Excellent post.
I understand what you mean about Eriksen, but I honestly think we have started to build him up too much.
I’m not sure how manny games he’s missed for Spurs, what the results were, who else we had available at the time, or how well we played without him in those games.
So for me it’s all turned a bit Emperors New Clothes.
It’s become this thing: “When Eriksen is poor Spurs are poor”
My solution to that is “get him off the pitch then”
Eriksen could be rotated with Dele for a similar effect, or change our attack completely play wingers and two up top.
We’re not varying it up enough with what we have and that’s the problem. I’d be happy to drop both Eriksen and Kane next PL match.
That’s how much confidence I have in the quality of Son, Moura and Lamela as a front three, and that’s why I’m putting Pochs failings before the signings argument.
He won’t rotate. So why would Martial, or Zaha or Grealish get a game ahead of Kane or Eriksen when he won’t drop them for the better players we already have?
People make the point Eriksen is dropping back to do the CMs work.
That’s not his job.
If he can break rank and do what he’s not supposed to be doing in central midfield then how about he breaks rank and does the same for Kane then?
I don’t buy it. When the central midfield disappears the defence usually gets a pummeling, yet by and large Jan and Toby are playing just as well as they always do.
So why are Kane and Eriksen so poor with the same central midfield.
Why is that Moura, Lamela, Dele and Son all look ok with the same CMs?
Poch is happy to drop Sanchez and Davies for no reason, for two players who showed no loyalty, but point blank refuses to rotate up top.
It’s a poor message to the squad. We were better with Davies and Sanchez in the side.
But dropping back has become a major part of his (Eriksen's) remit, either directly (where we are playing him CM3's as an 8, which we did several times last season and already this (Watfrd eg), or indirectly because of the complete lack of transitional ability of players like Dier (worst culprit) or Dembele (who's game's just degenerating and has never been a tempo setter). He wouldn't be doing without Poch's tactical instruction.
I genuinely think if anything his overall contribution to this side is underrated, partly because he has such a quiet persona.
If you search the big five European leagues for last season, you will be hard pushed to find a player who scored/assisted 20 goals, averaged nearly 3 key passes a game, 60 passes a game, and regularly also covered more ground than anyone else in their team.
The guy is almost playing two positions every game, due to the complete lack of creative/incisve/tempo from our other CM's. He's played as a 10, as an 8, and also more frequently as a kind of "false 10/ 8 Hybrid" where he takes responsibility for our transition from midfield to attack as well as ending up in the attack, often in the same moves.
Ive read you saying he's nowhere near a 100m player, but if you take persona out of it and just weigh up his performances and output, they are directly comparable with someone like Coutinho for example and he went to Barca for GB 105m rising to 140m.
Regardless of his "value", I would personally rather lose any other player than him, I think he's almost unique in Europe, certainly very rare. Apart from Coutinho, Pjanic is probably the only real other player currently fulfilling a similar kind of remit (and even he doesn't match Eriksen's goal/assist tally playing for Juve - the strongest team in their league), and I'm pretty sure he'd cost 100m+.
These are the games that Eriksen didn't feature in at all last season:
PL Southampton D1-1
FA Newport D1-1
FA Rochdale 2-2
CL Apoel 3-0
CL Apoel 3-0
LC Barnsley W1-0
LC West Ham L2-3
FA Wimbledon W3-0
FA Newport W2-0
FA Rochdale W6-1
I'm not sure if you remember, but some of those games were horrendous (Southampton, Newport, Rochdale, West Ham, Barnsley) That Southampton game was one of the worst games we played last season, this was when they were terrible too, and we were lucky to get a draw.
The problem with your idea is, that when Eriksen is poor, we don't look great, but when Erisksen isn't there, we look a shit load worse.
Natty Roots
Allegedly a 46 year old man disagreeing with everyone. Hey Roots? Why don’t you fuck off you fucking child? Or grow up? I suspect the former is more attainable.
