With Tottenham Hotspur putting in two poor performances against Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea side in our EFL Cup semi-final defeat earlier on this month, no doubt manager Antonio Conte would love a dose of revenge as we make the trip to Stamford Bridge this coming Sunday.
Confidence and spirits should’ve been massively boosted given the dominance we showed over Leicester City in midweek, particularly the euphoria that would’ve come from the manner of our late victory with Steven Bergwijn’s Stoppage time brace.
Covid permitting, Chelsea should only be without Reece James (injury), Trevoh Chalobah (injury), Edouard Mendy (AFCON), Andreas Christensen (Covid) and Ben Chilwell.
Spurs’ own injury situation has eased with the players who have now returned, and it shouldn’t be too long before we have Son Heung-Min, Eric Dier and Cristian Romero back in contention either.
What Sunday actually brings though is open to debate. More recently in the league we edge ahead in the form guide for the last five and Chelsea have struggled, but whether we’ll perform in a way that sees us take advantage will only be truly known at the full time whistle.
Cross everything, as a positive result here really means we can take advantage of our games in hand.
Let’s take it to them this time. COYS
We got a very good result on Wednesday nite, real nail biter, but in reality given the attempts on goal the dominance in possession even a draw would have been a travisty.
Like many have said it was a pity it took so long for us to score, with that said on another nite Kane could’ve gotten 3. But we won on the night and that was the main thing.
Conte as I said in earlier posts has boosted both fitness and confidence in our players.
He has started (just started) perhaps a winning belief if not mentality, under our last two managers and maybe even Poch, Wednesday would’ve been a defeat or at best a draw.
Now Chelsea is a different animal, thay can be a talented team on their day, with that said I certainly think that in their last couple of games against us, whilst dominant, they hardly peppered our goal with shots and indeed their goals had a big hint of fortune.
Where I disagree with HT only a little is that I feel we have a good 14 players, Chelsea have a good 20 or so and City have a good 24, and to compete we need at the very least a good 18 players and a bit of luck.
With that said, on our day we can beat Chelsea, and after Wednesday here’s hoping
COYS.
Niall. I didn’t mention either the Man City or Chelsea squads. I wasn’t comparing the Spurs squad to those 2 clubs. We cannot possibly compete at their level of squad strength and overall quality of players.
When I say that I believe that THFC has a good squad of players, it is relative to the level we are currently at as a club, looking at the whole of the PL as competition. We are a long way off spending the kind of money that those two clubs have done, and are spending on their squads.
Not having a squad as strong as the likes of City doesn’t make ours a bad one. Just a much less strong one. And, I wouldn’t say that Winks is a bad player because he isn’t up to the quality of De Bruyne. I wouldn’t lay into Davies because he is not at the same high level of Dias. And so on….
Luckily for Spurs (and all the rest,) we don’t have to play City every week. But then again, we are one of only 2 sides to have beaten them in the PL this season. And… it was without Harry Kane in the team! (But, maybe they would have beaten us that day, if Harry was in their team!) 😉
The bottom line is; That we need to improve our overall squad strength a helluva lot to compete at the level that the likes of City and Chelsea are currently at. And, we are talking about last seaons PL winners and CL Champions, no less. Whose squad spending in recent years has been enough to fund the squads of several of the PL clubs at the lower end of the scale. In Citys case, over a £billion worth on players.
De Bruyne earns almost twice as much as Kane. Dias almost twice as much as Davies. Son apparently earns £200k a week. Sterling, £300k a week… If you get my drift.
And by stark contrast to all of this; Brenford’s entire annual wage bill is said to be around the £12.8m mark. With De Bruyne alone earning close to twice as much as Brentfords entire playing squad! ….. And yet the Bee’s still beat the Gooners 2-0! HaHa! And drew 3-3 with Liverpool, earlier in the seaon!
How is any of this even possible?!
Anyhow, I’m just trying to give some perspective here. And a bit of counter-balance to (for example) Wentworths daily rants on the overall strength of the Spurs squad and his insistence on highlighting the poor quality of so many of our players. I just don’t agree!
BUT…
None of this means that we can’t do better. None of this means that we do not need to strengthen. None of this means that we shouldn’t now sell a few. Or buy a few too!
………… City could put Grealish on the bench every week and still keep winning! They could have Kane sat idle, next to him, and still keep on winning!!!
But, we don’t play them every week and Kane is still a Spur. And yet we also know that we can beat them, anyway! How is this possible?!
And on Sunday? Can we beat Chelsea? Yes, we can. But it ain’t no shame on Spurs, if we don’t…
If we want to compete in terms of squad strength with clubs that can spend more than they earn then we have to develop our own players, which is where I have some concerns. Dilan Markandy has decided he had no future at the club and left for some playing time. Last season Tanganga should have been on loan like Skipp. Instead he hung around the club not doing very much and his development suffered. Whatever Conte’s strengths developing young players isn’t something he’s interested in. But as a club we can’t buy the number of players we need for a really strong squad and every player that comes through the ranks is one we don’t need to buy.
