Official Tottenham Hotspur Thread

[5DOM]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... t-Ham.html

[Slava]

Looks like Torres and Bale had a child.

[and1GS]

lol, that's insane.

Looks like we're going to complete Holtby's early move by mid-day Friday. The kid reminds me so much of a young Modric - brilliant first touch and great vision. What he lacks in Modric's passing ability he seems to make up for in physicality. He'll be an interesting piece to our puzzle.

Sidenote: read from some dude on a Spurs forum that played with Holtby that he's more of a 'mercenary' who will use teams as stepping stones to get to the next level. But meh whatever, took Modric a while to get to where he is (was) now and I expect Holtby to follow the same career trajectory.

[Foye]

lol, that's insane.

Looks like we're going to complete Holtby's early move by mid-day Friday. The kid reminds me so much of a young Modric - brilliant first touch and great vision. What he lacks in Modric's passing ability he seems to make up for in physicality. He'll be an interesting piece to our puzzle.

Sidenote: read from some dude on a Spurs forum that played with Holtby that he's more of a 'mercenary' who will use teams as stepping stones to get to the next level. But meh whatever, took Modric a while to get to where he is (was) now and I expect Holtby to follow the same career trajectory.

I accidently gave you an and1... So the 5th best offensive midfielder in Germany behind Özil, Kroos, Götze and Reus looks like a young Luca Modric? Must be good times in Germany.

[and1GS]

I'll take the and1's any way I can get em

I don't make it any secret that I don't follow other leagues, just too damn hard while living in America, so I really have no response to your post. I will say that when we initially got Modric he was still kinda feeling himself out, but had IMO the best first touch in Europe. Also, I don't think he's as amazing as he was hyped up to be prior to his departure. Game changer at times? Sure. Brilliant passer? Definitely. But he wasn't even the best player on his own team...or even arguably not the best in the center of the pitch on his own team.

Ozil is better than any CM I've seen in the EPL this season, with Cazorla the closest to him whenever he drifts to the middle of the pitch. Haven't watched the others unfortunately.

[5DOM]

Lewis Holtby interview:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1yIFN0v2wE[/youtube]

[Baphomet]

Thanks for that 5DOM. A lot of positives from that interview, like how good his English is and how much he knows about the EPL already. His English heritage should help him transition very quickly, though I hope when he's actually out there playing football the German half of him shines through more. I wonder if he'll be involved in the Norwich game tomorrow? Provisional team sheets would indicate that he isn't, but if he's already trained with the team I guess there's always a chance.

Spurs still need a striker. We're linked with Leandro Damiao, Alvaro Negredo and Gary Hooper. I'm not particularly enticed by any of them, and I can't help but feel like we missed out on a bargain in not going for Demba Ba. Should be an interesting couple of days to close the window at least.

[and1GS]

**** COYS, I bet we see Holtby in this half. Dempsey looks like **** and Lewis was warming up before the half ended.

[and1GS]

Thank god, hit the bench Dempsey.

[and1GS]

2 minutes in and I can already see it, Holtby is what we were missing.

[and1GS]

BALE!!!!!!!!!

[Baphomet]

Needed all 3 points to maintain the gap between us and Everton, but I'll take it. At least Arsenal and Chelsea didn't get 3 points either. These upcoming West Brom, Newcastle and West Ham games are all very important, because we have Arsenal again after those and I feel like whatever happens there will go a long way to deciding the race for CL spots...

Also how good did Holtby look? Instant impact as a sub. Just get that elusive striker and we're in good shape, I think. 24 hours to go.

[and1GS]

Levy always gives me a heart attack at the window closing but I hope we sign somebody...at this point anybody that would be better suited as a striker than Dempsey.

Holtby was fantastic and should start alongside Dembele and Parker in a CAM/CF role, though he does tend to drop back and play that deep lying playmaker role quite often. His poise was fantastic and im pumped to have him on the team.

Very bad result and I'm nervous for the Arsenal game, we've been getting rung up for 5 goals the past few times we played them. These net few matches are must wins as West Brom seem to be flailing after a strong run of form, Newcastle is meh this year and West Ham is...still West Ham.

