Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Southampton

The fact a few of us were expecting an uptick in their form on Saturday morning says a lot...

 

Honestly that seems back to front for me: as keeping Lo Celso while selling Ndombele makes far more sense considering Ndombele is to blame for our complete lack of midfield control since last season, and at the very least Lo Celso is going to challenge for the ball when opponents have it while Ndombele goes missing

A midfield pairing of Zakaria (to pull a name out of the air) & Hojberg with Lo Celso at the tip of it is far more likely control games

 

Don't want the diving cheat anyway. Seriously. A lot of people (particular radio show hosts) assume that we just want our club to win, regardless of how it is achieved. I don't. If it means winning by stetting new records for penalties cheated from the officials I don't want it (of course we wouldn't get half those decisions).

 

I think that we need a playmaker more than someone like Zakaria, who I'd see as competition for Hojbjerg's place.
We don't have anyone pulling the strings and controlling the tempo of the midfield.
A Modric or Carrick-style signing in the summer is key, for me. Possibly two, if we can get someone experienced and a youngster.

 

Lo Celso has had injuries which is unfortunate but he always tries when he is on the field. Ndombele on the other hand flatters to deceive in my view

 

I don’t think either are worth keeping personally, if we could hit the reset button on both I would.

Lo Celso’s shown very little when he’s not been injured, he had a run at the end of last season (7-8 games?) where he impressed but that's been it, in nearly 2 years at the club that's just not good enough for one of our biggest ever signings. Whilst Ndombele is just flashes of skill once in a while, like I said in another match day thread he's basically another Taarabt.

Having two defensively minded midfielders, whether it be Zakaria/ Skipp/ an other with Hojbjerg, behind Lo Celso would be ineffective in my opinion. Lo Celso has shown little to nothing to suggest we should be relying on him to take on that creative mantle that Eriksen once did, he's not a patch on Eriksen both as a player and from a creative aspect. We'd have three midfielders in the side doing very little to assist the attackers. I'd rather Lucas play in that role as he's been the only one who's looked relatively decent there.

I agree with PNP though, a deeper creative player alongside Hojbjerg/ Skipp will be better. Then ideally someone who can operate in front of them.

 

Trying is only half of the job though. Many players have tried over the years, Lewis Holtby always gave 100% but he was dreadful, Soldado always tried and he's up there as one of the worst strikers we've ever had.

We need both quality and work rate and neither Lo Celso nor Ndombele have both.

 

I talked up Ward-Prowse years ago, as he caught my eye in England U21 games.
We should've nicked him a few seasons ago when we could've got him cheaply, but I suspect he'd be too expensive now.
Ran his arse off yesterday and his set-pieces bothered us badly, as well as his passing in the first half.
It would be nice to see a free-kick hit the target once in a while.

 

Hindsight obviously makes it easier to say but in an alternate reality we could've had Tielemans and Grealish. Seeing how well both have done for their respective sides, it's definitely a small kick in the bollocks knowing we chose (and spent more on) Ndombele and Lo Celso.

The downgrades at CM and CAM have massively hurt us, arguably more than at CB because if we had competent midfielders we likely could've relieved the pressure on the defence.

 

Yeah he's really come on as a player, especially over the last 12-18 months.

Best set piece in the taker in the league, though I'd fear what would happen if he joined us, lol.

 

It's certainly workable, as Hojbjerg is a box-to-box midfielder who has been deployed as a DM this season, so with a DM next to him he will push forward more

Obviously he wouldn't be as dynamic as Dembele moving forward, but he can certainly do a job there - and, more importantly, as he can play in both spots of the pivot there's no reason for us to keep hold of Sissoko, so that's a few million extra in the transfer kitty for the summer

 

What I have seen of Lo Celso he has more than just work rate. You are effectively blaming the guy for getting injured which is harsh. Given an injury free run I would expect him to make a difference.
And yes we signed hosts of players who have been ineffective so we cannot afford to discard potential quality because the likelihood is we will end up with another Doherty's or even worse another Bent. Don't know why you pick on Holtby he is far from our worst signing.
Fans are forever urging transfers and seem to forget that the success rate at our level is poor. The number of times we buy players like Ndombele who have clever tricks but no substance is what leads Spurs into being a nearly team. Yes we want flair but turning your noses up at players like Winks, an honest pro IMO, is why we never quite make it.

