Spurs fans worried about this knackered team…

If you have anything to add on any subject, you know what to do: Mail theeditor@football365.com

 

Spurs are being cheated
Johnny Rotten’s last on-stage utterance as a Sex Pistol was ‘ever had the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ and that will be a fitting epitaph to the ENIC reign whenever we are inevitably sold to a US based investor for a healthy profit on the 21m pounds initial purchase price in 2000.

What is the role of a sporting club owner? It is to create an infrastructure for the team to achieve success on the pitch. ‘A-ha infrastructure!’ I hear the ENIC apologists cry as they point to the State of the Art training centre and stadium currently being built.

ENIC’s ownership have produced one League Cup in 18 years, umpteen managers and a comparative net spend less than the majority of the Premier League. It was clear in the summer the squad needed fresh faces in order to deal with post World Cup fatigue and what was frightening about the lethargic nature of Saturday’s performance is it is only September.

What is less clear is how much ENIC themselves have contributed to the stadium build and how much is it financed by debt with the club’s assets i.e. the playing staff as security for the loans?

Given we could not offload Alderweireld, Dembele,Rose, Sissoko, Janssen and Llorente in the summer to finance player transfers it is clear ENIC will not invest in the squad as they have shown time and time again they have been neglectful in doing so when there has been a great opportunity to advance.

No doubt this email will be dismissed as ‘Spurs fans always want to have something to moan about’ but when supporters are asked to pay for substantial ticket price increases and the club’s CEO is the highest paid in the Premier League we circle back again to Johnny Rotten’s last on-stage utterance as a Sex Pistol.

We have become nothing more than an urban redevelopment project being plumped up like a Thanksgiving Turkey to be sold to the US.
David Harris, Sydney, Australia

 

…Much has been made of whether Harry is suffering from the knack or not (he is) but there’s a broader concern for Spurs.

The spine of the side is aging, crocked and/or knackered from the WC, which only highlights Levy’s transfer negligence. Alderwerield is 29, Vertonghen is 31, Dembele is 31 and broken, Lloris is 31. Along with Eriksen – not 31 – and Dele (also not 31) – they are all entering the last 12 – 24 months of their contracts. While Sarri, Klopp and Pep have been backed, Levy kept the cheque book shut and failed to inject some vigour into the squad.

The team is palpably dead on its feet, with weak back up. Vorm a walking disaster, with many fans pleading before the game for the basically untried Gazzaniga to start, such was the – justified – fear about the short and sub-standard Dutch “Stopper”. There is no back-up for a clearly knackered Eriksen. Still. Dembele is shot – failure to find a replacement negligent.

The current malaise doesn’t bode well for the new stadium move given the destruction of fans’ good will – the number of empty seats at Wembley was glaring. Failure to crack the top four couldn’t come at a worse time, if that’s the consequence of bad planning on and off the pitch.
Dan (Mo Salah is reverting to mean. With 91 goals in 193 career games, 1 in 2 on average seems his norm – discuss) James…


..Sorry fellow Spurs fans but I witnessed that first hand and it was a complete shambles of a performance. Liverpool had an effective gameplan and we had lots of possession without any threat. They picked us off easily without really needing to create anything.

I don’t really understand the starting 11. It wasn’t one thing or another in terms of nullifying their threat or going for it. It’s great to see Winks back and he could play a big role for us and England potentially, but it’s obvious we have a problem now in the middle of the park.

Further forward Lamela must get a run of games now as he always shows personality and desire. He always seems to want it – we need more of that!

Still think we’ll be ok, as Poch will sort it out one way or another. Can’t wait for Barcelona!
Dave, Winchester Spurs

 

Some Man United fans are happy…
Mails such as those from our Longsight lad make me weep inside. I always thought the sign of a good manager was being able to set up a team to win a football match. Jose Mourinho did exactly that against a team that have had a flying start, are full of confidence and whose wins have included beating Spurs (let’s not forget what they did to us at OT!?!).

From my viewpoint, the plan worked perfectly. We scored two goals, frankly would have had at least two more, but for the usual waywardness of our strikers and kept Watford by and large at arm’s length. Watford then did what any half decent, in form side is likely to do when playing at home, they scored. But then I felt we closed the game out reasonably well. Of course there was going to be some pressure and balls being put in our box, but one decent save apart, De Gea didn’t have a whole lot to do. These were exactly the games we would have thrown away over the last couple of seasons.

