Well our motion in the ocean is... not great?
Sure we get the job done sometimes, but no-one is having a good time on the way.
Hence my yearning for the days of Bentley and Dos Santos wasting away in the ressies!
-
The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
Sure we get the job done sometimes, but no-one is having a good time on the way.
Hence my yearning for the days of Bentley and Dos Santos wasting away in the ressies!
Like I said... It's what you do with them.
Kane's the closest we come to playing a CAM.
Kulu could be played CAM but isn't.
Peinnar was a 6 month-er that played 15/17 games on the flank.
Bentley 62/62 games on the flank.
Niko played the majority out wide.... As did GDS.
I get being misty eved over a list that included Modric & VDV, but they're the only true outlier here.......
Hopefully Porro can become a midfield middle third maestro. He certainly plays there as opposed to sitting in the back 5You can list them like that and it seems as though we're stacked on numbers alone...
But Gil has been ostracised, Perisic is the Ghost of Perisic Past (as well as nominally being our lwb as opposed to an attacking midfielder), Danjuma's just here for an extended Stadium Tour/maybe a cheeky bit of Karting, Kane is a striker etc...
I'm just yearning for the days of a pure attacking midfielder, sure maybe I included Lennon/Bale slightly disingenuously, and GDS was never anything more than an exotic name... but still.
Modric, VDV, Kranjcar and even Pienaar.
Bentley was probably still on the books too...
As opposed to what in today's squad? In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king, either of Niko or Pienaar would be our most creative midfielder today by virtue of being our only creative midfielder!
Also when you look beyond my initial list, we still had strikers on top of that!
You know what your problem is?
You spend way too much time trying to apply logic to what ultimately is an entirely irrational pursuit, you could reel off a litany of statistics and data telling me precisely why PEH is a more productive attacking threat than Niko Kranjcar, and yet I would still tell you to fuck off, Kranjcar was a genius...
As for Pienaar only being a 6 monther, or Bentley being played out wide, those things don't matter, it's not the actual historic record of what they were that matters in the hearts and minds, it's the notion of a Bentley (type), and what we thought Pienaar would or could be in our shirt...
Despite no actual evidence of it on the pitch at any time, the potential for GDS to explode at any moment and become a global superstar was something that I spent years anticipating, even whilst he was out on loan at Ipswich!
Whereas now, what glimmer of hope is there to cling on to in a sea of Conte ball?
I want a fucking maverick and I want one now!
And there's the punchline.....
One could just as easily argue that Kulu & Gil offer that same prospective hope and/or un-fullfilled potential (See GDS, Bentley & Piennar - None of whom came close to delivering on the "hype" for us.).
Ndombele arrived with "hype" through the roof....... GLC the same, to a lesser extent.
(With regard to your psycho-analysis of me.... I allow myself to get "hyped", but reality is gonna bite regardless especially in a proverbial "results-based business" Furthermore, hype" doesn't endear anywhere near as much on a retrospective basis...... You still excited by Ndombele?)
Like I already said. tho'....... I understand pining for Modric, VDV and the return of attacking football.
Ndombele? Honestly, not right now but I'm sure I could be pulled back in...
And I've still got time for GLC.
I feel like the joy has been sucked out of Spurs for so long now, I'll happily acknowledge that Kulusevski and Gil are of the right ilk, but they are here now and now is such a joyless time, so by association they aren't doing it for me as much as the thought of Kranjcar scoring a screamer once every few months.
If you'd have told me when I was young, or even as recently as the Redknapp days, that we'd be consistently qualifying for the CL and yet I would be taking next to no pleasure out of following Spurs, then I'd have thought you were a madman.
The "your problem" thing wasn't meant antagonistically, it just seems to be a recurring theme, you often seem to think that people should feel the same way as you based on cold hard facts and drop them on here like little "gotchas", but we're talking about a topic that revolves around passion and emotion, it's not governed by facts at all.
I'd wager that PEH has more goal contributions in a Spurs shirt than Niko Kranjcar, probably a better ratio per minutes played too, but who do you think 99% would say was a better footballer? More entertaining? More attacking?
But to cut to the chase, I simply pine for the day of having that option in the squad, be it VDV, Modric, Kranjcar, Ndombele, GLC or whoever. Part of me probably doesn't want to include Kulu/Gil in that mould as I see them as wingers, whereas I would like to see us play with some craft through the middle as well.
Not at all..... Shame you should take it that way.... It's just one man's take provoked by prior comment.
Sometimes one agrees; others not.... Typically "I agree" is a lot shorter than when one seeks to explain their opposing take because the equivalent "You're wrong; end of" is a bollocks way to contuct one's self.
In this instance if you're only talking based on pure emotion, then touche; but more broadly, nope. Facts are very much part of the equation......... In fact (pardon the pun!), I'd go as far as to say that if one is getting emotional about something that's not true they're being rather silly.
I miss that team. I just enjoyed it. We were great some weeks, others less so but in Redknapps 3.5 years i don't ever remember being bored which has been the overiding feeling since Ajax away 4 years ago. Something has to change. I'm not sure my interest could survive another borefest manager.
