Harry Winks

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I like stats. I also like context. He attempts to do it, yes. But he usually chooses a safe option. If we have any computer whizzes on this forum, I urge them to make a video of Winks when he receives the ball and what he does with it next in virtually any game.


So what we have is a guy who is 24 next month who is afraid to show for the ball under pressure and who waits until he receives it to get his head up. He is a tempo-killer, generally speaking. The easiest way to tell this is by how many touches he takes before playing a pass. So indecisive and tentative. Exuding no authority. I have had an issue with the movement of our attacking players for many years, but they are more likely to look like lampposts when our build-up play is slow-which it is. It's not his age that is the issue. It's his skill set.
I like stats with context, I’m sure you’ve become accustomed to me saying this by now and seen that I usually attempt to back up a numbers with what I’ve seen with my own eyes. In the case of Winks this is exactly what I am doing now.

You are moving the conversation away from the fact that he is a prolific ball progressing player of his age!!! Yet you are even trying to feminism this, why?

He can be safe, he can improve on this, that’s what young players have the capacity to do. There are also other reasons for this too:
a) There are no runners showing for the ball
b) Our current coach doesn’t focus on attacking phases of play
c) We are struggling for control in almost every game we play, sometimes it’s just better to regain control for a period. It’s his role to set the tempo, if you say he kills it, he might just be trying to have us regain a semblance of control we lack. But those halves of games we played well in, where we are moving the ball with tempo, that’s also down to him.
 
Really if little Winks played for anyone else your being saying how shit he is.
I want to dig him but your clutching at straws if you think this dude can cut it at top level.
A major reason along with others we are such a cluster fuck.
 
I like stats with context, I’m sure you’ve become accustomed to me saying this by now and seen that I usually attempt to back up a numbers with what I’ve seen with my own eyes. In the case of Winks this is exactly what I am doing now.
Could you define progressive pass for me please? Could you find a chart which shows how many touches he takes before moving it?
You are moving the conversation away from the fact that he is a prolific ball progressing player of his age!!!
I want to talk about Fernandinho and Jorginho.
Yet you are even trying to feminism this, why?
I beg your pardon?
He can be safe, he can improve on this, that’s what young players have the capacity to do.
Most of his passing is safe. The reason his pass completion stats are so high is because he takes very few risks and favours short passes. He favours short passes because his long-range passing is very poor. He is poor at switching the play with chipped passes and he is poor at playing balls over the top.
 
Really if little Winks played for anyone else your being saying how shit he is.
This is exactly the type of thing that drives me mad. If he played for Woolwich or West Ham, everyone here would be laughing their cocks off at him. Sterile possession is his thing.

There are teenage midfielders playing in Ligue 1 who would absolutely blow him out of the water in terms of technical ability and courage.
 
Could you define progressive pass for me please? Could you find a chart which shows how many touches he takes before moving it?

I want to talk about Fernandinho and Jorginho.

I beg your pardon?

Most of his passing is safe. The reason his pass completion stats are so high is because he takes very few risks and favours short passes. He favours short passes because his long-range passing is very poor. He is poor at switching the play with chipped passes and he is poor at playing balls over the top.
Ball progression is:
Measuring which players are most adept at moving the ball towards the opponent’s goal and into dangerous areas, be it through passing or carrying the ball at their feet.

There are various models deployed to track and measure it but by and large, it is used to create non-shot expected goals models, i.e. measuring the likelihood of a goal being scored based on where and how a team has held possession, while other analysts simply use it as a measure in itself; how many times has a player moved the ball into a certain location?

Further models can be used and applied for a non-shot xG model where the focus on primarily the concept of ‘deep progressions’: where the ball is moved into the most dangerous areas of the pitch. They have the exact location of where each pass and ball carry started and ended, and whether they were successful or not.

I believe that StatsBomb model their deep progressions as any successful pass or carry that takes a team 10 metres closer to the opposition’s goal, while also moving at least 10 meters up the pitch vertically. So this isn’t simply about moving the ball ‘up the field’ but also involves moving the ball towards the goal: a long diagonal pass from the centre to one of the wings might not have moved a team’s possession 10 metres closer to the opponent’s goal, even though the ball is 10 meters higher up the field vertically.

What's important here is if you are just focussing on players that progress from deep then that will always be (in the vast majority of teams) their CB's as they are often bringing the ball, unopposed and with those teams of the players that were profiled above all their teams are possession-based sides, using CB's to keep the ball and encouraged to playout from the back.

So, StatsBomb I believe the focus on "DEEP PROGRESSIONS" where the ball has been moved more than 10 metres towards the goal into or within the final third of the pitch. Basically targeting the role of a midfielder, rather than that of a CB.

I've not spoken about Jorginho or Fernandinho other than to make direct comparison to the players that are recognised as some of the best in the world at what they do in that position, ignore those comparisons if it suite your argument but if we are assessing a 23yr old who's at a critical time in his development and want he's showing as capable to develop into then he's not too far off them, I think this is highly relevant comparison.

(Autocorrect Spell check is a bitch).
 
What's important here is if you are just focussing on players that progress from deep then that will always be (in the vast majority of teams) their CB's as they are often bringing the ball, unopposed and with those teams of the players that were profiled above all their teams are possession-based sides, using CB's to keep the ball and encouraged to playout from the back.
Right. Well Winks often goes very deep to receive the ball (so that all/almost all of the opposition players are in front of him).
 
I think if Kane played for West Ham or Woolwich, it's more than likely most of our fans would also be calling him shit or labelling him with the same stuff those fans do.

Football tribalism eh?
 
Right. Well Winks often goes very deep to receive the ball (so that all/almost all of the opposition players are in front of him).
Take that up with StatsBomb then mate, maybe all the other profiles on Jorinho, Ndombele and Ferandinho are utterly irrelevant too and are not a fair reflection on what they are doing. Or maybe it's just Winks's profile is outa whack because he drops between the CB's to receive the ball.
 
Take that up with StatsBomb then mate, maybe all the other profiles on Jorinho, Ndombele and Ferandinho are utterly irrelevant too and are not a fair reflection on what they are doing. Or maybe it's just Winks's profile is outa whack because he drops between the CB's to receive the ball.

I like Harry as he’s a good lad, hard working, loyal, dies the basics very well but I would have thought that he’d have made much more progress than he has since his display against RM a couple of seasons ago when he virtually ran the game
There doesn’t seem to be any evidence the defence splitting killer pass from him but he’s not going to let anyone down either!

Difficult one
 
Oh, so what's the word on the street about Parrott?
I don't watch youth football, so I can't answer your question. And I almost never watch Ireland's senior team because, as I am sure you are well aware (and Christian Eriksen certainly is), our lack of technical quality (I am being kind here) appalls me. But I will pay more attention to them from now on if Parrott is playing.

I watched half an hour of him v New Zealand and he was full of running, he is well-built for his age but he's not the quickest. I would be delighted to see an Irishman being a success for Spurs (it would make me as proud as any South Korean) but if Mourinho says he is not ready, that is good enough for me.
 
Do you think Eriksen will regain his form when he leaves us?

If he goes to Inter, I think he'll put up good numbers. But he looks physically knackered. He was never a quick player, but he's struggling getting to balls slightly overhit, and the power in his legs seems to be gone with more and more weak shots.

This declining form started ahead of the '18 WC. I always thought it had something to do with him becoming a farther for the first time, and not using as much time on self-training as he used to do. Now I just think he's used up. Inter will get a brilliant player, but he'll never regain former strength
 
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