There has been many a discussion post season as to why we finished in fifth spot in the league last season, when many, myself included, thought that fourth should have been a definite and maybe even second or third was a real possibility.
Some of the post mortem debates have been;
Was it the lack of goals from the strikeforce and the fact we didn’t strengthen this area in the January transfer window? At the start of the season most would have said it was good enough to compete.
Was it that our success in the CL had a negative and tiring effect on our league form as we all know about the 2 points from 8 games fact, plus the seeming inability to defeat the so called inferior teams?
Is that I and many others are just wrong and we really aren’t as good as we had hoped and believed and we are in the right place for the level we are at?
All the above points have merit to some degree.
We know that our strikeforce of JD, Pav, Crouchy and Keano should have been capable of firing in the goals as they had plenty of imagination, flair and talent behind them creating the chances for them. But ,for various reasons, it didn’t happen for them last season and when we desperately needed to strengthen and had the opportunity this failed to materialise also.
The inability to defeat lesser teams was the most frustrating fact from last season for me. I can hear you saying now to yourself ‘why would this be?’, as Spurs have a history of doing such things and you would be correct in that thought. The previous season we were much better at getting the points when we struggled and played the bottom half of the table teams and maybe I just expected the team to carry on in the same vein. Of course the CL exertions had an effect but we have a quality and large enough squad that should have been used to its maximum to prevent such a dire return at the tail end of the season.
After reflecting on the last season I truly believe that it really was a superb opportunity for us to finish anywhere from second to fourth in the league as we had the talent to have done this. Especially as Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and even Manchester United struggled for large parts of the season, so a real opportunity lost in my eyes. On the where we really are front and compared to the other teams mentioned I think we can honestly seriously compete with City, Liverpool and Arsenal now.
But, after reading a very good article in the latest edition of FourFourTwo Magazine (@FourFourTwo on Twitter) I put forward this reason: Injuries and specifically injury to Ledley King!
According to said article Spurs had 61 different injuries during the last season, the most in the PL, the least were BLackpool with 20. Spurs as a whole lost 1528 days to injuries, the 4th most, Sunderland were top with 2001 days. I know our squad should be big enough and have enough depth within it to cope with such issues as every team has them, but 61! That seems a hell of a lot of injuries and days lost, I wonder how many times that specific ones occurred? Maybe the club should analyse what they were, how many times they occurred and how they could possibly change the training routine to prevent some of them. Yes, some were obviously match related injuries that you cannot do anything about as it is a contact sport after all and also injuries occurred to players whilst playing for the their countries rather then us (Dawson and JD’s for England being 2). Still, injuries on this scale must have an effect on the team with consistency, gelling with and understanding team mates, fitness levels and possibly psychologically as well. With the amount of games we played I am not saying this was the only reason but it may have been a real factor and taken its toll on the team.
My second point on the injury front issue is our leader, Mr Cool himself, Ledley King. I firmly believe he is the best centre back in the country bar none and it’s a crying shame what has happened to him due to his dodgy knees mainly, amongst other related issues. I have some interesting facts for you:
Last season LK missed 197 days of a 282 day PL season (the previous season 101). He was included in 10 squads throughout the last season, starting 9 times and being an unused sub once, 6 starts were in the PL (previous season 21 starts, 20 in PL). This related to a total of 764 minutes of competitive football played last season and 1637 minutes the season before. Our win percentage with him in the team last season was 75% (PL games only and yes I know only 6 of them!), and without 58%, over a much longer period it has to be said. I can counter this though with the stat that over the last 7 seasons we are at a win percentage of 59% with him in the team and 50% when he isn’t. How many points this relates to last season if he played even 10 more league games of the 32 that he missed is anyone’s guess but if we used a win percentage of only 50% and converted some of the draws into wins, it would be anywhere from 10-15 points I reckon and second place in the league! Wishful thinking I know.
Obviously this is all theoretical and stats can be twisted to suit but I do honestly believe we are a much calmer, better team with LK in it that wins more. It also would have helped if we could have had available our first choice XI much more often (obviously with squad rotation being taken into account) without the deluge of injuries and last season could have been even better than it was.
Hopefully next season we won’t have so many injuries, especially to our top players, Ledley will play some more games and our strikers will be firing.
Top four here we come!
