08 Oct 2014 05:05:24
With the news that Spurs rejected recent interest in Aaron Lennon, I was just wondering what people's thoughts were on him?

I, personally, would have thought now was a good time to sell him. He is not first choice, his crossing has always been a weakness and he doesn't score enough goals.

Yes he is quick, yes he works hard and yes, when he is on his game, there is little that can be done to stop him.

The problem is that he just doesn't do enough for me with the ball. He should be adding 10 goals a season, but he barely scores. He should be able to cross accurately, but his crosses are just likely to pick out someone in the back row of the stand as they are a forward in the box.

When Bale was in the team, he did provide excellent balance, and his workrate chasing back allowed Bale to be given more freedom. Now I just don't see a role for him, other than bringing him off the bench to torment a fullback on a yellow or to shore up wide areas when the club are leading late in the game.

Ed001

Lennon is just one illustration of a wider issue.

For some years now, we have been knocking on the door of the Champions League and that has had an impact on how we judge players. We no longer ask if a player is good: we ask if he is good enough for the Champions League. If we have any doubts about that, we want him out of the team and out of the club.

For example, last season we saw Sigurdsson playing well and scoring a few goals, but not looking absolutely top class, so we were happy to see him go. In the meantime, we hoped that Lamela would live up to his transfer fee and were desperate to see him get a chance to prove himself. This season he has had that chance. He has shown some good touches and some promise, but he hasn’t yet played as well as Sigurdsson did for most of last season.

The problem we face is whether we play the man that is performing best at present, or the man with the greatest promise. If we decide on the latter, we have to hope that the potential is real and that we don’t lose too much ground while we are waiting for the promise to be fulfilled.

I sense that most people on this site would take that risk, but I am worried that it is always jam tomorrow. It is no use trying to develop Champions League players if we don’t have Champions League football. Our problem at the moment is not that we lack quality but that quality players are playing badly, individually and collectively.

The Southampton game was really depressing. Despite losing their manager and half-a-dozen of their best players in the summer, they still outplayed us on our own pitch. But if all those players were put on the market, ours would probably be sold first and for more money. So why was it that, man-for-man, their players were quicker to the ball, stronger in the tackle, more incisive in their running, more accurate in their passing and creating better chances?

Until we are actually showing some form, it is pointless to worry about whether individual players are good enough for the Champions League.

So: what about Lennon?

I think that a fit Lennon, with a run of games under his belt, playing mainly on the right, is probably our best option at present. He is never going to get any better and your doubts about him will never be answered, but if he can recover his form I think he should play – at least until we have someone better.

But ‘someone better’ doesn’t just mean someone newer or someone more expensive.

Lamela isn’t a wide player. It doesn't matter where we nominally play him, he always drifts into the central positions where he knows he can best influence the game.

Lennon and Townsend are the only players that are willing and able to play on the wings, but Townsend wants to play on the right, rather than on his natural side, and his confidence is shot to pieces at present.

Lennon is also short of confidence and short of form, but is still the best bet to give us some width, even if his crossing isn’t great.

The only ability that I have seen Townsend show is pace. once he gets past his man he shoots regardless of how far from goal and usually when he shoots accuracy is not present.

I'd rather seen Lennon in the team simply because he will put in a shift helping out the young defenders Dier on the right for instance, who is young, inexperienced and playing out of position.

That said I don't see a long term future for Lennon at the Lane if he wants to play regular first team PL football.

08 Oct 2014 20:42:57
KM, did you watch the whole of the Southampton game? We were much better than you say and were playing the in form team other than Chelsea.

As for Lennon there ain't much to add other than what a waste of a talent, he could of been a great for us with his pace but is instead average now imo.

Spurski

I have just seen your post.

Yes, I stayed to the bitter end. The performance was slightly better than against West Brom (how could it have been worse?) and was slightly better in the second half than in the first, but I stick by my judgement that we were outplayed all over the pitch.

I think most of our players really are better than most of theirs and eventually that difference in class will start to show, so we will probably finish above Southampton again this season. It is just that I wanted to see seen some evidence of this on Sunday and I didn’t.

It seems to me that our individual players will only play consistently well if the team as a whole is playing well. That generally means we must play the system that works best for the squad and then pick the players that work best in that system. At present we are clearly not doing that.

For example, against Southampton we kept pushing up, even though we never once caught their forwards offside and they were continually passing and running through our high line, leaving our full backs stranded.

Similarly, against Besiktas we started with two natural wingers, but both were playing on the wrong side and neither was playing on the wing. Most of our width came from the two full backs. That is fine if you have a Dani Alves, but not if you have Dier and Naughton or Davies and Rose.
Essentially, we had four key players playing out of position, so it was no wonder they didn’t play very well and the team as a whole never gelled.

I know I am sometimes too dogmatic about how and where certain players should play: a player that can only play in one way and in one system is always going to be a bit of a liability. Nonetheless, some of the experiments we have tried in recent years seem senseless to me and clearly haven’t worked.

Let’s try to keep it simple and if that means playing our best team rather than out best players I can live with that. A decent quality player who is playing well is usually better than a top quality player who isn’t.