The Scum Thread/Stadium Redevelopment

[QuartzGooner]

Vertonghen, Soldado and Erikson are good players.
Capoue looks good, though has barely played.
Townsend would be in our squad, probably a bench option.
Lamella may yet come good for them too, early days for him.
But as others have said, they are not playing the way that gets the most out of them.

[Supagoon]

Bale wanted to go ( thank goodness), so there was little they could do.

Problem is they personnel they brought in. Eriksson has a lot potential to be the creative outlet but is still very young, but why dembele, Capoue and the Brazilian? Dembele is like Diaby he can't pass, and when he does it's at the wrong time. Do you need Capoue AND that Brazilian when you already have Sandro?? Lamela I know little about but he is looking very ineffective. Chadli? come on now.

They could create many chances when they had modric and VDV but they left and it was the magic of bale that made the difference.

Soldado can finish, he lacks a lot ability you would like in striker but he can finish, and yet he makes runs and nobody passes to him. I'm never one to call for crossing the ball in continuously, but they gotta try some width in that team.

I hope they pull there sorry arses together for utd, and put those mancs down for good this season, then they can go back to being abject.

AVB is a peculiar character, if he hasn't learnt any lessons from his Chelsea day's this could end badly for him. By all accounts he is a very stubborn man, and the squad could turn on him.

[Swifty]

My take is this - they knew they'd have a big bank to spend and that the fans would demand it was spent once Bale left. The problem for Spurs is that they arent a title nor UCL prospect and therefore are way down the pecking order for top players as a destination. They have therefore paid over the odds for a number of slightly above average players. Overall they have traded off their only world class player for a range of ok players and are trying to compete with teams that can do better business. It's great to see!

[northbank123]

There is a massive glass ceiling there - even with £100m to burn they simply can't attract any world class players. And any players that go there and really impress will be gone in a year or two.

That said you have to say they pissed a lot of the money away. People were banging on about the depth in their squad but I've always said there's no quality in that depth, or indeed in their starting XI. For all the money spent their front 3 for the first 10 games of the season was Chadli-Soldado-Townsend. I said they'd overpaid for Soldado although I don't think anybody predicted he'd be so ineffective and to be fair he is hamstrung by their useless formation. All that money on Lamela and he clearly has very little faith in him.

Strikes me as a bit similar to our 2011/12 season. That year we'd lost Fabregas and Nasri, and also Rosicky and Wilshere to injury - yet despite the lack of personnel for the advanced central creative role that our 4-5-1 craves we stubbornly stuck to it and consequently produced the worst football we had in nearly two decades. It just didn't work. Spurs last season not only relied on Bale to score and create out of nothing but to inject tempo and drag the opposition around, allowing the other players to drift into the gaps created. Now they have almost nobody who will be direct in their attacking (closest thing they have is Lennon or Townsend stumbling round hoping the ball doesn't get caught under their feet) and players drifting infield looking for non-existent space is causing them huge problems.

Plus they're really shit.

[Brady's left peg]

There is a massive glass ceiling there - even with £100m to burn they simply can't attract any world class players. And any players that go there and really impress will be gone in a year or two.

That said you have to say they pissed a lot of the money away. People were banging on about the depth in their squad but I've always said there's no quality in that depth, or indeed in their starting XI. For all the money spent their front 3 for the first 10 games of the season was Chadli-Soldado-Townsend. I said they'd overpaid for Soldado although I don't think anybody predicted he'd be so ineffective and to be fair he is hamstrung by their useless formation. All that money on Lamela and he clearly has very little faith in him.

Strikes me as a bit similar to our 2011/12 season. That year we'd lost Fabregas and Nasri, and also Rosicky and Wilshere to injury - yet despite the lack of personnel for the advanced central creative role that our 4-5-1 craves we stubbornly stuck to it and consequently produced the worst football we had in nearly two decades. It just didn't work. Spurs last season not only relied on Bale to score and create out of nothing but to inject tempo and drag the opposition around, allowing the other players to drift into the gaps created. Now they have almost nobody who will be direct in their attacking (closest thing they have is Lennon or Townsend stumbling round hoping the ball doesn't get caught under their feet) and players drifting infield looking for non-existent space is causing them huge problems.

Plus they're really shit.

They are fucking shit.... and I am enjoying every bit of it. Long may it continue!

[Herd]

Welcome to this weeks lottery live from the Etihad stadium. Where it's a rollover, those lucky numbers, 1,34,41,50,55 & 90.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/spo ... 3112581415



Now wheres those dancing monkeys !

