Lack of a coherent club strategy?

[diego_maradona]

I know this is being discussed in several threads and we might need a bit of a tidy up retrospectively but saw this on twitter and thought this guy has raised some fine points.

Tor-Kristian Karlsen ‏@karlsentk 46m
Observations on Spurs (summer signings, coaching situation) coming up in multiple tweets, I apologise in advance for hijacking your feed

1) more than anything, there's been no basis for new (any) player to thrive this season. Unsettled environment, no clear structure post AVB

2) even players that performed well last season have had negative trend this term, which shows something's fundamentally wrong

3) which Spurs players have improved on last season? Townsend? Adebayor? Majority of the rest looking confused, unmotivated, out of sorts

4) in such a context, how can one expect any new signings to flourish? I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way

5) from the summer signings, I've seen enough of Paulinho, Eriksen, Lamela (pre joining) to know that they'd strengthen Spurs significantly

6) I was unsure/unconvinced about Chadli and Capoue back then, but Chriches - if anything - has surprised me positively

7) Soldado has become a problem, starting to look like a lost cause, but he'd profit from clearer structure to the attacking game

8) but point is: with seemingly no clear plan, strategy or stability it's completely naive to expect new signings to prosper

9) as pointed out at the time of AVB sacking, why didn't Spurs go with a manager whose system would get the best out of the summer signings?

10) by appointing an inexperienced manager Spurs seemed to give up on £60-70 million worth of player investment after five months. Bizarre.

11) and finally, what's the point of appointing a technical director when he seemingly had no influence in appointment of new manager?

12) with all these factors in mind, there's no wonder why Spurs is having a disappointing season. Lack of coherent club strategy


Who is he?

Tor-Kristian Karlsen
@karlsentk
In the football industry in various capacities (chief scout, sporting director, CEO) since 1996 - currently independent advisor and occasional writer


-----

Just thought he raised some very well made points. Discuss

 

[Millsy_Yiddo]

I know this is being discussed in several threads and we might need a bit of a tidy up retrospectively but saw this on twitter and thought this guy has raised some fine points.

Tor-Kristian Karlsen ‏@karlsentk 46m
Observations on Spurs (summer signings, coaching situation) coming up in multiple tweets, I apologise in advance for hijacking your feed

1) more than anything, there's been no basis for new (any) player to thrive this season. Unsettled environment, no clear structure post AVB

2) even players that performed well last season have had negative trend this term, which shows something's fundamentally wrong

3) which Spurs players have improved on last season? Townsend? Adebayor? Majority of the rest looking confused, unmotivated, out of sorts

4) in such a context, how can one expect any new signings to flourish? I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way

5) from the summer signings, I've seen enough of Paulinho, Eriksen, Lamela (pre joining) to know that they'd strengthen Spurs significantly

6) I was unsure/unconvinced about Chadli and Capoue back then, but Chriches - if anything - has surprised me positively

7) Soldado has become a problem, starting to look like a lost cause, but he'd profit from clearer structure to the attacking game

8) but point is: with seemingly no clear plan, strategy or stability it's completely naive to expect new signings to prosper

9) as pointed out at the time of AVB sacking, why didn't Spurs go with a manager whose system would get the best out of the summer signings?

10) by appointing an inexperienced manager Spurs seemed to give up on £60-70 million worth of player investment after five months. Bizarre.

11) and finally, what's the point of appointing a technical director when he seemingly had no influence in appointment of new manager?

12) with all these factors in mind, there's no wonder why Spurs is having a disappointing season. Lack of coherent club strategy


Who is he?

Tor-Kristian Karlsen
@karlsentk
In the football industry in various capacities (chief scout, sporting director, CEO) since 1996 - currently independent advisor and occasional writer


-----

Just thought he raised some very well made points. Discuss

I went through that one by one and it's hard to argue with any of those points. The only thing I would say is that Eriksen and Chadli have looked better under TS for whatever reason.

Levy either brought in Sherwood because he thought that Sherwood would get the best out of them, or the person that he did think would, was unavailable and Sherwood is already involved with the club so he though it would be the easiest option until that person becomes available.

 

[diego_maradona]

I think it's juicy job for a top coach to take to be honest. Still massive potential in this club. And the rise could be as impressive as Liverpool's given the right circumstances and decisions to hire (and not fire!) a top manager. Easier said than done.

 

[Rossi22]

Scattergun.

Appoint Italian DOF
Sign Brazilian
Sign Belgian
Sign Spanish
Sign French
Sign Romanian
Sign Argentinian
Sign Danish
Sack Portuguese
Appoint English

 

[indianspur]

thanks for that, some great observations from Karlsen......stability, coherent strategy, is it much to ask for?

