Andros Townsend

Hatch99

For me, he gets an awful raw deal on here. He's 22, so still relatively very young, has everything a good winger needs, pace, good with both feet and has good delivery albeit it can improve. He's just come off his first proper full season with us, he's broken it to the England team and did well with them.
He suffered a few injuries and has struggled to pick up the form he was showing at the beginning of the season, and now it looks like he'll miss the WC.

I can't understand how some people say we should be selling at the first opportunity. Is it not guys like Andros that our new manager should be coaching and developing and using as one of our main attacking weapons, especially if we play just one winger going forward. Yes he has his faults, but what young player doesn't. Lennon has been at our club for years and still hasn't developed imo, whereas Andros is someone we should be keeping and developing in to a very very good PL player.

Discuss :cool:

Sugarlumps

Granted he has pace, which is the standard requirement nowadays in the premiership. Under AVB (supposedly a great coach) he had a license to shoot on site and not cross the ball, glory and headlines flashed before his eyes every time he struck the ball, and trying to replicate Bale didn't flatter him.

He's shooting was/is abysmal. His England career was based on a solitary goal. The media jizzed themselves prematurely, and not for the first time either.

His and Lennon's stats are awful, good bye and good riddance to both of them.

Kiith

The problem is that he started to believe the hype that the British media built up around him. He's a good player, when his head is on straight, but he's been made out to be the best right winger in the league, and he's not even close to that. He tries to shoot like Bale did, and he's simply not at that level.

Hopefully, his absence will bring him down to earth again, and he'll show some of the ability that we saw at the start of the season.

Hatch99

Sugarlumps wrote: »

Granted he has pace, which is the standard requirement nowadays in the premiership. Under AVB (supposedly a great coach) he had a license to shoot on site and not cross the ball, glory and headlines flashed before his eyes every time he struck the ball, and trying to replicate Bale didn't flatter him.

He's shooting was/is abysmal. His England career was based on a solitary goal. The media jizzed themselves prematurely, and not for the first time either.

His and Lennon's stats are awful, good bye and good riddance to both of them.

A spurs boy, and here we are fcuking him at the door at the first chance, no wonder other clubs laugh at us. If he was a liverpool player they'd be begging for him to stay and develop in to a first team regular, but at 22 we want rid... I just can't understand it.

DubPerryman

I wouldn't necessarily suggest getting rid of him, but he's a squad player at best. The one big problem is that he lacks class.

He's direct, he'll stretch teams but there's no end product. He does two things - one is to knock the ball and sprint past a player and the other is to shoot (which he does very badly) - if we're seriously looking to be contenders, we need wingers who can beat a player, shoot and to have something else. Either positioning, to get in the right place to finish a move (Arjen Robben) or to come inside and change the dynamic of an attack (Frank Ribery).

I know I'm comparing him to two of the world's best, but both of those were showing signs of having the 'x-factor' when they were 18, let alone 22. Townsend doesn't have the little extra something, he's just slightly faster than an average English winger.

Sugarlumps

Games - 25
Goals - 1
Assists - 0
Shots - 56

Those 56 shots weren't even close to the mark. And he still continued plodding along. Either get out and practice hitting the ball correctly, or stop shooting from ridiculous distances. If he had of continued playing regularly it would be a 1,156?

Hatch99

DubPerryman wrote: »

I wouldn't necessarily suggest getting rid of him, but he's a squad player at best. The one big problem is that he lacks class.

He's direct, he'll stretch teams but there's no end product. He does two things - one is to knock the ball and sprint past a player and the other is to shoot (which he does very badly) - if we're seriously looking to be contenders, we need wingers who can beat a player, shoot and to have something else. Either positioning, to get in the right place to finish a move (Arjen Robben) or to come inside and change the dynamic of an attack (Frank Ribery).

I know I'm comparing him to two of the world's best, but both of those were showing signs of having the 'x-factor' when they were 18, let alone 22. Townsend doesn't have the little extra something, he's just slightly faster than an average English winger.

