Defence!!! Will King play at least 20 games next season??????

[smurf2001uk]

Lets be honest our defence has not been the best this season. Conceeding 61 goals in League competitions. The Sixth highest in the premiership. Where does the blame lie.

Ok Robbo made quite a few mistakes this season and I think bringing in a descent GK is vital for spurs. Sad to see Cerny go but I think he is will make a name for himself in the next couple of seasons

As we all know Gareth Bale is a awesome player and I think we all saw the touches of class he has earlier on in the season. All being well if he is fit and ready great addition to the back 4.

Now King. Will he, wont he, I think King is a great influential player and when hes on the pitch we have more of a purpose, confidence runs throught the team, but I dont think he is gonna to be fit week in week out with his dodgy knee. There are only so many injections he can have before the knee gives up completly.

So who will get the nod?? Dawson and Woodgate?? Woodgate has shown tremendous skill and resilience this season and if he can stay injury free I think he will be in the heart of our defence all season. Dawson has had a up and down season for me. The 2006-07 season I thought he was brilliant but I think he has slipped slightly. Maybe through injury mabe through not getting a regualar place. I think these 2 can build up a solid partnership next season but I do feel if King is fit and available King and Woodgate should get the nod. Harsh on Dawson but you have gotta go with your best 2.

I think if Ramos can get our back 4 playing well and rock solid I think thats half the battle.

 

[DC_Boy]

Hi Smurf I haven't voted cos I needed a 'none of the above' button

I'm not relying on King and don't think Daws is up to it as first choice if we want to challenge top 4 -

to me it's either Woddy/Kaboul or we buy another CB

I''m also not counting on Bale either

to me in our back 5 including GK we only have 2 we can confidently slot in - Woody & hutton - the rest need to show their fitness pre-season or we need more players - probably a bit of both

to me ATM we should buuy a GK (or 2) a LB and a CB - maybe the pre-season will show different- maybe it will be too late and we'll have the fiasco of the team that trotted out at Mackems and home to toffees last august and showed just why we weren't gonna get top 4

 

[Dougal]

Like everybody else I have absolutely no idea.

 

[smurf2001uk]

Kaboul!! I think hes a great young player but I dont think hes quite ready to be first choice. He made quite a few mistakes last season. Dont get me wrong I think hes a good player. I like his style and his commitment but maybe a bit in experienced for the Prem. Couple of seasons time... who knows

 

[DC_Boy]

Kaboul!! I think hes a great young player but I dont think hes quite ready to be first choice. He made quite a few mistakes last season. Dont get me wrong I think hes a good player. I like his style and his commitment but maybe a bit in experienced for the Prem. Couple of seasons time... who knows

smurf - you're probably right - hence I say we need to buy

 

[Dougal]

The Everton game at the start of the season just show how we were not prepared for the start of the season and the likes of Man City, Everton, Ports who have all stepped up a gear. We can win all our games preseason, big deal. We all thought it was an encouraging start and then it all fell apart. Ok Everton scored a few lucky goals in that game but we stil didnt come close to winning.

My memory may be playing tricks, quite likely, but I thought we played well against Everton? :shrug:

 

[joey55]

Hi Smurf I haven't voted cos I needed a 'none of the above' button

I'm not relying on King and don't think Daws is up to it as first choice if we want to challenge top 4 -

to me it's either Woddy/Kaboul or we buy another CB

The thing with Dawson is that he is a victim of messageboards. A coach will always be happy to pick a player like him, especially next to an experienced defender, whilst I don't think the same could be said of Kaboul. Dawson's trouble is that he can't lead or organise the line and needs direction. Hence he got a lot of the blame early season and people turned on him. Now whenever he makes a mistake it is seen as "yet another Dawson error." People are ignoring the simple fact that in any football team, the CB will be the player who makes the most obvious mistakes that lead to goals. It's just the nature of the position.

