joey55

I think he'll stay with you. Even if Lambert doesn't rate him, you can't let him leave for nothing and there just aren't many viable options for him. There just aren't many clubs who could realistically afford his wages and transfer fee, that actually need him. Liverpool aren't going to drop a midfield player in order to accommodate a poacher. Rodgers plays a possession based game. All top sides do. I've read people saying Liverpool just need someone to finish off chances, but they wont have the same amount of chances or control over games if they were to use a player like Bent. He could be used as an impact sub, like Hernandez at Utd, but that isn't realistic. Jol is struggling to get a player of Petric's quality in the Fulham side, as Ruiz is becoming such an influence playing behind Berba, so they wont be in for Bent. Harry rate's him as much as the average Spurs fan does, so he isn't going to QPR. Unless a foreign club or West Ham come in for him, he'll be staying with you. I think he and Carroll would actually make a good pairing at West Ham.

Who isn't though? The coaching and tactical aspect of management is so over rated by fans in my opinion. All the top managers seem totally dependent on spending money on transfers and wages. Even Wenger is totally dependent on the quality of his squad and since their wage bill is no longer in the top 2 in the Prem, they've declined dramatically. The most true thing Harry Redknapp ever said was that managers are over rated.

We've dominated the first 20 mins of games against big club loads of times and still lost. Last season we were 2-0 up and strolling, but then the game turned and we couldn't get close to Arsenal. In one of Martin Jols last games we went a goal up against them and were all over them, but still lost. A lot of people are making a big deal of how well we were playing because they want to see positives in AVB. But never have we dominated a game against a top side from start to finish. Every single time there are periods when we dominate, followed by periods when the opposition dominate. See both our games against Chelsea and Arsenal last season for proof of that. Adebayor certainly had a negative effect, but I think it would be naive to say we would have won had he not been sent off. A large section of our support are really trying to big up our performance and it's cringe worthy. I don't think it's a game which should be used to criticize AVB or the team, as 10 v 11 away to Arsenal is tough. But there are so many embarrassing threads on SPurs forums, praising AVB's tactics when we were down to 10 men and posters saying how proud they were of the performance. I was pleased AVB was positive in his second half subs, but at the same time I'm not going to ignore that Arsenal wouldn't have been playing at maximum intensity knowing they had a man and a 2 goal advantage. The fact we dominated the ball for a while in that second half was pleasing, but at the end of the day it didn't work and I can't see Arsenal being so tame had it still been 0-0.

Adebayor has had a back injury and has only been fully fit for a couple of weeks. He's been totally committed when on the pitch worked his backside off. He made a stupid challenge. But any suggestions he's somehow less committed than last season seem foundation less to me. He was easily our best player against Man City and other than Sandro was probably our best player before the sending off on Saturday.

Why do you all want to start playing 2 strikers when you've got Sunderland (away), followed by Utd, City and Arsenal, coming up? I don't see you getting many, if any points from those games, but if you get thumped badly, then Lambert will lose his job. There is no way he'll play 2 strikers in those fixtures. If you keep it tight and make a reasonable game of things Lambert will be able to take positives to build on. But if you play 2 strikers, the beatings you take could be so bad, that Lambert has to go. If you are considering playing up top for a an extended run of games, then I think he'll wait at least until you play Reading at home. He might experiment with it against Norwich in your next game, but after that for the following 4 games, he'll certainly stick with an extra midfielder.

I lived in Hamburg for 3 years and to be honest I don't think I've ever heard of him. According to Wiki he was assistant at Bayern and coach at Kaiserslautern when I was there, so I may have come across him and forgotten. I suppose it would be like a German living here and knowing who Brian Kidd is.

If he's good at his job you should see a benefit from him then. There are a lot of good player in the Bundesliga who aren't necessarily start names, but offer real value. I don't know if having a scout is enough though, as often players like to know it's the manager himself that is driving the deal and ideally know the manager to some degree. I don't think foreign managers are better tactically and in terms of coaching, as most seem to, but I do think they often bring other advantages, particularly in the transfer market.

I think the biggest issue you face with Lambert is that he doesn't give you any advantage in the transfer market over your rivals. If you look at Fulham from Saturday, they had 3 players from the Bundesliga who have real quality, in Petric, Dejegah and Riether. They are top 8 standard Prem players, yet cost nothing and aren't going to be on high wages. But Jol knows the Bundesliga as well as he does the Eredivise and the Prem. All clubs have scouts that will cover lots of leagues, but having a manager that has a real in depth knowledge of a couple of other good leagues and is well known to the players in those leagues, is a huge advantage. I know Lambert played in Germany for a year, but that was long ago and it's not the same as having managed there.

