Where did this season go wrong?

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Very poor recruitment in the summer , which have brought in players with little or none so impact.
Our January signings have not improved performance.
A restricted transfer policy that targets prospects , sell on value and transfer run downs.
A chairman who is incompetent .
A owner who can't give a toss
 
I think stubbornness from Conte was a massive factor. Not changing formation when teams had worked us out. Last season the plan was to get Kane coming short turn and thread through passes to Sonny and Deki. This season teams just make sure there’s a centre mid in front of Kane and to stop the pass into him. Then the opposition defence can play high and kill all the space in areas where Kane wants it. Sonny and deki have stopped running in behind and we are so predictable. In the system Conte plays and the training regime,it looks like all the energy is sapped out of the players. I don’t think the players could keep that up all season and the world cup has played its part.
It would have been easy to freshen up to make other teams think but Conte not accepting that it wasn’t working I put the blame on him.
 
We've scored the 3rd highest number of goals in the league.

Westham in 15th have conceded fewer than us. And Everton in 17th have conceded just 1 more. The problem is defence . Our goalkeeper is old and the backup is shit. We play 3 CBs and barely 1 of them is useful. Our LWB doesnt know how to defend.

We failed miserably in the last two windows to strengthen our defense (adding donkeys like Perisic, Forster, Lenglet) and to make matters worse will be rewarding Dier with a new contract.
 
1. Failure to sign a single top class CB, let alone 2 which was the target going into the window. If we had signed 1 and Lenglet on loan, things could have looked very different.

2. Decision to go one more year with Lloris past his best. Individual errors in defence cost us every game. We have a relegation level defensive unit this season.

3. Conte's system created a disconnect in the dynamic between Kane and Son. He fucked with the one world class element in our squad and as a result only Kane could flourish. This even messed with Kulu because he's now playing as the build up guy instead of Kane, instead of just running at people and creating.

4. Injuries and fuckery. We lost a vital coach at a key point in the season, then lost Conte. Bentancur and Richy injured most of the season. Kulu got injured every time he found any form. We have had the worst officiating I've seen in 30 odd years I can remember watching Spurs.
 
There are plenty of angles here…

End of last season: we were on a roll when it was ALL about results. I lapped the results up but wondered if we’d see a different (at least tweaked) approach with a full pre-season. Let’s face it, Conteball was a difficult watch, even when winning. There was no change in approach this season. If anything, Conte doubled down on the dour, sit in and catch teams on the counter approach. Not good enough for Tottenham. Not good enough to win in 2023.

Pre-season. I wondered at the time whether the running into the ground of the players was wise - genuinely. I’m not a sports conditioning expert, so I was curious to see if we’d reap the benefits at some stage of the season. Appears not!

Signings: the CB issue as stated above seems to be the biggest area of neglect. Then Conte’s dismissal of ‘club signings’. Partly Conte, partly Levy’s fault.

Injuries: clubs will suffer injuries. However, was the pre-season (as outlined above) wise in retrospect? Added to this was the lack of rotation. 100% on Conte.

Contract situation. Conte fucked us with his attitude. From day 1 he acted like he was doing us a favour. From the moment it was obvious he wouldn’t stick around, the club’s lack of direction is all on Levy.

General malaise and the cyclical nature of being ‘Spursy’ (short hand here for laughing stock): completely and solely laid at the feet of Levy/ENIC. As trumpeted widely on this forum, we’ve been in so many similar situations over the last 22 years. The club has had some moments/seasons of success and excitement BUT it’s been in-spite of Levy/ENIC’s ‘efforts’. This latest ‘new low’ is a direct result of 4 years where strategy, planning, identity and togetherness have been non-existent.

The club is in the abyss. No manager worth his salt wants to work with Levy. Players won’t want to come here. Levy won’t countenance the much needed clear out of dead wood. And Levy/ENIC aren’t going anywhere.
 
reading between the lines, poor recruitment in the summer (In Conte's opinion) that instantly ruffled Conte's feathers about the clubs lack of ambition to win a title, apart from the constant references to club signing spence, he made some jabs about us spending 25 milliion on bissouma while others spent 80 million on one player.

The death of the fitness Coach drained Conte of what left he had, from then on i think he was only interested in spending time with his family in Italy. And maybe made Conte not so approachable anymore

Incredible amount of injuries to key people, and the World Cup. Also really just increadibly poor form of Lloris, and Dier and Romero. The defence is always capable of conceeding 3 or 4 goals to anyone
 
Lenny Hatchet said:
Very poor recruitment in the summer , which have brought in players with little or none so impact.
Our January signings have not improved performance.
A restricted transfer policy that targets prospects , sell on value and transfer run downs.
A chairman who is incompetent .
A owner who can't give a toss
Click to expand...

I'm not sure the summer was that bad. The forum rated it a 7 out of 10 (6.5 from yourself :) ).

We all thought Bissouma would hit the ground running and that Richy would prove to be a menace in the last 30 minutes of games. Perisic was coming off a fantastic season and Lenglet looked to be a sold CB to add to Romero, Davies, Sanchez and Dier.
 
We are just so shit defensively and our wing backs have been largely ineffective, that’s been obvious to everyone yet our superstar
“World class” manager refused to tweak the formation to get the best out of or squad!
Playing 5 at the back vs a B team Sheffield was the final straw for me and I pretty much checked out after that game , things will get a lot worse before they get better that much is obvious if we are renewing contracts for clowns like Dier!
 
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Injuries, poor long term recruitment, and poor individual performances all played their part. However, there are countless examples of teams achieving way more than the sum of their parts with the right spirit and belief.

Personally, I think players, owners and fans went in to this season with inflated expectations following the miraculous end to last season. If your manager is an absolute slave driver, but you get great, unexpected results, most players would still run through fire for them. When those results dried up, they got tired of it all pretty quickly. Add to that Conte's inability to personally commit, ridgitty and his habit of throwing the team under the bus, and you quickly go from being a fully paid up cult member to a mutineer.

Now the problem is different; lack of long term planning has come home to roost with no clear path for life after Conte and Paratici. We're all drifting, and the season can't end soon enough.
 
Furball man said:
Some of that & the club’s seemingly rudderless direction , complacency & confusion

Oh and Jermaine Jenas
Click to expand...

I'm not sure we had no direction. We had an elite coach and a pretty decent squad. Kane looking sharp and Son having just won the golden boot. It looked like Kulu was the missing piece of the jigsaw for our attack. We also added Perisic who just came off a great season in Italy with 10 goals and 9 assists and Richarlison.

On paper, we would have had the other top teams worried.
 
The season went wrong when Conte said he was coming back last summer. He does nothing to inspire players, plays a system that does not suit our players and is so boring and toxic that it turned fans away from the club.

Levy/ENIC will always be here and be hated until they are sold but the manager needs to do his part. We loved this club under Poch despite what ENIC did, Conte could not come close to that despite having ten times the budget Poch had.
 
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