Spot The Difference

[SpurSince57]

You are definitely right with this.

Not replacing Modric effectively is our biggest mistake in recent years. Slightly off topic, but relevant to your post, I am not sure Schneiderlin is a good enough replacement.

I think Dembele has the attributes to be that middle man though - he just needs to bloody show it more in his performances!

If it had been easy to find an effective replacement for Modric, Chelsea and Real would probably have signed him rather than Modric.

 

[SpurSince57]

While that is true of course, if you put it in perspective it took a lot longer for AVB to implement any kind of style after his first pre-season and that was without a world cup to factor in. Even AVB's biggest cheerleader (@Bus-Conductor) was critical of the first four months or so of the season in saying we weren't seeing any real evidence of his proclaimed philosophy. We were playing a 442 with Dempsey/Adebayor/Defoe, sitting deep with Sandro/Dembele as a pairing and not pressing like buggery etc.

When you factor in that Sherwood tried to completely change the way we had set up and went from a military organisation to a Montessori Nursery, the fact that Poch has got us looking at least a tad organised in 25 days working with a squad bereft of its world cup players could show some room for optimism when thinking ahead another couple of months?

I think it probably lies somewhere in between, I don't think you are wrong to ask the question, but I don't think we should be concerned just yet.

Whilst this is true, he also achieved 1.91 PPG, as against the Bearded Wonder's 1.69. It also pips the latter's Bale-assisted 1.89 in 2012-13. I don't know whether I find this amusing or faintly worrying.

 

[eddiebailey]

Whilst this is true, he also achieved 1.91 PPG, as against the Bearded Wonder's 1.69. It also pips the latter's Bale-assisted 1.89 in 2012-13. I don't know whether I find this amusing or faintly worrying.

It is possibly evidence that it is easier for a highly tactical coach to have a negative impact than a positive one.

 

[Hoowl]

I don't think it's a coincidence that Poch plays a style that is not a million miles from what AVB was trying to achieve. I think levy deliberately targeted a similar coach to AVB, which makes a change from the usual pattern of going from one extreme to the other (unless you include Sherwood...).

From Levy's view point, he wanted someone who would employ a similar system and thus be able to work with the set of players we already had rather than require an overhaul of the squad. This was requirement number 1.

We spent a lot of money last year and we underperformed and Levy clearly wants to be able to extract more from the players we have rather than write off some of the fees from last summer and splash the cash again. This was requirement number 2: get us playing closer to our potential. It explains why we hired a manager with both premiership experience and a proven ability to improve players that he already has at his disposal.