This has to be the biggest myth surrounding Bent. He is not a fantastic finisher. He's a predatory striker who is good at getting on the end of things. He's a fox in the box type of striker. But he's definitely not a fantastic finisher. If he was a fantastic finisher he wouldn't have struggled so much over the last 18 months as he's have scored long range curlers, bicycle shots, elegant chips and so on that real top class finishers have that make them dangerous in all situations. Bent is fairly pointless unless he has good service, for the very reason that his finishing is nothing special at all. He's a composed finisher and has the right instincts to get into good positions, but technically he's not a good finisher. He just doesn't have the technical ability to score the goals the likes of RVP and Aguero can. He doesn't even score with the variety of the likes of Ba, Cisse and Defoe. In my opinion he really is nothing more than a penalty box predator and his success there is more to do with instinct than technical finishing ability.

To be honest they probably aren't the best examples. Lennon was great from his debut on wards and went to the world cup at the end of the season. Bale was MOTM on his debut and was our best player that season until he got injured. He scored 3 and made 2 assists in his first 5 games. But in December he got injured and missed the rest of the season. He then spent the next 2 years struggling with a recurring ankle problem. Neither were the players they are now, but when we signed them they were still among the best players we had at the time. They needed to be developed to become top class players, but when we signed them they were plenty good enough for our team. I think it's very hard to buy players from the lower leagues that need to be developed to reach the standard of the club they are signing for. Ideally they should be at that level already and then look to develop them into something special. If you buy players from the lower leagues that aren't Prem standard (unless they are teenagers) then really you are doing well if they develop into average Prem players. Both Bale and Lennon were 17 when we signed them and were our best wingers from the start of their careers (yes Bale started on left wing for us and not at fullback as most think). I think the idea of recruiting young talent from the lower leagues is a good one. But the players Lambert has bought for you aren't even particularly young and don't seem to have stood out at the lower levels. I think the youngest is 21. The other 2 are 22 and the 4th is 23. They just seem like really odd signings. Lowton is older than Bale.

I seriously doubt that. We played them yesterday and they were better than us. It didn't look like a fluke performance either. They have a lot of players who are comfortable on the ball and can pick out good passes. We've had disappointing results in general this season, but yesterday was the first time I thought the opposition were clearly the better team. At the moment we aren't exactly the benchmark to measure quality against, but we aren't that bad either. They had a bad start against Swansea, but have since bought a couple of decent players. Granero was a real threat yesterday and Julio Cesar was very good as well. Players of that quality can make all the difference. I can't see them being involved in a relegation struggle. They'll be top 12.

Was you performance worth watching on Football First if you aren't a Villa fan? It's a choice between watching your game or Fulhams. Fulham a usually a great watch to be fair.

So it's understandable why the police the other side of the pen were so slow to react. On one side you have the police taking actions into their own hands and on the other side you have them choosing not to. I think more than anything this demonstrates that the tragedy was in part a result of a wider problem football had during that period. One would imagine that the police viewed the potential for trouble was far greater then than they do today, when it's more of a family game. On one side you have fears that if the fans don't get through the gates there will be trouble and on the other side there were fears about letting them on the pitch.

plus Bicks earlier post, detailing the travel/traffic issues causing delays for many fans going to the game Yes exactly. For this the local council were culpable for licensing the ground. The FA were culpable (along with the Police) for not delaying the kick off, kick off used to get delayed for crowd congestion, delays on the motorway etc back then as they do now. But not in high profile matches that TV companies have paid good money to show... can't have the paymasters schedules being ruined because of fan safety, no siree that's a preposterous idea. The Police were culpable for opening the gate. And on the emboldened lack of foresight, it's even worse than that, no foresight was required, they could have used hindsight. the exact same thing nearly happened one year previously, in the exact same fixture, in the same venue with the same teams in the same ends. I know, I was there. The crushing outside was almost as bad then, the game should never have been played there the following year. The FA were again culpable here (no doubt following Police advice). To be honest I could see myself making a mistake like that. It did seem like a logical thing to do. You look back and think how stupid it was not to think of the jam it was cause in tunnel, but at the time I bet the focus was purely on sorting the turn-style back log. It's easy to look back and say they should have thought ahead, but people make errors of judgement like this on a daily basis. I think the only really bad thing was the police officers who lied about who opened the gate, but I bet a lot of people would have done similar when they came to understand that their actions had been the biggest contributing factor. I bet in the immediate after math no one was gently enquiring about the gate, rather asking "how the **** to that gate get open?"

