Harry Winks

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He hasn’t got a particularly good 30. 40 yard ping which is normally a stock ball for playing CM.

I mentioned I think he can lack vision on occasions.... and identified the particular ball that Skipp spots and executes to great effect

And he can’t shoot for shit but that’s not pertinent to this area of play.

I think he can improve and I think it’ll help us a lot when he does

For the record I rate him. He sets the rhythm and for the most part moves the ball well
 
True.



What a shit ping he has.

Are you really going through every ‘ping’ of his that has lead to a goal ??!!

Because they are obviously going to be the ones he’s struck true

I don’t know how many you’ve put up but if you only want to watch the villa game you will clearly see 5 plus examples were they were not well timed or struck

So your welcome to keep trawling through his career to date identifying successful efforts but it proves sum total of zero

Any player that has a weakness you can demonstrate plenty of examples of them doing said weakness well because it is not suggested the failure rate is 100%

All you did really there totti was show us some nice spurs goals

So I’ll thank you for that
 
1st clip of Son's goal that is Toby doing the long pass. Nothing wrong with us saying he needs to add the long pass to his game on the regular. I want to see him do these kinds of passes at least 5 times each match.

You realise those passes are reliant on movement from either our attackers or our wing backs, right?

He completed 8 long balls at the weekend. More than any other midfielder in the Premier League. With Rodri (Man City), Lundstram (Sheff Utd) next with 7.

In fact, we'll compare him to some other Prem midfielders who play a little deeper for the 'top clubs' over the same weekend.

Winks:
82 passes
96% pass completion
2 key passes
8 long balls completed
64 minutes played

Guendouzi:
69 passes
85% pass conpletion
1 key pass
4long balls completed
90 minutes played

Jorginho:
62 passes
82% pass completion
0 key passes
1 long ball completed
73 minutes played

Rodri:
72 passes
90% pass completion
0 key passes
7 long balls completed
90 minutes played

McTominay:
48 passes
81% pass completion
0 key passes
5 ong balls completed
90 minutes played

Henderson:
54 passes
83% pass completion
0 key passes
6 long balls complete
90 minutes played


I'd say based on the one game so far - he's doing a pretty good job. If he was to CONSISTENTLY hit those numbers per game, we have one hell of a player on our hands.
 
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You realise those passes are reliant on movement from either our attackers or our wing backs, right?

He completed 8 long balls at the weekend. More than any other midfielder in the Premier League. With Rodri (Man City), Lundstram (Sheff Utd) next with 7.

In fact, we'll compare him to some other Prem midfielders who play a little deeper for the 'top clubs' over the same weekend.

Winks:
82 passes
96% pass completion
2 key passes
8 long balls completed
64 minutes played

Guendouzi:
69 passes
85% pass conpletion
1 key pass
4long balls completed
90 minutes played

Jorginho:
62 passes
82% pass completion
0 key passes
1 long ball completed
73 minutes played

Rodri:
72 passes
90% pass completion
0 key passes
7 long balls completed
90 minutes played

McTominay:
48 passes
81% pass completion
0 key passes
5 ong balls completed
90 minutes played

Henderson:
54 passes
83% pass completion
0 key passes
6 long balls complete
90 minutes played


I'd say based on the one game so far - he's doing a pretty good job. If he was to CONSISTENTLY hit those numbers per game, we have one hell of a player on our hands.
Winks on the ball is good, but his ability to spot the pass leaves much to be desired. If Eriksen does leave, I really hope for his development that he gets the opportunity escape the ‘6’ role between the two CBs and has the opportunity to play more of an attacking role. This has the following benefit:

1) It should in theory expand his vision as he moves further up the pitch. Rather than being the "recycler" of possession, he can be more like the metronome, explicitly passing forward, offering himself as a passing lane further up the pitch so that he can create a pass to provide an opportunity to attackers.

2) With moving forward, he’ll have more than likely will have the opportunity to spot runs that require balls over the top – one of the biggest criticisms that I have of Winks is that his long passes often tend to hang in the air longer than they should (see TAA of Liverpool – his driven passes quickly shift play from one end to another – forcing less time for the opponent to reshuffle into the defensive positions) – playing that more attacking role should hopefully help him to recalibrate the way he works and passes.

3) When or if he does end up back at the ‘6’ position, the attacking role that he played should help halt the excessive recycling that he does. When you compare his passing to someone like de Jong, who if we successfully did procure, would have superseded Winks and he’d be on the bench, it is strikingly clear that Winks takes the easier option. Considering Winks agility and ability to evade pressing, he should be stepping up more often and make those passes forward. I do think the hindrance of him not playing a more attacking role has him pigeoned holed into the defensive mindset.

It annoys me that Winks is doing what Dier is doing when Winks is a better footballer and passer.
 
Winks on the ball is good, but his ability to spot the pass leaves much to be desired. If Eriksen does leave, I really hope for his development that he gets the opportunity escape the ‘6’ role between the two CBs and has the opportunity to play more of an attacking role. This has the following benefit:

1) It should in theory expand his vision as he moves further up the pitch. Rather than being the "recycler" of possession, he can be more like the metronome, explicitly passing forward, offering himself as a passing lane further up the pitch so that he can create a pass to provide an opportunity to attackers.

2) With moving forward, he’ll have more than likely will have the opportunity to spot runs that require balls over the top – one of the biggest criticisms that I have of Winks is that his long passes often tend to hang in the air longer than they should (see TAA of Liverpool – his driven passes quickly shift play from one end to another – forcing less time for the opponent to reshuffle into the defensive positions) – playing that more attacking role should hopefully help him to recalibrate the way he works and passes.

