Good Morning binge drinkers.
T minus a few hours and the club we all hold dear is being torn apart by lies, discontent and double-dealing as the The Daily Mail reveals that Emmanuel Adebayor has ‘grown frustrated at White Hart Lane, having made just three substitute appearances this season.’
The article then continues to explain that since the season kicked off that Ade has been hampered by lack of match fitness then a hamstring problem.Therefore completely and utterly negating any scrap of truth there may have been in the piece.
Perhaps I should hold heart to heart talks with NASA regarding me not being selected as an astronaut. The Daily Mail could then run a piece covering the crisis talks, concluding with the acknowledgement that I am a overweight bloke in his forties who hasn’t even passed his cycling proficiency test let alone trained to be a ‘spacemen’ unless you count having been an avid Planet Of The Apes fan as a kid.
We covered the chalkboard and your fab predictions yesterday. Player news is pretty much as you would expect. We don’t have Scotty Parker, the are without the deathbed love child of Myra Hindley and Oswald Mosley.
Tottenham (from): Lloris, Friedel, Gomes, Cudicini, Smith, Gallas, Dawson, Walker, Naughton, Vertonghen, Caulker, Falque, Huddlestone, Mason, Bale, Lennon, Livermore, Sandro, Dembele, Dempsey, Sigurdsson, Carroll, Townsend, Defoe, Adebayor, Obika.
Chelsea (from): Cech, Azpilicueta, Ivanovic, Cahill, Luiz, Cole, Bertrand, Mikel, Romeu, Lampard, Ramires, Mata, Hazard, Oscar, Moses, Marin, Piazon, Sturridge, Torres, Turnbull.
Referee: M Dean Assistants: S Ledger, J Brooks Fourth Official: L Mason.
Very unlucky with the selection problems. What have we learned today? Our first choice 11 is strong, our squad is not.
A few prospects we should keep but Hudd, Dempsey, are nowhere near good enough. The former a mere shadow of the player he was 2 years ago.
I honestly don’t understand why signed Dempsey to replace VDV, I mean I get the VDV thing IF we signed someone decent with the money, but he really is a downgrade, slow, 29, cost £7m and no sell on value. Doesn’t track back on the left, not skilful enough to cut inside, too slow for the right, he’s just an average number 10. We made £3m profit on it, so dodgy hamstrings or not, why weaken the squad? F*CK!!!
what is dempsey,i haven’t worked it out yet
he has a brain and could nut in a header from a cross is what i’m hoping for
I think VDV wanted out and that was that. We don’t have players banging down the door at WHL to play for us, not the ones we want anyway.
Sigg was the real replacement for VDV, Dempsey is suppose to be back-up.
Not to torment myself by revisiting recriminations of transfer windows past, but VDV made enough sound bites to suggest he would have lumped it for another year if we wanted. We made the choice that £10m for a player of his age and fitness, at a club likes ours was good business, and I’m all for that if we follow by signing younger players…Sig is bought as a number 10, yes I agree…but VDV was still on our books. He doesn’t really fit AVBs system but neither does Dempsey, he can press…shit stick me a gym for 6 months and I can press, but he can’t play.
It was just a weird signing and we convinced ourselves he could cover the flanks, he can’t. If that was our only option we should have kept Rafa and had Sig and covering the flanks for 1 year.
Strikers aside we’ve had this problem out wide for 2 or 3 years also. Bale or Lennon aren’t available and we turn to sh*t. Doesn’t have to be a Hazard or Willian, there are plenty of tidy, pacy wide players in Europe who would do a better job then Dempsey. Why have a back up number 10 that can’t play anywhere else, and is mediocre in his best position? Panic buy, should have let him go to Villa.
Agreed it was a panic buy. But I don’t believe we have as many options for transfers as we’d like to.
We don’t encourage young European players because we wont make it easy for them to move on to Bigger clubs in the prem.
And we wont pay the £20m for the best players and pay them £100k a week so I think player acquisitions are going to be difficult for us.
I believe that VDV was only allowed to leave as the club expected to sign Moutinho.
I don’t quite understand what Dempsey does or might do but he seems like a waste of space at the moment
ODM, I agree. Dempsey is one of those players who works very hard to make the most of what natural ability he has. I can respect that to a point. He’ll chase the ball and has good movement, but as an attacking player doesn’t have enough for us.
BrizzleSpur – I’ve thought about that, and I’m not so sure if players or agents plan that long term, to say nothing of the fact that Berba and Modric got their moves in the end. I mean, I don’t see Schalke having problems signing getting KJH and Afellay in and their in and out of the CL (I’m prepared to be wrong about that?).
There are lots of players in Europe, I believe, who would be sound investments for the club. our trouble is our scouting capability became very narrow under Harry, and we stopped making the clever buys. We need a striker…who does Harry want? Tevez. Meanwhile we miss out on Cisse and Jelavic.