I was really pleased when we signed him. But if I'm honest I probably just judged him on highlights I saw of him in which he scored some great goals. Who actually watches Blackburn games other than their fans? Right from the start it was obvious he wasn't good enough, but many of us refused to accept this, probably due to being brainwashed by MOTD highlights and people comparing him to Beckham. I kept waiting for him to settle in, but after a while it became clear that he wasn't taking his time to adapt, but that he just wasn't very good. As much as I wanted him to come good, there was no denying he was slow, he got knocked of the ball very easily, he gave it away all the time and his crossing really wasn't even that great either. He did have a good shot though, hence looking so great on highlight clips.

He's already nearly achieved that once... That's not actually true though is it? They were fined a million pounds for fan riots. In the 80's this is an enormous amount of money for such a small club. That is what bankrupted them. Redknapp made a profit for them in the transfer market. Though debt increased, it was at a much lower rate than it had been increasing before he joined. Under Harry they had their most successful period on the pitch.

He is a fantastic chairman, but for someone with such a good academic background, I wish he'd apply it a bit more to the football side of things. By far his biggest fault is that he seeks advice and listens to people. But virtually everyone in football benefits from over complicating the game and exaggerating the importance of so many factors. If he actually took an academic approach to things and carefully went through a bit of football history, I think he'd see the reality is very different to that sold to us via the media/pundits etc. We ended up with Ramos, as Levy bought into this completely flawed idea of a tactical genius or super coach. He's done the same again. But the idea that these people exist, just doesn't stand up to any decent scrutiny, which is true of so many football theories. Football is an insanely simple game. There simply isn't to scope for all the bollocks we read to make that much of an impact. So the idea that there is some special coach out there who can make up for the fact our turnover is about £100 million less than our rivals, is completely stupid. Yet Levy seems to think there is. Maybe 20 years ago, this sort of thing was possible, but there are no secrets in football these days. There just isn't scope for a competitive advantage without spending more than your rivals.

Spurs fans are saying the same thing about Lambert As long as they don't read Villatalk, Spurs fans don't even realize how much you hate us. In general Spurs fan would be totally ambivalent about Villa doing badly. When you saw us as rivals, we didn't see it like that, as Liverpool and City were the teams we thought were our biggest threat.

I think AVB will leave on 9th December 2012.

Fulham will be fantastic to watch this season. Despite the great stuff we played under Harry, I still think Jol's Spurs side were the best to watch of of all our teams over the last 25 years.

That's pretty much what I think. But I generally read people describing him as a creative player, which I haven't seen a great deal of evidence for. I've even seen him compared to Modric, but other than them both being small and technically good, I don't see them being that similar. Modric is much quicker, dribbles and is very creative. Moutinho just seems good at keeping the ball, even in tough circumstances, which is a great asset for any side, but I'm not sure it's worth £20 million! But I've not seen an awful lot of him, so maybe he's got more to his game than I think. I'm sure he'll be an asset to the team, which is the main thing. It's just he might be an over priced asset.

Moutinho is obviously a very good player and obviously I'd be very pleased if we signed him. However, for what he is, I think he's expensive. He's seems to be very efficient on the ball, but from what I've seen he doesn't seem to be the creative player I often read him described as. From the little I've seen I'd probably rather spend the money elsewhere, but certainly wont complain if we get him. It looks like we could lose VDV, so we really need a passing creative midfielder. From what I've seen of Moutinho he's not a patch on Rafa. I think he's going and I'll gutted to lose VDV.

I haven't been this pleased about a signing since Modric. He's been the player I've most wanted us to sign all summer. I wanted us to try in Jan, as I thought we'd have no chance if we waited until now, as I was sure Chelsea would go for him. I suggested you guys try and offer a swap with Bent in Jan, as Dembele hadn't seemed to have caught the attention of most back then as he'd only just moved into CM and Fulham needed a striker.

It's actually hard to decide if he deserves much credit for that or not. He signed Dembele as a winger and played him there. He wasn't anything special as a wide player in Holland, hence Fulham were able to sign him for a low fee. He wasn't anything special playing there for Fulham during Hughes reign either. Jol seems to have totally transformed Dembele, from an unproductive wide player or second striker, into one of the leagues most dominant central midfield players. So whilst Hughes signed him, I'm not sure he should get that much credit in terms of talent spotting, simply because he wasn't that talented in the role Hughes signed him for and played him in.

The things is that this happens at lots of clubs. The difference is when the managers at rich clubs do it, they get given more money, have more success and people go on about how great they are. When a manager like MON does it and gets told there is no more to spend, fans see it as him taking the club as far as he could. But look at how many players Cheslea bought and hardly used under Mourinho or City under Mancinni. SAF has blown big fees and not really used players plenty of times. Rafa Benitez has to be the best example of this, as he paid big money for shit lots of times. When the Liverpool board couldn't give him anymore, he simply couldn't live with the likes of MON or Redknapp. Yet Liverpool fans feel sorry for him and still rate him. I think the truth is that football is about money and managers are often over rated.