Consolidation

This has been a season of consolidation. In the league we’ve finished higher than expected. Pre-season predictions generally suggested that Spurs would finish anywhere from 4th – 6th, particularly given the Wembley factor. The cups were, yet again, a case of what might have been. The League Cup exit to West Ham — having been 2-0 up — was one of the low points of the season. The FA Cup semi-final defeat to Manchester United felt painfully inevitable. And the Champions League exit to Juventus came on a day where expectations were relatively low, but was a bitter pill to swallow because the match had been going so well. The Champions League campaign on the whole was one of which we can be proud; some historic moments, some wonderful atmospheres, and Harry Winks’ coming of age at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.

Mauricio Pochettino has, yet again, overseen improvements in individual players to levels not previously thought possible. I’m particularly looking at Ben Davies, who has come on significantly. Previously thought a mediocre back-up, Davies is now an important squad member who has made 38 appearances in all competitions, scoring twice and getting six assists too.

Other than Davies, we’ve seen big improvements elsewhere, even from players who were previously already established. Christian Eriksen has gone up another notch, and is now arguably, along with Harry Kane, our best player. I voted for him as Player of the Season, such is his importance, his influence. When he’s not there, we are infinitely slower and less able to create. He could play for any club in the world, and I would personally be making him captain or vice-captain (I do like a captain in the middle of the pitch…) in an attempt to convince him to stick around longer.

Son Heung-min has become near enough elite. He managed 18 goals and 11 assists in 53 appearances in all competitions, at a rate of a goal or assist every 116.5 minutes, which is quite brilliant. He showed his versatility again too, playing from the left, from the right and through the middle, covering for Kane when necessary. Next season we need to learn when to take him out and give him a breather, as he seemed totally exhausted by the season’s end, though finishing the season with an injury didn’t help.

Jan Vertonghen has been immense. With Toby Alderweireld absent for long periods, we have been somewhat reliant on Vertonghen to marshal our defence, nurturing new boy Davinson Sanchez in the process. Sanchez’s first season has been unbelievably impressive — he is a mega-talent — and I am sure that he would say that the reliability and quality of Vertonghen alongside him has been a great help and has allowed him to bed in smoothly. Vertonghen has always been a lovely player; his quality on the ball often out-shone his defending in his early years at Spurs. But he has become more robust over time, his decision-making is 99% perfect, and he still steps out from defence like few other players in the Premier League, swaggering forward in a fashion that says ‘I could play anywhere, but I choose to play at the back’. I did notice towards the end of the season that Vertonghen started to look a little creaky on the turn when we played a particularly high line, and I wonder if — at the ripe old age of 31 (lol) — we may find that he needs our back line to start a few yards deeper over time.

Mauricio Pochettino’s post-season comments regarding the direction of travel at the club were fascinating, two comments stood out in particular:

“I think it’s a moment where the club needs to take risks and try to work, if possible, harder than the previous season to be competitive again because every season will be worse and will be more difficult.”

And:

“I think after four years we need to assess this period and if we want to play and be really contenders for big, big trophies, I think we need to review a little bit. It’s fantastic today all that we achieved, but it will be so important to create again, assess all that has happened and create a different, not project, but add different ideas to help the club to move on and be closer to winning titles in the next few years.”

I think there are two key points to take from this. Firstly, Pochettino is clearly urging Levy to take a slight change in approach, to be a little less risk-averse. And secondly, and possibly more specifically, to make some fairly significant changes to the squad.

It is likely that there will be a number of players leaving the club in the summer, most notably Toby Alderweireld. I foolishly convinced myself that the ITK was true and that there were some off-pitch issues surrounding him not playing, but it seems clear that he will leave in the hunt for trophies and market-value wages. Danny Rose may have back-tracked on his comments of last summer, but I wonder whether that’s mainly because his stock has fallen somewhat. In hindsight we should have sold him at his peak value, and we may end up hanging onto him despite everything — I cannot see why we would sell to Everton, who seem to be the only interested party now. Mousa Dembélé’s body has finally given up on him and, after years of carefully managing his schedule to maximise him, his performances have begun to dip. He had some real highs this season — particularly in Europe — but he had several really rough games too, and he now seems destined to move to China. He’s approaching 31, but I would say that he’s an ‘old’ 31 due to his niggling hip injuries, so I don’t begrudge him moving for that one last, big pay-day. One would have to imagine that Fernando Llorente, Moussa Sissoko and Vincent Janssen will all leave, and all have to be seen as transfer failures. I cannot see that we would recoup anything like what we paid, but between them they will be on big money, and that saving will be useful.

That is five or six players and all would probably need replacing in some way, adding up to arguably more major surgery than we have done under Pochettino than at any point other than his first season, so his comments were particularly timely.

We have another area of weakness which would be fairly easy to upgrade, but it’s problematic. Kieran Trippier is a good, solid player who has a skill set which is not suited to the way that we play. He is all about holding his position in the opposition half, receiving the ball and delivering early crosses for onrushing players. Crossing is an incredibly inefficient way of scoring goals, and our style requires someone who is able to carry the ball forward at pace, get his 10-20 yards up the pitch, and then ether hit the byline and play cut-backs, or lay the ball off for our attacking midfielders to probe centrally; i.e. exactly what Kyle Walker was so good at. Serge Aurier shows signs of having some potential to do elements of this, but there remain concerns over his rashness in defence, and his ability to beat a man. Certainly he is more agile and dynamic than Trippier, able to shift his weight more quickly and launch us from defence into attack more naturally, but he will require a lot of moulding from Pochettino to become a success. Then we have Kyle Walker-Peters. Two Premier League matches, two Man of the Match awards. If I’d had my way, he would have been fully integrated over the past two years and we might not have needed to sign Aurier, but we are where we are. Walker-Peters has all the balance and dribbling ability to be a success, plus the recovery pace to allow him to play further forward. In my opinion he is a far more natural fit for our 3-4-3 than either of the alternatives. We have been at our very best under Pochettino with two high quality, in-form wing-backs and, as such, my personal preference would be to sell Trippier (who is approaching 28) *and* Aurier (who I think will require rather a lot of fine-tuning), to sign a high calibre right-back (I rather fancied Porto’s Ricardo Pereira, but it seems that Leicester have got in there first), and to use Walker-Peters as rotation. My gut feel is that we will start the season with all three of our current right-backs, and I just hope that Walker-Peters has the opportunities to make the position his own.