In fairness I think the club have recognised this and are changing the set up with a Director of Football etc. If we can achieve this without having another Comoli / Jol debacle, then we should move forward in future windows. Our trouble is not spotting them early enough, we should be getting them before Porto and Shahktar get their hands on them. Falcao was linked to us for £7m when we signed Berba crying out loud, instead we bought Pav for £14m. I wouldn” have known any different, but my point is it’s not all about money, it’s also about expertise and judgement.
I fear for you if you think a guy who was quite happy to leave, who had no meniscus, and was the most subbed player in the Prem last season cos he could hardly ever finish a game or contribute after 60 minutes, is such an upgrade on Dempsey – or that his presence would somehow have made the squad any stronger than it is.
He wasn’t all that.
In case it’s not clear, that’s a reply to the VdV fanboy above. :daumen:
VDV fanboy? I just said I was all for selling him? So would you have sold Modric to Chelsea 2 years ago, because he was quite happy to leave also.
Reasons for selling him, doesn’t fit into the pressing game, not quick enough to keep up with our counter attacks, doesn’t fit in a 433, fitness concerns, value in decline.
Reasons for keeping him – we weren’t able to get Moutinho or Oscar, and nobody else available could change a game including Dempsey.
Tell me honestly who would you have preferred coming in when Bale pulled out today, Dempsey or VDV? Who would you have preferred to come on when it was 2-2, Livermore or VDV?
You must be confusing VdV with another player who would be happy to take his turn on the bench.
VdV was pretty pony last season. He left with my blessing.
You’ll have to remind me of the times VdV showed any aptitude out wide for me to prefer him over anyone else in place of Bale. Subs were made, selections were made based on who was available/in the squad. VdV is not in the squad – and even if he was, he is no upgrade to any that we had available.
I don’t follow this. If VDV played every game Dempsey has, he would have played as many games as his legs would have allowed him to anyway. So you’d have an ageing International coming off after 60 minutes for his understudy who needs games, but isn’t yet ready to start – case in point he’s not been able to hold down a place.
OR
A worse player starting and not effecting games.
How can this possibly be better for our team?
He’s there because we didn’t get Moutinho – at 11pm on deadline day, I can understand the nature of the panic but we shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. We should have got a genuine wide player in January, let alone the 3 months of the summer and kept VDV for a year unless we could find his equal. If Sig ousts him then sell him Jan, but at the moment he’s struggling.
It was the one f*ck up in an other wise shrewd summer from the club, admittedly, but my fear is it’s going to cost us and if we get an injury we’re screwed.
i think dempsey can do a job becuase he is useful,he just needs to hurry it up,still not sure what he actually is though,i assume he is a sheringham type,he is certainly not a wide man
Harry, I don’t know why you even bother clicking on the Daily Mail link to read the story. They are just after your click so they can keep their advertisers happy and it seems like they’ve got you right where they want you. If we ignore them enough, they might go away.
Agree. They gettin more air-time as a result. Ignore them. They don’t even exist in my eyes.
It almost came off but when you compare Defoe, Lennon, Siggy and Dempsey to Torres, Oscar, Hazard and Mata there is no contest really.
The thing I don’t get is Dempsey and Siggy. They don’t really track back, they don’t create and they don’t make so many forward runs.
They are not terrible players but I can’t see what they are meant to be doing.
I’m a little worried about Vert; he was superb going forward but never got back in position after an attack. Chelsea exploited that space before switching to the right for the third goal.
Highlight for me was Defoe- he did very well.
I’m a little worried about Vert; he was superb going forward but never got back in position after an attack.
Don’t worry about Vert, he’s a centre back. Hopefully AVB realises this now.
I totally agree- a quality CB but I worry that AVB prefers him on the left with Caulker and Gallas as CBs and excludes Benny (even when Benny is fit).
He’s certainly good enough on the left. Has played most of his games for Holland there. He’s just a very good, assured player wherever you put him. Benny’s good enough on the left for sure, and if he comes back, Jan can add the assured experience at the back alongside Caulker. But if he’s asked to stay out left he should get on with it. He’s a bit moody there, gets annoyed when he’s lost the ball rather than back-tracking, which isn’t good. But with BAE out he’s needed there. Walker/Caulker/Kaboul/Jan is as good as Walker/Kaboul/Jan/BAE. Not much in it.
I thought Sig showed some great touches, I see him as an intelligent skilful player with a glorious right foot, big, and mobile enough, but he’s not commanding enough yet. For now he needs the big and inform players around him, Bale / Dembele returning will make a difference.
No disrespect to Swansea but there’s so much more pressure, expectation, and scrutiny playing for Spurs. Anderton was the same when we bought him as a youngster, took him 6 months to play well.
Given time I think he’s going to be excellent for us, shame we don’t have the squad to ease him in.
Just realized we could be 9th and behind Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham come 7pm :sick: :sick: :sick:
Chin up. We’re still 5th. We at So’ton next whilst Chelsea play Utd. Hopefully we’ll catch at least one of them up. Ars lose in Norfolk, lolol. This is gonna be another twisty turnie season.