TOTTENHAM ARE STILL A BIG CLUB!

By the way Darragh if you're still shitting your pants every time Vertonghen goes forward then you'll have issued a fatwa against Chiriches by his third game for us.

Thanks for warning

My departure wasn’t straightforward by any means. It certainly wasn’t a case of walking in and being sacked.In fact, we had previously been talking about extending my contract.

Having had these discussions, I went to see chairman Daniel Levy again. ‘What’s happening, Daniel?’ I asked. He seemed very unsure. ‘Maybe, Harry, we’ve just come to the end.’

He was the first person to ring me up to wish me luck when I took over at QPR, and even on the night I left Tottenham, the car phone rang and it was Daniel.

‘Harry, let’s keep in touch,’ he said. ‘I hope we can still be friends.’

I thought, ‘He’s got some front. He’s just sacked me and now he wants to be mates.’

But we have stayed in touch. I’m not one for grudges.

thread to get over a breakup for those who are lolbanned from tottenham hotspur

all these excerpts are brilliant. the england one yesterday too was an amazing cocktail of humblebrags and humblebarbs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24425709

There have been rumours flying around for a while that Levy didn't actually intend to fire Redknapp at the start of that summer, I guess Harry got cocky and pushed the chairman too far. Given the collapse he'd just presided over he had no real right to.

Redknapp, who was manager of Tottenham when the decision was made, said he wanted Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers - then with Swansea City - to be his assistant.

"My thinking on Brendan was this: if he can do it with players from the lower leagues at Swansea what can he do with Rio and Terry or Rooney and Gerrard?" he added.

This kind of shit is so dumb, Rodgers got results at Swansea and now at Liverpool because he got to work with those players day in day out.

Still waiting to see what he can do with Gerrard tbh.

Darragh - moving Townsend to LW to accommodate Lennon on the right? Y/N?

Erik Lamela £30 million well-spent

Lamela will turn out to be better than any of them but he is 21, relatively slight, and still adapting to the Premiership and looking nervous. I think it's fine to wait a while with him.

Yeah I was being disingenuous really, he's even come out and admitted that he's finding the change difficult to handle atm. I'm just impatient to see the guy, I'm extremely excited to see if he catches fire. Along with Eriksen he seems like the sort of player who could plausibly be a deal-breaker when it comes to Spurs emerging as legitimate contenders over the next few years

agree re lamela
unsure how chadli will work out

slight proviso- i think lennon is better on the left cutting in, his finishing/passing is better then his crossing.

so i'd have them each on their opposite side cutting in.

rose being so much better on the ball than walker would suit that i think?

not bad to have 3 or 4 wide options again tho, no complaints. lennon always suffers lapses in form and injuries so townsend as deputy would still see plenty of games if the squad were to be utilised correctly.

must admit i've not seen a lot of the action in full tho due to new commitments, what's the impression of chadli/paulinho, or is it too soon to say really.

i want sandro back :(

every time i remember we have adebayor i get angry/sad

it's not often tho tbrr

Think Paulinho would look better if he was fielded with Sandro rather than Dembele

Lamela will turn out to be better than any of them but he is 21, relatively slight, and still adapting to the Premiership and looking nervous. I think it's fine to wait a while with him.

― Matt DC, Friday, 18 October 2013 15:37 (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

idk, depends on the while. if they don't hit the ground running soon enough you're treading water, ie not qualifying for cl / selling superstar once he ripens after three years / rebuilding again. £100m in one go is supposed to break the cycle

imagine avb's probably a bit naffed off with andros becoming england's andros and fucking with his rotation game

ebsm

i'm gonna have to learn as a supporter that we now have to pick these things on a game-by-game basis based on opposition- i don't really remember us having a squad that rotated on anything other than exhaustion/injury before (except for maybe the keane/defoe/berbatov/mido moment some years back before a settled forward line emerged).

maybe this kind of angst is nothing new to supporters of...well i cant say 'big clubs' can i i mean we a re a big club says so on the title.

im not sure that picking to suit the opposition is an area that AVB has excelled at tho tbph. his central three always seems neither conservative enough (dembele and paulinho don't really provide _that_ much effective cover to the cb nor attacking enough (eriksen alone picking holes is already proving not enough imo).

imo, a few goes at picking dembele sandro paulinho against midfields where we're likely to be up against it and a few trios of holtby eriksen and sandro or dembele holding where we're likely to struggle to break down a recalcitrant norwich or w/e would be more than welcome.

don't wanna put too much on lamela as yet. not even sure where it's assumed he'll play.

xp i would actuall yimagine so, and lol at ebsm

Paulinho has been excellent I think, although way better playing in a more advanced role. Deserves to be playing alongside Sandro/Capoue and instead of Dembele.

We need to start rotating more really, would be happy with starting against Villa with Andros + Lamela and then bringing Lennon on as a sub. We do need to start giving Lamela some gametime, think it's confidence as much as everything.

Time to work Adebayor back into the squad I think, if he's mentally there, which is a pretty massive 'if'.

ebsm

England's Brave Space Monkey?

oui

agree that ade and jd should be match fit for us til next summer

nngh should be kept

Let's take the #AVBOUT bandwagon discussion here. FWIW I agree with most of this:

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/tottenham/id/1582?cc=5739

No

On AVB
plus Spurs so far

Not so sure Lamela is the answer the author seems to think he is, and I'm also unsure about Dembele vs packed defences. Was amused to see that the average distance Townsend takes his shots from is over 26 yards out!!! AVB get him to stop. Seriously.