3) When or if he does end up back at the ‘6’ position, the attacking role that he played should help halt the excessive recycling that he does. When you compare his passing to someone like de Jong, who if we successfully did procure, would have superseded Winks and he’d be on the bench, it is strikingly clear that Winks takes the easier option. Considering Winks agility and ability to evade pressing, he should be stepping up more often and make those passes forward. I do think the hindrance of him not playing a more attacking role has him pigeoned holed into the defensive mindset.

It annoys me that Winks is doing what Dier is doing when Winks is a better footballer and passer.

Winks made more forward passes than any other midfielder in our team at the weekend.... and he played 30 minutes less than 2 of them...

Not sure what you mean by doing what Dier is doing. Dier does his best not to pass forward, hides from play, puts himself in positions so that he doesn't receive a ball under pressure and is uncomfortable when he does have the ball.

I honestly cannot help but feel if Ndombele put in the performance Winks did at the weekend, came off after 65 minutes to be replaced by Eriksen and we won the game, the conversations wouldn't even be happening and it'd be more geared towards "Eriksen changed the game" and not "Ndombele comes off and we win" and everyone would have praised Ndombeles performance.

For some reason though, it's easy to target a Spurs boy, who didn't really put a single foot wrong. Not aimed at you specifically, just those who seem to nitpick at the littlest things when it comes to players for some reason they don't rate and refuse to praise.

People have their favourites I guess and just can't get their head around change. A bit like how Sanchez got blamed for the Villa goal when he was pretty much the last person you could blame from our side of the field. I wonder if Vertonghen would have got blamed in the same situation. Hmm, I wonder.
 
Winks made more forward passes than any other midfielder in our team at the weekend.... and he played 30 minutes less than 2 of them...

Not sure what you mean by doing what Dier is doing. Dier does his best not to pass forward, hides from play, puts himself in positions so that he doesn't receive a ball under pressure and is uncomfortable when he does have the ball.

I honestly cannot help but feel if Ndombele put in the performance Winks did at the weekend, came off after 65 minutes to be replaced by Eriksen and we won the game, the conversations wouldn't even be happening and it'd be more geared towards "Eriksen changed the game" and not "Ndombele comes off and we win" and everyone would have praised Ndombeles performance.

For some reason though, it's easy to target a Spurs boy, who didn't really put a single foot wrong. Not aimed at you specifically, just those who seem to nitpick at the littlest things when it comes to players for some reason they don't rate and refuse to praise.

People have their favourites I guess and just can't get their head around change. A bit like how Sanchez got blamed for the Villa goal when he was pretty much the last person you could blame from our side of the field.

Driven long balls are much harder to execute than the lob style long balls Winks makes. Stats don’t tell you that.

We see this pass from Toby and Eriksen all the time as well. The Eriksen pass headed out by Heaton is itself this kind of a pass, and so are the numerous Toby passes to KWP. It takes roughly 1-2 seconds to go from one person to another. Whereas if you watch a Winks’ passing (any will do), a much larger proportion is those lob type slowish passes that take a longer time. Safer sure, and switches the play definitely, but doesn’t speed up play.

You see this from Jorginho who is a like for like comparison. These passes do 2 things:

1)switch the play
2)speed up the play, as the receiver has space to run into and threaten while the opposition is still recovering its shape.

I want to see Winks become a player that can unlock defences from a deep position and change the game with passing ability. Pirlo is the obvious ideal paragon. His long passing was phenomenal. His short passes were creative and incisive, creating extra space for everyone around him. Winks recycles the ball well. He maintains possession well. But his passing range isn’t great and whether by design or by nature his short passes lack for creativity.

This is not to slag off Winks. All players have their strengths and weaknesses. I just feel like the role he is playing and, perhaps more importantly, the formation that his role is a feature of suffer more from his weaknesses than they benefit from his strengths. To be honest I seriously think the formation just kind of sucks for us. And Winks is a point of contention because his role seems to be the key position in this shitty formation.
 
He hasn’t got a particularly good 30. 40 yard ping which is normally a stock ball for playing CM.

I mentioned I think he can lack vision on occasions.... and identified the particular ball that Skipp spots and executes to great effect
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It's line splitting passes like that which first caught my eye with him....

Would like to see more, but he been dropped further back since orignally playing as a #8 which tends to make such passes all the more risky. I hope we aren't slowly coaching this out of his game completely.
 
Totti Im not arguing it out all the mitigating circumstances to why it occurred. There are numerous other than this possible you’ve suggested..... villa were tiring is maybe the strongest factor. Who knows

But the point stands. That we improved when winks went off and I hope that isn’t something that occurs more often than not.

If it does he’s not going to get game time if other mids are effecting the game more

Surely that was more about who came on when Winks went off - Eriksen - and what really improved our attack was that Eriksen went into the front four and Sissoko came out of it.

I'm not saying Winks is wonder bread, but just think back to how fucking awful we were the back end of last season when he got injured and we couldn't play football through midfield for two months.
 
Surely that was more about who came on when Winks went off - Eriksen - and what really improved our attack was that Eriksen went into the front four and Sissoko came out of it.

I'm not saying Winks is wonder bread, but just think back to how fucking awful we were the back end of last season when he got injured and we couldn't play football through midfield for two months.
Yeah I went through all the mitigating circumstances of my original post

Just read it
 
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