A Spurs Fans Greatest Fear

By Spurs Daddy
Part 1


With pre-season well underway, we have now played four matches and from the highlights I have seen, the squad seem to have some good and bad points.

Midfield
The 1st thing that springs to mind is the balance of attacking play; being one dimensional is not going to win us many matches as opposition coaches will find a way to stop our strengths.

We all agreed that the problem with the team is our lack of goals from midfield. What has been implied but not highlighted is midfield creativity. As we all know the centre of midfield last season did little in the creative department.

I have also heard so much criticism of Carrick. People say that he has to do more. I disagree I think his role is to stop the other teams cracking our defence. He is the link man from our defence to the midfield. He links play by distributing the ball with his good array of passing. With Carrick doing this, he will give the player who plays along side him in the middle the license to press forward, in effect becoming the third striker, or player who interlinks with the forwards.

It is such a shame that D’Alessandro and Riquelme do not want to play for us. Either of those two would have caused some serious damage to the goals against column of our rivals.

Anyhow, we have Tainio, who has a good reputation. He looks like he’s going to be a good player and will give us some much needed attacking options. But who will be his cover? Will it be Mendes or Brown? Brown is hard working but I feel it’s time for him to leave. Mendes is good player, but he won't unlock defences nor score that many for us, so who else? Not Davies, as I think he is Carrick’s cover player.

Thinking back to all the matches I watched, what is prominent in my mind is that the team looked more attacking when Simon Davies played. The more he regained his fitness the better we looked going forward, and when he played with Kelly overlapping, we actually had some penetration on the right.

The left of midfield on the other hand (unless Ziegler was playing) looked mediocre. However, with Davies not being able to beat or sprint past his man, and more importantly not scoring many goals, it simply was not good enough for us to be challenging for a place in Europe.

Now I am not a fan of Reid as I think we should never have bought him. But as he is now wearing the blue and white of the team, I will never jeer him.

After last season, Reid disappointed me by not tracking back (I mean at a decent pace rather then a slow stroll) when we lost possession. He continued to annoy me by failing to get to the by line to deliver a telling cross. He forever was cutting in when we needed him to play wide.

This pre-season, he seems a little bit leaner; not a lot, but it’s a move in the right direction. He is also trying to take on his man. This coupled with Routledge on the right gives us more attacking options.

We all know Reid has a good shot and Routledge is fast. Martin Jol has stated his belief that the majority of goals are scored from crosses. This is what these two need to do on a regular basis and not just cut into the middle the majority of the time like Reid did last season.

Before you all yell, we need to vary our play, yes I agree he should cut in a move around the pitch, but Reid also needs to start crossing the ball from the touchline.

However, these two are not going to play 40+ games for us this season, so who do we have as back up? Ziegler and Lennon. What backup! I cannot be more pleased to have these two up-and-coming youngsters challenging the two ahead of them.

So that is what I think is our only midfield weakness, other then Reid's fondness for food.