 

Hojbjerg seems more comfortable playing in front of the back four, but tackling quite high up and aggressively.
I think he'd suit playing alongside a Carrick-type a lot, who helped to shield the defensive while orchestrating the midfield.
They would give us a very solid platform to build from and take a lot of pressure off a creaky backline.

Not sure who can do that sort of job though, unfortunately. Brozovic, maybe?

 

I'm blaming the guy for being poor when he's not injured. The fact he's often injured further makes him a terrible signing. We've spent £42m on what is essentially another Lamela. I agree we don't want any more Doherty's but to be a bit brutal here, the terrible Matt Doherty has 2 goal contributions in 15 league games, the "promising" Lo Celso has 4 in 43, one's a RB and one's meant to be a creative/ attacking midfielder and is also the second most expensive player we've signed.

Holtby was just a name who came to mind as an example of someone who worked hard but was terrible. As was Soldado. I can run a whole list though of players who work/ try hard but are essentially not good enough. Lo Celso is quickly becoming one of them.

Fans who glorify players like Winks are the reasons we never make it because the club then promotes these players like they're the best thing since sliced bread. We've even got Spurs social media always saying Sissoko is the GOAT because of an initial gimmick by fans that ended up becoming serious. Spurs fans have this obsession with glorifying mediocrity and unfortunately it somehow seeps through into the club.

 

Ruling out the players that are simply outside of our price range (Frenkie de Jong, Joshua Kimmich) or aren't worth the arseache (Sandro Tonali, Jorginho), the ones that come to mind that are feasible and can go into the team are Kalvin Phillips, William Carvalho, Stanislav Lobotka, Gabriel (although I get the feeling Benfica don't like us these days...), Ismael Bennacer, Thiago Mendes (who Lyon bought with the Ndombele windfall...), Xeka and Diadie Samassekou, as well as Brozovic

Or we go all-in with Skippy, of course

 

I think we should wait until we have a defense that doesn’t need all of the midfield to plug the gaps before we move them on. Really depends who becomes the permanent head coach

 

There have been a number of matches where Lo Celso was the prime mover so I doubt your claim that he is poor when fit. Like most players it takes a while to come back when you return from injury so until he gets a run in the team he will not perform at his best, but I have seen enough to think he has potential greater than most.
I do not glorify Winks, in fact I did the opposite. He is the kind of workhorse that we often need, we have seen our team without Winks and without Bale and of available players it's hard to think why they were not featured more. Bale can produce the kind of football that changes games and Winks produces the kind of commitment that we have lacked for most of the season. Southampton outplayed us in the first half purely through effort and I have seen that so often this season. Most of their players would not get into the Spurs team just as those from teams like Burnley, Palace, West Brom and so on but they have all outperformed our 'flair' players and the worst of all is Ndombele. I do wonder how much he has infected this team with his laid back ways. You just cannot be laidback in the PL unless you are Zidane and we don't have any of those.

 

I think Gio has plenty to offer if he can get a run of games while fit. Trouble is that he hasn’t been fit for a period of time for a long while now and you have to wonder if we might cut our losses. Players need time to build up physical fitness and match sharpness and I’m not sure he’s ever had the chance to do that here because of injury. Let’s not forget when he was influential for us after the restart last season he was playing with an injury then too.

 

Eriksen came to us as a free kick expert, although we trained that out of him by the end.

 

There hasn't been a number of matches though has there? He's been performing very poorly or not to the levels needed for a good amount of games this season and all we've seen is a few brief glimpses of quality. Brief glimpses are what I'd expect from a young player trying to make their mark, not a fairly experienced player who cost us a hell of a lot money. He may well prove a decent player in time but how much time can we as a club give him? He's had almost two years now and has been outperformed by about 75% of the players in his position in the league. The club are declining because players like him aren't delivering. The drop in quality from Eriksen to Lo Celso is monumental, just as it is from Dembele to Ndombele. Our recruitment has been poor and we're suffering for it. They're our two biggest signings and they've performed dreadfully for large parts.

What we need is both commitment and quality. We had that with Dembele and we had that with Modric before him. We don't have that with Ndombele and we don't have that with Winks, one has the other but we need both to succeed. Players like Winks are at a quality level that should be nowhere near a team like ours but due to the club's poor recruitment he's played a lot more than what he should have and given fans a false perception that he's something we need.