 

[diego_maradona]

"8) but point is: with seemingly no clear plan, strategy or stability it's completely naive to expect new signings to prosper"

This is the key. It's lazy of fans, journos and pundits to always say "7 was too many new signings".

Would love to see Paulinho, Soldado, and Chiriches swap with Fernandinho, Negredo and Demechelis just to see if a team with a clear direction and defined style of play would mean they would have flourished.

 

[Cochise]

The likelihood is that Sherwood put himself up for that job and insisted he was ready, likely citing the results of the U21's etc as reason to believe in him.

Point 11 I think isn't accurate as it would seem all choices for our next manager were unhappy to leave their positions midway through the season/before the world cup was over.

 

[WhoopWhoop]

There's a clear strategy at the club people just don't like to admit it. We exist to make Enic money that therefor comes at a cost of not competing and selling our best players every summer.

 

[Millsy_Yiddo]

I think it's juicy job for a top coach to take to be honest. Still massive potential in this club. And the rise could be as impressive as Liverpool's given the right circumstances and decisions to hire (and not fire!) a top manager. Easier said than done.

Depressingly, I've resigned myself to the notion that it won't matter who our manager is, they will never be given the opportunity to build something worth talking about.

Here's what will happen. We'll get someone decent in, next year we'll be riding high, Eriksen, Sandro, Soldado will all have great seasons. We'll finish the season just outside the top 4 (again). Manager will start the search for the top class centre back/striker/right-back/insert as required that we need to make us a genuine finished article. Then Levy will sell Eirksen, so we'll have our top class centre back/striker/right-back/insert as required, but not our creative genius. Because of this we'll just miss out again. Levy will sack the manager for not finishing 4th after two seasons.

And it all starts again. It was easier, and honestly probably more fun supporting us when we were finishing 8-12th every year.

 

[Robbo]

I know this is being discussed in several threads and we might need a bit of a tidy up retrospectively but saw this on twitter and thought this guy has raised some fine points.

Tor-Kristian Karlsen ‏@karlsentk 46m
Observations on Spurs (summer signings, coaching situation) coming up in multiple tweets, I apologise in advance for hijacking your feed

1) more than anything, there's been no basis for new (any) player to thrive this season. Unsettled environment, no clear structure post AVB

2) even players that performed well last season have had negative trend this term, which shows something's fundamentally wrong

3) which Spurs players have improved on last season? Townsend? Adebayor? Majority of the rest looking confused, unmotivated, out of sorts

4) in such a context, how can one expect any new signings to flourish? I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way

5) from the summer signings, I've seen enough of Paulinho, Eriksen, Lamela (pre joining) to know that they'd strengthen Spurs significantly

6) I was unsure/unconvinced about Chadli and Capoue back then, but Chriches - if anything - has surprised me positively

7) Soldado has become a problem, starting to look like a lost cause, but he'd profit from clearer structure to the attacking game

8) but point is: with seemingly no clear plan, strategy or stability it's completely naive to expect new signings to prosper

9) as pointed out at the time of AVB sacking, why didn't Spurs go with a manager whose system would get the best out of the summer signings?

10) by appointing an inexperienced manager Spurs seemed to give up on £60-70 million worth of player investment after five months. Bizarre.

11) and finally, what's the point of appointing a technical director when he seemingly had no influence in appointment of new manager?

12) with all these factors in mind, there's no wonder why Spurs is having a disappointing season. Lack of coherent club strategy


Who is he?

Tor-Kristian Karlsen
@karlsentk
In the football industry in various capacities (chief scout, sporting director, CEO) since 1996 - currently independent advisor and occasional writer


-----

Just thought he raised some very well made points. Discuss

Very well put, and he sums up our problems very well, IMO. There's a lack of long term strategy behind Levy's public aspirations for top four success for Spurs.

Personally I think the problem stems from unbalanced priorities between financial and footballing success. I'm happy Levy runs us as a sustainable business, but it affects our transfer strategy in that we don't buy players to suit a formation/system we want to bulid on - we seemingly go for the best possible financial deals, regardless of whether the players fit in or not.

We need to find a new manager with a proper gameplan, and Levy must give said manager time to implement this system and build a squad that fits the system. That doesn't neccesarily mean a financial carte blanche for transfers, but it means Levy giving the financial backing to buy the type of players that the new manager needs in his system. No more deadline day bargains, unless of course it is a player that suits the system. And no more stockpiling of talented players that doesn't match the system, just because there is potential sell on value.

 

[diego_maradona]

Tor-Kristian Karlsen ‏@karlsentk 2m
without wanting to sound arrogant: I don't think people realise how good Paulinho really is (if motivated and used the right way)

 

[Rossi22]

Tor-Kristian Karlsen ‏@karlsentk 2m
without wanting to sound arrogant: I don't think people realise how good Paulinho really is (if motivated and used the right way)

What's the implication here? That Paulinho is actually really good because Tor-Kristian Karlsen(who?) says so?

