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Nabil Bentaleb

This dude has such calm quality. That bit of skill at the start of the second half, phwoar! Sure he was rusty at times, but I love the guys confidence.

I've missed watching him nonchalantly strolling around the park, picking passes at will.

We really do have an embarrassment of riches in central midfield at the moment.. Long may it continue!
 
nayenezgani said:
This dude has such calm quality. That bit of skill at the start of the second half, phwoar! Sure he was rusty at times, but I love the guys confidence.

I've missed watching him nonchalantly strolling around the park, picking passes at will.

We really do have an embarrassment of riches in central midfield at the moment.. Long may it continue!
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Absolutely agree but he has to eradicate his tendency to be sloppy.
 
nayenezgani said:
This dude has such calm quality. That bit of skill at the start of the second half, phwoar! Sure he was rusty at times, but I love the guys confidence.

I've missed watching him nonchalantly strolling around the park, picking passes at will.

We really do have an embarrassment of riches in central midfield at the moment.. Long may it continue!
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Agreed. Great to have him back :)

Looked to be really enjoying himself after that initial 5 poor minutes at the start. Settled down nicely and bossed the game for extended periods of the second half.

Great boost to have him back. Probably not getting a PL start right away, but a good option to have on the bench for when we want to up the tempo or struggle to play through levels of pressure.

I still think him or Mason in something resembling match form could have made the difference from the bench against WBA.
 
Robspur12 said:
Absolutely agree but he has to eradicate his tendency to be sloppy.
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Eradicate? Is that a fair expectation?

Other than the very top deep playmakers in the world playing at their very peak there's not a player around playing with his ambition on the ball that has managed to eradicate the odd loss of possession.

He's trying to play quick one and two touch passing, he's trying to use skill and strength to create space often using fairly advanced first touches. When he succeeds it really helps us create space and does a lot for our buildup play. When that doesn't come off it often looks sloppy. Because of course if he had just taken another touch, or kept it simpler the mistake wouldn't have happened.

I think we need to accept that he will occasionally make mistakes, accept that there's some risk involved with his style of play. Because the benefits far outweigh the risks. That's not to say he doesn't have to improve, both on the ball, off the ball and in his decision making. But to set the bar at eradicating what can be seen as sloppy mistakes really seems like a ridiculously high bar to set for a 21 year old deep playmaker.
 
There was some showboating yesterday but he provides a completely different option to Dier as the holding CM - need just needs to learn more about the defensive side of the game. Great to have the second option in that position though
 
Good to hear the last few comments, I didn't watch the game properly (feed kept cutting out) but read some comments in the match thread and afterwards criticizing him and saying apart from bentalab it was a good performance, I'm glad that's not the commonly held view.
 
Gazza Dazzla said:
Good to hear the last few comments, I didn't watch the game properly (feed kept cutting out) but read some comments in the match thread and afterwards criticizing him and saying apart from bentalab it was a good performance, I'm glad that's not the commonly held view.
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He did make a couple of mistakes early on. Tried a Zidane-spin type thing twice in the first minutes of the second half without succeeding. A couple of average at best passes.

Really grew into the game for me and for a while, particularly at 3-1 when we had to up our game a bit and Monaco actually looked half decent, he took control of the game and looked a lot like he did in the league last season. Moved well into space to receive the ball, moved in on quickly with purpose. Bit of skill from time to time to create space and some good forward passing. Meanwhile we were in control defensively and he did his job in that regard too.

(Though just to be clear I'm probably one of those on here that rate Bentaleb, and what he does, the highest. So not a completely unbiased view by any stretch of the imagination.)
 
braineclipse said:
Eradicate? Is that a fair expectation?

Other than the very top deep playmakers in the world playing at their very peak there's not a player around playing with his ambition on the ball that has managed to eradicate the odd loss of possession.

He's trying to play quick one and two touch passing, he's trying to use skill and strength to create space often using fairly advanced first touches. When he succeeds it really helps us create space and does a lot for our buildup play. When that doesn't come off it often looks sloppy. Because of course if he had just taken another touch, or kept it simpler the mistake wouldn't have happened.

