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Moussa Sissoko

Hootnow said:
He clearly was one of our better performers last season. I struggle to understand how anyone can say otherwise. Even @nayimfromthehalfwayline, I don't understand fulur point tbh. You said you would put him 7th. We used 24 players regularly last season. Almost 30 if you include the likes of Janssen, Eyoma, I think GKN who contributed tiny amounts of minutes. Being in the top 25-33% of performers at your job, in any field... Would surely make you one of the better performers right?
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If that was how the comment was intented, then yes - Id agree.

Though I read as more than "Sissoko was maybe our 7th best performer last season" and so added context to my view on that.

And I could get pernickety about what "regular players" means, but Im happy to leave it.
 
nayimfromthehalfwayline said:
Its over lapped with a wider point, so I should explain.

International football, is, imo, a completely different and inferior game to club football.

And as a subset of that, International managers are generally worse to - though thats besides the point.

When we are talking about club football, about what a player offers a specific team - International football is irrelevant, and so your stats and leaning on Deschamps is also irrelevant.

I mention the limited resources because that is one of the ways in which International football is a fundamentally different thing. When you have limited resources you have to make completely different decisions than a club manager. Among those resources TIME is a key one, not just restricted player selection.

We could discuss at length the many ways in which Intl football is irrelevant, but I hope you begin to see the point.

When Im talking about who I would prefer as 5th/6th choice CM in a Poch system at Spurs - no amount of Intl cobblers counts for anything.
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Great points.... other than the fact that France have anything but limited resources as I touched upon with my whacking great list of players they have to choose from. Pochettino has FAR less resources to call upon at Spurs than the French national team manager ever has.
 
Hootnow said:
A few things about Sissoko in this absolute cluster fudge of a thread.

I didn't want Sissoko initially. If I'm completely honest, if I could go back, I still wouldn't buy him. I think 30 million, espcially at that time, could have been better spent.

Until this season, I was fed up every time I watched him and thought he was one of our worst purchases in recent times.

I still don't think he's a technical footballer or any such description.

....CROPPED.....
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Careful, that's tantamount to heresy around these parts.
 
Finney Is Back said:
Great points.... other than the fact that France have anything but limited resources as I touched upon with my whacking great list of players they have to choose from. Pochettino has FAR less resources to call upon at Spurs than the French national team manager ever has.
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The French (or any Intl) manager has a couple of training sessions before a game to bed a team and system in. Once every couple of months.

Which means no complex systems, keep it simple and functional, try and keep round pegs in round holes.

Already an entirely different kettle of fish.

He needs to find players with chemistry, that balance against each other and have natural partnerships through the team to have the best chance of a cohesive side.

An injury can throw the whole thing out of whack, and cause enormous upset to that careful balance.

He needs to consider who to prioritise - purely for arguments sake - he recognises Pogba as his best player and wants him to play freely, so needs to find people to accomodate that game around him. Does that infer those people are the best possible players France has to offer? Or just the best suited to the teams requirement?

For these reasons and more, as I tried to say up thread, I just dont see "Well he got X caps and he got Y caps" as proof of anything.

You are of course free to disagree, but you should at least be able to understand my reasoning.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I think it's perfectly fair.... You and Nayim could learn a thing or two from HootNow! ;)
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I agree with every single part of the cropped section of @Hootnow's post.

Where I disagree is that he was one of our better performers - that's simply not true. If we're measuring attainment as a function of talent, he blew everyone out of the water - his effort and fitness had him performing well above his average ability level. If there's an effort award for the slightly slow, corrective footwear, makes Harry Kane sound articulate, kid at school who thunders into tackles all over the pitch because he really, really wants to be a footballer but can't be, great - that award is his all day long.

If we're talking about an absolute, objective measure of ability then he was rock bottom of all the players I saw play for our first team (caveat: I didn't watch some of the really early domestic cup rounds so some bit part squad players may have been worse).
 
scaramanga said:
I agree with every single part of the cropped section of @Hootnow's post.

Where I disagree is that he was one of our better performers - that's simply not true. If we're measuring attainment as a function of talent, he blew everyone out of the water - his effort and fitness had him performing well above his average ability level. If there's an effort award for the slightly slow, corrective footwear, makes Harry Kane sound articulate, kid at school who thunders into tackles all over the pitch because he really, really wants to be a footballer but can't be, great - that award is his all day long.