 

[scaramanga]

What's the implication here? That Paulinho actually is really good because Tor-Kristian Karlsen(who?) says so?

Highly regarded in the international football community. Rarely wrong about a player's quality (or lack of) in my experience.

 

[diego_maradona]

What's the implication here? That Paulinho actually is really good because Tor-Kristian Karlsen(who?) says so?

Just putting it out there. It's an opinion.

I think he's made some very valid points. I think we've all very hastily written off most of our players. Myself included.

 

[harr1984]

I don't think you could question any individual signing that we made in terms of quality. Each has demonstrated ability/potential both here and at past clubs -from Soldado to Chadli to Lamela...The question is whether they fit into the sysytem we want to play, but we won't know the answer to that until (presumably)the new manager comes in...

 

[Enter the Pitbull]

TKK has made some very salient observations. For a while now I have thought it odd that the club decided to abandon the MOTD policy and cast its net wider afield, only to then appoint Sherwood.

The club lacks identity and focus. At least under Harry it had some. Now we are lacking cohesion or a philosophy. Are we tiki taka types? No. Are we English battlers? No. Are we doing a Southampton and building around young talent instead of spending 26m on a big striker? No. All I see is a lack of enthusiasm and grit with the occasional Eriksen or Ade brilliance.

Presumably things have to get worse before they get better though (assuming we are going to let LVG have full rein over the entire structure of the club).

 

[indianspur]

i think Paulinho will have a brilliant World cup and Real Madrid will buy him for 20 mill :lol:

 

[indianspur]

TKK has made some very salient observations. For a while now I have thought it odd that the club decided to abandon the MOTD policy and cast its net wider afield, only to then appoint Sherwood.

The club lacks identity and focus. At least under Harry it had some. Now we are lacking cohesion or a philosophy. Are we tiki taka types? No. Are we English battlers? No. Are we doing a Southampton and building around young talent instead of spending 26m on a big striker? No. All I see is a lack of enthusiasm and grit with the occasional Eriksen or Ade brilliance.

Presumably things have to get worse before they get better though (assuming we are going to let LVG have full rein over the entire structure of the club).

Southampton did spend about 15 mill on Osvaldo

 

[Icelander]

What's the implication here? That Paulinho is actually really good because Tor-Kristian Karlsen(who?) says so?

It's Karlsen's opinion that he's good, yes. And he is IMO as well, as evidenced by his performances for Brazil.

As to his other points, it's just spot on. We don't have a clue as to what we're doing on the pitch. Pass, pass, and back to the CB/Lloris who hoofs it forward because he's being pressed a bit.

The Pool on the other hand. Full backs pushing up to provide width. Gerrard dropping deep between the CB's. Coutinho coming deep to get the play going. Everybody moving, with everybody knowing where to and where to pass it.

The players came in with no belief that we'd do anything. We were late on every challenge, constantly a step behind and always chasing. Granted, Liverpool were very, very good, but we shouldn't be this far behind them. What they have however is a clear strategy, everybody rowing in the same direction and a system that everybody believes in. And it's cleary working well.

We on the other hand.....

 

[Rorschach]

I went through that one by one and it's hard to argue with any of those points. The only thing I would say is that Eriksen and Chadli have looked better under TS for whatever reason.

Levy either brought in Sherwood because he thought that Sherwood would get the best out of them, or the person that he did think would, was unavailable and Sherwood is already involved with the club so he though it would be the easiest option until that person becomes available.

I think that's it. He probably had Levy's ear and talked himself into the job. Maybe he's a jedi. Easy to say in hindsight I know but we should have given it to Hoddle for the 6 months.

Sherwood has to view these remaining matches as an interview for his next position. All the ranting and raving is doing him no favours and he needs to realise that he should not be in the spotlight as much. He's learned a few hard lessons but I think the most important one is that he needs some good progressive coaches around him who are not afraid to push back.

One thing I do agree with him on is the lack of character our players show. Out of all the players on show yesterday Bentaleb seemed to me to be the one most affected by the way the match had gone, or maybe he was just annoyed at the way he was deployed alongside Siggy. The lack of desire on show was evident and it was epitomised by Rose and Lennon's lack of application, sauntering back or walking on some occasions when the need to sprint back to defend was obvious. Those two boiled my pis yesterday, and then it occurred to me that basically Rose was playing rather like Lennon. He's not a FB and never will be. If I was manager I wouldn't put either of them on the pitch again this season (sorry - a bit off topic that 8-[)