We both know I could have retorted you to fucking death about the banality of Davies, Dier and Sissoko, and backed it up with stats if I could be arsed, but I couldn't.
By talking of banality, aren't you rather proving my point?
And please let it be noted, you brought Sissoko into this, not me before I have Sergeant
Bazali
of the fucking Sissoko police on my fucking case.
Noted, but a valid part of my 'case' though much the same... You exhibited the trait in question the way you reacted to the mention of Dier with out of context rhetoric.
And it's a bit hypocritical for someone who quoted a simple short post of mine pointing out the factual inaccuracies of your previous post with this stat filled essay
Nothing hypocritical about it at all. A) you proved straight away you had no grasp of the context in which my original (nor follow up) post(s) were made by comparing Rose to Davies, quoting minutes played and misquoting me as saying Ben was a "#1
selection" into the bargain (injury to Rose obviously gave him his 'break' as a 1st teamer for 18months - A fact I've not hidden from)... The former insertions were simply not relevant, the latter simply false. B) You know as well as I do, I don't fancifully band stats about on a regular basis, but in this case I was simply quantifying how many games each player I mentioned had started in the time period discussed. It was hardly an essay of the proportions or nature of that which I made light...
Davies is an OK LB to have in a squad, Dier is good/Ok as a CB, fucking meh/turgid as a CM, Sissoko is just fucking piss poor at most things, but as I said, teams win leagues, world cups and champions leagues or finish top 4, with all variations of shitty (relatively speaking) players in their midst that are compensated for by numerous other factors (I even gave you a couple of examples - where the fuck is the entire Leicester back 4 now? Greece winning a Euros etc etc).
Over arching point; How the fuck did they do it?
Being part of a successful team (or relatively successful even) is no more a steadfast guarantee of a player's individual quality any more than being part of a really shit team automatically means a player is shit.
Touche, but take our manager's history for perfect instance, most players that looked good under him, when sold, haven't pulled up trees afterwards... (Lovren, Lallana, Shaw, Schneiderlin... We all know the list); that doesn't mean they weren't worthy contributors within that system or can reasonably be expected to be 'swapped out' for high spec individuals across the board (unless you are Man City and a blessed few other teams in the world). I'm glad you mentioned Greece (and Leicester again... Let's throw Denmark in their too)... Isn't the pursuit here - however unlikely in a lot of teams cases - to WIN trophies? Let's not confuse the notion of 'entertaining football' or the fabled 'Tottenham Way' with a requisite that each and every player must be entertainers themselves.
On the flip-side, do you not think there is a tipping point where a system is only as good as the players attempting to execute it? We racked up our best ever defensive numbers with Dier & Ben as regular starters.... How many "relatively shitty" players can a team afford to have as regular starters before it becomes dysfunctional... 2, 3, 4....?
Ben was 23/24 when Poch dropped him again for a player you don't particularly rate in Rose.... Why is it not fair to assume he'd have improved further if his run of starts had continued? Same way that Dier may have developed further/better if he'd not been shunted around from season to season?
Finally, a closing point on Davies: If he was as bad as is made out by his detractors, then how comes we rarely leak goals down his side? ...Yet by contrast, teams would actively target Trippier for HIS weaknesses (a player you at length defended over and over again and has now been sold)?