De Zerbi Backed: The Tonali Links & The Vuskovic Dilemma | Pedro Porro's New Deal & Pape Matar Sarr to Brentford? (feat. Baker)

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1:50Jack:hello everybody welcome back to rule the ruse podcast welcome back baker How are you doing, mate? Are you enjoying the off-season? Yeah. What does an FPL person, man, do in the off-season? Worry about Tottenham. That's what we do every day. But it's nice. For me, this is nice. We all know the stress of just following Tottenham, But when you're like somebody that normally through the season follows every single game to have a couple of months where it's very little. Well, it's only a couple of it's probably like four weeks where you can just you don't really have to do anything. So it becomes like start of July.

2:41They introduce some like rule changes. You start getting prices of players and all that stuff. So it's hype, hype, hype, all that type of stuff. so when there's like this and there's a world cup on for example i love i love not doing any kind of like world cup fantasy or any of that sort of stuff because you just like i can just watch football and i can just enjoy it and i want the drama all this stuff i want i have no skin in the game at all nothing it's just just nice something i wanted to ask you um pretty much every single

3:12Jack:time we podcast and it's always just left my memory because the conversation's gone elsewhere where because you do watch every single game and you are studying basically every single Premier League player, are there any sort of just random Premier League players at any clubs that they might not be the best, but you just kind of like that you sort of think, I would quite like it if Spurs signed this player. Do you get what I mean? Are there any sort of just random players that you have quite a fancying for that you think could do a job for Spurs? Even like if you think about the World Cup, scored this week and so forth.

3:47But you do notice sometimes how certain players make such a difference to that club when they're playing versus when they don't. So John McGinn with Villa is one. As a guy that you'd be like, I wouldn't want to sign John McGinn. We would all be like, what on earth's going on type stuff. But when you watch Villa play with John McGinn versus many of the other people they've tried to use, for example down the right hand side uh they're just a completely different team when when those go so and that might mean not necessarily mean i said that we want john mcgimby or like well actually you then notice how much of a difference that might make to freeing up for example someone like morgan rogers so you're like oh okay this guy has there's almost conditions to when you would buy this guy in fpl to an extent as opposed to and then actually if we would have so therefore I start thinking about if, for example, we were linked to Morgan Rodgers, which we couldn't afford anyway, I imagine.

4:47Although we're a big club now. Massive. Maybe the biggest. I don't know. Maybe the biggest. Then I would be thinking about, okay, how does that partnership of certain thing work? So there's a lot of players where, yeah, you're interested in all of them. And Harry Wilson, for example, is one recently we've been linked to.

5:06Jack:Oh, that's, yeah, there's been discourse. There's been a lot of discourse about Harry Wilson. How do you feel about him? Well, from a fantasy football, he was remarkably good to me last season. Remarkably good to me last season. But he was one, for example, in terms of if you were the person that would pick Harry Wilson, where if you did any kind, if you use any form of, like, analytics, modelling to choose who you were picking, you wouldn't go near Harry Wilson. because virtually all of his goals are worldies. Most of it feels quite unrepeatable. You've actually got a history of... So it's like low XG, right?

5:46Jack:Low XG. Low XG. Say, I'm learning. I'm learning. You're learning. Worldies. Basically, he deals in worldies. But he's dealt in worldies his whole career. And therefore, you have to sort of like try and balance as to how sustainable is it? And is it likely he will go for a run of six, seven, eight games where he doesn't score? is it weird that he's got to like, was he 28? I think he was going to 29 this season. This is the first season where he's actually managed to deal in any reasonable minutes. And is that because he hasn't fit or is it because actually he had quite a lot of injuries earlier on?

6:26And has he now got to a place where those injuries have gone away? There's a lot to sort of think about with those kind of players where I think sometimes it's really useful context. One of the things me and you have talked about, we're going to talk about Tonali, aren't we? But one of the things I think that's really, really helpful about watching virtually every football game is, I think as Tottenham fans very much quite often, we're so blinded by some of the downfalls of what we see on a week-to-week basis that we're like, well, I needed this exact solution because that'll fix what I'm seeing or hearing people talk about that are the downfalls of our team.

