Valid points. I can't disagree with any of that.;

Chippy little f****r aren't you

the fact we differ means I can't question any further?

Also far than convinced on Mason and Bentaleb playing together in the middle in recent games. They are used to press the opposition and run about all game at high energy but neither offer good defensive protection at the end of the day. Yet our two bona fide DMs don't get a look in. Capoue has done well when he has had the chance to play but always gets dropped like a stone. Stambouli has won the French Ligue and looks like a more cultured player. He would at least bring us some experience if he was actually given a run as DM.

It has got to the stage where we have nothing really to lose as we are conceding each game as it is.

Article here about Lewis Holtby's argument with some of the fans at Hamburg.

Read it all the way to the bottom, especially the final sentence and look at the picture

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/row-ze...-rants-5516822

So you have indicated more than once, but otherwise you are so damning about Pochetino in so many aspects and at such length, it becomes difficult to see why you then seem fine with him being given more time. One would pick up that you feel he is in many ways pretty awful.

I am not a Spurs fan ( although Spurs are my favourite team from the top 8 say, sticking in both Everton and Southampton ) and I don't see enough of them to really argue particular points.

I do though think that for too long Spurs have been deficient in defense, certainly central defense, ever since Ledley King finished and even then there was a long period of uncertainty and inconsistency just due to Ledley's appearances having to be so managed.

For their aspirations Spurs have a group of defenders who are not top eight class. I do think that there are a few teams lower in the league with basically better defenders, which is not saying they are near the worst. There do seem to be too many individual mistakes and it is surely not really say down to the manager when you have a defender in position who then half turns his back and doesn't get off the ground against Benteke.

How much say and control Pochetino has had over getting better defenders in I have no idea, but things need to happen on that front in the summer.

Anyway, apart from already too many managerial switches ( for whatever various reasons ), Pochetino seems to me to have done a decent enough job that there should be no question of him not continuing into next season and at least see how that pans out.

I love Holtby and wish he had been given more of a chance here. He seemed pivotal in Pochs team over pre-season but then was loaned out. I know a lot of people think he is quite average, but would he really have been any worse than some of the others we have played this season? His passion is fantastic. I know that doesnt translate neccessarily to being an amazing footballer, but it pushes him ahead of others in the squad IMO.

Do you think Sherwood was judged purely on results though? I think the total a**e he made of himself while doing the job made quite an impact. Also don't forget there were some that were after him before he even got started whereas I think there was more positivity towards Poch and a reasonably wide recognition that we simply cannot keep sacking managers as soon as things don't turn out like we think they should.

I too would love some stability for once, so I'm not saying he should be sacked, just that I think he could and should be doing better, and can't accept with the excuses being made for him not being able to do anything more with what he has. I'm under no illusions about the quality of our squad, but at the very least he should be willing to be more adaptable rather than digging his heels in and just sticking with the same approach even when it's clearly not working. we've been absolutely awful for two months now, right at the point when we should've been improving. I see no evidence of leadership, defensive solidity, or errors and mistakes being corrected, we just keep repeating them over and over again. whenever Walker gets back into the team, for instance, I fully expect to see him going through his whole repertoire of stupidity. now, is that because he's a moron? quite possibly, but then it's the manager's job to identify these errors and work with him to eliminate them. I really don't care how deficient these players supposedly are, if you can toilet-train a dog, then you can teach a Premier League right-back to stop getting caught out of position and putting his team-mates in trouble.

stay, by all means. just do better with the means you've been given.

Not if you are going to add:


and


and make


"Not better" does not equate to "worse". As someone once said they are all "much of a muchness".

I also don't intend to get into a pseudo-statistical analysis about the number of goals conceded, points won, league position or the players inside leg measurements.

With the squad we have I think somewhere between 5th and 7th is where I expected to be. I am disappointed not to be higher but it's my choice is not to start sharpening the axe for the manager as a consolation prize.

I said I think they're better than those in the teams below us, and you said you differ. it's not unreasonable to then seek to clarification on whether that means you think they're all better than we are, rather than just assuming you think they're all much of a muchness. by all means start throwing insults about, or you could just make yourself clearer at the first time of asking.

I don't know why he attracted so much negativity from the off but it appeared to be because some thought he hadn't earned the right to be a Premiership manager and he wasn't what some fans thought we deserved I.e a top flight experienced manager. Add to that, he wore his heart on his sleeve which was not received well by some.

I would have liked him to stay and develop the players who wanted to be there and bring more players from the youth team but he's gone and we are where we pretty much always are. Whose to blame? Yet another manager or the players? (Bar Kane without whose goals it would have been a pretty tragic season.

Pee, I think everyone on this site is aware of your self righteous modus operandi; in this case putting words in my mouth and then acting all surprised and aggrieved when they pick you up on it. "But, but I was only asking a question!".

Obviously, you self-servingly jumping to an extreme and frankly idiotic conclusion is MY fault. Just in case I haven't made myself sufficiently clear for you, I don't really think that, I was being sarcastic. I really mean it is YOUR fault. It's what you do and boy, it's tiresome.

stop responding to me if it bothers you that much. it's really that simple.

Snipped your post a bit.

I don't know what Vertonghen has done to still be included in the group of players that are supposed to be key or most important. The only time he showed good form this season was alongisde Fazio, so I find it odd that Vertonghen is one that supposedly makes our squad better, but Fazio is one you choose to pick on as being bad or making mistakes. Our worse period defensively came after we dropped him. Vertonghen has been at the heart of the defence in the recent run of seven games where we conceded fifteen goals, being at fault for a number of them. Yes, Fazio got caught out for the goal on Saturday, but considering it was his first league start since 31st January, he did a pretty decent job up against a tough opponent in the league's in form striker.

