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Tottenham Hotspur 21-22: Ted Lasso Season 2

Captain Ron

By Captain Ron
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Captain Ron
Captain Ron

This was a really good discussion that Spurs really need to mix up their management and get bigger. Levy doing it all is just bad.  

kingkoopa6
kingkoopa6

"stevie lookin like the black grealish" - expressions 

Captain Ron
Captain Ron

It would have been funnier to draw Nottingham Forest.

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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12876

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BTW - with Son playing, this got me wondering about the COVID tests. It appears they players had false positives.

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After further analysis following Premier League protocol, two players – whose names will not be disclosed due to medical confidentiality – returned false positive tests for COVID-19 on Friday after returning from international duty.

 

Edited by Captain Ron
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DeepEastTexas

DeepEastTexas 640

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20 minutes ago, midtown said:

If Tanguy can keep his form we might have a decent season

He's great against lesser competition. He has his best games in the early rounds of the FA, the Carabao Cup, and Europa lightweights.  He needs to play this way against mid-table and top 6 clubs. 

But I agree, if he can keep this up, we'd have a good year. 

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midtown

midtown 3345

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17 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

Dele was a beast just 3 years ago. I mean for God's sake, THAT goal against Palace. The guy had it. And he certainly does not right now.

Agreed that he seems to not be passionate bout football anymore but I also think Mourinho fucked his head up.   

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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12876

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Frankly, maybe he isn't much better than what we thought of Wilshere. Immensely talented, yet dude let it all go to his head. Dele isn't somehow special, he's just another in a long line of players that when they finally had that stardom, they got lazy. I think Mou accelerated it, but I don't think he wouldn't have gone this way if Poch was still here.

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DCLonghorn

DCLonghorn 244

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Harry Winks, the Europa Conference League, and the sadness of watching players visibly fade

By Charlie Eccleshare 4h ago

 

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Athletic article

Listening to Harry Winks speak so openly about his and Tottenham Hotspur’s struggles after their dreadful 1-0 defeat to Vitesse Arnhem, the overwhelming emotion it stirred up was sadness.

Winks, talking animatedly and eloquently, clearly had a lot to get off his chest last night. We sometimes think of the players as the last people to feel the disappointment of a team’s defeats, but how could the last couple of years have been anything other than extremely difficult for Winks?

Spoiler

Listening to Harry Winks speak so openly about his and Tottenham Hotspur’s struggles after their dreadful 1-0 defeat to Vitesse Arnhem, the overwhelming emotion it stirred up was sadness.

Winks, talking animatedly and eloquently, clearly had a lot to get off his chest last night. We sometimes think of the players as the last people to feel the disappointment of a team’s defeats, but how could the last couple of years have been anything other than extremely difficult for Winks?

He has gone from England regular and Champions League final starter, playing under a front-footed manager who rated him highly, to this. Hustling around for what is effectively Spurs’ B team and getting outplayed in Europe’s new third-tier club competition.

No wonder he looked so upset post-match as he answered questions honestly from the assembled media about where it has all gone wrong.

“No. No, I can’t,” Winks said when asked to try and explain the decline. He used the word “difficult” 10 times in a press conference that lasted less than six minutes. Two of them were in relation to new head coach Nuno Espirito Santo leaving all 11 of the players who started against Newcastle United on Sunday at home for this trip to the Netherlands, which has led to allegations of a two-tiered Spurs squad.

“It is tough, yeah,” he said. “We’re meant to be a team. It’s meant to be competition. It’s meant to be competitive. Everybody should be fighting for (a place in the) weekend games, and it’s difficult. Motivation should be everybody fighting for the same cause and the same thing. It’s difficult.”

Everyone reading this will have their own view on Winks’ personal situation: Everything changed with Mauricio Pochettino’s departure just under two years ago, it’s not being suited to Jose Mourinho and then Nuno’s styles of play, it’s a consequence of the ankle injuries he suffered. Many will simply say it’s down to Winks and his level dropping (it’s worth saying that on Thursday night he was at pains to take responsibility for his performances).

But perhaps this isn’t really the point. Maybe it’s more about taking a moment to reflect on the disappointment of seeing a team disintegrate and the collateral damage therein.

Winks wasn’t the only one last night, on an evening when Spurs looked for all the world like a team there for the taking.