COYS
Rob
All facts and figures taken from myfootballstats.com and FourFourTwo Magazine
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I don’t buy the injury excuse. Every team has injuries and Ledley King being injured isn’t the reason our strikers didn’t perform. The reason we didn’t finish in the top 4 wasn’t down to us not strengthening in January either.
It was down to not buying 1 or maybe 2 quality strikers last summer. You’re right that many fans believed before the season started that our strike force was good enough but there were plenty who believed they just weren’t up to it. It was clear from the moment we beat Man City and we knew we’d achieved a top 4 birth that the one area we needed to buy was in the striking department. The midfield was fine and you could argue the defence needed improving too. With Gallas coming in you could say we got that part right just about but we missed chance after chance after chance in the 09/10 season and managed to still get enough points in spite of the strikers, not because of them.
Defoe had one of is not his best ever season and yet he still missed more chances than he took. Crouch and Pav the same. Keane was crap from the moment he returned. Improving when you’re on top is what the best teams do and we failed to do that. We spent too much time chasing Craig Bellamy and Scott Parker instead of going for the jugular and getting top quality in the positions all teams need it.
Imagine had we not been offered vdV at the last minute. I’m sure most fans would then see last summer as the mistake and not last January. Just like the CL nights papered over the league performance cracks, the vdV signing papered over one of the worse transfer window cocks up in recent Spurs history.
All in my humble opinion of course.
So, to flip the argument the other way….
Surely we should be selling / replacing King to get someone who will play every game?
He is possibly one of the best defenders I have seen, and the stats prove that, but 6 games, sorry that is not a luxury we can afford.
I expect most to mis-read this, so again I will make it clear.
He is one of the best players I have ever seen, but is too injury prone to be a contender now, for his sake as much as the clubs.
drwinston001; in my humble opinion, your humble opinion is correct.
all of our strikers need too many chances to get goals and as a result we don’t seem to kill off teams when we should. how many times last season did we thrash teams 0.0 so the problem wasnt goals conceded it was goals for. Dawson and King were both out for a fair amount of last season. Louis Suarez in Jan would have given us the goals and the lift needed to be in the top two. 19 goals short last season just one every two games!!!
All in my humble opinion of course.
I may sound petulent with this assessment but I blame Jermaine Defoe, he simply has always been overrated and think scoring against the lesser teams is enough, we focused soo much on him coming back from injury that we never signed anyone in January believing he would get some kind of form.
If he wasnt around Pav and Crouch would have got more games and we wouldve had to sign another striker
crap excuse. there are a lot of teams at the bottom that we will beat comfortably 9 times out of ten if we match them for effort. far too aften we did not match them for effort. in large part because the team thought it would be easy. it is a lesson that they will learn, but it is a lesson redkanpp should have learned years ago and imparted to the team. two points out of 12 against b’pool and w. ham. beat them both twice, we are second and aresnal are in the europa, really extremelt simple. so ” ‘arry it doesnt get any better than this” it bloody well shd have been better had you been doing your jobb, namely getting the team fired up.
we were goal shy,needed a stiker in january, instead of chasing the becks lone deal phil neville and charlie adams we should have got rossi for £18mil, we are still after rossi now £30mill and we’ve lost £20 champs lge revenue and have a fight on our hands to hang onto moders and bale, sometimes danny boy gets it right kran for £2.5mill and vdv for £8 mill with his bargin buys, but i think he got the last window wrong, that £18mill could have saved us so much trouble, it looks to me like that would’ve been £18mill well spent.
Thanks for the comments so far. I don’t think there is any one reason for what happened, a mixture of all the reasons mentioned and more. @Jay it is especially harsh to lay it all at JD’s door, injuries affected him and when he did start scoring he was immediately dropped. Twice. It’s a 25 man squad game, no one man, not even Gomes can be blamed for last seasons woes.
Lies. Damn lies. And statistics.
We finished 5th because although we’ve now figured out how to compete effectively against the ‘top 4′, we pissed away points against teams we should’ve buried. Again and again and again.
And the reason for our failure to beat these teams was because collectively our strikers were pitiful.
Whatever the reasons for not addressing this glaring problem in January, the fact we perservered (and suffered) with the same strikers effectively ended any chance of a top 4 finish. In fact, I think in the end we did quite well to finish 5th.
Would we have salvaged points from the horror list of games we lost because Ledley King specifically was injured ? Don’t think so.
