Player Watch - Tanguy Ndombele

kent brockman · Jul 31, 2020

We all know that many top class players have struggled in their first PL season. Often because it takes time getting used to the frantic tempo, where you get so much less time on the ball compared to other leagues. However, this particular aspect has not seemed to trouble Ndom one bit in possession, as he is so good on the ball (both in terms of technique and vision).

What does baffle me with Ndom is that his struggles appear to be pretty much entirely fitness related. His lack of physical stamina could potentially (if we are being very generous) be caused by recurring niggling injuries, which may prevent him from training properly. He has however looked entirely out of breath already after five minutes when coming on as a sub (e.g. our home game against Wolves when Jimenez scored their winner). Sadly, it is not only that. What is even more worrying is that he simply looks embarrassingly overweight for a professional footballer. Something which really cannot be blamed on injuries. And if you cannot even be bothered to get your diet in check, alarm bells are ringing IMO.

Japhet · Jul 31, 2020

Vinny_Sammways_left_peg said:
'If' Levy and Mourinho don't want to move on from Ndombele then where/why such a story in the first place? To have Dan Kilpatrick and Alasdair Gold both get written pieces up before 10AM seems a little ott for me.

Fires being put out for what reason?

Because speculation means clicks and paper sales and all sorts of other crap for 'sports' people to talk about.

Deleted member 27995 · Jul 31, 2020

Japhet said:
Because speculation means clicks and paper sales and all sorts of other crap for 'sports' people to talk about.

Ah - so they put the story out to then be able to put the story out ... ? Okay.

GioW · Jul 31, 2020

THFCSPURS19 said:
Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that if Ndombele was genuinely refusing to train properly, he wouldn't have even made our squads post-lockdown, and would've been training on his own.

Also I could be making this up, but I'm sure all the noise over lockdown was that Jose was delighted with the effort Tanguy was putting in.

Wadec · Jul 31, 2020

He has 5 years left on his contract and is our record signing. No chance he leaves unless we get back what we paid.

Huge season for Tanguy coming up, all the talent in the world but needs the application both in training and during games. I think he will play a big role next year for what it's worth.

SargeantMeatCurtains · Jul 31, 2020

It’s been obvious for months where these stories about Ndombele wanting out are coming from. Every single time Ndombele did not feature in a game, a story would appear in the press. I highly, highly doubt this is any different. The team around Tanguy are absolute poison.

For what it’s worth, Ndombele himself seems to get very little say on what his people throw out to the media. You’ll remember he very quickly took to Instagram to say “nothing to report” over claims in the media he wanted to leave a few months back.

The fact Gold et al have come out this morning with what seems like a blanket statement from Spurs saying unequivocally that we won’t be selling is enough for me. It makes no sense to feed that to the spurs journalists if we were willing to sell, if anything we’d be pushing other clubs to enter a bidding war.

Looking back at the news that broke last night, it’s actually such a load of bollocks. The Perisic link was lazy. He’s 32 years old and plays a position we are more than stocked in. Oh but Jose wanted him at United so it makes sense!! We wouldn’t give Vertonghen a big contract because of his age, why would we start now? Don’t even get me started on the notion that Levy was prepared to take a £20m hit...

aussiespursguy · Jul 31, 2020

DiVaio said:

For the "right" money sell. Get in who the manager really wants. We are at a critical point and cannot have people on the bench the Manager is not interested in. We need a squad where every one has a place.

I was all for the signing of him but I just don't see where he fits with Jose. I would rather open our spending ability a little more to make stronger the rest of the squad.

Japhet · Jul 31, 2020

aussiespursguy said:
For the "right" money sell. Get in who the manager really wants. We are at a critical point and cannot have people on the bench the Manager is not interested in. We need a squad where every one has a place.

I was all for the signing of him but I just don't see where he fits with Jose. I would rather open our spending ability a little more to make stronger the rest of the squad.

We'd take a massive hit if we sold after the season he's had and the fallout from Covid. Nobody has the slightest idea when spectators will even be allowed back into grounds. IMO the whole thing is media speculation because they really have fuck all else to do.

SargeantMeatCurtains · Jul 31, 2020

aussiespursguy said:
For the "right" money sell. Get in who the manager really wants. We are at a critical point and cannot have people on the bench the Manager is not interested in. We need a squad where every one has a place.

I was all for the signing of him but I just don't see where he fits with Jose. I would rather open our spending ability a little more to make stronger the rest of the squad.

How do you know Jose isn’t interested in him? Should we beat Sessegnon with the same stick? Bergwijn too who doesn’t feature very much?

