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But Erik Lamela

5 min read
by Bardi
He's been with us for quite some time, but he continues to divide opinion. Has his time come to an end? Bardi takes a look at the scrappy Argentine forward.

I wrote the intro to this a few times, but each time I had to add a “but” or a justification of some sort. That was when it hit me, the problem with Erik Lamela is that ‘but.’ It is what divides opinion, it is that small word is what stops him from being the player we need, the player he should be and perhaps the player he was destined to be when he left Rome.

You see…

Erik Lamela doesn’t score enough goals, but he makes key passes.

He doesn’t get enough assists, but he hassles and presses really well.

He hasn’t been decisive in a big game for a long time, but he gave some stick to Jack Wilshere.

He pulled off an amazing piece of skill last night, but it was miles from the opposition goal and meant nothing because he immediately lost the ball.

He scored some big goals, but not enough.

He just needs a run in the team, but he keeps getting injured.

But. But. But.

Lamela splits opinion, not because he is a bad player but because he does not do one thing well enough to establish himself as a first team player. Pro and anti Lamela groups are consistently searching for the one performance to define his career, but there will never be one because Lamela himself has lost his own identity and his own style of play. If he can’t define his own career how are we supposed to?

At Roma his path was laid out before him. Francesco Totti even welcomed him to the club with the immortal saying “I hope Lamela will be my heir.” His role was set, he would initially start out wide using his trickery and craft, whilst he learned from Totti before stepping into his shoes as ‘the fantasista,’ but fate intervened.

Daniel Levy sold Gareth Bale, in came Franco Baldini and then arrived, after much toing and froing, Lamela.

We expected a like for like Bale replacement. YouTube promised us a right-winger who cut in to pass or shoot on his left. We were a fan base fully versed in the inverted winger scene, so it made perfect sense and at £30m what could go wrong? But life changed for Erik and us.

AVB. To Sherwood. To mystery injuries. His first year was a write off, for some it was a relationship already over, others like me decided to cling on a bit longer and to see how it would develop.

But now it’s time to let go.

Whilst he remains a useful player and a player who I get the feeling genuinely loves Tottenham, we’ve now outgrown him. He’s a player that doesn’t suit our system and doesn’t offer us enough.

[linequote]Pro and anti Lamela groups are consistently searching for the one performance to define his career, but there will never be one because Lamela himself has lost his own identity[/linequote]

The moment you start praising the fundamentals of a player, their ability to adhere to the basics, is the moment you start patting yourself on the back for not smelling of body odour. Lamela is supposed to high press, we’re a high pressing team. It’s like praising a chef who works at one of the top four restaurants in the country for being able to fry an egg.

The real problem with Lamela though isn’t us, it’s totally him. He has lost his identity. We’ve seen him as a false 9, a winger, a playmaker and then we’ve seen him do all and none at the same time. He is suffering from a footballing identity crisis, one which will not be solved at Spurs. The transformation from the player who waltzed around in Rome and had their tifosi protesting at his sale has been total. Like a skinny Darth Vader, there’s nothing good left in him and the only real value are his dark arts.

For me the change in Lamela is down to two things.

Firstly Christian Eriksen has become one of the greatest modern number 10s in the game. The Dane has everything that Lamela should have had. Skill, trickery, vision, assists and crucially goals. Eriksen regularly clocks up the most mileage, and although he may lack the spite that makes Lamela stand out from his peers, he harries and presses equally as well as the Argentine.

Eriksen was part of the Magnificent Seven also, he endured the same issues, minus the injuries, but he changed, adapted, and is now referred to as “the brain” by Pochettino. The Dane is our heartbeat, not a chest thumper.

The second is Son. With the central role filled by Eriksen, wide is where Lamela should exist, but the Korean forward has made that role his own.

Arriving with far less fanfare Son had to face a similarly tough first season with injury and a lack of form reducing his role. The Korean, against the club’s wishes, opted to represent South Korea at the Olympics, this threw into his doubt his focus and sparked rumours of his departure, but Son returned from Brazil invigorated. Despite being the player most often sacrificed for the one of the Poch Triumvirate, the Korean made himself a crucial weapon and is now second to only Kane in terms of goals and fear factor.

[linequote]For as much as his scrappy nature and high work ethic is appreciated, he no longer does his primary job[/linequote]

What Son gives you is a genuine goal threat from wide areas. Left or right wing, cutting inside or out, Son has variety, Son has direction, Son has goals. Son is far from predictable, and even though this may make him unreliable and prone to dips in form, he remains a far more consistent threat than Lamela.

Quite simply there is no longer a starting role for Lamela. For as much as his scrappy nature and high work ethic is appreciated, he no longer does his primary job. He has two assists in the league and has scored goals only against lower league opposition.

