, but I'd expect it to get going at 11.
Not really my thing, but I'm sure some people will appreciate it and it's nice to see the club doing it.
Getting the academy games up will be another step in the right direction.

 

It's useful for testing our streaming infrastructure, not just in terms of whether it works but also gauging the sort of traffic it will receive

We definitely underestimated the traffic for the Orient match, although I don't recall any buffering or freezing for the Colchester and Not Wimbledon matches

 

There's a few people online suggesting that the Chavs intend to parade their CL trophy before we play them in the MIND tourney

Surely this gives us added incentive to get Romero done? Picture us having Romero walk onto the pitch to unveil him to the crowd, while just so happening to keep the Chavs waiting at the side of the pitch with what they got from last season's Battle Pass

Maybe have Romero walk the entire touchline so the entire crowd can get a good look at him?

 

Chavs showing off the CL trophy reminds me of a story about Stan Bowles, along the lines of Sunderland had the FA cup on show and Bowles had a bet with another QPR player that he could knock the cup off the table in 3 goes ,needless to say he won and it didn't go down well at Roker

 

Amazing story, Bowles was a good player, but a great character, I would recommend his autobiography to anyone who loves the game, its a fabulous read.

 

One thing this pre-season's doing, it's making me like the players again

Considering how last season mainly involved me thinking of calling Amnesty International on the players' behalf, while others started actively hating the team to the point they were editing highlights of certain players to circus music, it was quite difficult to like most of our players last season as if you didn't get irritated by them you were irritated by how they were being deployed in an ass-backwards system that only exposed their weaknesses

 

I think that's an important point. Many of us last season, certainly post West Ham 3 -3 started to really hate watching Spurs. The negativity of our play was very frustrating especially when we knew that we had such a potentially lethal attack. Good managers select the team, agree on a method and then let their players express themselves. It seems that Jose's success has inflated his ego to the extent that he now often gets in the way of the team and seems to believe he can somehow create a new player from an existing one. You have to be a Ronaldo to stand up to him and as a result he ended up stifling our team rather than enabling it.
Of course what we see on the pitch are players underperforming or just not being able to play how they need to. The joy of a new manager, if he is any good at all, is that new life can be injected into the team so that, as you say, we can begin to like them again.

 

Stan was a true character, one of many around his era.
I remember being at OT and the stretty end singing Stanly stanly show us your arse, he did so to the biggest cheer of the day

 

Hard to believe he only got 5 England caps but he admitted to playing football to support his gambling
Another story , when playing for England Alf Ramsey told him that if he didn't impress he would pull him off at half time, his reply was they only get oranges at QPR, if true it could be why his Eng career was so short
Sadly Stan suffers from Alzheimer's and has moved into a full time care home

 

Bowles, Currie, Worthington - all controversial characters victims of the FA's puritan, dour elements. All with more skill and pure talent than most of the dress that wore the England jersey at the start of the 70's.

 

Party pooper’s arrived

I think part of the reason some of you may be liking the players again is primarily because a number of the deadwood hasn’t featured and/ or left.

Sanchez, Aurier and Sissoko haven’t played.

Ndombele and Lo Celso haven’t played, whilst maybe not deadwood, they've pissed a lot off due to their thus far poor Spurs careers after big money moves.

Toby and Lamela have left.

It’s only Winks, Dier, CCV and Dele who’ve featured regularly that many Spurs fans would pretty much happily sell and two of those were seemingly dropped for the most recent friendly. Dele obviously still has a lot of support despite three years of nothingness but as he’s looked good against lower league opposition in pre-season so far I think it’s (temporarily?) got people back on side and believing “he’ll be back”…

Outside of them, it’s been players who many fans are happy with plus the youth featuring and because we’ve had two positive results out of three I think it’s obviously got some fans in a good mood.

If it’s any consolation though if we can shift the dross I’ll be joining in on the player loving again

 

Was Tony Currie controversial - don't remember that? Was a top class player though. I would add Hudson, Osgood and Marsh to that list though.

 

I also think it was the wrong decision to sub him in the recent league cup final (that we very rarely talk about). He seemed to be the only player actually doing anything. Again there was no complaints from him though.

 

There was a lot of whining from our supporters about Bale not starting, though...