I don’t think that’s fair. All evidence points to Jose really liking Ndombele. This has been said exhaustively but there is no way Mourinho would’ve gone to Ndombele’s home during lockdown if he wasn’t determined to help him settle here. He’s said in the past what a talented player he is too.

I can see why Jose doesn’t play him. This season especially was about getting EL with a squad who understood how he wanted to play. A good example of this is Lucas being favoured over Bergwijn when we know Bergwijn is the more talented of the two. You watch Lucas and you can see he’s been drilled by Jose that he must support the right back when we’re out of possession. I don’t think Bergwijn is disciplined enough to do that yet. I’ve read as well that Jose especially wants Hojbjerg because he will enable more creative players, such as Ndombele and Lo Celso, to play together. I think we’ll see a lot more of him next season.

Gspurs11 · Jul 31, 2020

If we have to sell, we should at least recoup our initial outlay so we can go and buy a replacement or someone more suited to Jose’s system and demands. The swaps suggested by Inter are pointless. Skriniar is a great CB but unless we’re planning on playing 6 CB’s next season, I don’t see why we’d do that. The only players you’d want from Inter in a swap are Lauturo Martinez (No chance) and Hakimi, who has just signed.

Mr Pink · Jul 31, 2020

Hope this quashing of the rumours isn't about driving price up.

Really hope we keep him.

Who’s our next manager? · Jul 31, 2020

It’s pretty common knowledge that Campos at Lille is a great talent spotter and that Levy and Jose seem to want him with us. I should think that Spurs and Lille would have different budgets when buying players even low cost players.Why can’t he scout for both clubs working within the financial parameters each club give him?

yankspurs · Jul 31, 2020

thecook said:
This should be fucking pinned to the top of the forum.

Yeah um no. Our manager is Jose Mourinho. Now let me repeat that so you can grasp the full magnitude of it. Our manager is Jose Mourinho. If Ndombele was refusing to train properly, do you really, truly, honestly believe Jose fucking Mournho, wouldnt pull him from the squad and make him train on his own? The man takes no bullshit from anyone and is not afraid to air this shit out publicly.

Santgus718 · Jul 31, 2020

joey55 said:
A big concern I have with NDombele, is that his transfer is badly tinged with what I dub "the GKN factor."

When we signed GKN, though I'd never seen him play, I was extremely confident that he wouldn't make the grade with us. Logic dictated that he was going to be a flop and I was surprised that Levy, a man with a 1st Class honours degree from Cambridge, didn't over rule our scouts and sanctioned the deal.

Other than Brazil, France exports more footballers than any other country in the world. Ligue 1 is by far the most scouted league in Europe. It is therefore a reasonable bet that Marseilles and Lyon (why bother with PSG?) are going to be the most scouted teams in Europe. It's also a very likely, that along with the Dutch, the French U21 team will be the most scouted European international team. I don't have any definitive proof of that, but I think it's fair to say no one would bet against it and that it's very likely to be true and if not, certain to be be very close to true.

So, GKN was a French U21 international, playing for Marseilles and therefore would have been scouted numerous times, by every top level club in Europe. Though not well known to the football viewing public, it's fair to say GKN would have been one of the most watched players in Europe. Yet somehow, he was available to us for £5 million. Surely when our scouts, or player buying committee, approached Levy, alarm bells should have started ringing. Martial, Dembele and Conman wouldn't have been available for such a low fee with seemingly no competition for his signature. Obviously a business owner needs to have faith in his employees and let them do their job. But at the same time Levy would surely have been wondering why Marseilles, having worked with daily, had decided to let him go for such a low fee? Why weren't the scouts of Madrid, Man Utd, Dortmund etc etc telling their clubs to buy and forcing the price up, as we see with French U21 internationals all the time? It's just the way markets work. The market signals, were telling Levy not to buy him. Levy is almost certainly an Austrian School economist and he committed the cardinal sin of ignoring what the market was telling him in favour of human interference (Keynesian madness!) The season before we ended up with N'jie. How often do you get top quality wingers from Lyon on the cheap? GKN had way more red flags than N'jie.

So back to NDombele. We can all see he's got brilliance in him. We've all seem his games against City and various other full match highlights videos, where he just looks top class. Yet somehow, PSG, Barca, Mardid, City etc didn't blow us out of the water when the bidding started. It's not like a Lloris situation, when there are only so many spots for GK's in European football, due to only 1 starts, they rarely come on as subs and they are rarely rotated. A club of our stature will always be able to attract quality in the GK position, as the number 1 spot at big clubs rarely becomes available. But CM is different. Every top club can have 4 or 5 top quality CM's in their ranks. When a seemingly special talent becomes available, having played in a league known for producing elite league talent, whether they are desperate for a CM or not, there should be no shortage of takers.