[DB10GOONER]

Welcome to this weeks lottery live from the Etihad stadium. Where it's a rollover, those lucky numbers, 1,34,41,50,55 & 90.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/spo ... 3112581415



Now wheres those dancing monkeys !

Loving it.

[brazilianGOONER]

this is class

stole it and posted on twitter - arsenal brazil folks enjoyed it quite a bit too

[Red Gunner]

http://www.glory-glory.co.uk/showthread ... s-methinks

"Giants Awakening"

"We were the most exciting team in world football then..."

[Blood_Gooner]

Really enjoying the view, especially at this point in the season where vacuous excuses about squad yet to gel simply will not cut it. The media rags must be slapping themselves in the face after creaming themselves over the scum's newly found "depth and quality". Hate to admit this, but once again Wenger has been proven right in regards to his sentiments surrounding spending a ton of money thinking that that's the answer to our woes.

[augie]

There is a slight contradiction from Gooners on here methinks - on one hand we are allowing ozil to have ineffective games having just signed, yet we all laugh at soldado, paulinho etc cos they have been largely ineffective sinced they signed too. The key difference imo is that we have had to gel ozil into a team that had 10 players from last season so we had that continuity - they have had to try and bed 6 new signings into a team all in one go abd being realistic you couldnt expect that situation to succeed.

I agree totally with the suggestion that even with 100m burning a hole in their pockets, they were never gonna be good enough or big enough to attract the top quality players. Tbh I hadnt heard of 3 of the players before they signed them but I had seen soldado a number of times and think that he has been very poor sinced he joined them. Where I will disagree with most on here is re paulinho who I feel has done really well every time I have seen him play and is a major upgrade on the dirty c*nt that is sandro

[brazilianGOONER]

There is a slight contradiction from Gooners on here methinks - on one hand we are allowing ozil to have ineffective games having just signed, yet we all laugh at soldado, paulinho etc cos they have been largely ineffective sinced they signed too. The key difference imo is that we have had to gel ozil into a team that had 10 players from last season so we had that continuity - they have had to try and bed 6 new signings into a team all in one go abd being realistic you couldnt expect that situation to succeed.

I agree totally with the suggestion that even with 100m burning a hole in their pockets, they were never gonna be good enough or big enough to attract the top quality players. Tbh I hadnt heard of 3 of the players before they signed them but I had seen soldado a number of times and think that he has been very poor sinced he joined them. Where I will disagree with most on here is re paulinho who I feel has done really well every time I have seen him play and is a major upgrade on the dirty c*nt that is sandro

if, and i repeat, IF you analyze it properly, yes, it's a lot of new signings so of course it's gonna take time until they play at their best. yeah, there are some decent players in there. but the point is, they are spurs. why will you intelligently analyze your rivals when they are giving so much fuel for mocking and laughing about?

fuck them. let's just laugh at the cuntish wankers

[clockender1]

the spuds always overspend and underperform - its what they do.

that's why every year that they insist "top 4" "top 3" or "title challengers" this year, is funnier and funnier.

they will ALWAYS put short term glory before consistent club building, going back to ENIC and the Sugar days.

11 games in and AVB doesn't know his best team or formation. Vertonghen is quality, capoue could be good and that Eriksson looked alright.

i don't think they are going to get any better in January or February. I think AVB will be gone by March 1st.

as I always say, don't hate Spuds fans, Pity Them...UTA

btw this year was the year that if you were born in the year the totts last won the league, you'd be collecting your Pension.

'appy days...

[Swifty]

[quote="clockender1"]think AVB will be gone by March 1st.

quote]

I don't think he'll make it January. Reckon they'll turf him and give someone else the January window to put some bandaids on.

[Red Gunner]

Andre Villas-Boas on brink of losing Tottenham Hotspur job

André Villas-Boas is clinging to his job at Tottenham Hotspur after Sunday's 6-0 hammering at Manchester City prompted the north London club's hierarchy to question whether he remains the manager to establish them in the Premier League's top four.

The Portuguese was cut to evens by bookmakers on Tuesday to be the league's next managerial casualty, with the City result being considered not as an isolated blot but as the most worrying sign of a malaise.

