Very good assessment, and I think I'd liken him to Frank Lampard as he is best suited to arriving into the box late like Lampard has done so well over the years (please dont jump on me, obviously not suggesting he's at Lampard's level). Whether we have a sysytem suitable for him is another question, but not writing him off completely just yet - especially if he is happy as a squad player....
Yep, both you and Cochise are IMO bang on the money.
Paulinho's strengths as far as I can see are primarily off the ball movement - timing runs into the box, arriving late, sniffing out 'being in the right place/right time' - and his athleticism. And IMO a confident Paulinho would be a GOOD end product player....
He's not an all round player though, far from it. Defensively he's quit shaky - he's athletic but seems to have bottled quite a lot of challenges. But more importantly.. Paulinho's general level of touch, technique, passing is relatively weak. He is an ineffective sideways passer: takes too many touches; moves the ball too slowly. Been a massive problem for him - and us - as quite often he's been assigned the key pivot position in the Spurs team - so often so much of our pattern of play has gone through him!! I've not seen many CMs who slow the play down as much as Paulinho does... oh wait there's also Mousa
. It's typical Spurs that we've quite often had Paulinho & Dembele both in the same team - I think they have equally been a huge factor in how painfully slowly we have moved the ball at times over the past few years...Especially under AVB although thankfully not much recently.
So I agree - I think Paulinho is classic example of a system player - some strengths, some weaknesses, who will only really excel in a certain set up. Put good pass and move players around him, give him a clear and defined role (i.e. basically a poor man's Fat Frank), and I think he could be a statistical monster actually. Do this and get him confident and I think the other parts of his game would get better.
Not sure if this will be at Spurs. I think there is a player in there and I don't write him off like a lot of Spurs fans, but I think it's more likely than not that it won't happen for him here.