7:08I'm not necessarily about what the sort of like meta is across the league in terms of what's actually happening in terms of like tactical evolutions or how things are working. I think we often will work in this world, quite siloed world of imagining. I mean, Pep Guardiola basically just ruined it, didn't it? It's like that level of control that Pep was applying, the ability to play football in certain ways. It's almost like, how does everyone gravitate to that? Because that's how that wins the league. But Pep's gone now. That's over. Times have changed. Most of the teams that are doing pretty well and doing pretty well on similar budgets to us, effectively, or lower budgets than us, if you look at teams like Aston Villa, if you look at Bournemouth, Sunderland, Brighton, Brentford, which are teams that we're these are teams that we're now looking to try and leapfrog these are the teams that's the team that I just rolled out that was 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th they don't really play heavy possession games that's not really what they're at they're not looking for in fact if anything they look to play more disruptive than elements of control in what they're doing

8:25Jack:well let's talk about Sandra Tonali because I think this is all going to bleed in very nicely to the conversation. I'm pretty sure it was Fabrizio Romano that broke the news last night that Spurs were in for Sandra Tonali. There's a lot of talk that the player is very interested in coming to Spurs, is very interested in the idea of working with Roberto De Zerbi. People have been making the link that they're both from the same town and whatever, I mean, how much that actually makes a difference or not, who knows, but still, it's an interesting quirk. to the deal the potential deal um i think it's it's been dropped today i'm not sure which one i think it's gary jacobs has said since uh that newcastle will want at least 100 million pounds for sandra tonali and thus the the the discourse continues um now this has obviously been met with a very you know divided opinion should we say from tottenham supporters many of whom feel we need to be prioritizing a progressive passer within our midfield think adam wharton somebody like that um and many people well and the term the term that's been used for tonali is that he is a runner that he is quite simply a say a utility player um a player who does a bit of everything but doesn't really excel at any one particular thing i guess before i sort of talk about the other side of things the you know the statement that it sends out Tottenham spending that much money so on and so forth initially how do you respond to I mean how do you respond to the deal in the first place Baker like the idea of Sandro Tonali I would say instantly got me excited if you like when I when I heard about the the news um it felt like a sort of big deal something that you know it's a sign that Spurs are backing Roberto De Serbi and also I would say when I've watched Newcastle in the past either against us or just in games where I've wanted them to be Arsenal or something like that I've often looked at Tonali as being one of their better players a player who dare I say it and no I'm not comparing them directly but at times I see just shades of an early at Tottenham Luka Modric about him the way he's kind of in the mix the way he picks up the ball travels with it offloads to say other players who are in space in dangerous areas further up the pitch i've always quite liked him i've always sort of thought god i would really like it if spurs had a player like him so to sort of hear lots of other people not be very excited about it and kind of make out that he's a bit of a shithouse for want of a better word um is i don't know it just seems a bit perplexing to me where are you at with everything yeah i mean look this is this is the guard that Paul Scarls has said is the best centre midfielder in the league.

11:24It's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. And I do think this is a little bit about us being, I think there's scars issue. I think there's a bit around the, we've become obsessed as fans around this progressive passer, obsessed about it. And then because we signed Gallagher, who's not a progressive passer, it's like, well, the next one has to be a progressive passer. And it's like, does this transfer, if it was to go through, one, does it make the Gallica move make even less sense? Probably. Maybe it does. Maybe it does. So I can kind of see that part. But to say he's not a passer is really unfair on Tonali.

12:13it's borderline poor I would suggest as a take from that is is he he's in if you think about what he's really good at in terms of his passing ability he's incredibly good from set plays hit set plays with a huge amount of pace and having just is that the best currency of of all in the Premier League right now that's incredibly important to make sure that you have people that have the ability to deliver good from set plays. Massive. So if you bring into our team Tonali, then you've got him, you've got Porro, you've got Madison, you've got Tell, you've got four guys there, Xavi Simmonds for next year.