He lacks class... everyone in our squad lacks class bar maybe Eriksen, how many wingers in the league have actual 'class' 5/6 maybe? He's 22, robben and ribery are both 30 odd, give him time

Don't pretend you had heard of ribery and robben at 18 ye spoofer

Hatch99

Sugarlumps wrote: »

Games - 25
Goals - 1
Assists - 0
Shots - 56

Those 56 shots weren't even close to the mark. And he still continued plodding along. Either get out and practice hitting the ball correctly, or stop shooting from ridiculous distances. If he had of continued playing regularly it would be a 1,156?

Coaching and development?? Improve that and in maybe 2 years he'll have 10 of each, he's had a lot of injuries too remember.

mushykeogh

Hatch99 wrote: »

good with both feet and has good delivery albeit it can improve.

Disagree there Hatch, i think his delivery( certainly this season) was awful, started brightly if i remember correctly but faded fast. Wouldnt sell him but jury still out for me.

tomo75

He has alot to learn. There was a 3 week period where the British media went crazy for him and he swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

He is 22, not sure how long his current contract is but I would keep him until he is at least 25. He is costing nothing from the outset. If he develops into a better player and gets to the Euros with England in 2 years time then we have a more valuable player. If he doesn't improve then we can look at offloading.
At the end of the day - he is one of the players who should be playing EL on Thursday nights to help him focus his mind on getting into the 1st eleven.

Lightbulb Sun

Bit off topic, he's doing World Cup punditry for ITV in the summer, must be the youngest pundit ever!

Kiith

Jesus, ITV must be seriously stuck for experienced pundits.

Ormus

If he reduced his shotting by 50% he'd be at least a good squad player. Who knows, he may kick on and discover end product. He wouldn't be the first. Ronaldo was very wasteful up to the age of about 23. Practice sometimes makes perfect.

Hatch99

Hope he stays as I think he can be an important player for us

DubPerryman

I think I thought about writing the below article every time I've seen Andros Townsend. Thankfully somebody able to write put it in black and white for me...



http://www.football365.com/profile365/9487866/Profile365

Andros Townsend: Forever Flattering To Deceive

Run down the wing (at pace). Cut inside. Shoot (off target). Repeat ad infinitum. So reads the Andros Townsend manual. Nick Miller is ready to tell the world just how bad that is...


To let you behind the luxurious velvet purple curtain of high-class journalism (leave it), this week's Profile365 was going to be about something else. Nine hundred words had been carefully crafted like the most skilful sculptor would chisel out a statue (almost certainly a nude), all ready to be submitted to the evil Football365 overlords for them to raise either their thumb or their middle finger.

Then your fearless correspondent discovered Andros Townsend had been voted man of the match in Tottenham's 3-1 League Cup win over Nottingham Forest, and everything changed. The world stopped spinning. The entire focus of the universe became concentrated on courageously righting this heinous wrong.

Well, obviously the wrong can't actually be righted, because while Profile365 obviously has huge influence (according to the F365 number-crunchers it's read by upwards of seven people), there's no way of rescinding said award, presumably decided by co-commentator Alan Smith, a pleasant enough man but who could not possibly have been paying attention if he thought Townsend was anything but 5 ft 11 of frustration on Wednesday night.

Or any other night. Or day. Or morning if Spurs ever start a game at 10am. Townsend is the ultimate player who looks dangerous, threatening and quite good, but is in reality none of those things. He's basically an English Ryan Babel, a professional at little more than flattering to deceive. Most people who have ever watched him play will know how every Townsend performance plays out: he gets the ball on the wing, cuts inside and yahoos what is theoretically a shot miles away from where it might be useful to anyone apart from the opposition defence. Repeat to fade.

Townsend is like a writer who uses dozens of adjectives but forgets about verbs, who'll fill a page with purple prose without actually telling you anything. Insert your own 'glass houses' gag here. Those quick runs allow him to do a decent impression of a dangerous attacking threat, before disproving that by doing two-fifths of sod all once his pace has put him in a position to be useful. Nick Hornby once said of Thierry Henry's early days at Arsenal, when he struggled to be anything like the gliding genius he turned out to be, that his pace was a curse, that it simply put him in more situations in which he could demonstrate his incompetence.

It's similar with Townsend; without his pace, he would barely be a professional footballer, never mind one who has international caps. Admittedly, that statement is mildly daft and writing off pace, a legitimate footballing attribute, is not especially helpful (it's a bit like saying if Robin van Persie couldn't shoot he'd be rubbish). However, it feels a legitimate statement in this case because that's more or less all Townsend seems to have.

