Line up was:
----------------------Forecast--------------------
Gunter----A.Henville----Dervite----Gilberto
F.Allen---Livermore----Maghoma---Hutton
-----------Pekhart---------Taarabt-------------
Final Score - Spurs 0-3 Chelsea (Di Santo hat trick)
Firstly, an awful match, and a referee who is unlikely to be enjoying any career progression any time soon. The first penalty and sending off looked controversial to say the least, and whilst he was over officious in some respects, he also managed to let some pretty unpleasant tackles from either side go unchecked.
There’s really only one place to start, and that’s Taarabt. He played up front with Pekhart, which was particularly interesting to me, because that’s where I would say should theoretically be his best position – dropping off into the ‘hole’ behind a target striker. However, he managed to do everything he could to prove me entirely wrong, as well as any one who still harbours high hopes for him. He was fecking awful. He looked totally disinterested for the most part, and when he did get involved, his contribution was diabolical. He looked sluggish, failed to pull off any piece of skill he tried and succeeded in finding blind alleys where there seemed only space, time after time.
I have to say, he certainly ain’t going to be anywhere near the first team again this season, and I’m not sure next season is going to be a break through either on this evidence. Perhaps the rumours about him wanting out are true, but then again his performances in recent weeks for the stiffs have been productive, so hopefully this can go down as merely a bad day at the office.
Pekhart alongside him, was almost as bad, but in his defence there was no service whatsoever. None of the penetration from the flanks that there had been against Ar5ena1 last week and, as ever, central midfield is a creativity free zone. Pekhart’s first touch was poor though, and his passing wayward when he did manage to hold the ball up and have a chance to bring others in to play. Anyone expecting him to be part of the first team next season is going to be disappointed. Realistically, it’s pretty unlikely that he’ll make it at Spurs, I’d say. They need to get him out on loan as soon as possible if there's to be any chance of developing him into a serious player now he doesn't have the height advantage he held at youth level to make him stand out.
One other negative, before some positives – Gilberto. He’s going to be a problem. He’s just not a left back, he looks completely clueless at times, and struggles to even hold a basic line, which Chelsea should have exploited on at least a couple of occasions. At left midfield, maybe he can contribute something, he does show signs of some nous in terms of overlapping inside and out and combinational play in the final third (though not tonight), but we will definitely get torn apart with him at fullback in the Premiership.
Positives were basically the rest of the defence. Archibald-Henville was impressive again, but he does tend to wander and create spaces. He also might lack a little bit of pace for the Premiership, but he certainly looks the most likely of any of the current crop of academy graduates to make the first team. Dervite also shows some promise – very dominant in the air, pretty decent distribution and technique, but again not sure about how his pace would hold up at a higher level. Gunter was our best player, the only one who posed any kind of threat going forward, pretty solid defensively, and is clearly well on his way to understanding his position. If he can improve his play in one on one defensive situations, I’d have no problem with him as second choice rightback going into next season.
Another player who I’ve been quite impressed with is David Hutton. He’s tiny, which probably rules him in terms of making the first team, but technically I’d say he’s the best player in the reserve group. Very nice first touch and moves well with the ball. Looks like he has a decent delivery on him aswell.
The others can all pretty much be written off in terms of a) making the first team b) earning fees when they depart (which are the two main criteria that justify an academy, in my opinion). Forecast is nowhere near good enough, even for the reserve level, Livermore has some nice touches but is far too cumbersome and neither one thing or the other in central midfield, and Maghoma just doesn’t look like a player to me, which goes for Fraser Allen aswell.
All in all, it’s very disappointing to see no apparent advancement in the reserve/development area of the club. We have a dedicated Sporting Director whose main responsibility is to improve this aspect of the club. I appreciate that there may be some serious talent coming through the academy in the next few years, but really, he should have done more to improve the pool of players there in the meantime, in my opinion. This is something Arnesen at least attempted to do. The development of what talent there is in that group is going to be stunted by not having a better general level of quality across the board, in my opinion. This is particularly apparent in central midfield and up front, where we have virtually nothing of note. Some Dervite-esque signings would be advisable for those areas, I’d say.
*apologies for the lengthiness; the usual disclaimer goes that these are entirely my subjective, uneducated opinions - they’ll probably actually all turn out to be stars really.
I have never really rated Taarabt myself to be honest. Cant even seem to pick the simplest of passes.
I cant wait until someone makes the Ronaldo comparison.