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i was about to mention this..must be 3-4 already, probably only beaten by cesc in the league tbh
:gylfi:
4 assists in the league, yes. I think his total is 7 (but for some reason ESPN don't count the two against AEL in the EL-playoff but they count Harry Kane's goals against them..) and add 3 goals to that and Erik is our best point scorer together with Kane. He's getting it done! By no means undroppable, but definitely not our worst performer as my Twitter repeatedly tries to tell me...
Imagine what he could do with better decision making. I was watching City - United yesterday and observing how City attack made it so obvious to me what we are lacking. Of course they have better players, but that doesn't mean they all score solo wondergoals. It's high tempo with one or two touches, always moving and looking for a team mate in a better position. Lamela's improving, but lacks a bit when it comes to team play. And that goes for most of our players btw.
Prefer him taking our corners to Eriksen. 2 assists from corners already this season and I can't think of 1 goal from a corner the whole of 13/14
While Lamela is getting it done in terms of assists and the occasional goal he's also cost us at least three goals due to individual mistakes and he is slowing down our passing by taking too many touches. He flashes serious talent but also there are poor mistakes and deficiencies. He's a work in progress and there's nothing wrong with that when you take into account his age and experience.
Was watching Di Maria taking free kicks yesterday and really wipping the ball in the box let down by some poor United attacking of the ball. Made me relise just how poor our free kick and corners are in general, most of the time our corners don't beat the first man, our free kicks are not much better (apart from Kane's deflected goal)
But he costs us far less than Lennon and Townsend.
JDK
and
Norwegianyid
Couldn't agree more. Especially about his decision making. I understand he's our record signing and adds pressure but I wish people could at least try to see both sides so to speak. I'm happy with the progress this far but obviously I expect even better as he learns!
Last season Eriksen was whipping in some un-defendable FK's towards the end of the season. His corners constantly don't beat the first man or are reached by our CB's on the volley and end in row Z
He has more upside in his play than those two but I don't think you'd see Townsend or Lennon make some of the mistakes Lamela has this year. Anyway it is irrelevant as Lamela should be playing now as his development long term is more important than anything in the short term. If he does sit it should be for Kane though, play Eriksen a bit wider on the right.
Couldn't agree more. Especially about his decision making. I understand he's our record signing and adds pressure but I wish people could at least try to see both sides so to speak. I'm happy with the progress this far but obviously I expect even better as he learns!
His progress looks great, he looks substantially more confident and never shies away from demanding the ball or taking free kicks. Still, I think his league assist total is a bit misleading. He has two from corner kicks which is a bit fortunate considering his corners on a whole have been pretty ghastly.
He should and needs to play a lot as he has done so far. But I think rotating him in and out of league starting 11s is the right move while he gets more time in cup games to develop and grow in confidence. Plus, we want to win cup games and his creativity has been a huge help. The more football and confidence you can get the guy, the better. But I'm not sure throwing him out there for every Premier League game is the best idea, he's just not quite there yet and guys like Kane are knocking on the Premier League squad door.
JDK
I think throwing him in the deep end now will play dividend later in the season...
lets be honest townsend or lennon just arnt challenging him for that spot and eriksen shouldn't b played right..
play him deeper in midfield..
mason eriksen
lamela soldado chadli
kane
Iol..
Last edited:
I think throwing him in the deep end now will play dividend later in the season...
lets be honest townsend or lennon just arnt challenging him for that spot and eriksen shouldn't b played right..
play him deeper in midfield..
mason eriksen
lemela soldado chadli
kane
Iol..
That lineup would be brilliant to watch in fairness but it just reminds me of...
I've said a million times under each of our 3 managers probably, at home we need to get Eriksen into the game more and as a #10 he just gets shut out by the sides who come to WHL and sit deep.
I think throwing him in the deep end now will play dividend later in the season...
lets be honest townsend or lennon just arnt challenging him for that spot and eriksen shouldn't b played right..
play him deeper in midfield..
mason eriksen
lemela soldado chadli
kane
Iol..
