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Player Micky van de Ven

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I for one hope that one day soon the bubble bursts! Football now ain’t the game we grew up watching and fell in love with!
It won't. Sport as big global entertainment is here to stay.

That said ... I do think some of what made English football distinctive has been eroded and continues to be eroded (tin hat on ... perhaps that is why "they" need a story such as a giant going down????).

-Stadia look like all those overseas. Same corporate shite.

-Fans are subdued. Give em some catnip, threaten them with all our laws so they can't say or do anything and they'll sit there quietly. French crowds are more riotous ffs! French!

-Systemic identical coaching techniques at academies and elite (increasingly private) schools create technically good, boring clones.
 
If it were a game of Top Trumps then VDV wins the pace category, everything else would be a landslide victory for Jan.

That said, we shouldn't forget that Vertonghen pre-Poch was also in a similar situation to what Romero/VDV are now, looking uninterested and uncommitted, fans on his back, etc.

VDV's pace has made him seem far better than he actually is to some fans, if a defence is well organised and the defenders are skilled in their position, lightening pace is not a necessity for keeping clean sheets. That pace should be a bonus, not the gameplan, and this is something I've been saying all the way back to Ange when people were bemoaning how he was supposed to get the team to keep cleansheets without VDV available.

From his first games it was blatantly obviously he was a poor box defender.
Seemed like the perfect fit at Spurs, a diamond in the rough that could grow with us... So I could forgive his inability to win a header, or end up on his arse when Isak cuts inside on him taking the obvious, inside route..

He hasn't improved since then. His ego has massively bloated because he scored a ridiculous goal, is incredibly quick and cleared a ball off the line.


View: https://www.tiktok.com/@premierleague/video/7446467967870651680?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
 
Yes, agree with every word. Trouble is, it all sounds like sour grapes, as if things were going well, we'd probably wouldn't be so pissed off with everything.
Yeah I do get what your saying and I'm sure if roles our positions with the Goons were reversed in the table we would be loving live, but it seems like the game is just boring now, Its not about the Ginola, Hoddle or the Bale with a bit of Magic, its about the long throw or a corner, add in VAR forensically analysing everything to give favour to some and fuck others over the game is just pretty grim at the moment and has been for quite some time.

I have never felt so disconnected from the squad we had that night in May where we were on top of the world and getting CL I thought we would kick on, but it couldn't have gone any worse, at least in the 90s it was like a siege mentality , we knew the players weren't the best but they were fighting for us and it never felt this hopeless, now it just feels like (barring one or two) its a load of over paid spineless wimps who aren't fit to wear the shirt and can't wait to getin their Super Car and fuck off back to there mansions in Hadley Woods, I Dunno maybe I'm just getting Old but I don't feel that any of the players really get what a privilege it should be to play for Spurs, in Hindsight I should have checked out after the EL but its not that easy is it, we are all addicted and as much as I moan I will be there supporting this club for the rest of my life!
 
Nowhere near world class and will never be.

He let the team and most importantly fans down last night.

Only way he can make up for his mistake is returning alongside Romero and working hard enough to earn points.
 
From his first games it was blatantly obviously he was a poor box defender.
Seemed like the perfect fit at Spurs, a diamond in the rough that could grow with us... So I could forgive his inability to win a header, or end up on his arse when Isak cuts inside on him taking the obvious, inside route..

He hasn't improved since then. His ego has massively bloated because he scored a ridiculous goal, is incredibly quick and cleared a ball off the line.


View: https://www.tiktok.com/@premierleague/video/7446467967870651680?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

I think this is one of the key issues with the squad that has brought us to where we are, obviously there are other things, but those things stop us from winning things, from competing for the league, what has brought us to the unenviable battle against relegation is the sheer ego of these players.

Let's be blunt about it, they have achieved fuck all to this point. Europa win isn't a drop in the ocean against the sustained awful league performances, they have no right to believe they are all that, no right to believe they are above playing for Frank, no right to be hacked off at the fans for being fed up, no right to sit there and try and shirk the blame for this current predicament off onto the ownership.

Their opinion of themselves is so far out of whack with reality that it has such a negative impact on overall performance that their actual output on the pitch is less than their technical talent, I guess largely due to the mismatch in effort/application between them and their competitors.
 
