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Jan Vertonghen

glorygloryeze said:
Vertonghen is playing very well atm, probably mainly because he's with his mate Toby and boy have we benefited!
But let's not get ahead of ourselves here: one thing Verts is NOT is a leader. If he was he'd have shown such qualities by now and not need his old chum to look consistently good.

Watch what happens when Toby is out and he has to partner one of our non-senior CBs, like say Wimmer: the sloppy goals and lack of man-marking will become a lot more obvious.

It's the reason why if Poch wants to play a different CB partnership to give a rest to one of Toby or Verts he'll almost always choose to play Toby and one other and NOT Verts and one other.

I guess we should just enjoy the good form whilst it lasts until ebruary when the inevitable plummet happens...
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Sorry mate I can not agree that Toby has made Jan look "consistently" good, during his first season here Jan was good enough on a regular basis to get in the Prem team of the season. Do not get me wrong I was overjoyed that we signed Toby and was pushing for him to come here all summer but Jan is a top CB in his own right.

I am not going into old debates again ( not in this thread anyway) but he did look poor in some games last season ( our whole defence did) but as I have said elsewhere that was more down to the lack of cover they got from our CM at the time.

As for not being a leader I disagree again, he was capt at Ajax and has also done that job for his country on occasions.
 
parklane1 said:
Sorry mate I can not agree that Toby has made Jan look "consistently" good, during his first season here Jan was good enough on a regular basis to get in the Prem team of the season. Do not get me wrong I was overjoyed that we signed Toby and was pushing for him to come here all summer but Jan is a top CB in his own right.

I am not going into old debates again ( not in this thread anyway) but he did look poor in some games last season ( our whole defence did) but as I have said elsewhere that was more down to the lack of cover they got from our CM at the time.

As for not being a leader I disagree again, he was capt at Ajax and has also done that job for his country on occasions.
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Jan often looks 'good' in the first part of the seaon before tailing off from about February onwards...happens every year.

I agree that the cover the CBs had last year wasn't great - but we've had better cover than last year and he's still often been found wanting (near end of AVB's first season, post Feb/March). Also, some of his poor play last season could not be blamed on Mason/Bentaleb etc not being the best protection, some of the goals last season were HIS rooster-ups e.g. Swansea's first goal and a few others where HE has a simple chance to clear the ball but he leaves it/ misses it.

My main point is he can often be a very good defender; but a LEADER he is most definitely NOT; after all he's had ample opportunities as the 'senior' CB to prove such and mostly failed in that regard imo
 
parklane1 said:
Sorry mate I can not agree that Toby has made Jan look "consistently" good, during his first season here Jan was good enough on a regular basis to get in the Prem team of the season. Do not get me wrong I was overjoyed that we signed Toby and was pushing for him to come here all summer but Jan is a top CB in his own right.

I am not going into old debates again ( not in this thread anyway) but he did look poor in some games last season ( our whole defence did) but as I have said elsewhere that was more down to the lack of cover they got from our CM at the time.

As for not being a leader I disagree again, he was capt at Ajax and has also done that job for his country on occasions.
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On the leader thing... I think a lot of us saw his mood drop when the club was in a chaotic state. I really think he has high ambitions and being a part of that circus made his motivation drop and he just looked out of place all around. I don't think he's the kind of leader that can pull together a group of struggling players in a situation like that. Not many people are though, and hopefully we won't be heading for a situation like that any time soon.

I think that's quite different from being a leader when things are going better, being a role-model for younger players on and off the pitch and organizing a back 4 in a well functioning team. Difficult to know for sure, but from what I can tell he seems pretty decent at those things.
 
glorygloryeze said:
Jan often looks 'good' in the first part of the seaon before tailing off from about February onwards...happens every year.

I agree that the cover the CBs had last year wasn't great - but we've had better cover than last year and he's still often been found wanting (near end of AVB's first season, post Feb/March). Also, some of his poor play last season could not be blamed on Mason/Bentaleb etc not being the best protection, some of the goals last season were HIS rooster-ups e.g. Swansea's first goal and a few others where HE has a simple chance to clear the ball but he leaves it/ misses it.

My main point is he can often be a very good defender; but a LEADER he is most definitely NOT; after all he's had ample opportunities as the 'senior' CB to prove such and mostly failed in that regard imo
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Well we will have to agree to disagree over this, there was a lot of crap written about him last season about his body language ( still do not know what Uni you have to go to and become a expert in that skill), not saying you were one of those "experts" but they were a few.
 
braineclipse said:
On the leader thing... I think a lot of us saw his mood drop when the club was in a chaotic state. I really think he has high ambitions and being a part of that circus made his motivation drop and he just looked out of place all around. I don't think he's the kind of leader that can pull together a group of struggling players in a situation like that. Not many people are though, and hopefully we won't be heading for a situation like that any time soon.