The detail has retained a staggering quality. When Érik Lamela joined Tottenham Hotspur from Roma on 30 August last year, he cost a club record £30m but he did not start a Premier League fixture until 24 November. “It was weird and crazy for you to see?” Lamela says. “Well, it was a bit like that for me.”
The one-time River Plate prodigy had come off a wonderful season at Roma, when he scored 15 goals in Serie A and helped the club to reach the Coppa Italia final. The only downer was that they lost 1-0 to their crosstown rivals, Lazio.
The idea for Lamela was to shine in a rejigged Tottenham team, making light of the sale of Gareth Bale and to finish the season by lifting the World Cup with Argentina, ideally after beating Brazil in the final at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro.
Instead, Lamela experienced bitter frustration. The best-laid plans were reduced to rubble. It has gone down as the 22-year-old’s lost season, one in which he was waylaid by jarring assimilation difficulties, particularly with the language, and an injury that wiped him out from the turn of the year. The back problem also accounted for the World Cup dream. Lamela watched the final, which Argentina lost narrowly to Germany, at his house in London.
The winger made his Tottenham debut as a substitute in the 1-0 derby defeat at Woolwich on 1 September but it quickly became apparent that he did not enjoy the trust of the manager at the time, André Villas-Boas. Lamela had followed Franco Baldini, the sporting director, from Roma to Tottenham and the theory went that he was not a Villas-Boas signing. When Villas-Boas finally started Lamela in the league, it was in the 6-0 loss at Manchester City and, in what felt like a political statement, he left him on for the 90 minutes.
“I was not struggling with any injuries in my early weeks at the club,” Lamela says. “It was not until the first week in December that I felt the injury [initially in the thigh]. I didn’t want to miss out on any playing time so I carried on and then I had the problem with my back as a result.”
The bewilderment is still plain, although there is a pragmatic streak that runs through Lamela, which feels at odds with the flair of his on-field persona. “The manager has to call it as he sees it,” Lamela says. “There might have been people at that time who were showing better form. It’s down to me to be fit and in form. You’re not guaranteed a place just because you cost a certain amount of money.
“The thing about the manager is that he was very, very open and his style was to speak to every player individually all the time. It was kind of an open door, so on a couple of occasions I would speak to him. I told him that I hadn’t had the chance to play three, four, five games on the spin, to convince myself and other people that I can play in this league. But it’s all in the past now. I’ve managed to have more regular performances this season and continuity in the side. I’m proving to people that I can play in this league.”
The summer was a pivotal period. It was strange to watch the World Cup from afar. Lamela had been an ever-present in Alejandro Sabella’s Argentina squads last season – until the injury – and, as an aside, he has been called up every time thus far by the new manager, Tata Martino. If fit, he would surely have gone to Brazil. But Lamela saw the bigger picture.
“Of course, there was a part of me that thought I could have been there myself but it was the injury that was responsible for taking all that away from me,” Lamela says. “I’ve discussed it with my family and what I have now is like a fresh hope for my career. There is something to aim for, to strive for. I am still young. Hopefully, I can have another chance at the final.
“I had goose bumps before every match when I listened to the national anthem but when they got to the final, it was nothing but pride for the rest of the lads. I think we shaded the final. I think we almost deserved to have won.”
Weaker characters than Lamela might have wanted to walk away from a club after enduring such a season, to push for a move elsewhere. There was interest in him back in Italy. Tottenham were in a position where they could not sell – Lamela’s value had dropped after only three Premier League starts – but it was all academic. His determination to succeed at White Hart Lane had merely intensified.
“There was talk, not only in the summer, but in December – people had spoken about me in Italy and stuff,” Lamela says. “But I’d spoken with my family and my girlfriend and we were all convinced that my time would come, that once I got over this injury, I would be able to show what I could do. We were never going to leave this challenge.”