That said, we shouldn't forget that Vertonghen pre-Poch was also in a similar situation to what Romero/VDV are now, looking uninterested and uncommitted, fans on his back, etc.

Vertonghen didn't look good until Toby came in alongside him. He was everything that Jan wasn't, and covered him brilliantly when Jan was out of position.

Romero doesn't 'complete' VdV like Toby did with Jan - although they do play better alongside each other.

Love You Ily GIF by I Love You GIFs
 
Yeah I do get what your saying and I'm sure if roles our positions with the Goons were reversed in the table we would be loving live, but it seems like the game is just boring now, Its not about the Ginola, Hoddle or the Bale with a bit of Magic, its about the long throw or a corner, add in VAR forensically analysing everything to give favour to some and fuck others over the game is just pretty grim at the moment and has been for quite some time.

I have never felt so disconnected from the squad we had that night in May where we were on top of the world and getting CL I thought we would kick on, but it couldn't have gone any worse, at least in the 90s it was like a siege mentality , we knew the players weren't the best but they were fighting for us and it never felt this hopeless, now it just feels like (barring one or two) its a load of over paid spineless wimps who aren't fit to wear the shirt and can't wait to getin their Super Car and fuck off back to there mansions in Hadley Woods, I Dunno maybe I'm just getting Old but I don't feel that any of the players really get what a privilege it should be to play for Spurs, in Hindsight I should have checked out after the EL but its not that easy is it, we are all addicted and as much as I moan I will be there supporting this club for the rest of my life!
Man, I didn't even feel connected to this lot then tbh.

It was nice to win the cup, and I was properly psyched for the Final pre-match, and then the football started...

:ange-blow:
Glorifying that night to me is like coming away from watching too drunk lads flailing about in a fight at 3.47AM after a night out and then celebrating the guy who won the fight because the other one swung for a punch, fell over, and knocked himself out.

It was shit, we were shit, and then this bunch of jammy bozos went on a 3 day bender thinking they were the dogs bollocks and turned up half-drunk to a home game against Brighton to round off an embarrassing league campaign with yet another humping at home.

The absolute misery that was last season was in no way compensated for by that one night of abysmal football that ended with Europe's version of the FA Cup, no matter how lovely the trophy is.
 
Sport as big global entertainment is here to stay.
For the record, I think the Premier League as big global entertainment that nonetheless retains the culture and feeling of English football and the game we all love always has been and always will be possible.

Self-serving of me to say sat here in Chicago maybe. But the people in charge are falling all over themselves to bend the game into an unrecognizable Americanized corporate slurry, they're making it worse on purpose.
 
Football has the same problem other sports are experiencing, the "solve for x" guys in analytics admit of only one solution to every problem. Their answer now is to make the sport about set pieces and long throw ins, at the expense of open play and creativity. The beauty of football is how different players with different skill sets create unique styles of play across different clubs. Analytics says, "No, our numbers show there is one way to play football, and it is a brute force solution." Creativity, or clubs having unique identities, is being taken out of the sport. The problem is when every team has the same answer to how to score and prevent goals, the only thing that differentiates between them is how much talent you can afford to purchase. Spurs overly embraced analytics and abandoned the club's identity and where has it gotten us?
Yes, agree with every word. Trouble is, it all sounds like sour grapes, as if things were going well, we'd probably wouldn't be so pissed off with everything.
 
After his goal line clearance and things he said online at the time I thought he was going to be a player that grew with the team and was here for the long haul. At one time he was my favourite player.

This season he’s been a major disappointment.

I don’t know who’s in his ear, whether it’s his father, his agent, Romero or someone else, but he clearly thinks he’s above us and can’t wait to move on it seems.

Arrogant, petulant, and an average centre back just blessed with mad pace.

The type of bad egg we need to clear out come the summer.
 
For the record, I think the Premier League as big global entertainment that nonetheless retains the culture and feeling of English football and the game we all love always has been and always will be possible.

Self-serving of me to say sat here in Chicago maybe. But the people in charge are falling all over themselves to bend the game into an unrecognizable Americanized corporate slurry, they're making it worse on purpose.
yep. I agree.
 
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