I think that's quite different from being a leader when things are going better, being a role-model for younger players on and off the pitch and organizing a back 4 in a well functioning team. Difficult to know for sure, but from what I can tell he seems pretty decent at those things.
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Pretty much how I see it, to be honest a lot of this criticism of Jan started after the photo of them in the L'pool tunnel. That is when the so called "body language experts" stated the gonads about him not caring enough, pity to say a few fans bought into that gonads and it escalated from there.
 
Er...some fans had issues with his play BEFORE the tunnel and all that 'body language' stuff. Seems like in the case of Vertognhen whenever he fails to clear a ball he could with ease or lets an attacker easily skips past him, or fails to mark well at a corner giving away a header on goal it's someone else's fault ALL THE TIME.
 
glorygloryeze said:
Er...some fans had issues with his play BEFORE the tunnel and all that 'body language' stuff. Seems like in the case of Vertognhen whenever he fails to clear a ball he could with ease or lets an attacker easily skips past him, or fails to mark well at a corner giving away a header on goal it's someone else's fault ALL THE TIME.
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Some fans maybe but the body language gonads was picked up by many more. Maybe because to some fans there has always got to be a spacegoat.
 
glorygloryeze said:
Er...some fans had issues with his play BEFORE the tunnel and all that 'body language' stuff. Seems like in the case of Vertognhen whenever he fails to clear a ball he could with ease or lets an attacker easily skips past him, or fails to mark well at a corner giving away a header on goal it's someone else's fault ALL THE TIME.
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I have no issues blaming him for his mistakes. Though I have also seen him blamed for stuff that clearly wasn't his mistake.

I think all defenders make mistakes though. It's a question of frequencies. Most centre backs we could realistically sign would make mistakes relatively often I think.

Verts, along with Toby seems like the best defenders we've had since Gallas was truly good, and that was essentially only for a season and a bit. In their age group I don't think we can do much better than either of them. If a couple of years down the line someone like Wimmer, Dier, Velkjovic or Carter-Vickers can develop into even better centre backs that would be awesome. But that's most likely the only way we'll get someone better, unless we're going for a short term solution or someone injury prone.
 
parklane1 said:
Some fans maybe but the body language cobblers was picked up by many more. Maybe because to some fans there has always got to be a spacegoat.
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There do seem to be those who need a spacegoat, fair enough.
But i think you have to recognise that whilst Jan is a good player individually, there have been times when as often the 'best' CB with us he has been as poor as anyone in our defence at times; perhaps because he is seen as a good player he gets more focus when he make the mistakes he does (and you have to admit he's a made a fair few).

For me he has been excused too much due to 'lack of midfield cover' or 'not playing with a CB of equal quality.' If he is a true leader, he would be the one that elevates his partners and not fall so headlong in the brick that appears around him. It is this quality that separates the likes of King, Naybet, Toby, Fonte at Soton etc.

If Jan has similarly poor games from February as he has often with us, if he is doing this again with Toby beside him he'll have no excuses.
 
Some people cannot win. Vertonghen is one of those. Plays well and still gets sh!t from
"the supporters". It's sad really.
 
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parklane1 said:
Pretty much how I see it, to be honest a lot of this criticism of Jan started after the photo of them in the L'pool tunnel. That is when the so called "body language experts" stated the cobblers about him not caring enough, pity to say a few fans bought into that cobblers and it escalated from there.
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It's all bullsh!t anyway, Jan always looks like that in the tunnel, usually he walks out of it as our last player. Also when he plays well.
 
glorygloryeze said:
There do seem to be those who need a spacegoat, fair enough.
But i think you have to recognise that whilst Jan is a good player individually, there have been times when as often the 'best' CB with us he has been as poor as anyone in our defence at times; perhaps because he is seen as a good player he gets more focus when he make the mistakes he does (and you have to admit he's a made a fair few).

For me he has been excused too much due to 'lack of midfield cover' or 'not playing with a CB of equal quality.' If he is a true leader, he would be the one that elevates his partners and not fall so headlong in the brick that appears around him. It is this quality that separates the likes of King, Naybet, Toby, Fonte at Soton etc.

If Jan has similarly poor games from February as he has often with us, if he is doing this again with Toby beside him he'll have no excuses.
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Of course Jan makes mistakes all players do ( in truth most goals that are scored in football can be put down to a mistake somewhere in the build up). Personally I have never excused him for mistakes because he is not playing with a CB of equal quality ( some may have though), however your second point about the " lack of M/F cover I disagree with. From what I remember both here and at the ground all our defenders were castigated last season for being rubbish and that was mostly down to the lack of help/cover they got from our CM players.

