You're not sure about Soldado? I thought you said he was shit!
Aye, that was how I articulated it in the heat of the moment, but I meant that he's not a £30 million striker. He was in the corner and the ball sort of dribbled out of his control, but fortunately Ashley Williams just fucking decked him for no reason. I agree it was solid hold up play, but I don't see much ingenuity in him, or anything that's going to make the stadium stand up and roar.
Like, I'm sure he can nod it in at close range, or slot away a penalty kick, but I just haven't seen anything special from him.
I think they wanted £25 million for Benteke. Obviously he's started the season really well. Soldado has been isolated and hasn't had many chances to be honest. He needs to forge some sort of understanding with the players around him, and today showed that he desperately needs someone creative playing behind.
The thing with Benteke is teams have to go into a game with a plan to specifically stop him. He's got such incredible physical attributes, as well as everything else, that you can't just look to starve the supply like you can with Soldado. We've seen more than enough times that Benteke can pull a goal out of nothing, he can win a game on his own, and he can batter a defence singlehandedly. Given the two players are similar prices I think it would've been wiser to opt for the Belgian.
Obviously you're correct that Soldado has played about five games for Spurs, so it's a wee bit harsh for me to be writing him off so soon. I think he'll be an efficient goalscorer, but I've yet to see much top, top talent from him.
Another thing, Dembele does not work well with Paulinho and Capoue. I don't think he should be playing with those two because he's not a very good attacking midfielder. Those three players share too many of the same qualities for a midfield three, and if they don't understand their role then you just have them constantly coming short to get the ball off each other. Also, our attacking movement is really poor. Townsend in particular still has a lot to learn about how to use space effectively. You can't just stand out wide waiting to get the ball so you can run at people.
I agree with this. They're all quite brutish, and at times I wanted to see some ingenuity behind Soldado. It seemed like whenever Paulinho or Dembele would break free of their marker and have a few attacking lanes open up, they'd both just opt to shoot. That's where someone like VDV would do some damage laying up the likes of Soldado, and I think someone like Gylfi or Holtby is better suited to go along two traditional midfielders.