[cgf]

Watching part of the Arsenal game today I realized the perfect comparison for EPL fans who haven't seen much of Lewis, he's got so much in common with Wilshere. Both are strong on the ball, excellent passers, and can shoot, but they also drop deeper to launch the attacks. Lewis is maybe a little more defensive and versatile positionally, having played everything other than striker and as a back, but overall both are incredibly similar players.

[and1GS]

How good is Gareth away from home? Yeesh, he's bagging us points all by himself lately.

[Baphomet]

He's playing out of his mind right now. Levy needs to use all of his market sorcery to hold onto Bale for as long as humanly possible, preferably without any of the bitterness that emerged during Modricgate. If Spurs ever become an elite CL side (which isn't entirely unreasonable to think, at full strength) we need the likes of Bale for us to be competitive. As good as Modric and VDV were for the club, I feel like they are more replacable elements... and we may have already found someone capable of filling their shoes in Lewis Holtby.

Togo lost so Adebayor's coming back from the ACON. Hopefully he can find form and start producing for us again as he did last season, but my hopes honestly aren't too high at this point. I'm not sure why but he just doesn't look like the Adebayor of old, he's all business and no smiles.

[and1GS]

I think he's still finding his rhythm, he's been in and out of the lineup so much this season. But we really needed a striker, it's times like that where you really see the difference between clubs like ours and Man U or the uber-rich clubs. We needed a stopgap striker, but were left with trying to force Dempsey into an area he's definitely not comfortable in.

It's disappointing, because this run of games without a striker could have cost us the champions league...and more importantly Bale, who needs to be the centerpiece of this team moving forward if we want to assemble a side worthy of top 2 contention. Thankfully we came out relatively unscathed.

We're not at a point yet where I look at our matches against the top 5-6 and say 'ya that's definitely 3 points,' or even 'ya we're definitely not losing,' but maybe I'm being paranoid after Harry pissed away a CL spot last year by flirting with the England job for months.

[Baphomet]

We were interested in Damiao and supposedly put in a bid, but Internacional were holding out for more money. That is probably lucky for us, because not only do I think that Damiao is not the striker we need, but I get the feeling that they've held on to their 'diamond' for too long and his value is going to start depreciating from here on. Exactly the same thing happened to the likes of Remy and Mvila.

Despite playing some pretty mediocre football this season, I think we're the beneficiaries of rival teams weakening. Newcastle have sunk to surprising depths, Chelsea are in flux, Arsenal lost RVP and City don't impress me much at all. Everton are the exception and have gotten significantly stronger and have taken Newcastle's place as the dark horse player for 4th place.

[and1GS]

lol at the meteoric fall of Remy...just a couple eyars ago he was too expensive and valuable to be sold to Tottenham..now he was sold as a cut price striker to QPR. Crazy how things change.

I agree on Damiao, I think his ceiling is a slightly better Adebayor and his price was obviously inflated due to international competitions. Not to mention he'll be 24 next year.

It's not so much him as I would rather have not gone that direction anyway, but the fact that we couldn't even get a stopgap player. Someone like Carlton Cole who's ok but at least gives us an option up top. IDK, I'm sure this is the right strategy to take when you're not Real Madrid rich, but Levy gives me heart attacks pretty often. However, we get top dollar for our players and I'm never afraid that we're losing our best players and there's nothing we can do about it. Hell, Levy wouldn't even let Huddlestone leave for a fair amount.

I don't think Everton is a CL team, they're riding a high right now and will collapse in the final stretch. Arsenal is who we need to worry about because we always get stomped by them lately and they're still in CL competition. Other than the top 2 I'd say we are at worst slight favorites against every other EPL team, which si good but I'm still very hesitant to mark games off and call it a definite 3 points. Don't think we're there yet, but AVB has been a godsend thus far.

[and1GS]

Our remaining matches against top 6 teams:

Arsenal
Everton
City

Also play @Liverpool

Everton is probably F'd, as they play @Man U, City, @Arsenal, Spurs and @Chelsea

Arsenal has the easiest schedule, as they just play @Spurs, Man U and Everton..but they've dropped a lot of points and have not looked good.

Barring major injury and an epic collapse I'm liking our chances.