The puffed-up recent Champions League finalists up against an energetic, highly-motivated side who were playing in front of a raucous home crowd — a first sell-out at their ground for seven years.

Competing with Winks for the most potent symbol of the Tottenham decline over the last couple of years was Dele Alli, the man who, on the club’s previous visit to the Netherlands, set up Lucas Moura’s last-gasp winner against Ajax to send the team into the Champions League final with a sumptuous assist. Now here he was, a shadow of his former self, with those watching left asking: “What’s happened to Dele? What position does he even play any more?” Like Winks, Dele was an England regular not so long ago.

Then there was Davinson Sanchez, another veteran of that epic Champions League run under Pochettino, who looked similarly devoid of confidence even if his overall performance on the night was not bad.

There was an excruciating moment towards the end when Winks undercooked a header that put Sanchez in trouble. He was forced into an acrobatic clearance that felt painfully desperate. Ben Davies was also representing the class of 2018-19, still dutifully getting up and down the left flank of a Spurs team that was part future prospects, part weird phantom of a moment in time that has now well and truly passed.

When Winks was asked about his future, he naturally stopped short of saying he wanted to leave. But after reports surfaced during the recent international break of him wanting a loan move in January, it wasn’t hard to read between the lines when he said: “I love Tottenham, I’ve always made that clear, but I want to play football. And I want to play regular football. The only way to play your best football, get momentum, is when you’re playing regularly.”

Tottenham will be reluctant to sell a player at a position where they don’t have much cover, and that’s their prerogative. But as Winks spoke to reporters in the media room of Arnhem’s GelreDome, the need for a fresh start was painfully apparent.

Great personal performances like the one against Real Madrid at the Bernabeu four years ago this month or against Spain in Seville a year later that drew such fulsome praise from Pochettino and England counterpart Gareth Southgate feel further and further away.

Dele is closer to the first-team picture under Nuno, but it’s similarly hard to imagine him rediscovering his best form anytime soon. Sanchez meanwhile has looked off the pace for some time now.

Teams evolve, players leave, squads endure “painful rebuilds”. These things happen all the time in football. Perhaps it’s so clearly seeing the rebuild taking place in games like this one that makes Spurs’ current situation so odd.

The Europa Conference League was supposed to be a chance for Nuno to blood youngsters and keep his fringe players sharp for domestic matters. That remains his intention, and we can debate the merits of resting all 11 of his starters from the weekend to keep them fresh for Sunday’s trip to a West Ham United side who are flying one rung up the ladder in the Europa League another time.

But the unfortunate reality is that playing in UEFA’s new competition so far has, for Spurs fans, primarily been about the sadness of watching players fading before their eyes.

“They stuck by me, I stuck by them – and I want to play for Tottenham,” Winks said poignantly last night. “But it is difficult when you get matches here and there, confidence is low and you don’t get that run of games. It is difficult.”

It is difficult. Not only to be part of, but also to watch.

 

 

Edited by DCLonghorn
First time spoiler use... User idiocy
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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12876

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1 hour ago, Schulz2.0 said:

He was shitty before Mourinho. 

This. I realize my quote about him was really confusing. I think he WOULD be lazy under Poch now if he stayed. Poch was letting his act go a little at the end, but he was already starting to fall off.

I think Mou accelerated it because Mou challenged him on it. But at the time he was already in that "I'm so good, I don't need this" mindset and started to shut down more.

 

I don't know how a change in team helps him, he's going to still be lazy. The only question is what does it take to light a fire under his ass?

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mr. littlejeans

mr. littlejeans 184

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dele is lazy AND being asked to do things he's not good at doing, like dropping deep and distributing the ball. bad combo.

then when he's put in a better position tactically, like he was yesterday, he's still lazy and has got guys like winks trying to boss the midfield instead of dembele and wanyama. bad combo.

it also doesn't help that nuno is kind of a shit manager and creating divides in the squad between the first and second team players by some of his decisions, as winks hinted at during his post-match interview yesterday.

 

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mr. littlejeans

mr. littlejeans 184

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3 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

Winks isn't playing much because Winks sucks. He should have be sold on the cheap. 

oh no doubt. the only reason he ever played for spurs was because levy wasnt active enough in the transfer market to replace dembele and wanyama when they started declining.

i just felt like he was implying there is now a team divide and nuno leaving the entire PL starting XI home is further perpetuating that, leading to lack of motivation for some.

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