Following on from last night’s shocking performance and result against Vitesse Arnhem in our Group G Europa Conference League clash, Tottenham Hotspur will be looking to get back on track as we face bubble blowing West Ham United this coming Sunday.
The positive from midweek, if you can call it that, is the defeat can be laid squarely at head coach Nuno Espirito Santo’s decision to rotate the entire pack once again and not even have some big hitters on the bench, so they should be fresh and raring to go – but of course with Premier League struggles and inconsistent form, our place in Europe (and the finances that brings) is now in doubt for the remainder of 2021/22.
West Ham are in mixed form themselves sitting only a point below us, but they will be buoyed by their own European progression, so this is set to be a pretty tight, and I imagine, end to end sort of encounter and we’ll need our big players to step up and be counted now as making it three wins on the spin again in the top flight would be the perfect way to bounce back from our most recent hiccup.
Now i feel better.
Come on Harry. Act like a man. An adult. not a disappointed five year old who is disappointed with the presents he got for his birthday.
Niall – I won’t talk too much about England as I care less about how HK performs in that set-up, but much like you use that argument to justify your opinion, to me it justifies my point to a degree. If he’s scoring for England, the problem isn’t form, it’s context.
I think different people will see it differently/we will see what we want to see to justify our respective opinions. In the end, as always, there’s probably a bit of truth in both. I appreciate the exchange of points of view, in any case.
I will just say this – you’d like to think that as national team captain, Kane brings more than just goals to that team. National set-ups are all about continuity and the hugely successful ones don’t chop and change at the slightest drop in form. It’s hard enough to get 23 players to know each other on the pitch when they only meet up every 3 months; if they’re 23 different players each time, it’s mission impossible. Eden Hazard is still getting picked for Belgium despite rather indifferent recent club form, and rightly so for me. Success has to involve some degree of continuity. Specifically when said players are still performing for their country…
As for Spurs, as long as the alternative to HK is Dane Scarlett, who despite huge potential is only just a kid (his indifferent performance against Vitesse only reaffirmed this), I’d rather persevere with the proven commodity and ride through the rough patch, than throw a youngster in at the deep end before he’s ready. It’ll likely do nothing to improve Kane’s form and it’ll hurt Scarlett’s development.
Playing with a front 3 made up of 2 players who have never consistently scored (Moura and Bergwijn) hardly seems more appealing to me.
Now we can all regret the lack of an alternative for Kane, which I do, but that is another topic altogether.
(For the record, I wasn’t against selling Kane in the summer, if the funds had been properly and fully reinvested in the squad. In theory, using the funds to improve several areas of the squad could have made sense. But did you really trust Levy to do that?)
Re Youri, with all due respect to him he has nowhere near Kane’s track record. Youri has blown hot and cold his whole career.
Kane’s current form may be up for debate, but even accepting that it’s not where it should be, he has at least been fairly consistent in the last 7 seasons.
Youri might be putting in a shift, but is that enough? If putting in a shift is all that’s required to play for Spurs, why did we sell players like Michael Dawson, and why aren’t we playing Harry Winks more? Effort has never been the issue with them.
It’s because despite their work rate, they weren’t/aren’t good enough for a club aspiring to play in the CL.
I personally would pick PEH over Tielemans any day of the week, and I just don’t think we’re ever going to see the best of Skipp if we limit his opportunities.
If those 2 are struggling (along with too many others), for me it goes back to the question: is Nuno getting the best of them? Would those players shine playing for Brendan Rodgers, and/or would Youri shine playing under Nuno? Asking the question provides a partial answer, for me.
BS….playing with that front 3, experiment I know, and not very appealing, but would/could it be any worse than what is happening at the mo?
If I am right Newcastle have scored more gls in the Prem than us.
For me we have to keep Hoj n Skipp together the only pairing in our team that seems to be working. COYS
That’s true PY but we can’t flog them to death and currently don’t have any decent replacements for the DM role. We did buy a young lad who already looks better than Winks but we chose to loan him back to the selling club for the season. He could have been gaining experience with us in the ECL and league cup. I think it’s fair to say that our first choice back 4 isn’t doing too badly, it’s our lack of creativity in moving the ball forward that is the issue. If we could score goals I believe our defence and first choice defensive midfielders would play their part in getting us wins, however narrow they may be.
I think we’re on different wave lengths here BS,
Re Hazard, I would argue that Belgium hardly has a player( as good) for that position.
However, currently England does have several strikers scoring more goals(for their club) than HK.
And I wasn’t actually saying to drop Kane from England, what I was saying that on his current club form would he get selected. Which is a different thing altogether.
Re Tielemans, I was never comparing him to Kane, But I did say he is currently better than what we have in our mid field, I can’t give you the Skipp one m8 (sorry) Tielemans is for now a better player.
PEH is in and around the same level (I’ll give you that one)
I don’t even want to go near Winks, on Thursday nite past against Vitesse, a player like Winks should’ve been running the show, spreading the ball driving the game, but yet again he was side to side and backwards (mostly) if he tries a pass more than a yard (for you metre) it goes astray.