13:01You've got a real breadth of how they would deliver a ball as well. much flatter way in which Tenali delivers the ball so therefore it becomes harder to defend against and we shouldn't we should want to continue with that. Realistically our set place goals is what kept us in the league last season and you should lean into it. Continue to lean into that. So that's... I mean just to jump in here Becker

13:30Jack:you know like you're saying football is changing as well right? And I know it's not always the most palatable. I know we look at Arsenal and we really don't like the way they've won the league this year, but they've won the league. They got to a Champions League final. I would say just, and it's the tiniest sample size, but the early World Cup games thus far, to me at least, show that football is trending in a direction that physicality is becoming way more important. than no i'm not going to say it's way more important than technicality but i would say that the balance is growing versus in when we're talking about like the 2010s up to probably the last few years it's technicality has been key right as you say pep guardiola's football has dictated that strong passing technical footballers footballers who have as people call footballing brains is the top tier of currency but it feels like people are breaking that a bit now and it also feels that like roberto de zerbi is kind of at the forefront or one of the managers at the forefront of that changing tide right yeah very much with tonali is just like he is rounded he is some people would call it hybrid like he's not a traditional italian magista as they would call it is, you know, I think purely because of almost his looks and how he is, people just immediately went younger, compared him to Perlow, and it just assumed it was this deep line playmaker.

15:04But he's like a hybrid between this deep line playmaker and like a high-energy ball winner of a guy. He can play 6 '8". He is very, very well-rounded in how he plays. One of the things that... So then actually when I saw his passing, so dead ball delivery, fantastic. two other things that he does incredibly well one is his ability in terms of press resistance to take the ball in on you know whilst under pressure and pass is incredibly strong and secondly his ability to play through ball which these are things that deserve he very much appreciates he wants to bait teams so a player that is good at passing at that specific moment of being of being press resistant is very strong and the ability to go directly is something that is, again, something that he wants from his players.

16:01So the bits that De Zerbi wants him to pass with, he's good at. He's more than good at. He's excellent at. He has, you know, the ability to... His short passing, rather than I'd say progressive, would be more combination stuff. He does particularly well. But his ability to do, you know, long diagonals, three balls is really strong. And then his energy is monstrous. Rarely gets injured. I think he's missed one game through injury in like three years. The rest of the time he missed it because he likes gambling. But that's a different story. Do you know what?

16:40Jack:I forgot all about that until somebody was like bringing it up like a Tonali naysayer today. I was like, oh yeah, I did forget that. How long has he been for? About a year, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he likes the gambling. One of the other things that he does is he is pretty good at this sort of like a ride late to the box. And he hits the ball. I think he actually took more shots than anybody else in the league without scoring last season. But there was a few times where it was incredible. There's one save from Pickford towards the end of the season from Everton that it's just unfathomable how he saves it.

17:18Like the man can bang. and we don't score enough bangers. Like, we would be so incredibly lucky to get Tonali. So incredibly lucky. It feels otherworldly. You know, I said to you earlier, I had a school assembly and one of the dads is Italian, he supports Juventus. And he's like, who are you looking at? I was like, have you not seen the Tonali links? He's like, what? No chance you're getting Tonali. It was absolutely steaming about the idea that he might be at Tottenham. But if you watch, if you look around and see other things now, if you even just go to, you know, you get auto-translate now on Twitter.

17:59Phenomenal. It's phenomenal to see because actually now what used to happen was a lot of those tweets would be excluded from your view. You wouldn't see those tweets. whereas now actually if you go and search like the go look through the replies and the romano ones it's just a continuous continuous stream of italian messages saying what are they what is he thinking what is he thinking why on earth would he do that why on earth would he do that like

18:25Jack:look it's not like you get much worse lads you've not qualified for another world cup do you mean it's not tottenham that's going to ruin the italian national team just to yeah i've I've just got to jump in there a bit defensively. But then we have to move on to the fact of, I sent you a couple of games from last year because there's a lot from the FPLOT world that I have to remember about. I can remember about why I wanted certain players from Brighton. So Soli March and Matoma were the guys, but also even players like Duncan Webster, for example, point centre-backs, why they were so good in FPL was because they were so heavily, like those four in particular, were so heavily involved in almost all of the progressive work, the chance creation work that was done in that team, that that makes it almost more predictable that when they score, I know where it's going to come from.

19:25So there were a couple of games I'd sent to you where they really illustrated...

19:34Jack:does the functionality exist for you to do that probably does doesn't it i need to get the picture up i don't know good technical work you're doing here mate unbelievable i'm not sure i can't need to put some elevator music in here at the moment i'm not sure i can get it to work not on that because i've got it on my phone annoyingly and we're on the desktop now let me talk for it i can talk for it let's do it if your business runs on five different apps 12 browser tabs and one spreadsheet that everyone's afraid to touch, it's probably time for Odoo. Odoo is an all-in-one business management software that connects every part of your business into one powerful, easy-to-use platform.

