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Dele Alli

DeanoAustin said:
Ah stop now. A man of your superior intellect and sophistication is surely capable of putting forth a decent argument.
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If you measure our success by the performance of other clubs then there's no difference.

All we can do is gain as many points as possible - 72>69
 
billyiddo said:
Chelsea started their two best players on the bench, we could have done the same
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LemonadeMoney said:
This is brilliant. It wasn't squad depth, it was being outsmarted. We could have done the same with Kane and Dele.
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That argument completely ignores the difference in depth of the 2 squads at the time. Chelsea left out Hazard and Costa and yet could still play Willian, Pedro and Batshuayi (the striker who Poch wanted); if Poch left out Kane and Eriksen the choices were between Janssen, Nkoudou and at that time a pretty rubbish Sissoko. So are posters seriously suggesting that Poch should have left out Kane and Eriksen in favour of Janssen and Nkoudou to “outsmart” Conte? Close your eyes for a second and imagine how well that would have gone down on gg let alone the rest of the fan base.

Incidentally the other subs Chelsea could bring on that day were John Terry, Fabregas, and Kurt Zouma. Poch had Wimmer a knackered Ben Davies, and Pau Lopez. Bearing in mind both teams were also vying for the title and Spurs had played more games as they were competing in Europe.

So imo he was not “outsmarted” but was playing the best hand he had against a manager with better resources. Something of a recurrent theme for Poch at Spurs.

I said it in a post yesterday. There are several managers I could name who have big trophies to their name but who you would not necessary consider to be as good managers as Poch. Managers like Mancini and Di Matteo. Seriously do you think Poch hasn’t won trophies because he and his team are bottlers? Or could there be other factors in play?
 
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Raziel said:
You can argue that and perhaps be justified, but his failure to make at least one of them count has to be something more than some bizarre theory that funding gives you a side good enough to get to a SF or Final but not win it.

I think the interesting revision for me is we all were worried about the mess Harry would leave the club in, and the mess Jose will eventually leave the club in, right now (in this moment) it looks like Poch has left the club in a worse state than any manager in a long time, a mentally and physically broken side completely shot of self confidence.
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Sigh, You love having your digs at the last manager. As I keep saying until another manager achieves more than Poch, it is very hard to criticise methods that got us the consistency and success, albeit missing that final hurdle, that fans and the board have craved. Poch is unprecedented in terms of recent managers, he has no recent equal so no point comparing against your Harry’s, AVBs or even Mourinhos.

When assessing the squad of course you completely ignore the fact that, unlike the other managers, he had a smaller net spend and went through an entire season with no refresh of the squad whatsoever. That blame lies with the entire transfer committee.
 
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DeanoAustin said:
We'll agree to disagree but you're saying you'd rather finish second on 85 points than win the league on 80?
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No, I'm saying the manager achieving 85 point would have performed his role to a better standard.

Spurs are a business. What I prefer is irrelevant.
 
scaramanga said:
Except in the empirical, objective sense.
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You're wilfully ignoring other factors. Take the AVB v Harry comparison. The last games of the season, Harry put out a weakened team v Burnley because the game didn't matter and we lost 4-2. AVB put out his strongest team v Sunderland because we had to win (although in the end it didn't matter). The fact AVB got three points more than Harry means very little for that reason alone.

Harry achieved the goal of getting CL football. AVB didn't.

Managers' greatness is judged on trophies/achievements and not points totals. There is a reason for that.
 
Robspur12 said:
Sigh, You love having your digs at the last manager. As I keep saying until another manager achieves more than Poch, it is very hard to criticise methods that got us the consistency and success, albeit missing that final hurdle, that fans and the board have craved. Poch is unprecedented in terms of recent managers, he has no recent equal so no point comparing against your Harry’s, AVBs or even Mourinhos.

When assessing the squad of course you completely ignore the fact that, unlike the other managers, he had a smaller net spend and went through an entire season with no refresh of the squad whatsoever. That blame lies with the entire transfer committee.
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Mate, we will see over time, the fact that basically BMJ -> Harry -> AVB -> Poch has been pretty much an upward curve in terms of points and results tends to indicate Poch wasn't bucking the trend. The criticism is the final hurdle, as others have mentioned whenever we got to that last stage, we never even looked prepared and that has nothing to do with squad depth, it's about tactics, motivation and preparation.

