Romero and VDV are the new Toby and Jan !!
Just need one decent back-up !!
Just need one decent back-up !!
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Player Micky van de Ven
- Thread starter The Swellhead Spur
- Start date
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Please, my OCD couldn't take the number 3 shirt going to anyone other than Udogie.
But yes, in the same vein Micky being number 37 is driving me slightly bonkers. Fix it ASAP!
Exactly this. If he had stuck to what he did in his first season, we'd be in a completely different spot right now. In retrospect, thank goodness he didn't. We needed this rebuild and a manager like Ange.
I think we played the system such as it was pretty darned well from near the beginning. Almost the opposite of playing with freedom, I think the players responded to the structure really well.
After Conte's post-Burnley freakout, a man management effort in the Conte style, and with Kulusevski and Bentancur by then integrated in the squad, we won 17 of our next 24 in the league, storming from 8th to 4th then having our best 10 game start ever in the PL, sitting a point off the top.
W17 D4 L3; 60 Scored 18 Conceded
When you look at the players he was doing that with, it's pretty remarkable and speaks to his reputation.
Then one of our assistant coaches died, an unprecedented World Cup stopped the season for a month, Conte required invasive surgery which he initially returned too soon from and was never physically himself, it all just completely went to hell even beyond the powder keg of the footballing situation.
And before the farcical equalizer against Southampton that finally drove Conte to madness, we were going 3rd.
He did the best he could with the person he is and the players he was given. The same was true of Jose.
All credit to Ange's coaching, but he is receiving the benefit of a functional scouting operation that Jose got none of and Conte was never going to last long enough to benefit from. The namesake of this thread would have been a godsend to either of them, though he's best of all playing this style.
Seeing stuff like this makes you feel there’s a real authentic togetherness in the squad that we’ve not seen so clearly before. Partly the characters and partly the camaraderie.
Love to see it.
My guess is he’s just waiting for PEH to head off to nab the #5 jersey he wore at WolfsburgPlease, my OCD couldn't take the number 3 shirt going to anyone other than Udogie.
But yes, in the same vein Micky being number 37 is driving me slightly bonkers. Fix it ASAP!
Super, super Van
Super, super Van
Super, super Van
Super van de Ven
Super, super Van
Super, super Van
Super van de Ven
Bit of a Ven boy
I don't understand then how largely the same group of players looked so much worse after a full pre season.
I did recall us ceding much more possession at the start of 22/23, Son being asked to drop more deep, receive the ball with his back to goal and not play on the shoulder.
Despite our best start to the prem league, the football was horrible, especially in the first halves.
Consistently playing a two-man midfield that most teams we played easily over run.
Our players last season were a better collective than were being coached to play.
Oh Ven The Spurs Go Marching In
Pre season army training killed them.
The poor first half stuff started after the run in question.
In that 10 game stretch we scored in the first half in 9 of 10 games and only trailed going into the break once, the exception in both cases being the Chelsea game, which while hardly a great performance was certainly a vintage three course meal of a London derby from an entertainment perspective.
There were tactical reasons the season started to fall apart last year, I acknowledge that. Conte indulged some of his weaknesses in the way he set the team out to play as things proceeded.
But I think the various weird and tragic personal circumstances also were major contributors to us not getting the best version of Conte after the positive start. The sort of things that you could just tear the page off and move on from if that kind of longer-term thinking were possible in that situation.
Still, the players Conte was forced to rely on as the grizzled veteran campaigners whose professionalism and savvy he loves are players who Ange is making every effort to keep away from the team entirely, let alone not play them.
The competitive levels didn't drop at Spurs after Poch's heyday, they plummeted. The responsibility for that lies in one place and one place only, and it ain't the fucking dugout.
During those 10 games we were terrible in the first half vs Wolves, Everton, pretty sure in the West Ham and Brighton games too!
Results - positive
Performances were largely not good and for me, that was down to Conte playing two in MF and other coaches easily countering his very rigid and ineffective tactics.
The results were positive, in spite of the bad performances, but it was obvious this form was not sustainable and would eventually catch up with us. Which it did.
And here's my beef with Conte: in his first season he had to work with what he had, plus he didn't have the chance to fully implement his system, meaning he provided some outline of it and then let the players express themselves within that. That clearly worked.
In his second season the system became more rigid and it's almost as if he insisted on it just to highlight that the players he had were not suited to it. That's criminal and not the sign of a good manager. A good manager will implement a system that plays to the strengths of his players and make his case for better signings, not because everything went to shit by not having the exact ones he wants, but because he took the group he had as far as it can go and to go that extra step better signings are needed.
People are saying that the death of Ventrone and a couple other close friends, as well as his health issues, took a toll on his managing. I don't doubt that. But just think if it was Ange who was in that situation. Man, the players would have applied themselves twice as hard and would have unified even more for the manager, because that's the environment that Ange builds. Conte just throws everyone under the bus.
He has those Jan Vertonghen vibes for me, slighty taller and obviously bit faster.
what a fucking signing. so glad we got him over that tapsoba! he doesnt even look good in his youtube clips. VDV is everything you want in a CB, especially when playing a high line. big, quick, competent technique. looks like hes been playing with his team mates for years.
I am being as polite as I can with how nakedly this is all just crypto-Levybot bullshit, as all the Ange avatars that popped up five minutes ago are.
Levy's personal cold blooded murder of the Poch miracle will not be swept under the rug that easily.
But to be substantive, I think trying to draw the distinction between Year 1 and Year 2 Conte cleanly falls apart upon exposure to the evidence. Year 1 clearly grew over time and Year 2 clearly decayed over time.
If you want to draw a monocausal explanation, the one that fits the evidence the best is very clearly the availability of Rodrigo Bentancur.
But Conte got credible results even during the period before he had Kulu and Bentancur, and the period after Bentancur got hurt.
When you look at the tools he had to work with during those periods, Ange would have been completely hopeless with those squads, having no choice but to rely on players he's been given the opportunity to ostracize now and having very few of our current lynchpins and top performers.
The guy who gave away that fateful Southampton penalty that broke Conte was Pape Sarr. He was 19. There just wasn't enough time for Conte, he arrived in a situation no manager could fix.
He didn't trust his team and responded to it in a self-destructive way. That's true.
He was also absolutely contemptuous of the state of the squad's cohesion and professionalism, which is in some sense exactly what he was brought in to fix. (That's why I was thrilled with the appointment at the time, I thought he could restore the Poch-era standards in that regard having infused an immediate strong culture elsewhere)
BUT, he was also publicly and unambiguously brought in to win a trophy immediately with the waning time available with Poch's team.
Ange's brief is to build for the longer term, and his first act is the wholesale removal from the setup of the leadership core that Conte was forced to make the best of.
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You have called me and what I'm trying to say is completely wrong my good man. What I'm saying has nothing to do with being a Levybot or any other kind of pejorative you want to sling out there.
My opinion, watching us play, seeing the players at his disposal I believe a different manager could have had even those players playing better.
edit: He needed better CBs but had a pretty decent midfield and an attack that scored a ridiculous amount of goals for him the season before.
What he did not do was adjust our formation and playing style to counter his midfield two being found out as being completely ineffective
Please, my OCD couldn't take the number 3 shirt going to anyone other than Udogie.
But yes, in the same vein Micky being number 37 is driving me slightly bonkers. Fix it ASAP!
I say stick with what they got. Ledley king wore 26 his while career. If it’s not broke don’t fix it.
What was Poch's miracle, getting second with the best starting XI in the country?