The ambition and the competitive fires burn inside Lamela. They always have done, since the days when he joined River Plate as a seven-year-old and tore it up in their junior ranks. As a 12-year-old, he scored more than 120 goals in a season and Barcelona tried to take him to Spain, just as they had done with Lionel Messi at a similar age. It was reported that Barcelona had offered Lamela an annual payment of €100,000, a house for the family, employment for his parents and education for him and his two brothers.
“I went over there,” Lamela says. “I trained with them. I even played a kids’ tournament with them but when I went back, I spoke to River and I decided to stay there.”
His mother, Miriam, is on record as saying that she did not want her son to have such responsibility when he was so young; the pressure of knowing that the family had emigrated to Barcelona because of him. But Lamela never had any doubts that he would become a professional footballer and there is an old video clip to prove it. At the age of 12, he told a Trans World Sport film crew that his dream was “to win the World Cup with Argentina, just like Maradona”. He adds: “I was born to play football. I may have been taught to play but everybody is born for something and I was born to play football.”
Lamela’s mentality was forged at River Plate. He made his debut for them at 17 and, by 18, he was a first-team regular, playing in the Superclásico against Boca Juniors. The Buenos Aires derby is one of the most heated in world football; in 2004, the Observer described it as making “the Old Firm game look like a primary school kick-about”.
Lamela was in the side that won 1-0 at River Plate’s El Monumental in November 2010 and he travelled to La Bombonera for the return in May 2011. By then, with Ariel Ortega having left the club, Lamela had the fabled No10 shirt. The River Plate team bus was pelted with rocks on the way in. “We got there but without any glass in the bus,” Lamela says, with a smile. Boca won 2-0.
“Those games were among the best things that have ever happened to me in my football career,” Lamela says. “I’d been at River since I was a seven-year-old kid and it’s something you dream of. Derby day in Buenos Aires is completely crazy and those sort of experiences have shaped me. When you’ve played at a club like River, who are a massive, massive club in Argentina – and Roma, the same, in Italy – you learn how to deal with the pressure. After that, you can live with anything.”
Lamela is talking at the Bruce Grove youth centre, where the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation’s skills project is helping to get youngsters off the streets and on to more positive pathways. It is his first UK interview and he speaks in Spanish, even though his English is improving. He can understand things better these days and he feels more a part of it in the dressing room.
“The language barrier was a bit of a factor last season but my first year at Roma [in 2011-12] wasn’t fantastic either, for similar reasons,” Lamela says. “It’s always tough when you go somewhere for the first year and maybe in the second year, you start to hit the ground running more. I didn’t speak Italian in my first year in Rome but I did in the second.”
Lamela wears wicked trainers and he has a slightly husky voice. He is a cool guy. He has a kickabout with a group of boys at the youth centre and a table tennis match, too. It turns out that he is a bit of a whizz. “He’s from Buenos Aires,” explains a friend of his. “In Buenos Aires, they learn how to win at everything.”
What shines through is Lamela’s love of football. “It’s the thing I enjoy most in life,” he says. “I live for football. I’m at my absolute happiest when I’m out on the field playing, or in training. If I go home, I’ll just have a kickabout there because I love the game so much.”
Lamela returned to London two weeks before the start of pre-season but his preparatory work had begun immediately after the final day of last season. “I started training [in Argentina] once the season had finished,” he says. “I had started to be almost pain-free so it was the time to start. Gradually, the pain went and I’m fine now.”
The season has begun promisingly for him. He has benefited from a proper pre-season and he has a new manager, Mauricio Pochettino, who is picking him. Lamela’s belief in his ability has always been total and he is certainly not afraid to try his moves. They have not always come off at Tottenham; Lamela feels raw and mercurial, and there have been misjudgments.
But it is clear that the talent is there, as his outrageous goal in the 5-1 home win over Asteras Tripoli proved. Previously, most people in England thought that the rabona was something off Strictly Come Dancing. Not any more.