If you were to watch John Terry at Chelsea, Nelson at Blackburn, Carragher at Liverpool or any CB in the more heroic mould, I bet they'd be responsible for a similar % of errors that lead to goals against their team as Dawson is for us. Most goals are scored from balls delivered into the box, so it stands to reason that the CB will be the player at fault. The trouble is Spurs fans are now so convinced of Dawson's ineptitude that everytime this happens, they see it as a confirmation of his shitness and ignore the fact that he clears so much. Ramos will continue to pick to Dawson and I'd be suprised if we buy another CB. If we get a new GK and DM, I bet our goals against tally would suddenly dramatically improve and so would Dawsons "form". Dawson was part of the CB pairing which gave us our best ever Prem goals against tally. Often the player who takes on most responsibilty is the one who is left to carry the can and when Daws was playing without Woody or Leds, this was definitely the case.

 

[tRiKS]

ledley will play 20 in the league and another 10 in cups. The games he's doens't play will be rested to prevent injury not becasue he has an actual injury.

 

[DC_Boy]

the first two games certainly showed we weren't properly prepared - but the team sheets lacked the quality for a top 4 challenge

pre-season had gone well - but certain key players like King and Bale weren't fit and when the real stuff started we were way short - plus we also saw Robbo was gone never to be recovered

basically our back 5 was a mess and to this day we still haven't sorted it out -

as I say I only count on Woody and Hutton ATM - if we started the season tomorrow we'd be in the same mess as last season's start

yes we have three months to put it right - will we - we'll see

 

[DC_Boy]

The thing with Dawson is that he is a victim of messageboards. A coach will always be happy to pick a player like him, especially next to an experienced defender, whilst I don't think the same could be said of Kaboul. Dawson's trouble is that he can't lead or organise the line and needs direction. Hence he got a lot of the blame early season and people turned on him. Now whenever he makes a mistake it is seen as "yet another Dawson error." People are ignoring the simple fact that in any football team, the CB will be the player who makes the most obvious mistakes that lead to goals. It's just the nature of the position.

If you were to watch John Terry at Chelsea, Nelson at Blackburn, Carragher at Liverpool or any CB in the more heroic mould, I bet they'd be responsible for a similar % of errors that lead to goals against their team as Dawson is for us. Most goals are scored from balls delivered into the box, so it stands to reason that the CB will be the player at fault. The trouble is Spurs fans are now so convinced of Dawson's ineptitude that everytime this happens, they see it as a confirmation of his shitness and ignore the fact that he clears so much. Ramos will continue to pick to Dawson and I'd be suprised if we buy another CB. If we get a new GK and DM, I bet our goals against tally would suddenly dramatically improve and so would Dawsons "form". Dawson was part of the CB pairing which gave us our best ever Prem goals against tally. Often the player who takes on most responsibilty is the one who is left to carry the can and when Daws was playing without Woody or Leds, this was definitely the case.

fair comments Joey, as you know I rate your input very highly. If you think Daws can do the biz in a strengthened team, I'm a little reassured.

It's still a massive gamble for me

I stil trust JR, so if he decides we don't need a CB fair enough. But he'd best be right as we've already see early vultures flying around and the squawking and a pecking will get mighty loud if lose our first two games this season

 

[van_Pommel]

The thing with Dawson is that he is a victim of messageboards. A coach will always be happy to pick a player like him, especially next to an experienced defender, whilst I don't think the same could be said of Kaboul. Dawson's trouble is that he can't lead or organise the line and needs direction. Hence he got a lot of the blame early season and people turned on him. Now whenever he makes a mistake it is seen as "yet another Dawson error." People are ignoring the simple fact that in any football team, the CB will be the player who makes the most obvious mistakes that lead to goals. It's just the nature of the position.

If you were to watch John Terry at Chelsea, Nelson at Blackburn, Carragher at Liverpool or any CB in the more heroic mould, I bet they'd be responsible for a similar % of errors that lead to goals against their team as Dawson is for us. Most goals are scored from balls delivered into the box, so it stands to reason that the CB will be the player at fault. The trouble is Spurs fans are now so convinced of Dawson's ineptitude that everytime this happens, they see it as a confirmation of his shitness and ignore the fact that he clears so much. Ramos will continue to pick to Dawson and I'd be suprised if we buy another CB. If we get a new GK and DM, I bet our goals against tally would suddenly dramatically improve and so would Dawsons "form". Dawson was part of the CB pairing which gave us our best ever Prem goals against tally. Often the player who takes on most responsibilty is the one who is left to carry the can and when Daws was playing without Woody or Leds, this was definitely the case.