Paulinho has been excellent I think,

he was great the last game alright

good article matt

The reality is more complicated. I like AVB, I think he does know what he's doing and there's a great deal to admire about the way he has strengthened the defence. But creatively Spurs are misfiring. Tottenham aren't translating possession into goal-scoring opportunities. Opposition defences are finding it quite easy to contain them. To me, it feels still very much as if AVB has a single, fixed plan about the way he wants the side to play. I would like to see more flexibility; partly for variation, but also to give the players confidence that they have something else up their sleeve when Plan A isn't working.

hugely otm imo

pandemic- 1st article interesting to a point but the purported difference from redknapp to avb isn't all that it's claimed imo? a few less shots against per game. not convinced. 18 shots from outside the box per game and getting 6 reasonably comfortably on target also masking problems in transition.

second article was really good tho.

Redknapp wasn't very good at beating teams who were set up to just defend either. We had a couple of godawful springs where we failed to beat those teams time and time again. Difference now is that teams done it more often, and the manager hasn't worked out how to get his front four playing together (everything behind that is basically okay).

The formation itself isn't necessarily an away tactic, loads of teams play with one up top now, it's the structure of the forward line that's the problem.The lack of a Plan B is worrying, as is the fact that, offensively, the Plan A doesn't fit the personnel.

Having two English wingers bombing at either side is fine if you have a Benteke or an Adebayor there but not with Soldado. Having a small but intelligent striker like Soldado who's an adept finisher but isn't going to out-muscle defences is fine if you have the players who are going to provide incisive defence-splitting passes - which is the argument for working Lamela and especially Eriksen in as quickly as possible. The front four we've seen in the last couple of games is an awkward fudge of the two that serves no one particularly well.

I have faith that AVB will sort these problems and, hey, at least we're grinding out results, West Ham debacle notwithstanding.

agreed, one particularly dire instance comes to mind against I think Stoke where we scraped a draw by an injury time vdv header off an early cross

xp

agreed with your second post 100% matt, yr first one not totally digested yet as im finishing a nested for loop in another window and i can't do it all at once goddammit

http://www.101greatgoals.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/erik-lamela-vlad-chiriches-pictured-in-london-airports-as-they-head-to-join-tottenham.jpg

"The player will only be allowed to resume play if asymptomatic and with normal co-ordination. The medical attendant should alert the coaching staff, and the player closely observed for any deterioration in playing ability," the regulations say. Spurs said on Monday: "The club can confirm that Hugo Lloris underwent a precautionary CT scan and was given the all-clear and travelled back to London last night."

Spurs head of medical services Wayne Diesel added: "Once the relevant tests and assessments were carried out we were totally satisfied that he was fit to continue playing."

Wayne is currently in his ninth season working in the Premier League. He is also regularly invited to give annual lectures on MSc Sports & Exercise Medicine courses for UCL and Barts.

http://www.scienceandfootball.com/Uploads/481.jpg

uh

Alejandro Faurlin faces another long spell on the sidelines after scans confirmed the QPR midfielder suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury in Saturday's win over Derby County.

QPR's head of medical services, Peter Florida James, told the club's official website: "It's a really nasty cruciate injury."

"the lad was clearly up for it, besides the most dangerous thing to do after someone gets knocked out like that is to wake them, they could die from the shock"- spurs medical team, yesterday

Crushing sudden fear that this was an awful call

apart from levy and his usual hair trigger mgmt style, protecting the summer's investments must weigh heavily here.....soldado, eriksen, especially lamela who was probably bought in the expectation he could be sold for a huge fee in a couple of seasons

Adebayor starts!

described as a 'senior professional' in neil ashton's gleeful villas-boas obituary

Big man and a little man upfront, two out-and-out wingers played on the correct side, Sigurdsson played in position for seemingly the first time all year. Strange times.

Apparently we're swarming all over them?

soldado, eriksen, especially lamela who was probably bought in the expectation he could be sold for a huge fee in a couple of seasons

Don't see why that couldn't still happen with any of them, really. Eriksen in particular wasn't that expensive, relatively speaking, and could be worth a fortune in a few years time. Lamela will need to be given time and I wonder if a loan move might work for him but the upside of persisting far far outweighs the risk given we've already spent the money.

The exception is Soldado who's a lot older and theoretically should be at his peak, who obviously didn't fit into AVB's system and really everything should be based around getting the best out of him. Getting Adebayor onside and playing well is crucial here, I think, in the short term at least. The more I read about AVB's treatment of him after his brother died the more I wonder how much of his poor form for the last season has been down to the manager being incapable of motivating him properly.

Didn't realise that Soldado's wife had a miscarriage a couple of weeks ago either, so his mind is hardly going to be on football right now.

adebayor has about the worst attitude imaginable, villas boas in some sense 'right' to exclude him but he is also a useful secondary option who a less dirigiste manager would probably not have alienated to that extent

suggestion was that the next manager will be chosen to a large degree based on how they can safeguard the summer's investments, tottenham being a player carousel and investment engine more than a fitba team

lol he has just scored.

spurs really have 71% possesion? (and still only 2 shots on goal?)