He rarely shoots.
He plays a pass then drops back rather than go forward to create the overlap.
He constantly gives the ball back to the guy who gave it to him, he creates very little going forward and is poor defensively often being out muscled.
I just don’t see what he brings, other than if we were 4-0 up (if only) he could come on to run the clock down.
There you’ve made me go off on one about Winks now. 😉
Re Dawson I always thought we got rid of him after a serious injury playing for England and he couldn’t get his form back after it (see Dier and Dele)
Re Levey, trust him to reinvest funds on players let me think on that, it would be a no🤔
I think PY’s (hi PY) have just about nailed it re HK.
Playing the alternative front 3?
Well it can’t be any worse as Kane ain’t getting any goals any way, so why not.
Re Nuno I’m in total agreement, is he the man for Spurs? would players run thru brick walls for him? , is the job too big for him?
ND …. I think I’ve said this to you before but why would you think a striker scores more for his country which is full of quality players, playing as a team, than he does for his club which is full of out of form players, resulting in a team performing poorly. How can you not understand that this must affect any striker? Also, as I’ve said before and BS has also said …. why use Kane as an isolated example of poor form and ignore the form of the rest of the team. Winning or losing is a team effort, surely. And why the hell has Kane come up again.
Didn’t we beat City with a front three of Bergwijn, Son and Moura?
Geoff I write this slowly so that you can understand it😉
I’ve just said this before and previously.
Kane has for many years been our leading player and indeed talisman, he has basked in the glory of being Spur’s top player, again I’ll say that in my opinion he hasn’t exactly been playing well for England.
For what ever reason, he is not playing well for us, our goal scorer isn’t scoring goals.
You can’t win a game without any shots in a second half.
Now we are in a flux at the moment and Kane is a big part of that.
I could say we won our first games, 1 against the current champions without him on the pitch.
So here’s my point yes we are playing to a degree poorly, but the one player who has regressed most is indeed HK.
Hence my reason for pointing this out.
However I’m wrong, he playing the best football of his career. ⚽😉
ND …. ‘To a degree poorly” …. are you a master of the understatement? I disagree that Kane is playing his best football (or did I misunderstand you lol). I’m surprised that you think Kane has regressed more than Dele, for example. I do agree that for many years Kane was our leading player. Was that perhaps due to playing in MP’s high performance team as against the current low performance team. How many current squad members are on top of their game? I’m guessing you may have played the game, maybe not as a striker but, more than any other position, a striker needs good support from the players behind and around him.
Some really interesting discussion points here with sensible, reasoned arguments.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that we have had the luxury of two top players one of whom has not been performing for various reasons.
We have to also recognise that we have an average first team squad with a very mediocre group of back up players. Oh to have Man City’s bench (Brighton match)in our first team let alone bench ( Raheem Sterling wasn’t even around). We have no super subs as was shown on Sunday. No point in substituting with our lot unless you are trying to run down the clock. We had no one that would make a difference.
We have signed Moura, Bergwijn, Lo Celso who have regressed. We signed Jack Clarke and Ryan Sessegnon who have regressed. Bryan Gil is not a David Ginola. We signed a young prospect Papa Sarra who looks promising and then loaned him back.
I keep banging on about youngsters in our club. Do we have any? If so give them some game time. ( Scarlett is not the answer, at present, but there must be others. If not what is going on?)
The January transfer windows looms. Will we be able to sell some of dismal second string/ bench warmers? Will we be able to attract one decent player? The simple answer is probably not. We then get to summer in desperation for a clearout and Levy’s blue cross sale of bargain buys.
Something drastic has to happen soon. Would a top coach want to come to Spurs with the present chairman and squad?
Niall – Eden Hazard is playing in the Belgian team when players like Dries Mertens (who has now surpassed Diego Maradona and Marek Hamsik as the all time leading scorer of Napoli), Yannick Carrasco (starts for Atletico), Eden’s brother Thorgan (starts for Dortmund) or even KdB (who plays on the wing for Belgium in certain games) are being rotated in and out.
There is plenty of competition for places in those wide positions for Belgium. If Eden Hazard is being picked ahead of those players, it’s got nothing to do with lack of alternatives, and everything to do with the intangibles he brings as a captain.
On those merits alone, Kane would absolutely merit selection.
Also, if you look back a few years, players like Emile Heskey played how many games for England – not because he was a goal threat himself but because he allowed others to shine. Putting the best 11 on the pitch doesn’t always equate to putting the 11 best players together. You may talk up the other strikers available for England, but how many offer anything else besides the goals? Even when he isn’t scoring, Kane can still produce a killer pass.
You may discount those contributions but Gareth Southgate isn’t. And coincidentally or not, that coincides with England’s most successful period in a long time…
wentworth – Stating the obvious I know but to have City’s bench we would need City’s oil money, which we don’t. Its why the one question people on sites like this will never answer is “where does the money come from ?”
It would actually be possible to drop Kane if you played like we did against City, on the break and at pace with Son, Moura and Bergwijn all bombing forward. But we aren’t playing like that at the moment.