“It’s not such a big deal,” Lamela says. “It was a split-second decision where the ball just fell right for me. I didn’t think before the game: ‘Right, I am going out to do one of those today.’ I was just trying to score. My philosophy is to win.”
The one-time River Plate prodigy had come off a wonderful season at Roma, when he scored 15 goals in Serie A and helped the club to reach the Coppa Italia final. The only downer was that they lost 1-0 to their crosstown rivals, Lazio.
The idea for Lamela was to shine in a rejigged Tottenham team, making light of the sale of Gareth Bale and to finish the season by lifting the World Cup with Argentina, ideally after beating Brazil in the final at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro.
Instead, Lamela experienced bitter frustration. The best-laid plans were reduced to rubble. It has gone down as the 22-year-old’s lost season, one in which he was waylaid by jarring assimilation difficulties, particularly with the language, and an injury that wiped him out from the turn of the year. The back problem also accounted for the World Cup dream. Lamela watched the final, which Argentina lost narrowly to Germany, at his house in London.
The winger made his Tottenham debut as a substitute in the 1-0 derby defeat at Woolwich on 1 September but it quickly became apparent that he did not enjoy the trust of the manager at the time, André Villas-Boas. Lamela had followed Franco Baldini, the sporting director, from Roma to Tottenham and the theory went that he was not a Villas-Boas signing. When Villas-Boas finally started Lamela in the league, it was in the 6-0 loss at Manchester City and, in what felt like a political statement, he left him on for the 90 minutes.
“I was not struggling with any injuries in my early weeks at the club,” Lamela says. “It was not until the first week in December that I felt the injury [initially in the thigh]. I didn’t want to miss out on any playing time so I carried on and then I had the problem with my back as a result.”
The bewilderment is still plain, although there is a pragmatic streak that runs through Lamela, which feels at odds with the flair of his on-field persona. “The manager has to call it as he sees it,” Lamela says. “There might have been people at that time who were showing better form. It’s down to me to be fit and in form. You’re not guaranteed a place just because you cost a certain amount of money.
“The thing about the manager is that he was very, very open and his style was to speak to every player individually all the time. It was kind of an open door, so on a couple of occasions I would speak to him. I told him that I hadn’t had the chance to play three, four, five games on the spin, to convince myself and other people that I can play in this league. But it’s all in the past now. I’ve managed to have more regular performances this season and continuity in the side. I’m proving to people that I can play in this league.”
The summer was a pivotal period. It was strange to watch the World Cup from afar. Lamela had been an ever-present in Alejandro Sabella’s Argentina squads last season – until the injury – and, as an aside, he has been called up every time thus far by the new manager, Tata Martino. If fit, he would surely have gone to Brazil. But Lamela saw the bigger picture.
“Of course, there was a part of me that thought I could have been there myself but it was the injury that was responsible for taking all that away from me,” Lamela says. “I’ve discussed it with my family and what I have now is like a fresh hope for my career. There is something to aim for, to strive for. I am still young. Hopefully, I can have another chance at the final.
“I had goose bumps before every match when I listened to the national anthem but when they got to the final, it was nothing but pride for the rest of the lads. I think we shaded the final. I think we almost deserved to have won.”
Weaker characters than Lamela might have wanted to walk away from a club after enduring such a season, to push for a move elsewhere. There was interest in him back in Italy. Tottenham were in a position where they could not sell – Lamela’s value had dropped after only three Premier League starts – but it was all academic. His determination to succeed at White Hart Lane had merely intensified.
“There was talk, not only in the summer, but in December – people had spoken about me in Italy and stuff,” Lamela says. “But I’d spoken with my family and my girlfriend and we were all convinced that my time would come, that once I got over this injury, I would be able to show what I could do. We were never going to leave this challenge.”
The ambition and the competitive fires burn inside Lamela. They always have done, since the days when he joined River Plate as a seven-year-old and tore it up in their junior ranks. As a 12-year-old, he scored more than 120 goals in a season and Barcelona tried to take him to Spain, just as they had done with Lionel Messi at a similar age. It was reported that Barcelona had offered Lamela an annual payment of €100,000, a house for the family, employment for his parents and education for him and his two brothers.