If we're talking about an absolute, objective measure of ability then he was rock bottom of all the players I saw play for our first team (caveat: I didn't watch some of the really early domestic cup rounds so some bit part squad players may have been worse).
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You're equating good performance with being a super-skilled silky-smooth player. That's where you're missing the point. You can lack the world class skills and still be a top performer. Performance is comprised not of skill alone, but also of determination and application. You seem to be ignoring the last two.
 
alekaras said:
You're equating good performance with being a super-skilled silky-smooth player. That's where you're missing the point. You can lack the world class skills and still be a top performer. Performance is comprised not of skill alone, but also of determination and application. You seem to be ignoring the last two.
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You're right - ability is determined by all three of those attributes. Fortunately, we have a squad who all have the latter two. Sissoko is lacking in the former.
 
scaramanga said:
You're right - ability is determined by all three of those attributes. Fortunately, we have a squad who all have the latter two. Sissoko is lacking in the former.
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You clearly want to have, like a thousand of Sissoko’s babies. He’s in LA right now, so fuel up your Lear and get over here.
 
This debate can be summarised and largely put to bed with the below key points.

1. An extremely questionable signing, considering his lack of technical ability and consistently poor performances for Saudi Sportswashing Machine, for a massive fee at the time.

2. We were looking for a mane/zaha type player at the time and turned to sissoko on the final day of the window. Possibly influenced by his outstanding display, performing like those players, when they beat us 5-1 on the final day of the previous season.

3. Playing as one of our attacking midfielders he was horrific, showing outrageously poor technical ability in terms of controlling the ball, passing and shooting.

4. He was then moved deeper following the demise of our central midfielders and to play a similar role as he does for France. In this role he performed extremely well.

5. The club is at fault for his early poor performances by incredibly concluding that he could be a mane/zaha type player and he subsequently was awful in that role.

6. He is a very useful central midfielder but following the massive upgrade purchase of ndombele, the potential of winks and the continuing renaissance of wanyama and surely dier too, the question is at 29 and his stock at its highest (it was rock bottom when we tried to sell him last summer) do we cash in?

7. If we got a huge offer of say £30m then yes but I dont think the level of club that would be looking at sissoko would offer that, whilst he is clearly a popular member of the squad with an excellent attitude who causes no problems and is an example to the other players.

So I think he will stay and the club will be quite happy to keep him. He will get games and wanyama and dier will need to rediscover their very best to get ahead of him in the pecking order.
 
I think the debate re. selling Sissoko is being influenced by how divisive he was as a player last season - some loved him, some hated him and I think that's at the forefront of people's mind's right now in this thread.

I think it's right to keep Sissoko and use him as an experienced, stable member of the squad next season. It's the first one in our new stadium, and slipping back would be terrible. At the same time, I don't think it's a simple decision. Here's my reasoning:

For me, in order to recoup the highest value for our players and ensure that the squad continues to develop, those thoughts aren't so helpful. He's the wrong side of 30, right? His game is based around physical dominance (along with disciplined positioning and great teamplay, don't hate me). I imagine that even his most stalwart fans (of which I am one) can admit that. If we take it as a given that his capabilities will decrease in the near future, I think selling him now really has to be given serious consideration (even though he just took us singlehandedly to the CL final).

Unless he has another mega season, it's unlikely his value will be any higher than it is now. Any decent scouting will note his physicality and how important it is. The value of a 31 year old Sissoko is far less than a 30 year old Sissoko. It will depreciate even further if he has a season at 5th or 6th choice, out of the limelight. Ndombele's signing will limit Sissoko's time on the pitch. I think it's fair to assume that there is a high financial cost to keeping Sissoko this season.

At the same time as holding that belief, overall, I don't think it's right to sell Sissoko this season. He's been around a good while now, he has a great mentality, and he does what he's told. I think that there is a risk of changing too much at once, and we know Eriksen is likely to be off. I don't want to lose too much of our CL final team in one go. I think that on balance, the financial costs to keeping Sissoko this are outweighed by the benefits to team stability (we all know what he's gonna produce!) in the context of Eriksen's departure. If we only thought about the impact on the playing staff and football activity of the club, I'd want to keep Eriksen over Sissoko... but as the financial impact of keeping Eriksen this season is so much higher than keeping Sissoko (80m vs 10-15m) my decision is kinda made for me. Also, Sissoko sparks joy about as often if not more so than Eriksen does for me (controversial, don't hurt me) and I'd love to watch him for one more season in his prime.
 
benp said:
I think the debate re. selling Sissoko is being influenced by how divisive he was as a player last season - some loved him, some hated him and I think that's at the forefront of people's mind's right now in this thread.

