The English Football Thread

[Laylabelle 9,534]

Surely though Arsenal have played since then so youd think it would effect Portsmouth and West Ham as well. So if any of Arsenal have it they'd passed it on..maybe?

[Vesper 30,085]

Spurds are paying for failure to overhaul their squad. Now there’s no quick fix

https://theathletic.com/1668309/2020/03/11/tottenham-jose-mourinho-lloris-champions-league/

Not yet ready or past their best — the Tottenham squad can be broadly divided into these two camps.

There are a few notable exceptions, but in the former group are still-to-settle signings from last summer like Tanguy Ndombele and Ryan Sessegnon, and youngsters like Troy Parrott who are too inexperienced to be relied upon. In the latter group, thirty-somethings Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen and Hugo Lloris are among the Spurs players almost unrecognisable from the level they were at during Mauricio Pochettino’s peak years. Alderweireld and Lloris offered us a reminder of this during Spurs’ dismal Champions League exit to RB Leipzig on Tuesday night.

A major reason for this state of affairs, as my colleague James Maw recently pointed out on The Athletic’s View from the Lane podcast, is the decision not to sign a single player during the transfer windows of summer 2018 and winter 2019, having brought in only Lucas Moura in the winter of 2018.

Reaching the Champions League final in this period suggested Spurs had gotten away with their stadium-enforced frugality, but the present situation makes that seem like an illusion, an unsustainable sequence made possible by a manager and group of players who, by the end, were on their knees wringing out every drop of their collective talent and desire.

Now is when the consequences of that self-imposed transfer embargo can really be felt. This is the time when the players who should have been signed in that period would have been coming to the end of their second season and theoretically fully settled at the club, helping to give the squad the refresh it so desperately needed.

Because when you think of most successful recent Spurs signings — and those of most big clubs — few were instant hits.

Of the Gareth Bale-money signings in 2013, Christian Eriksen and Erik Lamela started off solidly but both went to another level in their second and third seasons. Even Dele Alli who hit the ground running enjoyed his best season in his second campaign at the club in 2016-17 when he scored 18 Premier League goals — almost double his next best tally. Bale himself endured a difficult first couple of seasons before an outstanding finish to the 2009-10 campaign.

Looking forward, this has major implications for the summer rebuild that Spurs so desperately need. Given the slow-burn nature of most signings — unless they are exceptionally expensive or quick to gel — it seems unrealistic to expect any to instantly settle and transform this Spurs team. It’s possible Ndombele and Sessegnon will make big strides in what will be their second seasons next term, and Giovani Lo Celso already looks being a brilliant signing, but the pipeline of players from the last few years is pretty dry.

Of the 2017 summer signings, Davinson Sanchez and Juan Foyth were supposed to be a centre-back pairing for the future, but Jose Mourinho appears to have little to no faith in the latter. Foyth has played just three times under him and is consequently open to a summer move. The remainders are Serge Aurier, who continues to divide opinion, Paulo Gazzaniga who has shown himself this season not to be a No 1 of the future, and the already departed Fernando Llorente.

Then there are young home-grown players from the last few years like Harry Winks and, well, that’s about it.

Spurs are more hopeful that Parrott, Oliver Skipp and Japhet Tanganga can become first-team regulars, but certainly in the case of the former two, it’ll likely be a year or so before they are fully established.

In short, plenty of patience is going to be required, and with chairman Daniel Levy admitting last week that there will be a reduced budget should Spurs fail to make the Champions League, shrewd signings who need a bit of time to develop will be the only option. That is unless Spurs sell one of their star players like Harry Kane or Dele and reinvest it as effectively as Liverpool did when they sold Philippe Coutinho and brought in Alisson and Virgil van Dijk. Should Tottenham choose to hold on to their best names and be more financially constrained, then Liverpool again illustrate how to effectively develop a side, with Joel Matip, Sadio Mane, Georginio Wijnaldum and Andy Robertson costing only a combined £67 million. But it took them time.

Whether Mourinho is the man to oversee this kind of rebuild is open to debate — he has certainly never been tasked with doing so on such a meagre budget before.

And watching the 3-0 defeat to RB Leipzig on Tuesday night it also became apparent just how many of the old Spurs guard look unrecognisable from their former selves. Lloris’s two errors caught the attention, but just as worrying was Alderweireld’s obvious discomfort against Leipzig’s pacy front three. The three-year contract extension he signed in December is suddenly looking like far less of a coup than it felt at the time.

Eric Dier had similar difficulties, and it was hard not to brace oneself in the second half when the rapid Timo Werner picked the ball up around the halfway line with only Dier between him and the Tottenham goal. In the end, Werner’s shot was off target after he had sprinted away from the Spurs defender.

Vertonghen, another key man of the best Pochettino teams, couldn’t even get a game — despite Spurs being without the injured Ben Davies and Sanchez. As he had done after being substituted against Southampton last month, the Belgian looked devastated when talking to Mourinho after the game.

Spurs’ struggles are about more than just a fallow year or so in the transfer market, but some of these players should be in the process of being phased out. Instead, not enough alternatives have been brought in to replace them.

Dele summed up the situation when he said in the aftermath of the Leipzig defeat that the team’s “confidence has gone”.

He, and all the other stalwarts, have desperately needed fresh faces to reinvigorate this Spurs squad for at least a year. But they either didn’t arrive or did so last summer when it was too late.

Tuesday night illustrated the extent to which Tottenham are paying the price for that, and you suspect they will be for a little while to come.

[chippy 342]

Ahhh the poor Potatoes are back to being shit again.  

[Fernando 6,585]

And now they have Mourinho a coach that cannot do much without spending. 

If they continue with Mourinho they are screw. 

[Atomiswave 6,117]

[NikkiCFC 8,285]

 

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Fernando 6,585]

Just suspend the dang season. Watching games behind close door is dull. Might as well just suspend the whole season. 

[Jase 43,479]

44 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

 

[Jase 43,479]

https://www.arsenal.com/news/club-statement-covid-19

Arteta tested positive for the virus...

[LAM09 7,043]

https://www.arsenal.com/news/club-statement-covid-19
Arteta tested positive for the virus...

That should be the end of the discussion. Postpone games immediately (something that should have been done already).

[Jase 43,479]

15 minutes ago, Jason said:

https://www.arsenal.com/news/club-statement-covid-19

Arteta tested positive for the virus...

 

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Laylabelle 9,534]

It seems daft to continue. Arsenal played West Ham so their players have to be tested now and postponed? They also played Portsmouth who then played another side so more postponed. 

Then Leicester have had players with symptoms.. they played Villa...