Re: Official MKII- Paulinho
Out of the seven that came in last season, the only two I'm not prepared to give any more time to prove their worth are Paulinho and Chadli, for the simple reasons that their level of technical ability is nowhere near good enough for the positions we want them to play in.
I don't want any player at Spurs who I can't fill in Y for: "Player X is very good at Y" - What is Paulinho's Y?
Dribbling? Nope.
Passing? Hahahahahaha, hell no.
Finishing? He scores a few, but misses a lot of chances too, so no.
Heading? No
Tackling? Definitely not
Pace? Not really any faster than your average Premiership CM
Strength? He's a ****ing pansy, no way
Work rate? Non-existent
Flair? Tries the odd backheel but he's hardly Jay-Jay Okocha
The one thing he is quite good at is popping up in good positions to score goals. That's all well and good, but - you need to have a certain level of technical skill to able to control the ball and take the chance, it's the same reason why I don't want Harry Kane playing for Tottenham next season. Having a player making unpredictable runs and finding space near the opposition goal is also only useful if you surround him by other skilled technical footballers who will occupy the attention of defenders, move the ball around quickly and be able to pick him out, so alongside Oscar, Neymar etc he will get those chances to rack up the goals, whereas alongside Chadli and Kane, he won't.
I didn't see what all the fuss was about in the Confederations Cup. Yeah, so he scored two goals and had that chip against Spain that was saved. Big ****ing deal. The level of technical skill just isn't there. Signing players on the back of good international tournaments is always a very risky strategy (Pavlyuchenko, Zokora etc), I mean Fred looked awesome at the Confederations Cup last year before reminding us all at this World Cup why he flopped at Lyon and has spent the best years of his career playing for Fluminese.
Yeah, so some of the Premier League's best players took a bit of time to adapt to England before coming good. Name me somebody who was as bad as Paulinho in his first season in England that became a genuine star. But there are a lot of Klebersons and Denilsons who came over here and frustrated their teams for ages while they waited for them to get good and never did. We put up with Jenas for years because of that - just think what we could have done if we'd signed a proper central midfielder to complement the Berbatov, Keane, Lennon, Malbranque quartet that scored so many goals from 2006-2008.
If we get offered anywhere near what we paid for him we should bite their hands off. I don't see what he offers us that we can't get from Eriksen, Sandro, Bentaleb, Holtby, Dembele and Capoue in central midfield, let alone any half-decent replacement that we could bring in.