20:15Jack:So instead of wasting time switching between disconnected systems, your entire business works together in real time. Your team moves faster, your data stays accurate, and you can actually focus on growing your business. Let one unified system run your entire business. From the first opportunity to the final payment, everything works together in one place. Whether you're a small business or managing a large operation, Odoo gives you one flexible platform built to grow with you. Learn more at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. You thought this was your Run Club era. Turns out, it was more of a thinking about Run Club era.

20:59Jack:The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on Depop. Just snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit, and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop. Where taste recognizes taste. So he joined the 2022-23 season. And I think it was January time, but people got to look it up and see the scores. But Brighton beat Liverpool at home 3-0. And at the time, really often, he liked to use the Alexis McAllister and Caicedo centre midfield. and realistically I think Tonali could play either of those roles like he is somewhere between he could do either of those roles and quite often what he used so people would think of more like oh he used Gross as a progressive passer well they might forget but actually quite often what he used was he used Gross at right back and including in that game against Liverpool he played Gross at right back so he used a progressive passer at right back do you know any progressive passers at right back at Tottenham?

22:18I think you can name me one yeah we might sign a new contract for one that might be always quite important and then other than that the majority of progression was done via the centre backs so there's a really good account called MarkRStatsPod one no spaces MarkRStatsPod but after most games it'll show things like average pass maps and it'll show like progressive pass attempts and all those type of stuff. So I went back and found where it was from. And you'd literally be able to see that the progressive passing was literally all done via centre-backs, all from the right-back position, progressed through the middle.

23:04They get the ball to the wings, and then the wingers are direct. The wingers are purely focused in chance creation. That's how we operated. And I'm like, okay, that makes sense. while we would want Sanessi. That would make sense while we go after Van Heek. That would make sense while we give Poirot a contract. That would make sense that we don't prioritize progressive passing through the centre midfield because Alexis McAllister and Caicedo are perfect hybrid guys. Yeah, I would say Caicedo's a bit more destroyer-y. I don't know if we've got an exact profile for that, but McAllister is definitely what you would class as a hybrid.

23:43You know, we used to talk about at the time that he had like Mac 10 on his back, but he would play 10 for maybe 10 minutes of the game and the rest of it, he was playing six. And it was all the way in between all the time.

23:55Jack:Because again, just on this, because this is the interesting thing. It was especially interesting you pointing this out to me that, you know, this idea, again, that I see kind of parroted really, that he is not the type of player that we need. I mean, that assumes that Roberto De Zerbe, a man who essentially turned around a flailing injury plagued side that was headed towards relegation last season turn them around in a matter of weeks doesn't know what he wants doesn't know the way in which he wants to play football and as you say as soon as that's pointed out as soon as that's made clear that as you say the progression comes from the back if you like it comes from the sides suddenly every single profile of every player that we've been linked with and are trying to sign makes total sense because there's been so much confusion and there's been a lot of agitation from a lot of people why are we trying to sign this type of player why are we trying to sign that type of player um it suddenly makes the Andy Robertson deal seem so much more obvious as well given that he's such an unbelievable passer even if it is a stopgap for a couple of seasons until we identify somebody else that can play in that position or a doggy manages to step up or Sousa manages to step up it makes total sense to me now why we would have gone for somebody like Andy Robertson.

25:13Jack:I mean, did you see us cross the other night for Scotland? I looked at that and I thought, I haven't seen that at Spurs for a long time. A long, long time. I think the interesting part is, what it appears to be is that we are incredibly all in on Deserby. Yeah. That's probably the more the bigger alarm bell that rings to me to an extent, is that we are all in. like if we spend all our monies on this guy this guy decides he's had enough and does you know has the tantrum that potentially is always around the corner well I mean that's always been the cloud taking it over to Serb isn't it exactly but it appears that we are 1 million percent all in on this type of play but that's exactly that Brighton Liverpool game 3-0 all of the progressions I think there were 7 progressive passes from Colwell and Duncan.

26:13And then it's like three from McAllister in the game. Yeah, it's four from Caicedo. Like it's all being done via those centre-backs. And then they used the wingers to carry. So they progressed by carry, basically. And looked to create chances into the number nine. Or via those. I think March got a brace in that game. And then the second game I sent you was shortly after that. They beat Chelsea, more towards the end of the season, they beat Chelsea 2-1 at their place. Again, we're not talking about just counterattacking teams. In both of these games, they had around about 60 % possession. But it's the same.