Agree HT. If the expectation is that we compete with City for titles, that’s a very high bar to set.
We should aim to be the “best of the rest” after the top 3 teams, which is a reasonable goal and a door into the top 4.
I personally would be very happy with a draw here. We’re on a nice little unbeaten run, and there are other opportunities for 3 points elsewhere. I hope we approach this game pragmatically, and not attack them at will hoping to avenge the LC defeats. Let’s focus on the bigger picture and winning the war, regardless of what happens in this specific battle.
jod – developing players through the academy is great if the club’s ambition is to be in the top half of the table, but I don’t think there is a single recent example of a club winning things with a team majoritarily made up of players coming through the academy.
Even the clubs with the best academies, the Barcas and Bayerns of this world, rely on heavy investment in the transfer market to build winning teams. Put it this way: nobody has recently been able to build a consistent winner relying majoritarily on the products of their academy.
If that is what ENIC are trying to achieve at Spurs, they are trying to be the first club in modern football to make it work – which is setting an unreasonably high bar. You can laud the “outside of the box” thinking, but you can also regret the adoption of a vastly unproven (some might say losing) model.
Either the academy is seen as a “nice to have”, a channel which can produce a good player for the first team every once in a while, but doesn’t detract from the need to recruit externally with a decent degree of competence, or it is seen as the main way of improving the first team, in which case I think everybody needs to have realistic expectations as to how far this model can take Spurs.
I think the investment in the stadium says as much, it is a recognition that the academy model has limits. It is an admittance that the number one priority is to raise the revenues of the club to help bridge the gap with bigger clubs.
I won’t get into the relevance of choices made, and if the massive investment in the stadium was necessarily the smartest way to maximmise profits (a cheaper stadium with comparable capacity but with less belles and whistles would have lowered the overhead and increased ROI, but what is done is done). Looking at the situation positively, here is to hoping that the stadium will finally live up to its promise and generate additional revenue streams.
If we can get closer to the bigger clubs, and recruit better (the true challenge in my opinion), we might be able to compete on a smaller budget. The LEicesters of this world seem to do far better than us in identifying talent. When we have had recognised talent evaluators at the club (Paul Mitchell, Comolli…) we have managed to alienate them and drive them away. In my eyes, this is by far a bigger problem than anything we do at academy level.
Our big problem is that we have a few good players but a large group of mediocre ones that should not have been bought and certainly should move on.
Like Jod,my biggest concern is that our fantastic facilities do not seem to be providing future talent unlike many clubs that have outstanding youngsters. Also our scouting system seems very poor currently.
In the recent past we signed Walker, Rose, Alderweireld, Vertongen, Dele. Currently only Son has exceeded expectations.
You don’t have to spend massive amounts to pick up top talent. I think Levy is a big problem now that he seems to procrastinate over every possible signing.
wentworth – with all due respect, our academy has produced our best payer in our squad, and decent players like Winks and Tanganga who are firmly in the current first team picture. If anything, the academy has produced more than what we might have reasonably expected.
A quick look around the PL will show that very few clubs can claim that almost 30% of the starting 11 came from the academy, as was the case for us in our last league game.
And I’m not even talking about the academy products who may not have made our first team, but have gone on to generate nice profits for the club when moved on.
If you’re expecting/relying on the academy to produce more than that, again that is setting the expectation levels very high.
I’m not sure who you have in mind when you think of those outstanding youngsters you refer to, but I’d ask what percentage of the first team those players represent.
Where I do agree, is that our outside recruitment has been poor overall.
Here is a list of our top 10 most expensive transfers, according to Transfermarkt:
NDombele
Sanchez
Sissoko
Lo Celso
Bergwijn
Soldado
Reguilon
Lamela
Son
Moura
That list makes for grim reading overall, and is further proof that we have completely missmanaged money when buying players from outside.
Our biggest problem lies with how we have spent money when we have spent it, rather than anything the academy has produced or failed to produce.
Wentworth. Spurs have recently bought a lot of players that were/are considered to be top young talents.
Namely: Lo Celso, Ndombele, Reguillon, Royal, Bryan, Bergwijn, Sessegnon, Romero, Rodon, Clarke.
And on Wednesday Spurs had Tanganga, Kane, Winks and Skipp all starting the match and all from the THFC Academy. On the bench we had Scarlett, also from the Academy.
That means that 12 of the 15 above mentioned players were in the match squad versus the Foxes.
Just because you don’t personally rate that many of them highly, doesn’t actually mean they are all indeed mediocre players. Some of course are better than others. Some have yet to prove themselves. Some have not lived up to their hype. But surely this is to be expected.