Again I say all players make mistakes ( never ever seen one that does not) and even Toby has been slated this season for doing so, as I said earlier I obviously rate Jan higher then you do and that is fine as Stop! Hammer time so we will have to agree to disagree over him.
 
glorygloryeze said:
There do seem to be those who need a spacegoat, fair enough.
But i think you have to recognise that whilst Jan is a good player individually, there have been times when as often the 'best' CB with us he has been as poor as anyone in our defence at times; perhaps because he is seen as a good player he gets more focus when he make the mistakes he does (and you have to admit he's a made a fair few).

For me he has been excused too much due to 'lack of midfield cover' or 'not playing with a CB of equal quality.' If he is a true leader, he would be the one that elevates his partners and not fall so headlong in the brick that appears around him. It is this quality that separates the likes of King, Naybet, Toby, Fonte at Soton etc.

If Jan has similarly poor games from February as he has often with us, if he is doing this again with Toby beside him he'll have no excuses.
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When has Toby done that exactly?
 
glorygloryeze said:
I meant Toby elevating the defenders around him; he has with us so far and he certainly did with Soton last season
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"Elevates his partners and not fall so headlong in the brick that appears around him"?

At Southampton he replaced Lovren who also looked very good next to Fonte, they had Schneiderlin and Wanyama ahead of them giving them protection.

For us he's played in a very different team to what Vertonghen played in last season when he was at the very least decent or even good. Not even comparable to the team Vertonghen played in when he actually looked poor and out of place.

Neither team has been brick. Fonte one of your named leaders. And Toby's partnership with Jan has been successful at Ajax and for us. Vertonghen was one of a rather limited number of centre backs that made Dawson look properly good. And in a team that was much less solid last season he was good enough to be a mainstay in a changing back 4 consisting of a changing cb partner and a often a makeshift right back.

I would say Vertonghen has shown at least as much ability to improve those around him as Toby.
 
braineclipse said:
"Elevates his partners and not fall so headlong in the brick that appears around him"?

At Southampton he replaced Lovren who also looked very good next to Fonte, they had Schneiderlin and Wanyama ahead of them giving them protection.

For us he's played in a very different team to what Vertonghen played in last season when he was at the very least decent or even good. Not even comparable to the team Vertonghen played in when he actually looked poor and out of place.

Neither team has been brick. Fonte one of your named leaders. And Toby's partnership with Jan has been successful at Ajax and for us. Vertonghen was one of a rather limited number of centre backs that made Dawson look properly good. And in a team that was much less solid last season he was good enough to be a mainstay in a changing back 4 consisting of a changing cb partner and a often a makeshift right back.

I would say Vertonghen has shown at least as much ability to improve those around him as Toby.
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I disagree TOTALLY; but will be happy to hold my hand up in the future on this
 
braineclipse said:
Strange how Dier and Toby can also lose Giroud in the same game, in set piece situations that should be more predictable. Yet no comments are made about their hair or attitude...

Alderweireld has similarly looked excellent alongside Vertonghen. And Vertonghen looked very good in his first season, most of his games next to Dawson iirc. Another player that seemingly only played well with a leader next to him.

It's not a coincidence that we look better defensively with Toby in the team. Just like it's not a coincidence that we look better defensively with Dier in the team. Just like it's not a coincidence that we look better defensively with an in form Walker in the team. Just like it's not a coincidence that we look better defensively after Pochettino has had a full season to work on the team. Just like it's not a coincidence that we look better defensively with Lamela instead of Townsend in the team. And so on and so on...

Vertonghen has been a part of that. Just because Alderweireld so far hasn't been a part of our team when we've struggled defensively doesn't mean that he for example would have looked better than Vertonghen alongside Fazio with the team we had last season.
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Imo you have come to the wrong conclusion about Vertonghen. In his first season he was often poor when he played alongside Gallas and Caulker but improved when Dawson came into the team. The much maligned Dawson actually bought some stability to that defence and his presence lifted verts. Hence AVB continued to play Daws. Easy to overlook this because the narrative was Dawson was brick. Toby has come and basically done what Dawson did that season imo, bringing some stability.

Why do we focus on Vertonghen rather than Toby? Because he has been at Spurs longer we have far more instances of his sloppiness. I have yet to see this with Toby.

That is not to say I do not like Vertonghen or think he is not good. I just wouldn't trust him to lead our defensive line.
 
glorygloryeze said:
I meant Toby elevating the defenders around him; he has with us so far and he certainly did with Soton last season
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I'm not sure he has done that.... I think he is just a much better player than Fazio that's all. Put Toby alongside Fazio, take away the protection of Dier and either replace Walker with Chiriches or ask Walker to play while carrying an injury so that we have the same defensive line-up as last season and I doubt we'd look any better at the back as we did last season with Vertonghen there.
 
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