His time is done at Spurs and in all honesty, there can be no complaints. He has had four seasons to prove himself; he has had more goodwill and patience than countless others have before him, or will have after him. Instead of making himself indispensable, he is slipping down the pecking order.

Lamela may be a good player, Lamela may well find a role for himself at a big club, but it just wont be at Spurs. It could’ve been great, but it wasn’t.

All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.

Bardi

Like Paulinho once.

8 Comments

  1. David Jackson
    01/05/2018 @ 11:41 am

    I tend to agree, though it’s sad to see a technically gifted player in this situation. As I see it, there are two main differences between Lamela and the other players mentioned. First, he plays with his head down – just watch him on the ball and compare his head position with that of Eriksen! Second, the total lack of use of his right foot – every other player in the team can use his weaker foot reasonably well (Eriksen and Son especially so), but Lamela doesn’t seem capable of using his at all. That limits his play so much, and any half-decent defender simply stops him going that way and he ends up going round in circles. Pretty circles, but very ineffective ones.

  2. Hotspurious
    01/05/2018 @ 3:41 pm

    I stopped reading when I came to this: “…[Eriksen] harries and presses equally as well as the Argentine.” This is simply not true. Eriksen does a lot of things well and better than Lamela. This is not one of them. We should keep Lamela because he gives us something different than Son. Son was horrible yesterday and Lamela was perfect for that situation. It’s funny that once we finally have the depth to change our formation or approach to the game, everyone seems so eager to abandon non-starters because they’re not good enough.

  3. Barry Wills
    01/05/2018 @ 3:43 pm

    What a great spurs fan you are take your support somewhere else and slag them.

  4. Paul Maslin
    01/05/2018 @ 5:41 pm

    I have been a big backer of Lamela. I thought he, perhaps more than any other player, bought into and demonstrated the type of pressing fire that Pochettino demanded in his first two years as manager. Whether the injury, whether his personal problems, or whether he has simply not adjusted and adapted well enough, I sadly have come to the same conclusion as Bardi– it isn’t enough. Last night there was a sequence where Lamela fought for the ball, fought off a couple of defenders and then…. Nada. And another where he had the ball in space in the middle of the field with options on either side, except he chose to try to do it himself– maybe making up for the frustration of the past 18 months, I don’t know. I do know that a) nothing came of it and b) Eriksen or Son or Dele all would have done more. Is he worth keeping as a squad player, particularly with unclear futures for Dembele, Winks and even Wanyama that could unsettle our midfield? I suppose. But he’ll just never be an integral part of this team again, I’m afraid. Nice piece, Bardi.

  5. Cheshuntboy
    01/05/2018 @ 5:53 pm

    Lamela has been given so many opportunities in almost five seasons at Tottenham that it’s incredible that anyone can still believe he’ll come good. Stupid and frequently costly fouls are much more his trademark than goals or assists – did we really pay thirty million for a latin Livermore? I doubt that we’d get half what we paid, even in the current inflated market, but it’s time to cut our losses on yet another poor purchase in the Levy era – I reckon there must be at least three duds for every half-decent buy since ENIC took over, but that’s probably being too generous.

    • Sweetsman
      01/05/2018 @ 6:46 pm

      As ever, the stink of rotting flesh, out pops Cheshuntboy, from deepest, darkest Brexitland. So, the problem with some of the comments is that no one knows what it is that Pochettino wants from him and if he is fulfilling it. Yesterday, for example, he took the ball on what looked like an aimless run, keeping the ball away from three or four defenders, which by the way is what Dembélé does. What he achieved was use up time and not give the ball away by taking a low percentage shot. Of course, the fuckwits will have groaned, but this is what has been needed at Spurs for a long time, some maturity to kill off a game and not lose the ball trying to go for an unnecessary goal. I agree with Bardi that he has lost his original identity, yet before his injury he was getting more assists than Eriksen. Let’s not forget Eriksen’s previous inability to impose himself in games, something criticised by the Danish national manager. Eriksen has had the luxury of not having Lamela compete against him to establish himself, and yet he was below par at the beginning of the season; it may well be why Barca went for Coutinho instead of him. This is not to underrate him or Son in any way, because clearly they have stepped up to the plate. Lamela will be sold only if Pochettino doesn’t see a role for him, or worse still, if Pochettino leaves.

  6. Sweetsman
    01/05/2018 @ 6:48 pm

    As already mentioned, to say that Eriksen presses in anything but the ephemeral sense is laughable. His tackling is as strong as the Maginot Line.

  7. belgian spur
    02/05/2018 @ 1:44 pm

    small type on the article, you forgot a word in the sentence :If he can’t define his own career how are supposed to?

    OT : He needs a new club, even if it’s on loan – needs to establish some kind of a role for himself. As you said, he has lost his identity and as such will always be used by poch as a jack of all trades .

    That and he tends to clog the center of the play even more when he plays, and we already have so many central players

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