Normally a club will go into the summer with a couple of key areas to strengthen, but this time around we will likely require reinforcements in almost every area of the pitch, and that includes goalkeeper with Michel Vorm coming to the end of his contract and expected to move on. Some of these squad spaces could be filled by young players *prepares self for rant*.

Spurs have sold Keanan Bennetts to Borussia Mönchengladbach this week, amidst talk that Reo Griffiths — scorer of 32 goals in the Under-18 league this season, twice as many as anyone else — may also move on, and may also move abroad. The loss of Bennetts and potential loss of Griffiths follows a trend of us selling talented young players to German clubs – Milos Velkovic, Ismail Azzaoui and, of course, Nabil Bentaleb all followed that course. Bentaleb would likely get in our current matchday squad. Veljkovic is going to be a high-class centre-back. Azzaoui has been unfortunate with injuries but has played 1000 minutes this season and is going to be worth a fair bit in the future. Veljkovic in particular is an interesting one, and his situation seemed to pre-empt what’s happening now. He wanted assurances that eventually he’d get first team football, but Spurs wouldn’t give him those until he signed a contract. The stand-off intensified and he joined Werder Bremen for a token gesture fee in February 2016. He will be in the Serbia squad for the World Cup. He’s a ball-playing centre-back who would have been ideal for us in the long-term, but we would not compromise.

Had Bennetts been on the bench for a couple of League Cup matches earlier in the season he’d probably feel integrated and like he wanted to stick around. Heck, he could have been used at left wing-back when Walker-Peters (a very right-footed full-back) was having to fill in there — he’s certainly physically ready, and he has the pace to scare opposition defenders. Had he played, he’d have suddenly been worth £3/4/5m and, had he done well he’d have been worth double that, perhaps more. Not all youth players are going to become first team players but we should maximise profit. So even from the ‘our Academy players aren’t good enough for the first team’ perspective, it’s worth giving them *some* minutes just to add value. Ultimately he’s a player that will likely be worth multiple millions one day, so even if you don’t think he’ll be first team material, we could have at least built his value up with strategic first team involvement and loans.

Spurs losing young players is not confined to scholars and above — last season we lost Nya Kirby to Crystal Palace at 16, and this year it seems Noni Madueke will be joining Manchester United as a scholar. These two are big talents and, whilst it’s not unusual for 16-year olds to change clubs before their scholarships, it does make you wonder why potential stars would leave our wonderful training centre, and the lack of progression opportunities may be one reason.

As a whole, Premier League teams are failing to bring through talented young players (England are strong across the board from Under-16 to Under-21), instead choosing to spend millions on (often sub-standard) players from abroad. German clubs have now identified that within English academies there’s an untapped pool of top class technical talent, available cheaply and willing to move for first team football.

We’ve seen players like Ademola Lookman, Reece Oxford, Jadon Sancho make the move, and they are rumoured to soon be followed by Rhian Brewster, and now Bennetts and potentially Griffiths. If I was a Sporting Director at a European club I’d be all over the English market, there’s so much talent — and it’s a money-ball dream because all they need is opportunity and suddenly they’re worth a fortune!

Spurs need to develop a coherent plan for bringing players from Academy to first team, as that is currently failing. We’ve built an incredible training complex, have elite coaches at various age groups, and are producing excellent Under-18 players (the team finished 4th this season behind some very good sides). But it seems to stop after that, and there’s a lot of work to do with the Under-23s, with the loans, and with the link to the first team. Let’s hope that next season we can develop a plan for bringing young players through to our first team squad to back-fill, save us some money, and to hopefully develop the next Kane, Winks or Walker-Peters.

So onto next season. If this season has been one of consolidation, next season appears set up to be one of transition. We will likely have a number of key positions to fill and will also have a reduced pre-season due to the World Cup hampering preparations. We will have our third home stadium in as many years and so new routines, a new pitch and a new atmosphere. Pochettino will, more than ever, have to get a new group up to speed efficiently, and will be reliant on some of his key players to carry the weight initially. We could do without Harry Kane blanking in August, for example, and we could also do without too many coming back from the World Cup with burn-out.

This is possibly Pochettino’s biggest challenge yet, and he will be judged by the summer transfer business, since he now has more control at the club.

Looking at his transfer business to date (below – taken from the legendary Topspurs), I would suggest, perhaps generously, that there are eight hits, eight misses, and six maybes. That ratio could do with tweaking, and I think that explains his recent comments about a change of approach.

As ever, fans will be desperate for a cup triumph, and perhaps some lessons will have been learned this year, though frankly I feel as though I’ve said that before. The team selection against Manchester United — with Alderweireld and Lloris on the bench — was certainly questionable.

We have some major surgery to do this summer, but the potential is great, with some wonderful players throughout the spine of our team. Do this right, and we can challenge on all fronts. Get it wrong, and we could find ourselves taking a backwards step.