Eriksen is another who is getting far more credit than he deserves. He's been off the boil for over two months now, and was appalling on Saturday. He had a great first half to the season, and is having an annonymous, pretty crap second half. He's stopped popping up with goals (he's not scored since January) and his set piece delivery has dropped off (his corners are just as crap as ever) and we are at a point where we are almost carrying him. I've mentioned before that Chadli gets all the criticism, and his form has dropped too, but he has had the death of his father to deal with. I'm not saying Chadli is playing excellently, but he gets mountains of criticism, yet Eriksen seems to continue to get away with being poor.

Bentaleb and Mason have done well, but their form has also dropped, and they don't suit playing against every opposition.

Are we taking those six players out and not replacing them with anyone? Because theories like this are irrelevant unless it's a level playing field. Let's take out six key/regular players from every squad, and see how we'd all cope. As it is, Vertonghen hasn't played and we've only conceded one goal in two games, after conceding the amount we did in the games before as I mentioned previously, and as much as I rate Lloris, think he is exceptional and he'd undoubtedly be my first choice, him being out and Vorm coming in hasn't exactly had a negative impact. So there's nothing to say other players coming in for the others you mentioned couldn't/wouldn't have done as better, or the team wouldn't have done as well or better.

I certainly think Poch needs to shake the team up a little. There is no point in having a squad if underperforming players don't get dropped. Others have to have a chance to come in and play and there is no better kick up the back upside if a regular gets dropped.

Actually it was you that responded to me but I'll let you have the last word. I know that's important. In any case as a past observer of similar exchanges you have had, I know how tedious they are for other people.

I agree with a lot of that.

I did say (perhaps it was in a separate post) that I don't think Vertonghen is a good defender. Perhaps, I shouldn't have included him in my group of "second line" (not key) players - he's borderline for me. Fazio does make mistakes, usually when he is on the ball. He can head and tackle but I don't think he can cope with intensity of the Premier League. Perhaps he will acclimatise but to me he looks like a £4 million defender and second choice to who Poch really wanted.

I agree about Eriksen and I did say that his form has dropped off. But I don't think anyone is doubting he is a fundamentally good player. Bentaleb and Mason have at times done well but have lost form recently. In the long term I think Bentaleb will be a key player. Not so sure about Mason.

I am sorry that Chadli lost his father. However, I think he was poor before that. He did have a few good games but I think most people were surprised about that. I certainly was. Essentially he is not good enough (IMO).

My basic point ( and taking your comments on board) is that the quality of the majority of our squad is generally not significantly better (or worse!) than many of the teams below us. We have one or two good players (Bentaleb and perhaps Mason) and three players that for at least part of the season have been very good (Lloris, Kane and Eriksen). However if they lose form, which apart from Lloris they all now have, or are missing (Lloris), we become a very average team and it shouldn't be a surprise that we struggle against teams below us. Especially teams that are motivated by threat of relegation.

I think the issue is that even when they are underperfoming, players like Kane, Eriksen, Bentaleb and to a lesser extent Mason aren't worse than the alternatives. I like Stambouli and wouldn't mind seeing him given a run in the team, same goes for Lamela and Townsend / Chadli but other than them ...

I think you have a point. We just do not have enough players in the 'very good' category to be able to weather a drop in a players form or injury. Quality over quantity really needs to be our policy on recruitment this Summer. I'd rather we afforded the wages of one very good player than two average ones


I'd certainly like to see Stambouli given a run because I'm sure he would improve game by game as his match fitness improved and we would see his real capabilities. Poch has to address our lack of defensive protection as a prime weakness. Using a proper DM would seem to me like a start.

I suppose if you look back at Bale's final season with us, it's almost the current situation in reverse because his form elevated everyone around him.

at the end of the day, we have some very capable and experienced (if not necessarily top-level) players that are seeing next-to-no game time for whatever reason. meanwhile, we're persisting with the same set of relatively inexperienced, apparently tired, and very evidently underperforming youngsters because there are "no better alternatives". there's really no justification for that, however you dice it. they can't ALL be bad eggs. alienating half of the squad, whatever the justification, just cannot be good management.

If I can post again on Spurs - sorry I'm not a Spurs fan so if my observations aren't welcome I will stop. I think the biggest problem is that similar to Liverpool Spurs would probably naturally be expect to finish 4th-8th in the League with above 4th being brilliant and below 8th being poor, would that be fair? The problem is that those 4 places actually cover a massive difference in achievement over a season. When Spurs are closer to 4th its the promise of Champions League qualification but 8th means missing out on European football. There probably aren't too many equivalent 4 places that have such a difference in reward and the difference between being seen as on the up or on the slide might not actually be that much!

The truth is that it is more crowded at the top end now with the Man Utd back on form and Liverpool, Southampton challenging for the minor places. The level of performance required over a season to finish in a CL / Europa position has ratcheted up but we, Spurs at best have not improved from last year. We have had our chances to get some points on the others but choked in games against bottom half teams we should be easily beating.

Walker, Vertonghen and Lloris still doubts for tomorrow V Newcastle. With the Toons' poor form this should be an easily winnable game but going by our last performances we will probably contrive to make it difficult for ourselves.