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João Palhinha

He may have a high ceiling but as of now, Paulinha is twice the defensive midfielder that Gray is.... not to mention his leadership qualities...

Actually the "easy tiger" comment could be equally applicable to your reply... which seems to ignore the fact that we have just escaped relegation by the skin of our teeth and have finished 17th twice in a row... the first thing we need is to be solid at the back before all the fancy offensive stuff. And there is no doubt that Paulinha excels at that....
We can't carry any players where possession goes to die, if we have ambitions above 17th
 
The collective technical ability of our squad is well beneath the average of the league. It's part of the reason we're in the mess we are in. Pahlinha and Gallagher are two of the worst offenders.
Sorry mate... but WALOB... even taking into account your usual hyperbole... to say that our mess is the result of Paulinha and Gallagher is taking the biscuit... even by your standards....
 
He may have a high ceiling but as of now, Paulinha is twice the defensive midfielder that Gray is.... not to mention his leadership qualities...

Actually the "easy tiger" comment could be equally applicable to your reply... which seems to ignore the fact that we have just escaped relegation by the skin of our teeth and have finished 17th twice in a row... the first thing we need is to be solid at the back before all the fancy offensive stuff. And there is no doubt that Paulinha excels at that....
The “easy tiger” comment was about building a team around him. He’s a 31yo destroyer with limited on-ball abilities. No doubt he’s been incredibly important this season, probably my POTY, but looking forwards I hope our plans are to improve on this position with a more complete player.

The old American adage of “the best defense is a good offense” comes to mind. RDZ likes technical players who can keep possession, and I think Gray is ultimately more suited to this in the longer term. He had an excellent run for us during Tudor’s reign and I’d really like to see how RDZ can improve him further. He could very possibly become our Anderson IMO.
 
The “easy tiger” comment was about building a team around him. He’s a 31yo destroyer with limited on-ball abilities. No doubt he’s been incredibly important this season, probably my POTY, but looking forwards I hope our plans are to improve on this position with a more complete player.

The old American adage of “the best defense is a good offense” comes to mind. RDZ likes technical players who can keep possession, and I think Gray is ultimately more suited to this in the longer term. He had an excellent run for us during Tudor’s reign and I’d really like to see how RDZ can improve him further. He could very possibly become our Anderson IMO.

While in 2-3 years I would completely agree, lets be clear Spurs needs to get out of the brick we are in. When RDZ had to get a result(s), Palhinha was one of the first names on the team sheet, that in itself is why it makes sense to go for him now.

Do I see him as an automatic starter? no, but he has a part, both from a capability perspective (personally I think he and VDV are critical to making RDZ's game work at highest level for now, we will get occasionally exposed with our commit and the positioning and pace of those two will be important) and personality. We talk about wanting players with fight/give all, then just say upgrade them with no thought to impact to team. Gray needs to learn to train/play from players like Palhinha.

He's made it clear he would like to come back, the manager has repeatedly said he wants him, if the club fudges this up over 5M, we will be back circling the fudging drain next season.
 
While in 2-3 years I would completely agree, lets be clear Spurs needs to get out of the brick we are in. When RDZ had to get a result(s), Palhinha was one of the first names on the team sheet, that in itself is why it makes sense to go for him now.

Do I see him as an automatic starter? no, but he has a part, both from a capability perspective (personally I think he and VDV are critical to making RDZ's game work at highest level for now, we will get occasionally exposed with our commit and the positioning and pace of those two will be important) and personality. We talk about wanting players with fight/give all, then just say upgrade them with no thought to impact to team. Gray needs to learn to train/play from players like Palhinha.

He's made it clear he would like to come back, the manager has repeatedly said he wants him, if the club fudges this up over 5M, we will be back circling the fudging drain next season.
Again, I have no problem with him but he’s not the long-term solution. If his transfer is only 5mil then sure let’s pull the trigger, but if it’s 30mil then I would have concerns given his age and fit for a true RDZ team.

I watched BHA quite a bit under RDZ as they are my local team growing up and played excellent football to watch. They were the only team capable of going toe-to-toe stylistically with Pep’s City team. That is a remarkable achievement given their resources. I would expect he is going to want to play a similar style next season and Palhinha is not a natural fit for that.

But please don’t get me wrong, he was immense and instrumental in helping us stay up. He did a specific job for a certain situation. Moving forwards, we all hope to never be in that situation again so we won’t need that player and personality. Thats all.
 
We tried that... remember? A rather pudgy Australian guy sold us the same thing... didn't really work, did it?
RDZ plays a more controlled system than Ange’s kamikaze-ball. Go back and watch his BHA team control games thru possession-based football.

It doesn’t have to be this-or-that. You can still play front-foot football without being reckless.
 
Again, I have no problem with him but he’s not the long-term solution. If his transfer is only 5mil then sure let’s pull the trigger, but if it’s 30mil then I would have concerns given his age and fit for a true RDZ team.

I watched BHA quite a bit under RDZ as they are my local team growing up and played excellent football to watch. They were the only team capable of going toe-to-toe stylistically with Pep’s City team. That is a remarkable achievement given their resources. I would expect he is going to want to play a similar style next season and Palhinha is not a natural fit for that.

But please don’t get me wrong, he was immense and instrumental in helping us stay up. He did a specific job for a certain situation. Moving forwards, we all hope to never be in that situation again so we won’t need that player and personality. Thats all.

He'll be 25M, my point is if we don't get him, don't get a player that obviously influences the team and the manager wants because we want to quibble about 20M instead of 25M, we have learnt nothing and the talk about "investment" is all the same brick
 
The collective technical ability of our squad is well beneath the average of the league. It's part of the reason we're in the mess we are in. Pahlinha and Gallagher are two of the worst offenders.
What you need to create a successful team, imho, is balance. We had two ball playing CBs as first choice, and it didn't work because they didn't complement each other. Put big Kev alongside VDV and we look better already. Dembele was not ball playing but still created plenty of chances for others. Agree we need more ball playing midfielders as well as a keeper who is comfortable on the ball and can distribute well. But I would sacrifice other midfielders before Gallagher and Palhinha. In any case, the latter wouldn't play every game but would be a really good mentor for Archie Gray imho. And Gallagher, if you watched him at Palace, will contribute goals from midfield.
 
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