For a coach that appears to favour attacking wing-backs, Antonio Conte has plenty on his plate. As per my breakdown earlier today, Emerson Royal’s crossing was wildly unpredictable. If you take time to watch the videos of his successful balls into the Watford penalty area, then it’s pretty obvious that even the Brazilian’s ‘key passes’ were perhaps more of a mixed bag than one might expect from such actions of note. Royal undoubtedly did his best, but the fact that so little was achieved from so many key passes has to be a concern.
Beyond Emerson’s hit and mostly miss routine, we have the random acts of defensive madness from Eric Dier to consider, there are also the efforts of Sergio Reguilon to consider. A cynic might say, ‘he can’t cross either’…
Against Watford, the Spaniard’s success rate was just 20%. To make the point, here are the 4 duff attempts, for your consideration.
My point is that picking holes in one player’s performance is not the path to addressing where Tottenham’s general faults lie – at least – not in a meaningful manner…
Selective memories I think Finn! Bonzo was Bonzo because he was awful for years, made mistakes, stupid fouls etc. However he had a couple good seasons under Poch hence why he got his big move.
Aurier was hopeless from day 1… brain fart waiting to happen, punctured by the occasional decent cross.
Walker-Peters was too light weight at the time, and I seem to recall it was him who left for 1st team football, and fair play to him.
Tanganga is suffering because, much like Royal, he’s a better right back than wingback.
The “hoodoo” is really due to not having bought, or produced, any quality in that position since Bonzo left.
Maybe for some of them, but too many were hopefully floated either too short or too long, or too late or without pace.
Maybe he’ll get better at it… maybe he wont.
On his hit and miss crossing, I would have thought a mitigating factor is the number of players Watford had in the box most of the time, which must reduce the odds of successfully picking out the generally smaller number of players we had forward.
My thanks, I did at least get the initials wright (right?) 😊
His name is Walker -Peters…. not Wright Philips…
Small things ☝️😂
In Conte’s system it’s not only the Fullbacks that need to be better, it’s the 3 CB’s, all 3 of Dier Sanchez and Davies passes from the back are terrible, and more often than not, put us in trouble. Romero is far ahead in this regard.
Good points MS and I agree Royal is on balance not that much better than Aurier, I think Royal is less prone to a brain fart as a defender, but not as adept as a crosser or shown any aptitude to cut in and have a dig himself.
However I felt that Aurier was just one of many who have suffered under the Right Back hoodoo at Spurs. Think about our list of RBs: all have been lambasted by bloggers, fans, pundits etc, when playing for us, but somehow have been outstanding or at least very passable players when somewhere else.
Walker got heaps of stick (we named him the parked-car-chasing “Bonzo”), Trippier we were never happy with, Wright-Philips showed well for Saints last week, Aurier was (IMO) brutally and unfairly treated by the fan-base, Doherty was not such a donkey at Wolves, one might say Tanganga’s progress was blunted as a Spurs RB and now Royal – the latest victim.
As for Conte, yes I agree: I think the system is in place and he’ll want to recruit to fit the system. But we all suspect what he will get….. the 58million quid ‘A’ grader will fall through at the last minute due to…..(insert your preferred excuse for failure here), we will buy a winger we don’t need, get a ‘B-‘ grader who has injury issues and then get taken down the garden path through the usual smoke screens of “about to sign Dusan or Coutinho” courtesy of the likes of Alistair Gold and the other “Mouths of Sauron” the club uses to disseminate misinformation.
………..ahhhh, supporting Spurs: the eighth level of Dante’s Inferno.
Sadly all of our fullbacks are average players. Emerson Royal offers very little going forward and never looks confident on the ball. He always seems to hesitate and rarely tries to take on the player. He doesn’t seem to have much pace either.
These players are what comes of buying bargain basement deals. Levy was scammed!
Spot on, for some reason Reguilon avoids much criticism. Whilst emerson is poor going forward his defending is the best of a right back since Walker and I would argue maybe even better. If Sessegnon stays fit ( big if) I think he could overtake reguilon for LWB
As I wrote in my reply to Finn’s previous excellent guest blog, Emerson does not appear to be much of an upgrade on Aurier and although I am reluctant to make a judgement on an overseas player in their first season, it seems to me that Barcelona got the best of this particular deal. Zidane was sadly right about Reggie, very likeable lad but not good enough to play in this particular role. One can never be entirely confident about either Dier or Sanchez. They are both more than capable of some brain fart or costly lapse of concentration as demonstrated by Sanchez who had an air kick in the first half. There is plenty for Conte to do and although we have tightened up with his system , yesterday’s game was less than inspiring. Time to back the manager one again.