Villas-Boas, who takes his team to Tromso for a Europa League match on Thursday, desperately needs a good result at home to Manchester United on Sunday as he battles a clutch of problems. Those include the perception inside the club that he has sought to blame everybody bar himself for the recent difficulties, from the White Hart Lane crowd and the Tottenham medics to members of the first-team squad. Villas-Boas said that the City loss ought to have provoked shame in the players, which went down badly in the dressing room.

The embarrassment at the Etihad Stadium was keenly felt by the club's chairman, Daniel Levy, and the owner, Joe Lewis, who had initially been angry after the 3-0 home defeat by West Ham United on 6 October and Villas-Boas's hard-luck-story when he read of the defeat.

There had been disappointment at the early-season loss at Arsenal and, the weekend before West Ham, the manner in which Chelsea had reeled Tottenham in to earn a 1-1 draw at White Hart Lane. But West Ham represented the beginning of what has become an intense examination of Villas-Boas's suitability to fulfil Tottenham's ambitions.

The club did not sanction a summer outlay of £110.5m on seven players (including three club-record fees) for a team that would lose at home to West Ham. And, if the ultimate measure of a man is where he stands at times of challenge and controversy, then Tottenham feel Villas-Boas has not distinguished himself.

He took the bold, and possibly foolish, decision after the 1-0 win over Hull City on 27 October to chide the White Hart Lane crowd for how they had created a "very tense, difficult atmosphere". Villas-Boas said it was "like it drags the ball into our goal, instead of the opponent's goal", and added that "this is something that is felt within the squad. It's a feeling that invades us in fixtures like this".

The Tottenham fans are no different to any other London crowd in that they grumble when things are not great and they have only reacted to the football they have seen from their team, which has been cloaked in caution. Spurs have scored nine league goals in 12 matches this season (three of them penalties) and it is not only the supporters, who demand an exciting style, who have become frustrated.

The board has not enjoyed many home matches this season and some of the players have wanted to see Villas-Boas switch from his preferred 4-2-3-1 formation to play with two strikers. Villas-Boas orders his wide midfielders to work hard defensively and so the team have often struggled to commit men in front of the ball.

Villas-Boas reacted surprisingly to the Hugo Lloris controversy, after the goalkeeper had suffered a head injury in the 0-0 draw at Everton on 3 November and played on. When Tottenham's medical staff said that Lloris was unfit to play in the home defeat to Newcastle United a week later, Villas-Boas made it clear that this was their decision rather than his, saying that Lloris had been "clinically and medically" ready to play.

He called for the club to present a member of the medical department before the press to offer a full explanation, which did not happen, and the effect was to make Villas-Boas look isolated and at odds with the doctors.

His comments after the City defeat were badly received in the dressing room and it reinforced the impression that Villas-Boas might be happy to talk up the collective when results are good but he will revert to blaming others in times of adversity.

The criticism from the dressing room is that his highly scientific approach overlooks the human dimension, which is ironic, given that is one of his buzz phrases. The players, technically, ought to have been ashamed after City but, on a human level, would that soundbite not have been better kept behind closed doors? Other managers might have accepted the blame in public, albeit as a diversionary tactic.

Villas-Boas has struggled to manage the transition since the sale of Gareth Bale and the influx, for a second successive summer, of a host of new faces. Some of the existing players have been bumped down the pecking order, which has led to gripes.

Mousa Dembélé, for example, is no longer a first choice after the arrival of Paulinho and Christian Eriksen; Sandro fears that he is behind Etienne Capoue, albeit the Frenchman has been injured and with no left-back having been signed to replace Benoît Assou-Ekotto (on loan at Queens Park Rangers), whose face did not fit, Jan Vertonghen, arguably the club's best centre-half, has been forced to deputise in the position.

Most alarmingly, Villas-Boas has struggled to get the best from the new signings, particularly Erik Lamela who, at nearly £30m from Roma, is the most expensive in Tottenham's history. Given his difficulty in adapting, it was a surprise that Villas-Boas introduced him for his full league debut at City.

Roberto Soldado, the £26m striker from Valencia, has sometimes looked isolated and his impact was always likely to be measured in numbers. He has four league goals, three of them penalties, plus two more in the Europa League qualifier against Dinamo Tbilisi. The hope remains that the new signings will show their true colours once they have acclimatised. The process was never likely to be easy.

Villas-Boas intimated that he turned down Real Madrid and Paris St-Germain over the summer to stay loyal to Spurs and begin a second season at the same club for the first time in his short managerial career. He remains only eight points off the title pace in a congested division but he must urgently address the damaging momentum.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... am-manager