Townsend delivered a masterclass in Townsend, a self-parody cartoon Townsend performance against Forest, running very quickly at defenders, occasionally beating them then shanking a shot high into the Park Lane End. He went close with one free-kick, twanging it off the bar, but even stopped clocks nearly tell the right time occasionally. If you consult the stats you may notice that he registered an assist against Forest, which perfectly displays the problem with placing too much faith in such numbers, given this 'assist' was a dreadfully-dragged shot that was heading a good five yards wide, but was smartly turned home by Roberto Soldado.

He plays football a bit like a drunk toddler with a nerf gun, barrelling around the place, knocking a few things over then firing harmlessly into the ceiling. Again and again and again. You know exactly what you're going to get from Townsend, the problem being that 'what' isn't anything particularly useful. The old Shane Warne line about Monty Panesar not playing 17 Test matches, but playing one Test 17 times, rings true here.

About a year ago you might call Townsend overrated, but that's not really the case anymore (apart from by Alan Smith, apparently) as his presence in the Spurs side on Wednesday, along with assorted other stiffs and back-ups, might suggest. He hasn't been a first-teamer at White Hart Lane for a while now (he last started a league game in March, left on the bench for the remainder) and, although that is partly down to injury, it's also partly down to him not being very good at football, as a couple of managers seem to have now worked out. If Tim Sherwood can spot that you're a fraud, then it's probably time to pause and think about where your career is going.

Townsend has essentially enjoyed two spells of decent form in his career: on loan at QPR the season before last, when Harry Redknapp was roundly patted on the back for getting the best from this enigmatic tyro while the rest of the side were quietly being relegated, and the start of last term after his return to Spurs. During this time he appeared to have recalibrated those errant shooting boots and a few of those shots went into the goal rather than row Z, notably an excellent strike for England against Montenegro.

It was this goal that convinced many that he was the great wide hope of English football, a man who would run at defenders and cause havoc, but these goals were outliers, almost statistical freaks, and he would revert to type soon enough. Townsend is a bit like the archetypal old-fashioned big man that gets touted for an England cap every couple of years (Michael Ricketts, Kevin Davies, Grant Holt etc), in that he'll hustle and he'll bustle and look dangerous for a while, but will ultimately be found out. He's the man who'll 'put it about a bit', but not really achieve anything of note. He'll achieve this nothing at some pace, but it'll still be nothing.

Quite what Daniel Levy, a man never shy of robbing opposing chairmen blind (he should have 'turned a profit on Mido' tattooed on his chest then written on his headstone), was thinking when he turned down a reported £12m bid from Southampton this summer, isn't clear. Bullet dodged by the wily Saints, there.

Not for Spurs, though. They're stuck with him for the foreseeable, a banjaxed Eric Lamela hamstring or popped Nacer Chadli Achilles away from seeing Townsend in their first team every week. He's no good, everyone, and it's important that as many people as possible know this.

Now, anyone got Alan Smith's phone number?

Ormus

There's a lotta truth in there in fairness, but it's very one sided and vicious.

Andros is a frustrating player who might never come good.

mickman

Ormus wrote: »

There's a lotta truth in there in fairness, but it's very one sided and vicious.

Andros is a frustrating player who might never come good.

agreed. I think he is rubbish to be honest

Sugarlumps

I was lost for words last night as to why he picked up the man of the match award? Surely Mason was? Anyhoo, numerous managers have tried with Andros. Is he capable of heeding instructions...no.

He'll never make the grade here, which is a shame. Had a rather good spell on loan to QPR. If Southampton come sniffing for his services, then a deal has to be made.

DubPerryman

Ormus wrote: »

There's a lotta truth in there in fairness, but it's very one sided and vicious.

Andros is a frustrating player who might never come good.

I agree, but the frustration I go through when I watch AT play would drive me to be as vicious as that author.

I honestly think AT has a future as a very decent left winger. He can beat a player and he can stretch a defence. Though, when played in from the right, he's useless. He offers no link up play with the striker and can't shoot.

I've heard him say he'd prefer to play as am inverted winger. Though he needs somebody like Harry to convince him he's an out and out left winger, and that's it!!