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FB =/= CB
He has had 1 good game against a top team. Lets see what he can do in the next few weeks.
If he can be consistent~~~~ oh boy do we have a gem.
But they didn't so give it a rest.
Nah. No rest for the wicked. Point is, the way he plays he will give away freekicks and if our CBs are shite we will give goals from a freekick here and there. So hopefully the dumbos wont attack him over it.
He is good and will start alot of games for us this season
PLEASE WHY CANT WE GIVE HIM AWAY TO WET SPAM FOR FREE I WANT ALL OUR GOOD PLAYERS TO LEAVE FOR A BARGAIN PLEASE
PLEASE WHY CANT WE GIVE HIM AWAY TO WET SPAM FOR FREE I WANT ALL OUR GOOD PLAYERS TO LEAVE FOR A BARGAIN PLEASE
he has all the attributes of a top quality CB. Doesn't get pushed off the ball, tight marking, doesn't look like losing 1-1 battles, positioning inside the box when there is a threat .
If anything he isn't that great bombing forward, he is more of a RB/CB than a RWB
He was outstanding on his debut vs liverpool too.
You say this as if we have never seen him play before. He has had now several excellent games against top teams. He plays high risk but us not dumb like the player you mentioned. Of course he will make mistakes but the error great game ratio is exactly where it should be for a player his age. I watched the same grow cycle with Ledley King one of his howlers cost us a cup final.
Just saying that i hope no one turns on him when the exact same freekicks given away will get punished sometimes. I prefer him to aggressive rather than let the other players do what they like (which doherty does).
Tanganga is exactly what Spurs need right now: home-grown, totally committed and has chemistry with the crowd
By Charlie Eccleshare
Was this a breakthrough moment for Japhet Tanganga? And if it was, has he just saved Tottenham about £20 million in the transfer market?
There are few things more exciting as a fan than an academy graduate thriving in your club’s first team, and so on Sunday the buzz around Tanganga’s performance against Manchester City at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was palpable.
Soon after the half-hour mark, the crowd burst into the first refrain of “Japhet Tanganga, he’s one of our own” after the defender had fouled Raheem Sterling and been given a talking to by Anthony Taylor. The referee was making the point that Tanganga, playing at right-back, was on his final warning after putting in a number of fouls already.
Which was fair — though Tanganga had also committed several tackles that while extremely firm were not fouls. Often described as “old-school”, Tanganga relishes these kind of challenges.
In the first few minutes of the match, he went in strongly on Sterling twice, and as the half wore on he did the same to Jack Grealish. One of these fouls has subsequently gone viral on social media as Tanganga bundled Grealish to the floor and then carried on running towards him as he fell.
“Japhet was huge today,” Spurs’ new head coach Nuno Espirito Santo said after the game when asked by The Athletic about Tanganga’s performance. “He faced too many one-v-ones today against fantastic players and he dealt fantastically with the situation.”
Nuno, it should be said, is someone who generally does not like to talk too much about individual players, so this was significant. Especially as the original question had been about both Tanganga and fellow academy graduate Oliver Skipp, and Nuno returned to the former having moved away from the duo to the more general sanctuary of: “All the team did very well.”
On the BBC’s Match of the Day 2 show later that evening, former Spurs midfielder Danny Murphy added: “He (Tanganga) epitomised everything that was good about Tottenham. He didn’t care that it was Sterling and Grealish — he was right after them.”
Tanganga was also named man of the match by Sky Sports, who showed the game live in the UK, in recognition of the way he had blunted not one but two England players in Sterling and Grealish.
As their touchmaps from Sunday show, both men played primarily from the left…
Grealish’s touch map from Sunday
Sterling’s touch map from Sunday
…but were completely shackled by Tanganga, which was all the more impressive given how isolated he often was because of the way Spurs’ right winger Lucas Moura was tucking in.
The question now is: Where does Sunday leave the 22-year-old?
The short answer to which is: In a much stronger position than at the start of August. Especially with Spurs still hoping to sell Serge Aurier and, although they would like to make a signing for their back line before the August 31 deadline, no deal for defensive targets such as Bologna’s Takehiro Tomiyasu is understood to be imminent.
This means Tanganga has a crack at nailing down the first-choice right-back spot over the next couple of weeks.
Just two weeks ago, The Athletic revealed that Spurs had accepted a season-long loan offer from Turkey’s Galatasaray for Tanganga (with no option or obligation to buy).
Naturally, as an academy graduate, Tanganga’s ideal scenario was to stick with his parent club and prove himself — “I’d love to stay with them as long as I could, and go on until I retire,” he said in January 2020 — but he was open-minded about a loan and the decision would ultimately come down to how much game time he looked likely to be given in north London this season. That was, and is, the player and Spurs’ primary concern.
At that point, Tanganga was coming off a tough night at Stamford Bridge, where he had played at centre-back in a 2-2 pre-season draw that had seen Chelsea create a stack of chances in the first 50 minutes or so before making wholesale changes. This following an injury-hit, stop-start 2020-21 season in which he started just six Premier League games.
The feeling was that Tanganga’s momentum had been checked after an invigorating couple of months at the start of last year when he made his Premier League debut as a shock starter against Liverpool and then kept his place until the first pandemic lockdown that March. A back injury meant Tanganga didn’t play at all in the final nine games when the season resumed three months later but in the July he was awarded, after a bit of negotiation, a long-term contract.
After thigh and shoulder problems then disrupted the first half of his 2020-21 season, struggling West Bromwich Albion offered to take Tanganga on loan in January for the rest of the campaign. There was also interest from Southampton, but Spurs decided that he should stay put. A couple of weeks later, Tanganga started in a 3-0 loss at Manchester City, and was one of the only Tottenham players to emerge from that game with any credit.