26:57Heavy, heavy, heavy build-up through both centre-backs, moving out via the full-backs. Full-backs then unleash the wingers. wingers are where the chances are created. So I do expect us to still continue to prioritise. I can see why Savino, again, is a... I can see that... I don't necessarily think it's Tonali or Savino or Van Heek or those ones. I think each of those three is really excited. This appears to be where we're looking to go.

27:34Jack:but i just the thing for me is i i've always had reservations about deserby and i've not hidden those i think we all have a debt of gratitude to him now given the fact he has saved the football club from a very uncertain future at least in the in the certain near future should we say um Um, so, you know, I'm not saying that I'm going to be like completely enamored with, I mean, I say I'm not going to be completely enamored with the football. His Brighton team were decent. I actually, you know, I thought they were good to watch, you know, really nice side to watch. So if we are kind of backing a manager for once as we've been calling for, then why not do it with this guy who, to be honest, really, I think the thing that's particularly kind of, I would say, exciting about De Zerbe to a degree is that he seems to be one of these managers that players really like.

28:33Jack:The players seem to be really excited by him. It feels like pretty much as soon as he's walked through the door, the idea of Mickey van der Ven leaving the club is just not a thing anymore. You know, I'm not even entirely certain that Christian Romero leaves, but I think it's most likely that he will. and what will probably stop it is nobody really wanting to offer Spurs anything close to the sort of money that they would want to receive for Christian Romero I think I think that the powers with people negotiating for Christian Romero at this point in time right um but look still that aside um people seem to want to play for Deserby there is a bit of a buzz around him he is he's a young manager um he's you know he's he's done a good job with with Brighton to a to a degree things went a bit weird with Marseille how much of that was his problem how much of that was Marseille being a bit of a basket case you sort of feel like the I mean the the the sort of things we've heard from behind the scenes from his coaching staff from Deserby himself is that this is the club where he knows this is the moment for him in his career he knows this is this is the moment if he's gonna achieve something big it's here and you could see that all over his face looking at the south stand on that final day of the season um yeah so if we have a manager who is exciting who is you know on an upward trajectory that people are excited about outside of the football club and we are backing him you know i think for me it's sometimes sometimes you know Now, in terms of what we were saying earlier, people getting kind of quite in on things that are happening.

30:15Jack:But this is why this is a bad decision, because there are many, many reasons why this is not good and this would not work out. But again, another one for like a positive and it's perhaps less of a quantifiable reason, but still a reason nonetheless, I believe, is that Tottenham, after nearly getting relegated, being able to come and spend big money and take one of your rivals, like you say one of the teams you want to leapfrog now in Newcastle to take one of their very best players for a massive transfer fee kind of shows you that the club is in good health that the club has big aspirations that it is trying to be better than what we've seen for the last two seasons it sends a statement when if Tottenham had to drop 70 to 100 million pounds or euros on a player of the quality of Roberto Tonali, even if you think he is like good enough or not.

31:08Jack:Sandra Tonali. But it's, you know, it's, I think that's, I don't know. I think that's something that maybe a few people are neglecting right now. You know? I suppose they need a lift.

31:24And it does seem, this does seem ambitious for a club that's just finished 17th, two seasons in a row and maybe we won't go from you know 17th to winning the league but i do think we have got some good blueprints around opportunity where teams that have for various reasons underperformed and we should note that for tottenham there are contributing factors to why we underperformed last season you know there is an injury crisis which has never been seen before from any club. We have also then got, well, we had Thomas Frank, and then we had Tudor, and then we had Deserby. So you had all of those things.

32:10So it's not, what we are hopefully approaching this season does not feel like what we were approaching last season with. And there is an opportunity to go for it. We've just seen Man United go from, they were 16th to 3rd. and what was a massive huge factor in that they didn't have europe when everybody else had they didn't have europe and that is such a bigger deal than it's ever been because of the number of clubs that are in it yeah and but but they're not like the first i don't know you know i'm old enough to remember but the the liverpool 12 13 season they finished seventh and then brendan rogers comes in everyone thinks he's brilliant but realistically he just suddenly played 20 less games and then they finished second and they should have won the league but obviously they let it slip as everyone knows um but Chelsea did that Chelsea uh then a couple of years later Chelsea in the 2015-16 season finished 10th won the league next season is you take away that