For a team whose supporters bestow such perennial gripes about the amount of perceived deadwood at the club, it seems somewhat ironic that Tottenham Hotspur’s Premier League campaign is beginning to be undermined by a crucial lack of it at the club.
‘Deadwood’ – the colloquial term for an abundance of sub-part players within a side – does of course carry a very obvious set of negative connotations and in terms of stacking up the wage-bill with the mediocre, Spurs have been one of the Premier League’s leading lights in recent seasons.
But while no team ideally wants to be ploughed down with too many squad players unlikely to wield much of an impact upon first team affairs, fans on the white side of North London should perhaps be careful what they wish for before waving goodbye to the likes of Tom Huddlestone, Kyle Naughton and Jake Livermore.
Because it’s within the last batch of so called ‘deadwood’ that the club looked to so hastily remove from the club you can attribute an alarmingly shallow squad depth at Tottenham that has been dreadfully exposed in recent weeks.
The likes of Vedran Corluka, Niko Kranjcar, Steven Pienaar and Roman Pavlyuchenko all evoked a varying level of emotion from supporters, going from the indifferent towards Pienaar to the near-on cult hero worship of Pavlyuchenko. Yet if they were differentiated by their support from the White Hart Lane crowd, all four are unified by the misguided lack of value put upon them.
Few in N17 were particularly sad to see the aforementioned quartet leave the club and although supporters were well aware of what they were capable of on a good day, the rarity of those occasions ensured that their collective loss wasn’t one worth much in the way of any long-term grieving.
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More space on the wage-bill and money for the transfer kitty, was the universally-adhered to school of thought following their sale and while it’s true that their departures helped pave the way for the arrivals of Mousa Dembele, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Hugo Lloris, it’s most certainly been a double-edged sword.
Spurs sold their squad players – as well as two of their most prominent first-team members in Luka Modric and Rafael van der Vaart – to help inject a serious boost of funds into the starting XI. Yet while addressing the first-team will always be the priority, the club seemed relatively happy to amble on without replacing the likes of Corluka and Pavlyuchenko.
Time it seems, however, has finally caught up with Tottenham and although the absences of Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon has shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the questionable depth of Villas-Boas’ squad, the writing has been on the wall for some time now.
The abject lack of pace and penetration to cover for Bale and Lennon seems dangerous enough considering the value both those attributes wield within Spurs’ game plan, but the lack of depth goes a lot further than simply patching up the obvious.
In both full-back positions, Spurs have suffered from both injury and a severe lack of form, but bar the unconvincing Kyle Naughton who’s has to double up as both a left-back and a right-back, there’s been nothing in reserve past their first choice picks. How much use would a Vedran Corluka have been to offer both experience and stability when the going got rough for Kyle Walker?
When Tottenham have been in need of a goal, so often this season their bench has been bereft of creativity, with the likes of Tom Huddlestone, Jake Livermore, Kyle Naughton and before Sandro’s injury, Scott Parker holding rank.
The pairing of Niko Kranjcar and Steven Pienaar were too often shorn of first-team football, but both offered Spurs a goal threat and a degree of variation that Villas-Boas’ squad simply doesn’t possess.
And in both Pavlyuchenko and to a lesser extent, Louis Saha, even if neither offered Tottenham a consistently quality outlet up front, both at least capable of producing a moment of magic and most poignantly, another option. And it’s within that lack of option that perhaps you can attribute a certain proportion of Tottenham’s woes upon this season.
If the urban myth that surrounded the strength of this Spurs squad was still even remotely prevalent before this season, then the last few weeks have surely shredded that down to little more than a distant memory.
Long gone are the days where Tottenham could boast a selection of four strikers up front or a real, genuine goal threat from their substitutes bench and although the financial rigors of developing a starting XI fit for a top-four push are strenuous, Spurs have perhaps put one egg too many in the basket of their front-line players.
This isn’t to say that possessing a Kranjcar or a Corluka would necessarily have seen Spurs flying considerably higher in the Premier League table, but it most certainly would have offered the manager another option and at times this season, that’s something Villas-Boas simply haven’t had enough of.
Regardless of whether Tottenham do or do not qualify for the Uefa Champions League at the end of the season, the immediate elements of the squad that need addressing are clearly apparent. But more than just signing a new striker, Spurs need to add another layer of depth to their side. Quite whether they possess the resources to do, however, remains another question indeed.
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