A fresh injury, this time to his ankle against Aston Villa at the end of last season just as he had made successive starts and looked to be finding his feet again, was a further unfortunate setback. It meant Tanganga’s pre-season had been focused largely on getting fully fit. Nuno would ask him how the ankle felt but there was no dialogue about the player’s future, which looked uncertain ahead of Spurs’ final pre-season fixture against Woolwich two weeks ago.
It was at this point that Tanganga rediscovered the form which made him a rare shining light during that pretty dismal start to 2020, when without the injured Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, Jose Mourinho’s Spurs staggered out of two cups and top-four contention. Tanganga, though, played without fear and, in a sign of things to come, cleared a shot off the line in the second minute of his Premier League debut — against the European champions and runaway Premier League leaders Liverpool, no less.
In the warm-up friendly win over Woolwich four days on from his Chelsea struggles, and then again on Sunday against City, Tanganga played with the same kind of verve.
He set up Son’s winner against the old enemy with a determined charge upfield, before delivering a masterclass of controlled aggression against the champions (even if he was a touch fortunate not to pick up a yellow card).
The switch to right-back for both games has worked extremely well. Despite playing as a central defender throughout his academy years, it was at right-back where he excelled on his first-team debut against Liverpool, and for now that appears to be his most effective position.
Tanganga is viewed by some close to the club as Spurs’ most effective defender in one-on-one duels and so it makes sense for him to play as a full-back, where much of his job is shackling opposition wingers. His athleticism also enables him to get forward and create chances, as he did for Son’s goal against Woolwich, even if his final ball needs a bit of finessing.
“He has the assets to be a phenomenal right-back,” says one coach. “With a bit of work on how he can produce in the final third more — improving his crossing and passing — he could become one of the best right-backs in the league.”
Tanganga himself has said his ideal position is central defence but that he is happy to play anywhere. He can also play as a right-sided centre-back, as he did under Mourinho against Nuno’s Wolverhampton Wanderers in March of last year (he played as a right wing-back the week before at Chelsea and almost scored), but earlier this summer admitted: “I’d like to cement one position.”
The versatility he offers and his impressive performances over the last week or so have naturally impressed Nuno. That loan bid from Galatasaray is still on the table, but if Tanganga keeps his place in the Spurs team over the next couple of weeks (and it seems inconceivable he won’t start in the next league game away to Wolves on Sunday) then it’s very hard to see the youngster moving on loan this month.
Not playing regular football and stagnating is always the fear for a young player, especially as it happened to a few Spurs youngsters under former manager Mauricio Pochettino, but that’s looking increasingly less likely for Tanganga.
After all, Spurs still want to shift Aurier — he isn’t even in the squad for the first leg of the Europa Conference League qualifier against Pacos de Ferreira in Portugal on Thursday — and if he and Tanganga were to go over the next fortnight, that would leave just Matt Doherty to play right-back… the same Doherty who Nuno sold to Tottenham a year ago while Wolves manager and who is more comfortable playing at right wing-back than as a traditional right-back.
The situation could change if Tottenham bring in another defender who can play right-back, but at the moment there is still no breakthrough in their negotiations with Bologna over Tomiyasu and no other deals are imminent.
Tanganga’s performances also suggest there is no longer such a pressing need for Tomiyasu (another centre-back/right-back hybrid).
Clubs should always be wary of basing their recruitment decisions on just a couple of matches, but Tanganga has a bigger body of work than that and has certainly done enough this month to make Spurs feel better about walking away from a deal for someone like Tomiyasu if they feel the asking price is too high.
Bologna ideally want around £20 million for the 22-year-old Japan international, including add-ons — Tanganga could potentially save Tottenham that level of outlay if he can kick on from here. Alternatively, it could allow them to focus on a cheaper option, or one who plays only as a central defender without necessarily having to be able to operate as a right-back as well.
It’s a risk, of course, but Tanganga’s attitude has always marked him out as someone who can be trusted. He’s also said to be a great person to have around the dressing room — extremely dedicated, but with a warmth and a sense of humour.
“Generally now with a lot of these young lads, they’re all very quiet, very respectful,” says Simon Brundish, a sports science consultant for the Football Association who has worked with Tanganga at England youth level. “Japhet has that respect too but he also has a bit of a spark, he has a joke with the other players.”
As a player, Brundish adds: “Tanganga jumps so high it’s absurd. I think he’ll be a replacement for Jan Vertonghen (in central defence for Spurs) one day. He’s quick, very calm, incredible physically.”
Regarding his level of focus, Tanganga’s former England Under-20s manager Keith Downing told The Athletic last year: “He’s diligent, works at his game, is very focused and doesn’t ever look like he might get sidetracked. He’s sensible enough to realise he’s still got a lot of work to do but he’s a smart boy.”
Tanganga feels like the kind of player every club needs — home-grown, totally committed and someone who developed an instant chemistry with the crowd. This feels especially pertinent at a time when many Spurs supporters are disillusioned with another one of their own.
He is impressing Nuno too, and over the next couple of weeks has the chance to cement his place in the team for the season ahead.
I've made no reference to WBs.
My point isn't to criticise him........ Simply to note that playing at CB demands a different level of game-intelligence and responsibility than RB (a RB has the potential for a CB to bail them out; a CB not so much...).
His two best performances have come from that wide right area (be it at RB vs City or as a RCB, man-marking Mane in a back 3).
Maybe his future does lie at CB; but Sunday's performance is no indicator that he's ready to start there for us with any degree of regularity.
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