Nonetheless, whatever you may think of any single one of them, it is not necessarily what the club, Conte and other coaches believe of them. Or that other clubs and coaches may see in them…. One man’s mediocre is another mans pretty good… 🙂
You don’t rate Winks or Bergwijn for instance. But I do! 🙂 And Doherty was a star on Wednesday. You were relieved that he was on the bench. Conte changed his mind at half-time, replaced Royal, and Doherty was great!
But, IMO, we do also have to maybe question some of the recent coaching and management of many of these players. Seeing as some of the not so average ones in your opinion had also not been performing so well until Conte arrived. Namely Kane and Son. Dele also. Dele of course is still not getting games. But this is not Levy’s fault.
You mentioned Rose, Walker Vertonghen. All at one time called not good enough for Spurs by many a supporter and VS poster. Kane too. Add to that Modric and Eriksen! Hugo! Now Dele…
It seems no one is good enough for Spurs at some point in their career… We’re doomed. We’re cursed!
But we are currently 5th in the PL with 3/4 games in hand on those 2 London clubs above us. How is this possible?! What with so much mediocrity around the gaff! 🙂
BS, there is only two playwers on your long list that make grim reading for me.
That’s Soldado and Ndombele. One because he just couldn’t score goals and yet kept Kane on the bench for a time. And the other just seems to be unhappy at Spurs and so wasting his most obvious talent and natural footballing ability.
There are other players that for various reasons were not always rated by many Spurs supporters but nevertheless were or still are constantly being picked or relied upon heavily under all the managers they have played for. Sissoko, Lamela, Sanchez and Lucas. All by far not the best imo but still worthy of their time and efforts for the club. Even so, all generally underated imo… Except Lucas, who I think is now overatted. But Conte seems to like him. As did Jose! 🙂
So, what do I know?
BS Exactly the comments I have been making ref the mishandling of the transfer kitty .
Throughout there have been poor buys with the obvious one being the wasted Bale money .
In the past couple of years over £150 mil has been spent on players but the wrong ones .
However I feel that if Levy can sanction 3 very good players in this TW then I think that with Conte at the helm and by improving the squad we have a great chance of finishing in the top 4 which would be a great efort .
HT – again I am not saying those players don’t have some value.
What I’m saying that most of those 10 players cost lots of money and have come nowhere near justifiying the price tag. They are poor value for money.
That same list would make for great reading if all of them had cost less than 10 million each. it’s all a question of context and value for money.
With hindsight however, we could habve either:
– spent the same amounts more wisely, which means we could have had better players for the same spend;
– or should have spent less to acquire those players, freeing up funds to address other areas of need in the squad.
I also think that some players on that list have played for Spurs more often than they otherwise might have, if the managers at the time had had better options to pick from.
If the board tells you there is no money to spend, you’re forced to play the players you do have, regardless of what your assessment of those players might be… That’s part of the challenge of inheriting a squad.
Case in point: I saw a post the other day saying Ben Davies had played 250 times for the club. Davies is your typical 6/10 player. I don’t think any manager would claim he is a top PL player or the first name on the team sheet. He’s more of a PL journeyman, a middle of the road player whose biggest quality is availability. He’s not exactly being targeted by all of the top clubs in Europe.
But here we are: 250 games played. He’s just fortunate that he isn’t the biggest problem in the squad right now. That still doesn’t make him a great player.
Out of list that BelgianSpur has made only Son gas turned out to be a great success. The rest are not good enough for top 4. Also there is Jack Clarke and Bryan Gil. Someone is responsible for very poor signings.
Our youth policy has only provided Harry Kane to be top drawer.Tanganga and Winks are just workmanlike. However, Skipp seems to be making great progress.
Fortunately we managed a win against Leicester. If we had lost, the mood on this link would have been quite different.
Problem is Levy will have put his wallet back in the wardrobe now that one swallow has made his summer.
HT I think we are at cross purposes here, I wasn’t comparing Man C or even Chelsea’S line up to ours, what I was trying to get across is that they have those players, who, if some one is injured or needs a rest or what ever, they virtually have another to come in who is as good.
What I was trying to get across is that we have about 14 players so we can’t literally rest our best or rotate effectively. Hope this explains it isn’t about comparing like for like.
On our day with a fair wind we can be as good as if not better than what’s up there, for me this season we showed it against both ManC as you said and I would argue that we were better than Lpool on the day.
I am more in agreement than disagreement with you in this, however the squad does need improving/refreshing to progress but we don’t need the wholesale changes that WW states, though he is justified in some of his views.
We’re Bergs and Doh good on Wednesday nite agreed yes, have they been a constant 6 or 7 out of 10 for Spurs then no, I’m still on the bench with a few of our players and I think Conte is too, hence the reason for a delay in transfers.
