It was such a poor performance yesterday, I think it's fair to truthfully examine where this team and this set of players stand.
Based on the Accy game, I'll divide the starting XI into 3 groups
1) Still pieces to build a promotion team/squad around - Macari, Bedeau, Tsaroulla, Iorpenda, Dennis
2) Not so bad yesterday and probably best regarded as squad back-ups anyway - Roos, Norburn
3) Players that might need to be re-evaluated in terms of how far they can take us - Platt, Hall, Kouhyar, Jatta
Platt - Rod McDonald better be injured or there's been some cowardly team management going on. Montague recruited Platt as a starter and RodMac as a back up in summer '24, but this season's evidence should throw that out of the window and the team should be picked on merit. Maybe Monty missed Sept/Oct when RM was a revelation. Platt is a fine L2 defender, but is prone to poor runs of form, is a below average distributor, can't use the space ahead of him and has stopped contributing as a goal threat, so the jury's out on him being a promotion level L2 defender. All I'm saying is that if there's someone who's been playing better this season in his position, they should have the shirt instead. Let's see if they can defend it and Platt/Ness can earn it on performances.
Hall - We've seen so may Charlie Whitakeresque games from Hall by now - largely anonymous and ineffectual, and way too easily dispossessed and knocked off the ball. I speculated before that Hall was probably a schoolboy level striker that Spurs coaxed into becoming a midfielder when he didn't turn out to be big, strong or fast enough. He's still got great skill, composure in the box and an eye for goal, but 3 out of 5 of your performances in midfield can't be like yesterday's
Kouhyar - was hoping he could force his way into the team but instead he shows like a natural sub, blazing brightly for 10mins and then dropping off a cliff. MP doesn't give too many chances but he does give them and you have to be ready to take them. He didn't
Jatta - the big one, where to start? He has too many games like yesterday. English pro football isn't like the Danish league, you just don't get the time and space. You have to try to win your individual battles with the opponent. Does he try enough? Probably. But that doesn't change the fact that he loses 80-90% of his tussles and challenges. I wish he was regarded as someone who still had to prove himself rather than a surefire sell-on asset and then maybe him and his agent would see it that way too. I get it, we want (big) money for him so have to talk him up. But how nice would it be to tell him you have to do better, take a seat on the bench.
The subs are a whole other story, so won't get started on that. Comments? Is most of that the usual over-reaction (probably is ;) ) or does any of it ring true.
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Good luck to him wherever his career takes him next.
Not surprising, makes sense for everyone really.
I thought he was ok defensively but I was more shocked with how poor his technical skills were, his passing, first touch and just general ability on the ball were far below what I expected from someone who’s been schooled in Man Utd’s academy. I’d have thought the biggest issue would’ve been adapting to the physicality, but there you go.
I wish him all the best for his future though and hope he gets a club where he can play more often.
That puzzles me as well @menzinho. He seemed to get nervy during those bad games and things went from bad to worse. Hopefully,that's easily fixable for him.
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