Good post mate. I totally agree.

 

[joey55]

the first two games certainly showed we weren't properly prepared - but the team sheets lacked the quality for a top 4 challenge

pre-season had gone well - but certain key players like King and Bale weren't fit and when the real stuff started we were way short - plus we also saw Robbo was gone never to be recovered

basically our back 5 was a mess and to this day we still haven't sorted it out -

as I say I only count on Woody and Hutton ATM - if we started the season tomorrow we'd be in the same mess as last season's start

yes we have three months to put it right - will we - we'll see

How did they show we weren't prepared? We dominated possession and chances in both games. You can't possibly do that at prem level without being prepared. If anything they showed one simple fact that has gone on the be proven throughout the course of the season - we weren't as good as we thought we were. People forget that we should have buried Sunderland, but the ball jsut wouldn't go in, then with 5 minutes to go their crowd suddenly got excited and the whole atmosphere changed. A poor mistake at the back and we lose. But we certainly wenre't unprepared. It was jsut we didn't have the quality to break them down. Would we have let in such a soft goal had we bought an experienced CB in the summer as we should have? Would we have had trouble creating the chances our possession deserved had we bought the LW or DM (who can move the ball quickly) we should have in the summer? This lack of prearation nonsense comes from the camp who just don't want o accept what a catastrophe our player purchasing was from Jan 2005 until Ramos took over.

Look at the stats for the Everton game. We had 66% of possession and more shots. You can't do that against such a quality side if you are unprepared, it just isn't possible. We lost that game because Gardner fell asleep (as he has done for years) and they scored a FK that took a big deflection! Evrton have conceded on average less than 1 goal per game per season, so by scoring we did our bit. We just had bad luck at the other end. You can't prepare for that sort of thing. The signings of Woodgate and Hutton show the only way to prepare against that sort of things is better players.

http://www.skysports.com/football/match_report/0,19764,11065_2846803,00.html

The trouble was, instead of carefully analysing the performance and supporting the coach. Our board went to Seville and from that moment on our season was in tatters.

 

[DC_Boy]

How did they show we weren't prepared? .

Take your point Joey - forget the 'weren't prepared bit' as I was just basically agreeing with someone else

my main point is and was - we didn't have the quality needed - those teams weren't good enough v Mackems & Toffees (and here I think we're in agreement

so if you want to be pedantic - you could say we weren't prepared because instead of buying a new CB - we trusted in what we had and that failed miserably

you could also say that Robbo had already showed sufficient frailty the previous season that we needed a real challenger to his position

you could say lots of things with hindsight - that we didn't buy the mid leader we needed etc

what I'm saying without hindsight was that I spent all last summer saying we didn't have the squad to crack top 4 - that we needed a CB and a leader/hard man mid type for example

and what I'm saying now is that ATM I only trust 2 of our current back to be ready and good enough come next - things will change over the summer - here's hoping come august we'll be 'better prepared' than last if only personnel-wise

 

[Kendall]

woodgate and kaboul should start next season imo.

 

[Rocksuperstar]

Guys, has anyone seen any question marks laying about? I've been looking for one fo...



oh. So this is where they're all hanging out :|

 

[Flatters]

Guys, has anyone seen any question marks laying about? I've been looking for one fo...



oh. So this is where they're all hanging out :|

A few exclamation marks if you're interested as well. :lol:

Ledley will overcome his injury problems this Summer and be fit from then on. :up:

 

[glennyhoddle]

The thing with Dawson is that he is a victim of messageboards. A coach will always be happy to pick a player like him, especially next to an experienced defender, whilst I don't think the same could be said of Kaboul. Dawson's trouble is that he can't lead or organise the line and needs direction. Hence he got a lot of the blame early season and people turned on him. Now whenever he makes a mistake it is seen as "yet another Dawson error." People are ignoring the simple fact that in any football team, the CB will be the player who makes the most obvious mistakes that lead to goals. It's just the nature of the position.