Frankly, I don’t care where or how Fellaini or any other player for that matter is deployed, as long as it works. And I would suggest that a 2-1 victory indicates it did!

Finally can I just say, I get fed up with this attitude displayed by a number of United fans (step forward Mr Longsight) that belittles any opposition outside of the mythical Top 6. Liverpool have won all five games this season, but apart from against Spurs, have largely scraped by. Maybe, it’s time to give other teams a bit of respect before assuming they should be swatted aside with minimal effort.

Thankfully Jose has done that against both Watford and Burnley and we have walked away with six points. Oh and last time I looked, United aren’t even in the Top 6! Looking forward to you supporting Jose’s tactics against Bournemouth
Angry of Ancoats

 

…In response to Longsight Lad, criticizing Mourinho’s approach of the game, the lad is actually quite short sighted while he may sort examples of Man City, Liverpool e.t.c. but he failed to mention how efficiently United kept out every threat and how attacking they were in the last quarter of the 1st half. Its become a custom for the fans to criticize the defensive approach while just ignoring the attacking threat posed by the team as well.
Ritvic, India (Jose To Stay)

 

Silly, silly stats
I have to write in and take issue with Ted, Manchester from Friday’s mailbox and it dovetails nicely with my general belief that people quoting tedious stats as proof of a players worth is getting a touch silly.

He states that Mata “blocks as many crosses per game (0.1) as Herrera, Fellaini and Pogba…I would say that’s a fairly decent defensive contribution.”

I mean come on.. is that where we are now, quoting stats that are so small to be irrelevant. 0.1 crosses per game? So over 40 games he blocks just 4 crosses? All he has to do is be hit in the face by a mis-hit cross once every 10 games and this means his defensive contribution is fairly decent? I know you can make arguments for and against and using comparisons to other players is sometimes useful but there’s got to be a number per game limit below which stats just sound meaningless.
Dave, (F365 are biased against everyone apparently which surely isn’t possible)

 

Defending Theo
I’ve always thought that the ridicule that Theo Walcott got over the years were designed in the press to get the Arsenal fans in a mouth frothingly frenzy like they often do and that after he moved on he’d get a fair shake.

But then in a recent article I came across the phrase ‘Theo Walcott syndrome’ which apparently meant padding your goal record against lower class opposition and frequently scoring the 4th or 5th goal in a rout. Then a few days later his England caps are brought into question despite him scoring four times as many goals in a similar amount of games than your poster boy Raheem Sterling.

Walcott has scored 108 goals for Arsenal. 23 of them against what you would call top class opposition (I include Tottenham in this because of the derby aspect the same way I include Man City in Ryan Giggs tally for the sake of comparison). Now, premier league legend Giggs has scored 22/153 which percentage wise is far worse. Especially considering he played for one of the most dominating teams in the history of English football and Walcott fourth this and fourth that.

Sixteen times Walcott has scored the Equaliser for his team, 28 times the winner and 32 times the opening goal of a game. But hey…padding.

All those despite his well documented shoulder injuries in his formative years and a knee injury that cost him the better part of a year.

He never became the player Arsenal and England fans hoped he would but his record shows that the cheap shots fired in his direction have no place in any accurate account of his career thus far.
S.Singh

 

Is Marco Silva the new Ian Holloway?
Any one else getting the impression that Marco Silva is the Portuguese version of Ian Holloway? As in great at setting up an attacking team but lacking any aptitude in organising a defence. Holloway’s Blackpool were great to watch but couldn’t keep a clean sheet to save their lives. History seems to be repeating itself with Silva’s Toffees.

He first came to prominence on these shores as manager of a Hull team that went down…well conceding goals. Wasn’t exactly obdurate under Watford too before he got the curly finger for fluttering his eyelashes towards Goodison.

If Jose went and started a player mourning the death of a loved one, he’d be hung out to dry. Not a peep from the media towards Silva though.

One win from five games after incredible investment isn’t exactly a stellar start.
Brian, Wexford

 

Watch this!
If you don’t do anything else with your Monday, just watch the goal Dimitri Payet scored for Marseille last night………WOW

Mikey, CFC (Picked Aguero over Hazard as my FPL captain, doh!)