I agree that whilst I was a fan of N’Dombele sadly he has to go for his own sake as well as Spurs, similarly and even more sadly Dele now needs a move, I thought he could turn it around but unfortunately he hasntv(for me) and tho maybe out of position, he still doesn’t look “right”.
But a few new faces in a good run in the old FA Cup a result at the weekend who knows.
Stay safe folks.
Agree Niall. That’s the thing about judging players on a very small sample size – it’s not representative.
Bergwijn’s stock is at an all time high after this week’s heroics. Credit where it’s due, fine, but where has this level of performance been in the last 18 months?
I still think if Ajax want to give us what we paid for him, we should bite their hand off.
And that is why I feel Lucas Moura’s stock is also over evaluated. One great night in Amsterdam, a couple of good goals here and there, with large periods of anonymity or ineffectiveness in between.
This thread and its posts, is just a good/great example of how peops/fans see things so differently, yes its about opinions, and luckily we are not all the same.
One persons “Cup of Tea” is another’s “Bitter taste”
For what it is worth I rate Winks, and think there is a good midfielder screaming to get out, maybe that is starting to happen.
Then there is Bergs, I rate him also, I think if he had had the same chances, not with standing injuries, as Lucas we would be witnessing the “animal” we saw on Wednesday consistently.
Thus Son n Harry or Bergs n Son or Bergs n Harry, 3 options of two strikers up top. COYS.
Bleedin hell, forgot, on Sunday v Chavski lets play 3-5-2, same as Wednesday and V Liverfools. COYS
As to Sunday
It will depend on which Chelsea turn up.
If it is the team which played us off the park in the CC then no chance
Mind you less intensity from them and we have a chance
However i feel that we will be over run in mid field and their defence will be too good considering our lack of creativity in the final 3rd
A few good though balls for Bergs might work !!!
BelgianSpur – I never said anything about a majority of the players being developed in house, though apparently you criticise people for things they have never actually said. What I said was “every player that comes through the ranks is one we don’t need to buy” and I’m not sure how that can be wrong. I do question how we develop players, there seems to be a reluctance to send players out on loan, I’m convinced Tanganga in particular would be a better player now if he’d spent last season on loan and actually played more games.
Your comments on player purchases are (as always) vague. The implication is other clubs are doing better but of course these aren’t named. Nor do you explain how exactly you improve the process. You can always make a club look good or bad by being selective in which transfers you highlight. N’dombele makes us look bad, Son makes us look brilliant. As far
BS. How about naming all the very good regular starting players in recent years that have proved to be of great value for money because they were relatively cheap?. There’ll be more on that list! than on your “expensive” one.
Just like the matches. You lose some, you win some. Hopefully we continue to win much more than we lose. As has been the case for a long time now.
Wentworth… My point is not that certain players haven’t been playing in a mediocre fashion at times. Doherty has certainly been poor in the main. But that I don’t feel that they were mediocre players when we purchased them. And given the right coaching and some self confidence etc., can still be good players. We can’t just keep swapping and/or shipping them out. Our squad would suffer even more…….
We are Spurs not City but still some folks seem to think we can compete with them more so than we do. And yet do it on a much lower budget and through the help of our academy. It ain’t happening and it’s not gonna happen. Unfortunately. It’s not just the top priced star players that go to a club like City. They and the other top clubs, also have the cream when it comes to picking the very best kids from an early age…
BS, Davies may not be an all time great, but I bet there’s not one manager at Spurs who hasn’t appreciated having him around. They can’t all be great. They don’t all need to be great!
Wentworth. The Foxes match was not a one-off win. That’s why we are now where we are in the PL … After 9 unbeaten! And for me it wasn’t just about the win anyway. It was all to do with the very good performance and fighting attitude that gave us the win. Which we fully deserved…….
I said at the start of Conte’s tenure, that his some of his best work will need to be done before he can buy anyone new. He couldn’t be waiting for improvement purely based on whatever this transfer window may or may not bring. He had a big job to do before it and he has done it well. And it’s ongoing, of course…..
January is unlikely to see a big change in our squad’s overall look for the rest of the season. In my opinion, It’s just unrealistic to think so. But the work that is put in now and up to the summer is what can then hopefully see a more positive outcome to our comings and goings in prep for the next season. And meanwhile if we can finish in the top 4 and play CL football next season. Then a lot of that work will be down to the likes of those who we have in our squad right now.
Well another Levy mess if reports are to be believed .
The Traore saga rolls on with something like £ 20 +mill needed to get him . What did Levy apparently offer ? £ 15 mill
WHY ? If Wolves rate him for that amount then offer somewhere near their valuation . All Levy appears to do is put other clubs backs up by his meanness and penny pinching tactics . If the boot was on the other foot Levy would adopt the same stance as Wolves .
Will we ever get anyone this TW ? If not will Conte stay ?