If you were to watch John Terry at Chelsea, Nelson at Blackburn, Carragher at Liverpool or any CB in the more heroic mould, I bet they'd be responsible for a similar % of errors that lead to goals against their team as Dawson is for us. Most goals are scored from balls delivered into the box, so it stands to reason that the CB will be the player at fault. The trouble is Spurs fans are now so convinced of Dawson's ineptitude that everytime this happens, they see it as a confirmation of his shitness and ignore the fact that he clears so much. Ramos will continue to pick to Dawson and I'd be suprised if we buy another CB. If we get a new GK and DM, I bet our goals against tally would suddenly dramatically improve and so would Dawsons "form". Dawson was part of the CB pairing which gave us our best ever Prem goals against tally. Often the player who takes on most responsibilty is the one who is left to carry the can and when Daws was playing without Woody or Leds, this was definitely the case.

Totally in agreement there. Our defence gets a slating but its our midfield thats the problem. The gap between the defense and midfield at times is appauling and so many times we end up with our midfield on the half way line and the back four on the edge of the box creating a huge gap for opposition teams to. IMO we have still not replaced Carrick and until we get that kind of midfielder I really don't think it will matter who plays in defence!

I know we did come 5th again in the first season that he left but still think we would have easily have been challenging for a top 4 place if we had kept him at the club!

 

[joey55]

Take your point Joey - forget the 'weren't prepared bit' as I was just basically agreeing with someone else

my main point is and was - we didn't have the quality needed - those teams weren't good enough v Mackems & Toffees

so if you want to be pedantic - you could say we weren't prepared because instead of buying a new CB - we trusted in what we had and that failed miserably

you could also say that Robbo had already showed sufficient frailty the previous season that we needed a real challenger to his position

you could say lots of things with hindsight - that we didn't buy the mid leader we needed etc

what I'm saying without hindsight was that I spent all last summer saying we didn't have the squad to crack top 4 - that we needed a CB and a leader/hard man mid type

Totally agree with you there and I was in the same boat. If you look at how the Prem team around us improved, especially in terms of their 1st teams and key weak areas and compare it us, we have to have had one of the worst summers of shopping in the Prem. We finished 8 pts behind the top 4, yet the teams above us improved, so why should we expect to have closed the gap. Also, the teams below us also bought well, so why shouldn't we expect them to close the much smaller gap (ie Evrton finished just 2 pts behind us, not the 8 we finished behind Arsenal). In fact the 5 teams below us in the 2006/7 season, were closer to us in terms of points, than we were to Arsenal. Yet somehow alot of our fans and board thought we should be looking to challenge the top 4, rather than expect between us and the teams below to dissapear.

Can anyone in their right mind have looked at our signings and thought they'd improve our 1st choice 11 and should have been stronger this season? Maybe Bale, but he's just a kid.

 

[rez9000]

Totally agree with you there and I was in the same boat. If you look at how the Prem team around us improved, especially in terms of their 1st teams and key weak areas and compare it us, we have to have had one of the worst summers of shopping in the Prem. We finished 8 pts behind the top 4, yet the teams above us improved, so why should we expect to have closed the gap. Also, the teams below us also bought well, so why shouldn't we expect them to close the much smaller gap (ie Evrton finished just 2 pts behind us, not the 8 we finished behind Arsenal). In fact the 5 teams below us in the 2006/7 season, were closer to us in terms of points, than we were to Arsenal. Yet somehow alot of our fans and board thought we should be looking to challenge the top 4, rather than expect between us and the teams below to dissapear.

Can anyone in their right mind have looked at our signings and thought they'd improve our 1st choice 11 and should have been stronger this season? Maybe Bale, but he's just a kid.

I'd say that Bale has in fact spared our blushes somewhat and that it could have been far worse if he'd turned out to be rubbish. As it stands, I think he was a great signing, and so we managed to salvage something from a summer of really ill-advised purchases.

 

[Bill_Oddie]

Some interesting points on our recruitment, and I think joey nailed it when he briefly referred to the fact that since Ramos has been here our recruitment has been good. DC, both your reliable defenders (mine too for that matter) are bought since Ramos has come.

Which suggests that this summer should be a much more positive one than last.