I think it's right to keep Sissoko and use him as an experienced, stable member of the squad next season. It's the first one in our new stadium, and slipping back would be terrible. At the same time, I don't think it's a simple decision. Here's my reasoning:

For me, in order to recoup the highest value for our players and ensure that the squad continues to develop, those thoughts aren't so helpful. He's the wrong side of 30, right? His game is based around physical dominance (along with disciplined positioning and great teamplay, don't hate me). I imagine that even his most stalwart fans (of which I am one) can admit that. If we take it as a given that his capabilities will decrease in the near future, I think selling him now really has to be given serious consideration (even though he just took us singlehandedly to the CL final).

Unless he has another mega season, it's unlikely his value will be any higher than it is now. Any decent scouting will note his physicality and how important it is. The value of a 31 year old Sissoko is far less than a 30 year old Sissoko. It will depreciate even further if he has a season at 5th or 6th choice, out of the limelight. Ndombele's signing will limit Sissoko's time on the pitch. I think it's fair to assume that there is a high financial cost to keeping Sissoko this season.

At the same time as holding that belief, overall, I don't think it's right to sell Sissoko this season. He's been around a good while now, he has a great meteorology, and he does what he's told. I think that there is a risk of changing too much at once, and we know Eriksen is likely to be off. I don't want to lose too much of our CL final team in one go. I think that on balance, the financial costs to keeping Sissoko this are outweighed by the benefits to team stability (we all know what he's gonna produce!) in the context of Eriksen's departure. If we only thought about the impact on the playing staff and football activity of the club, I'd want to keep Eriksen over Sissoko... but as the financial impact of keeping Eriksen this season is so much higher than keeping Sissoko (80m vs 10-15m) my decision is kinda made for me. Also, Sissoko sparks joy about as often if not more so than Eriksen does for me (controversial, don't hurt me) and I'd love to watch him for one more season in his prime.
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Or we stop worrying about sale prices and start worrying about having the best available players

Big clubs don’t sign players looking at resale value unless their kids

I doubt we paid £30m for sissoko on the basis of selling him for that 3/4/5 years later
 
Bedfordspurs said:
Or we stop worrying about sale prices and start worrying about having the best available players

Big clubs don’t sign players looking at resale value unless their kids

I doubt we paid £30m for sissoko on the basis of selling him for that 3/4/5 years later
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Sissoko would have more than repaid his transfer fee with his performances last season. They helped us get 4th and get to the Champions League final. One performance that particularly stood out for me was the 1st leg Vs Ajax when him coming on swung the momentum of the game in our favour, meant we only lost by a single goal and provided the platform for the second leg. Those semi final games alone must have been worth a few Bob.

Selling Sissoko now would, imo, be counterproductive. It heaps pressure on Ndombele, when we need to give him time to settle and our other midfielders are notoriously fragile. Keep him and it's not a position we need to buy cover for. We can then focus resources on other positions.
 
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Hootnow said:
But clearly Poch does not share the opinions of some on here (which doesn't make him right of course).
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But by the fact that he sees the players everyday in training, knows their mental and physical condition, is a highly qualified, elite coach and has achieved success against the odds last season means it is far more likely that he is a damn sight more right than most of the naysayers.
 
Robspur12 said:
Selling Sissoko now would, imo, be counterproductive. It heaps pressure on Ndombele, when we need to give him time to settle and our other midfielders are notoriously fragile. Keep him and it's not a position we need to buy cover for. We can then focus resources on other positions.
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This.
 
Robspur12 said:
Selling Sissoko now would, imo, be counterproductive. It heaps pressure on Ndombele, when we need to give him time to settle and our other midfielders are notoriously fragile. Keep him and it's not a position we need to buy cover for. We can then focus resources on other positions.
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I agree the general sentiment that Ndombele comes into the squad with a great deal of pressure, but the solution is to improve on the players who will now surround him. If we can get something of the 30m back we should absolutely do it as long as it it is reinvested into the side specifically into the midfield. We now have Ndombele but one injury and we are back to Sissoko and Winks.
 
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