Souleymane Coulibaly scores on Spurs debut
Follow me on Twitter – @WindyCOYS.
16 year old striker, Souleymane Coulibaly, signed after his impressive showings for Côte d’Ivoire in the 2011 FIFA U-17 World Cup, came off the bench to get his first Spurs goal as our young players held Brighton to a very creditable 2-2 draw in Portugal.
Again, I can’t be sure of the formation, but our team was:
Byrne Livermore Nicholson Townsend
Pritchard Luongo Carroll Kane
Mason Obika
Brighton’s line-up was not first choice, but certainly more experienced than ours:
Sparrow Bridcutt Smith LuaLua
Hoskins Agdestein
Subs: Poke (GK), Greer, Vincelot, Dicker, Buckley, Navarro, Mackail-Smith.
Spurs went 2-0 down (goals from Hoskins and Agdestein) but Andros Townsend’s long-range effort made it 2-1 at the break. “Soli” replaced Obika at half-time and scored from close range ten minutes into his debut to equalise. He was lively for the rest of the match, having a number of efforts on goal – the Brighton website described him as a “livewire”.
Spurs bossed the second half, but were unable to find a winner. Still, a draw and a win against Championship opposition is very impressive for our young development squad, managed in Portugal by Tim Sherwood and Les Ferdinand.
Join the conversation
Regardless of if he is ready, he should go into the first team, even if playing 20 minutes to get the true premier league pace and power, having a consistent run of games will make him wanna stay as he will develop a love for the club, instead of not get played for 3 years have 1 shot then sold to some high bidder who he will flourish under or ultimately be worse under, make him feel like a king!
Same comment - any sign of Ceballos and do you reckon he'll play Saturday at Barnet? Keep it up.
As for the test saying Harry won't give this new kid a chance, based on what mate? Are youvsaying he didn't give the kids a chance at wham? Are youvsaying he hasn't given the likes if bale, Rose, sandro etc a chance? Garry picks youngsters if they are good enough and have the right attitude. In the cases of the likes of bostock, taraabt and dos santos this simply isn't the case. Try
Bale was linked with cheap moves to the Championship before he was forced to be played because of an injury to BAE. Similarly, Sandro never played until there were injuries to Hudd, Modders, and Sgt Wilson. The true story is those of KP Boateng, dos Santos, Taarabt etc.
Will be interested to watch Coulibaly do 90 mins, he impressed me at the U17 WC but he was only playing against kids really so i'd like to see how he manages against fully-developed professionals!
Davspurs - thank you!
Anon @ 22:17 - Ceballos wasn't involved this time, but please see my previous article.
hoopspur - cheers. No Ceballos this time out (maybe hadn't played in a while?), but I reckon he'll play a part vs Barnet. He has been included in the squad that Barnet have published.
Anon @ 22:34 - I hope you're wrong. Remember that the likelihood is that Redknapp will only be with us for one more year. Hopefully our next manager will show a bit more willingness to use our young players.
Anon @ 22:37 - Fingers crossed. I still think we'll sign Vucinic...
munkeyjim - I'm 100% sure that he'd be at least as effective as Defoe has over the past year! Tend to agree about Modric, but can also see it from the other angle - i.e. trying to convince him to stay and show him that he's still valued.
Morgan - some great crosses last night from both Rose and Bale. And Walker's cut back to Kranjcar was excellent too.
Anon @ 22:37 - You must be able to understand the frustration - having been in such a strong position at the end of December, we just needed a goal-scoring striker and we'd have almost certainly finished 4th (or even 3rd).
Anon @ 01:14 - Tend to agree. Redknapp's use of young players has been conservative at best, despite his spin.
Anon @ 07:53 - Thanks - if you look through some of the old articles you'll get a feel for what I aim to do with this blog. Thanks for visiting.
Anon @ 08:42 - I think the main point is that our strikers are so far below the levels of the rest of our team.
Lets put this Striker argument to bed firstly. Our strikers are no different than any other strikers who are suffering from lack of space. Let me explain myself, I know 100% part of some teams fitness is energy drugs and this is why you will see some teams chasing the ball like terriers all over the pitch and when the ball is delivered in the box there is at least six or eight players defending.
This blanket defending is not down to super fit players and energy drinks but like I say illegal substances. This means the only way to beat this closing down is with fast long raking balls so attackers get beyond defenders. This is done remarkably well by Huddlestone, the missing link, but sadly at the moment his passing mechanism is playing up. His ankle won't heal after his operation so he can take a tackle or a long fizzing pass or shot.
I studied our whole season by scanning our great magazines and when Huddlestone played we created more and won more games, when he got injured we drew more and lost more and King was the other missing link. So when you call our strikers remember this: Torres £50m no goals; Dzeko £27m one goal that was offside; Rooney struggled till he went away to Nike training complex?
This hurts me to say this but unless this energised Blanket defending and pressing for 90 plus mins is stopped then all Strikers will struggle. Berbatov leading scorer had three hat tricks and scored 22 goals, the ones who I discovered using this illegal method showed me how big it has become since three seasons ago and Toure was unlucky he got picked to give a sample because he was on the bench for the only game of the season against UTD when the Nike man, Rooney, did his overhead kick to snatch all three points.
This is a hidden scandal just as big as the phone hacking but kept under the carpet by another Murdock run industry, Sky.
Windy you are my hero, who I follow on twitter, and I always read your blog
You are a Spurs (fan) legend!
Keep up the good work. We'll see about Soli (I prefer writing that cause it's easier) but it sounded like a good start
The guy who always seems to get good write ups but who's otherwise less heralded is Massimo Luongo - he's an Aussie midfielder isn't he?
Know anything about him?
But if it aint perfect it can be improved.
We had a successful season last year but it could have and should have been better.
We should have gone further in the CL and qualified for it again.
Look at our last 10 games.
Never satisfied?
Nope and nor should you be.
Cheers Windy as always. Keep panning for them nuggets
Jimmy - Spot on, as usual.
Anon @ 18:35 - thank you :)
I've been reading for ages but rarely comment, thought it was about time I applauded your good work.
I'm afraid I have only really picked up on Ceballos and Coulibaly, where are we with this Witham guy from Mexico? has he joined us yet?
bonse - Thanks for the kind words! Whitham apparently failed a medical, and has since been trialing at Crystal Palace. Given that he couldn't get into the Mexican side he was at, I'm not too worried about that one...