I think we need to accept that he will occasionally make mistakes, accept that there's some risk involved with his style of play. Because the benefits far outweigh the risks. That's not to say he doesn't have to improve, both on the ball, off the ball and in his decision making. But to set the bar at eradicating what can be seen as sloppy mistakes really seems like a ridiculously high bar to set for a 21 year old deep playmaker.
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If you are suggesting that "eradicate" is a ridiculously high bar insofar as no footballer can totally eradicate mistakes I agree. But I believe a player can eradicate sloppiness which imo equates to needlessly giving the ball away. Of course players could give the ball away trying a risky through ball that could assist an attack. But this is often not the case when he loses the ball. Sloppy is when he loses the ball in his own half trying to do unnecessary step overs. Sloppy is when against Liverpool last season he passes the ball back to the keeper without putting enough weight on it or checking who is around - twice. Or under no pressure giving the ball to a Man utd player in his own half. Or Again under no pressure playing a poor square ball. This is down to poor decision making. You don't see this so much from other players except maybe Walker. With the emergence of Alli, dier and with Dembele and Mason also competing for that midfield position with Bentaleb I can't say his absence has been particularly detrimental so why do the benefits outweigh the risks? We don't have to accept his poor decision making and I am sure Poch won't. I understand this kid has talent I've said it plenty of times in other threads and I understand he is young and his decision making will hopefully get better. In fact if he can sort this part of his game out he looks to have the attributes to be a future captain. But imo at the moment if he doesn't significantly reduce the type of mistakes he is making it will be the difference between him being a good player or a great one.
 
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Yes, if he is the deepest midfielder he should not do stepovers and Zidane spins, as the benefit is very marginal and the cost is huge. If he is not the deepest midfielder then he can try all that stuff. It is very simple, there is a time and a place to do these things. Particularly in the first 5 mins after months out of the team.
 
Bullet said:
Yes, if he is the deepest midfielder he should not do stepovers and Zidane spins, as the benefit is very marginal and the cost is huge. If he is not the deepest midfielder then he can try all that stuff. It is very simple, there is a time and a place to do these things. Particularly in the first 5 mins after months out of the team.
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This for me as well, he does not have the mindset to be the DM and it shows with moments like that.
 
parklane1 said:
This for me as well, he does not have the mindset to be the DM and it shows with moments like that.
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He'll grow into it. Little Luka Modric was best played deep and he was as supremely skilful. Either way, with Dier, Bentaleb and Alli we have three astonishingly good young CMs

And that's before you get to Mason and Carroll who are young and decent but who I don't believe have quite the same potential
 
If I was guessing I would say he went on the pitch last night with the mindset to impress. He obviously sees players jumping ahead of him in the queue when he was injured and he wanted to remind the coach that he was still a good player.

Where he went badly wrong (surprisingly really) is not knowing what impresses this coach. If he thinks showboating in front of of the back four will impress Poch then he is in for a rude awakening. Actually the yellow card was the best thing that could have happened to him. It made him cut out the nonsense and play far better.
 
Rorschach said:
If I was guessing I would say he went on the pitch last night with the mindset to impress. He obviously sees players jumping ahead of him in the queue when he was injured and he wanted to remind the coach that he was still a good player.

Where he went badly wrong (surprisingly really) is not knowing what impresses this coach. If he thinks showboating in front of of the back four will impress Poch then he is in for a rude awakening. Actually the yellow card was the best thing that could have happened to him. It made him cut out the nonsense and play far better.
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Agree with all that
 
He's got to learn when he can play like that and when he can't, bascially up his situational awareness. Dier keeps things quite simple, he sticks to the plan and has benefitted from it. Bentaleb wants to be a creator first and foremost which he needs to curb if he is asked to be the DM out of the two.
 
I may come off as a bit thick, but I still don't see his creative side. There were times when he had good forward options and passed the ball sideways or backwards. And we can excuse yesterday's game, since he just got back from injury, but I didn't really see it much last year either.
 
Maybe creative is a little off the mark, perhaps the one instigating our attacks from deep is better. He looks for the pass into the feet of the front players and will play eye of the needle passes to do so at times, passes that don't always come off. He also is more likely to drive forward with the ball than nearly all of our midfielders bar Dembele. In that I would list him as creative or at least positive.
 
Were Poch drawing up a Christmas list, number one on the list would probably be for every one of Tottenham's opponents for the remainder of this season to have someone in front of the back four who plays like Bentaleb did on Thursday.

In attempting to impress, I think he did the opposite, but he is still young, has bags of talent and probably does not want to be playing that deep position anyway.
 
My worry with Bentaleb is he needs to learn when to do the simple things and when to try to show off. I counted more than one misplaced pass that could have damaged us.
 
AdamB said:
He'll grow into it. Little Luka Modric was best played deep and he was as supremely skilful. Either way, with Dier, Bentaleb and Alli we have three astonishingly good young CMs

And that's before you get to Mason and Carroll who are young and decent but who I don't believe have quite the same potential
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I do not think so, he may turn out to be a very good player but not as the DM player ( imo).
 
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