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Harry Winks

lurker of old said:
For that role, for this game, we didn't have anyone better than Winks. I maintain that he did as well as can be expected....and Ndombele instead of Winks yesterday would've likely resulted in us dying early on via committing suicide.
But we were incredibly lucky not to be 3 down by half-time. Fact is that we didn't take the game to City, and most of our passing seemed to be backwards....as if we would get a bonus point every time Hugo touched the ball.
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Putting aside the fact that I think 3-0 at HT would’ve been very harsh as City had few, if any, clear cut chances.... having Ndombele instead of Winks wouldn’t have magically had us on the front foot and dominating. It would’ve improved our forward play a little I agree as Winks is a very weak, unimaginative user of the ball, but even a player with Ndombele’s skill would be able do very little on the ball inside our defensive third, the flip side of that improved ability on the ball is that it would’ve left acres of space for City in front of our back 4 as Ndombele has the positional sense of an 8 year old in the playground (which is marginally better than Lamela’s who is still at 7 year old level in this respect).

Our game plan on Sunday was quite clear I thought and relied on the midfield players being very disciplined in their positioning (the very thing that Ndombele and Lamela are not). We had 4 counter attacks with even numbers or numbers in our favour on Sunday. Usually that number would result in at least one goal, the ref stuffed us by not booking each of their players who committed the tactical foul which meant that they could have multiple goes at stopping our counters via nefarious means. The best counter opportunity we had was the one when Laporte got booked, we were 4 on 2 there, so should either have come out of that playing against 10 men for the rest of the match or (probably) going a goal up.

As I said before I would’ve liked to have seen us open up a little with Ndombele for Lo Celso around the point we made our double sub when the game was a little more stretched than in the first half.
 
djp82 said:
Yes they did to an extent but Winks is not brave on the ball. He does not pass the ball through the lines. He used to do it early on but he’s not these days.
Our two deepest midfielders done a lot of hiding behind players on Sunday and showed little bravery to get us moving forward.

Winks is a nice player but that’s it. He’s another Carroll and Mason. He’s never going to be a top CM. Squad player at best. Unless he starts to show some bottle on the ball and gets the game moving forward.
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He’s not as good as Mason. Mason was quite brave on the ball, which is one of the reasons why Pochettino liked him I think.
 
djp82 said:
Will be very interesting to see what a new manager makes of this squad. We need a passer in the midfield. Deeper or more attacking I’m not sure . Some will say Ndombele or Lo Celso but they just don’t show enough of it.
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I suspect that Ten Hag (assuming he’s the man) would look to do what he did at Ajax to get De Jong on the ball as much as possible and play two minders. One of those would be Hojbjeg, the other would be a new signing (Soumare please Spurs) or Skipp if we’re as brassic as we suspect we are.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I suspect that Ten Hag (assuming he’s the man) would look to do what he did at Ajax to get De Jong on the ball as much as possible and play two minders. One of those would be Hojbjeg, the other would be a new signing (Soumare please Spurs) or Skipp if we’re as brassic as we suspect we are.
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What do you mean by "minders"?

Wasn't it often De Jong at one of two deeper midfielders, with a more defensive midfielder next to him. Then van de Beek in a more advanced role?

If we were to replicate that I would say Ndombele or Lo Celso as the nearest to a De Jong player next to Hojbjerg (or Skipp) with a more attacking role being given to Alli or the other one out of Ndombele and Lo Celso?

So somewhat similar to what we've tried to do at times at least in the second half of this season?
 
Finney Is Back said:
I suspect that Ten Hag (assuming he’s the man) would look to do what he did at Ajax to get De Jong on the ball as much as possible and play two minders. One of those would be Hojbjeg, the other would be a new signing (Soumare please Spurs) or Skipp if we’re as brassic as we suspect we are.
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Think we will bring in Skipp, as you said think we won’t see to much of a transfer budget
 
braineclipse said:
What do you mean by "minders"?

Wasn't it often De Jong at one of two deeper midfielders, with a more defensive midfielder next to him. Then van de Beek in a more advanced role?

If we were to replicate that I would say Ndombele or Lo Celso as the nearest to a De Jong player next to Hojbjerg (or Skipp) with a more attacking role being given to Alli or the other one out of Ndombele and Lo Celso?

So somewhat similar to what we've tried to do at times at least in the second half of this season?
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Yes, come to think of it, I think your'e right, Schone tended to play deepest and Van de Beek would buzz around all over the pitch. You might be bang on there with your thoughts.
 
Winks, you say? Yeah, he's been the stalwart of our midfield for years now. Ever since that masterclass against Real Madrid. Like Dembele and Eriksen rolled into one. Consistently excellent, drives the team on, must be worth at least £45m.
 
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