- Jul 20, 2017
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I get a bit fed up with people labelling opinions as agendas. Its not about not liking youth players, it's about misplaced risk aversion. I think Poch has pretty much unilateral respect from Spurs fans of all spectrums, and he gets shitlaods of praise, but some criticism is justifiable, not all, but some.
I'm sorry if the word agenda bothers you but it bothers me when people twist our managers words to fit their 'opinion'. I've seen a number of people in this thread saying "oh well is sissoko an 8/10? hehe got you there poch" when everyone can clearly see that's not what he meant.
From his appointment, when great play was made of his willingness to integrate our best academy players, by him and the chairman, to as recently as his own words in his book when he several times rambled on about what a huge believer he is in giving youth chances, and often preferring to promote academy players rather than buying, he's set himself to be criticised, because he's continually not walked his talk.
Yep I agree he's made some mistakes but to say "he's continually not walked his talk" is just wrong. You can say his level of youth intergration hasn't backed up his reputation but you can't say he's terrible at it, there's a middle ground which people never seem able to find.
From packing Veljkovic off on loan, Pritchard to West Brom on loan and then sold without getting a single minute, refusing - inexplicably - to even give Onomah a single minute as a CM, even in friendlies, the complete reversal of Edwards trajectory, buying another (far from perfect) RB, when KWP had waited patiently for his chance (with us already having a RB here), the lack of games for Winks last season.
Yep some of these are his failures. I'd argue Prichard, we just couldn't offer him the game time he wanted at that time but yeah I would've like to see onomah in CM although the questions about his mentality are worrying. However it would be wrong to miss out that he's intergrated winks to a key first team player, he took mason from a player with a few failed loan spells to a starter for us so whilst he's not perfect it's unfair to say he has no merit
In that time we've spent about 110 million (plus millions in wages) on Wimmer, Njie, Nkoudou, Sissoko and Aurier to name 4. When, IMO, if Poch was the great integrator of youth he claims to be, none of those purchases were really necessary and the remit of all of those players could have been filled from within out own ranks.
Agree apart from aurier and nkoudou
And I'm sorry if this thread gets into this debate often, but the bottom line is, there is no point to spending all the money we have on our academy, having one of the best academy directors in football, producing some of the best youth players that are winning WC's, promoting them up to the first team and.... there is no point in this thread really (just like the whole transfer rumour thread if we were only signed one player every three years) if we aren't going to give them the appropriate chances - whatever that may mean - but it's got to be more than we have seen in some cases so far.
We hardly spend all the money we have but I get your point. I don't think poch is perfect in this area but I also don't think he's as bad as many in here believe and the only reason I got back involved in this debate is that I think it's turning from questioning pochs academy credintials to a kind of just poch is shit with the academy, which is fine but then I can also think that's stupid