I'm not suggesting i'm getting emotional about this, I'm saying that supportership is all about emotion, if it were a purely logical process then almost everybody would just support the side that sits atop the table as that's the one that would logically bring you more joy.
And people would prefer to sit down and enjoy the historic performances of a Frank Lampard over a Gazza or a Hoddle, as statistically he was the better attacker by many metrics (probably, I'm not about to fact check this...)
So looking at a teamsheet lined up 44(fackin')2 with Modric and Kranjcar at cm, no matter how imbalanced and unlikely to actually succeed, would get me way more excited than a 343 with 5 defenders shielded by Skipp/Hoj.
Not logical.
I'd also wager that I'd get much more pleasure watching some of the games we lost under Redknapp or Poch but played really well, than I do out of a lot of the wins under Conte.
Not logical.
The issue with stats is they only tell the story of the final result, not the journey that reached that end, one mazy Ginola run and side foot into the bottom corner against Barnsley in an early round FA Cup tie at Barnsley, would you swap that for a hundred Frank Lampard skuffed daisy cutters that deflected in?
I wouldn't.
No logic.
It's ok... I understand that.
I do think you're romanticising some rather disappointing players tho (Piennar, Bentley, GDS).
You're also very much verering back to my original point which was "it's as much about what you do with them" than the list of players you or managed to cobble together.
Whoever resurrected this thread has made me sad today.
I amazed a single person thinks GLC is a player he stinks. Can't run Can't shoot Can't dribble WTF are you watching? I never want to see him an N'dombele in a Spurs shirt for as long as I live and I hope that's very very many years to come.
On Kranjcar I'm getting 71 games 11 goals 8 assists. But I'm not sure, I read it correctly
And you didn’t mention the connection between GLC and Ndombelly
They don’t want to play for us!
So let’s fuck them both off in the Summer
I don't think there's any way you cobble together a midfield from Lucas, Danjuma, Gil out on loan that would ever get me reminiscing about them as wistfully as one from GDS, Kranjcar and Pienaar.
It's not about what any given manager would do with them, it's fundamentally about them being football players as opposed to quick strong lads who play on the wing, which is what Conte wants to build his attacking style on.
That in itself is fair enough from his PoV, it's not what I want to be watching week in week out but what can I do, I do however find it borderline negligent that he's too stubborn to even allow a single space in the squad for a creative central player to use when plan A isn't getting shit done.
The fact that I so desperately want us to have one such option in today's squad is what makes me hark back to the days we had many that could do that role so gleefully. You're focusing a lot on my mention of Pienaar and the like, but start from the top, options we had as attacking central midfielder.
1 - VDV, if he was unavailable then...
2 - Modric, could be moved further up to the position he started out at, or if you preferred to keep him deeper then...
3 - Kranjcar, yeah he nominally played from out wide but he was for all intents and purposes an attacking cm played out wide. The drop off in quality from VDV/Modric to him was quite big, but largely down to lack of pace. If he'd have been quick he'd have been obscene...
4 - Pienaar - I'll happily admit, his time here was a nothing, came in cheap off of a very good stint at Everton, rarely threatened the first team and when he did he didn't do much to impress. It just didn't click for him. He's another similar to Kranjcar who I always saw as a central player used out wide because there was no room for him in the centre and you know what, we're 4 deep into the list now, compare that to the nobody we have at present and I'd say he wins...
5/6 GDS/Bentley - Kind of irrelevant at this point, at one point they had potential, but I'm not romanticising them, I'm reminiscing about the fact that they existed, they were just mentioned as the cherry on top to the rest of the talent we had available then.
You know, someone to throw on late in the game when you're desperate for a goal, as opposed to Davinson Sanchez...
:contelol:
If we wanna be 'brave' and 'jazzy' (my words, granted!) we can just play Bentancur with Kulu & Gil in front of him... I'd find that more appealing than a trio cobbled together from #3-6 on the above list.
Romero / [pick your poison]
Porro -------- Bentancur--------Udogie
Kulu / Gil
Richy / Kane / Son
I always liked Niko.
It's a little fluid in having Modric/Bentley/GDS in my list really I accept, but all of the ones I've named either started as central players or did move there eventually, let's not forget that we could also call upon Bale and Lennon in the old squad too, it's only fair if you are going to use Gil/Kulu as counters to the worst of my bunch!
Also I see you're still sticking with that god awful 343, I think I'm more averse to that now than I was Poch's bloody diamond - at least that was short lived!
Our squad now just feels so heavily oriented towards defensive minded grafters, I don't even care if you break it down and demonstrate to me that there is a perfectly even balance of "defenders" and "attackers", it may well just be a sympton of the dirge that we serve up on the pitch, but it just feels so insipid and uninspiring...
The fact that whoever we put out in whatever formation, all they are going to do is spend 90 minutes chugging down the flanks winning set pieces to try and Wimbledon a win...
Ugh...
:contefacepalm:
Look closer; it's not 343......
It's an ultra-attacking 433... 2CBs...... I'm just showing the FBs pushed up.
I actually think with the right defensive re-reinforcements that we all know we need (GK & CB); we've got the capacity to field a very attacking team (see above)...... (Kane/Son caveats accepted).
Read it as Kulu or Gil not and...