@bobspurs – this whole Rossi for £18m thing, I don’t get that, no matter what HR said yesterday my understanding from Spanish/Italian sources is that there is no way he was leaving for that amount in January. More smoke and mirrors and blame shifting.
strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers,strikers!
@SpursSimon – I can’t believe you think Ledley King is rubbish. Have you even been to a game or do you just sit on your sofa passing judgement? *winkie face*
Thanks guys for all the comments and discussions so far. This was just really a piece that caught my attention while reading the latest copy of 442 and I thought I would put it out there. Interesting debate going on and most lay blame at strikers door, which is a fair argument. Same strikers who propelled us to fourth the year before though! January transfer window was a strange one as linked with many top class strikers but maybe all for show rather then serious? We just don’t know on that one
I concur with SimpleSimon, we should be looking to replace King. Looking for a player with similar attributes, even involving King in the process. We are interested in a defender, but Cahill is not of the calibre we should be looking at. He is too similar to Dawson. We need a dynamic and intelligent player, someone in the mold of Thiago Silva.
Don’t buy into this. The real reason behind us finishing 5th was Levy’s lack of investment in the January transfer window. It looks as though his meaness is going to cause us to loose 1 or 2 of our best players now. This is dispite him raking it in from another hike in season ticket prices this year.
We created the chances, the forwards missed them. Simple.
I tend to agree with the injuries thing. No squad can compete with more expensive squads unless you have continuity. I bet if you look at the team that wins the Prem, it’s probably the most consistent line-up. So having more injuries than Arsenal and City definitely hurt us, that can’t be discounted or ignored by anyone.
It’s only part of the issue though. We didn’t play hard enough, we didn’t play with the same lineup often enough (both tactics and injuries to blame) and our strikers misfired.
Ciaran
Good points. Here’s one of mine. Haven’t read the comments yet so apologies if this has been raised already.
A team IMO stands a better chance of scoring goals when there are 2 strikers up top as opposed to one.
I really think Harry had a hard time not playing vdV as he was a Levy signing and as a result took a very long time to accommodate him somewhat properly.
In doing so this left the others rusty and not match sharp when the chance came. Crouch excluded. As he got most gametime with vdV behind. But still didn’t score enough. Yes yes I know the ‘understanding’ with vdV blah blah.
Hopefully we won’t be having this same convo in Jan.
Studub mentions that we have a squad of 25 but fails to note that our manager is clueless on player rotation, many players only got a game due to others being injured, eg ; Rose, Sandro. With so many squad members out of favour with HR we are in fact virtually working with a squad of 14. Sandro still not allowed to cross the halfway line…………..management…………Bah Humbug. Roll on August 13th.
@Razspur I definitely mentioned that Harry is clueless about rotation in the article about youth last week. Definitely.
During the 1960-61 season Spurs started off with 11 straight victories and out of 42 matches we won 31. We also went on to win the FA cup but then the great Bill Nicholson was a real manager and a gentleman, not a wheeler dealer full of his own self importance.
Studub please accept my most humble apologies then. COYS.
No apology needed Raz, I just didn’t want it said that I wasn’t getting on Redknapp’s back for his poor rotation.
It’s a mix of so many things:
1) Lack of consistency in the defence
2) Strikers who weren’t consistent
3) Harry’s lack of tactical creativity
4) Subs such as Niko Kranjcar not being used somewhat consistently; some players needed a rest and it was beginning to show (e.g. Bale)
5) Goalkeeping inconsistencies
Keyword is “inconsistent”. We were inconsistent against the smaller teams and that also hurt us. But that’s all in the past. COYS!
Last season was a tale of two halves Aug-Jan 31st a team who believed in themselves, were up for the fight and ready to take on Europe. Feb-May a team without belief, missing the ability to get up off the canvas and scrap it out with even the most moderate of opposition, too often relying on excuses. Tottenham Hotspur history dictates that when playing for this great club you shall give you`re all and then some, displays like the one against Wigan where we saw under par performances from the majority would not have been tolerated in Bill Nicholsons Champions so why accept it today. One thing HR says is correct, we do need 3 more signings to complete the squad, 2 world class strikers and a w/c goalkeeper. As we know success breeds success so winning the Europa League is imperative to instill a winning mentality, sure you can buy in has beens with experience but long term that`s costly and it`s easier for the squad to develop together, win together and stay together on an upward spiral. (starting to sound like a rant) Believe and then you really can achieve. COYS.