“I went over there,” Lamela says. “I trained with them. I even played a kids’ tournament with them but when I went back, I spoke to River and I decided to stay there.”
His mother, Miriam, is on record as saying that she did not want her son to have such responsibility when he was so young; the pressure of knowing that the family had emigrated to Barcelona because of him. But Lamela never had any doubts that he would become a professional footballer and there is an old video clip to prove it. At the age of 12, he told a Trans World Sport film crew that his dream was “to win the World Cup with Argentina, just like Maradona”. He adds: “I was born to play football. I may have been taught to play but everybody is born for something and I was born to play football.”
Lamela’s mentality was forged at River Plate. He made his debut for them at 17 and, by 18, he was a first-team regular, playing in the Superclásico against Boca Juniors. The Buenos Aires derby is one of the most heated in world football; in 2004, the Observer described it as making “the Old Firm game look like a primary school kick-about”.
Lamela was in the side that won 1-0 at River Plate’s El Monumental in November 2010 and he travelled to La Bombonera for the return in May 2011. By then, with Ariel Ortega having left the club, Lamela had the fabled No10 shirt. The River Plate team bus was pelted with rocks on the way in. “We got there but without any glass in the bus,” Lamela says, with a smile. Boca won 2-0.
“Those games were among the best things that have ever happened to me in my football career,” Lamela says. “I’d been at River since I was a seven-year-old kid and it’s something you dream of. Derby day in Buenos Aires is completely crazy and those sort of experiences have shaped me. When you’ve played at a club like River, who are a massive, massive club in Argentina – and Roma, the same, in Italy – you learn how to deal with the pressure. After that, you can live with anything.”
Lamela is talking at the Bruce Grove youth centre, where the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation’s skills project is helping to get youngsters off the streets and on to more positive pathways. It is his first UK interview and he speaks in Spanish, even though his English is improving. He can understand things better these days and he feels more a part of it in the dressing room.
“The language barrier was a bit of a factor last season but my first year at Roma [in 2011-12] wasn’t fantastic either, for similar reasons,” Lamela says. “It’s always tough when you go somewhere for the first year and maybe in the second year, you start to hit the ground running more. I didn’t speak Italian in my first year in Rome but I did in the second.”
Lamela wears wicked trainers and he has a slightly husky voice. He is a cool guy. He has a kickabout with a group of boys at the youth centre and a table tennis match, too. It turns out that he is a bit of a whizz. “He’s from Buenos Aires,” explains a friend of his. “In Buenos Aires, they learn how to win at everything.”
What shines through is Lamela’s love of football. “It’s the thing I enjoy most in life,” he says. “I live for football. I’m at my absolute happiest when I’m out on the field playing, or in training. If I go home, I’ll just have a kickabout there because I love the game so much.”
Lamela returned to London two weeks before the start of pre-season but his preparatory work had begun immediately after the final day of last season. “I started training [in Argentina] once the season had finished,” he says. “I had started to be almost pain-free so it was the time to start. Gradually, the pain went and I’m fine now.”
The season has begun promisingly for him. He has benefited from a proper pre-season and he has a new manager, Mauricio Pochettino, who is picking him. Lamela’s belief in his ability has always been total and he is certainly not afraid to try his moves. They have not always come off at Tottenham; Lamela feels raw and mercurial, and there have been misjudgments.
But it is clear that the talent is there, as his outrageous goal in the 5-1 home win over Asteras Tripoli proved. Previously, most people in England thought that the rabona was something off Strictly Come Dancing. Not any more.
“It’s not such a big deal,” Lamela says. “It was a split-second decision where the ball just fell right for me. I didn’t think before the game: ‘Right, I am going out to do one of those today.’ I was just trying to score. My philosophy is to win.”