So basically, this all leads me to believe, that NDembele's troubles adapting haven't come as the slightest shock to the European giants, who you'd have thought we have been hugely attracted to a talent like him. I suspect they all decided to pass due to the fitness and attitude issues that have been discussed in his time with us. When you look at him on YT, it's almost too good to be true that we'd get a pretty much free run at him and tie the deal up reasonably early in the transfer window. It's not like he was playing in Holland or Eastern Europe, when it's common for the big clubs to be more hesitant. How often does a top class, young player, come from one of the biggest French clubs and not go straight to one of the richest clubs? Of course bargains can be picked up in France, as they can Holland, Belgium and Serbia etc etc. But you've got to be a tad suspicious when a player as obviously talented as NDombele, playing in CM for Lyon, gets passed on by the giants of European football.

Obviously we need to take gambles, as otherwise there is no way to compete with the biggest, richest clubs. But I think the lesson here, is to gamble on players from lesser leagues, rather than gamble big money on players from a league and club, we know traditionally produces for Europe's elite.

Of course, I'm not saying NDombele won't turn things around and that our gamble wont pay off, but even so, I think we have to learn a lesson from this, as we aren't a club that can gamble with such huge fees. We've done our best gambling on players from the lower leagues and smaller European competitions. Modric, Bale, Ali, Verts and so on. I feel we are more likely to find good deals looking in those areas. I'm not convinced that shopping at the big French clubs is a good strategy for us.

The “giants” who it seems would now quite like to buy him...

yankspurs · Jul 31, 2020

Its really funny to see some agendas on here. Even after its been categorically denied by the main tottenham mouth pieces and plenty of others, we have some people jumping through hoops to deduce that there all pulling our leg and we’re looking to sell a player we clearly are not. We have people believing something someone said which has falsities, contradictions and nonsense when you look throughout this managers history. Solely because it suits their narrative. Its like people are using the Pythagorean Theorem in their minds their jumping through so many hoops that arent there.

I know I also have an agenda. But in this case, it’s quite clear that i am right.

Univarn · Jul 31, 2020

Vinny_Sammways_left_peg said:
'If' Levy and Mourinho don't want to move on from Ndombele then where/why such a story in the first place? To have Dan Kilpatrick and Alasdair Gold both get written pieces up before 10AM seems a little ott for me.

Fires being put out for what reason?

Because the club either don't want the story out there and want it squashed, or they don't want it out there on either Inter's terms or Ndombele's agents terms (who are clearly shopping him around).

You can pick any of the reasons you feel best suits your predisposition on the matter because any and all could be true. Personally I think the club don't want to sell him, and probably can't afford to take the hit on him plus do other transfer business. They want it to be clear to anyone that the asking price is his value or profit, otherwise they can wait until next summer.

wrd · Jul 31, 2020

I think the reality is, the club didn't want the fanbase freaking out that we are going to sell him. It was for our benefit and that's it. Whether they'll stick to that is something we won't know until the window closes but I hope they do and I think what Alasdair Gold said which was that they signed him with a long term view hence the 6 year contract makes logical sense.

Must admit the Skriniar link is certainly enticing and he'd be an amazing signing for a Jose team but I don't see that sort of signing happening this summer.

daryl hannah · Jul 31, 2020

wrd said:
I think the reality is, the club didn't want the fanbase freaking out that we are going to sell him. It was for our benefit and that's it. Whether they'll stick to that is something we won't know until the window closes but I hope they do and I think what Alasdair Gold said which was that they signed him with a long term view hence the 6 year contract makes logical sense.

Must admit the Skriniar link is certainly enticing and he'd be an amazing signing for a Jose team but I don't see that sort of signing happening this summer.

I think the reality is DL couldn't find anybody to pay his full wages when he can't even run for 45 minutes.

It's a real F up, and we've got one super-talented fat bastard on our hands.

HildoSpur · Jul 31, 2020

daryl hannah said:
I think the reality is DL couldn't find anybody to pay his full wages when he can't even run for 45 minutes.

It's a real F up, and we've got one super-talented fat bastard on our hands.

That is funnily enough exactly what I've asked to be put on my gravestone.

wirE · Jul 31, 2020

punkisback said:
See this is what I am talking about,
now people are stating that the player is making himself "unavailable for selection"

Weren’t that the alleged rumors about Pogba? Unavailable/injured because he wanted a way out?

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