Net spend is irrelevant when you get Kane, Walker, Rose, Dele, Eriksen, Dembele, Lloris on the cheap or free, did you really do worse than someone who spend 30M-50M+ each on equivalent level players? To say a completely broken squad that for the first half of this season looked like they could not give a brick, who senior players simply wanted away from (despite having made a CL final) is not a reflection on the manager is a bit of a reach.

I appreciate the times under Poch but unlike others I don't believe he was vastly over performing (I didn't expect us to win the league as there squad depth matters, even though the opportunity presented itself). And lets be clear, he fudged us this season, something happened in the last 8-10 months of his time here (not going to speculate) and in the end he didn't want to be here and instead of walking away, this "great manager" just continued to let the club death spiral, destroy confidence and leave us in the bottom half so he could get his fudging payout ... if that's the guy you want to hold up .. feel free mate, just don't expect me to join in.
 
DeanoAustin said:
You're wilfully ignoring other factors. Take the AVB v Harry comparison. The last games of the season, Harry put out a weakened team v Burnley because the game didn't matter and we lost 4-2. AVB put out his strongest team v Sunderland because we had to win (although in the end it didn't matter). The fact AVB got three points more than Harry means very little for that reason alone.

Harry achieved the goal of getting CL football. AVB didn't.

Managers' greatness is judged on trophies/achievements and not points totals. There is a reason for that.
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Yet all they can control is their own team's points score.
 
scaramanga said:
Yet all they can control is their own team's points score.
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Not really. Harry masterminded our defeat of Emirates Marketing Project which controlled their points total to ensure that they couldn't finish ahead of us. There are a lot of factors that you are ignoring deliberately.
 
DeanoAustin said:
Not really. Harry masterminded our defeat of Emirates Marketing Project which controlled their points total to ensure that they couldn't finish ahead of us. There are a lot of factors that you are ignoring deliberately.
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Most other factors are outwith out control. What we can control is our own results, and AVB's were measurably better.
 
DeanoAustin said:
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. For me, Harry might have been a crook but he was a better manager for us than AVB in every respect that really matters.
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Of course he was.... better league finishes, took us further in the Cups, infinitely better football to watch and taking over a team near the bottom of the table as opposed to taking over the 3rd/4th best team in the country as AVB did.
 
Finney Is Back said:
Of course he was.... better league finishes, took us further in the Cups, infinitely better football to watch and taking over a team near the bottom of the table as opposed to taking over the 3rd/4th best team in the country as AVB did.
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Harry took over a bloody good team
But he also got them playing
For me he was a very effective manager. Blagged, liar, probably on the take... but doesn’t want he didn’t do his job
Avb was actually a really nice guy and a student of the game. Doesn’t make him a great a manager though
 
scaramanga said:
If you measure our success by the performance of other clubs then there's no difference.

All we can do is gain as many points as possible - 72>69
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I only measure our success by....erm... success. League position and performance in the cups. The higher the better in the league, the further the better in the cups. With winning them being the ultimate aim of course.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I only measure our success by....erm... success. League position and performance in the cups. The higher the better in the league, the further the better in the cups. With winning them being the ultimate aim of course.
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Cups I agree with - winning a cup is entirely within our control. Win all our matches and we win the cup.

In the league (assuming no manager we're comparing wins all the matches), then finishing position isn't just dependant on that manager's performance - it also depends on the performance of 19 other managers.
 
Seems to me that, whether you measure a team's prowess in terms of league position or points gained, the answer's always a function of how good or bad all the other sides are as well.
 
mudshark said:
Seems to me that, whether you measure a team's prowess in terms of league position or points gained, the answer's always a function of how good or bad all the other sides are as well.
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Exactly
So surely it should be league places in practical terms
You can only beat the teams in front of you that season and teams can vary in quality season to season
 
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