N'koudou - is he now ready? | Vital Football

N'koudou - is he now ready?

Spursex

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A whole new Nkoudou

There were signs in pre-season that Georges-Kevin Nkoudou was starting to get understand what he had to do.

One thing that's clear from Pochettino teams is that he does not like wingers who hug the line. He has no need for them with his flying full-backs.

The Argentine wants his attacking midfielders to be able to switch sides with ease and play through the middle if required.

Nkoudou started to show that in the post-season friendly against SC Kitchee in Hong Kong. He continued his improvement in the USA on tour in the summer, but then he picked up a troublesome foot injury that kept him out for the opening month of the season.

Pochettino told football.london this month that he had been happy with the young Frenchman's progress and that he now needed to find some consistency and continue to work hard to get more minutes under him.

Against Barnsley, the 22-year-old showed exactly what he can bring to the party. Spurs don't have many players who can beat a man with pace and trickery, but Nkoudou falls into that category.

He turned up on the left and right at various stages on Tuesday night and even had a rare shot on goal after coming off the bench with a powerful effort that was beaten away by the goalkeeper.

Nkoudou is only young and struggled to settle into the English way of life in his first season. However, now his manager feels he is fully integrated into life at the club and is a "calmer" person for it.

If he shows more of what he did at Wembley on Tuesday night, with an end product, then he might have something to offer Spurs as the season goes on.
 
One thing that's clear from Pochettino teams is that he does not like wingers who hug the line. He has no need for them with his flying full-backs.

Davies isn't a wing back so that is nonsense. When Rose plays fair enough.

Just play the lad for crying out loud he is 22 not 18.
 
Real Deal - 21/9/2017 12:27

One thing that's clear from Pochettino teams is that he does not like wingers who hug the line. He has no need for them with his flying full-backs.

Davies isn't a wing back so that is nonsense. When Rose plays fair enough.

Just play the lad for crying out loud he is 22 not 18.

I'm pretty sure Poch will be using him, especially when we're failing to break teams down and get to the byline - the cross he made for Jannsons goal in pre-season was outstanding; 'all' he has to do is beat players and make deliveries like that and Llorente and Harry will be putting them away..
 
In most of his very small cameo's last season, he looked quite dangerous running at the opposition with the ball, making me quite excited and wanting to see more.

But after a nice performance he seemed not to show up on the team sheet for the following matches. Eventually there would be another similar cameo with the same result, until he completely disappeared.

Was he injured everytime he played? .... or simply another example of Porky going back to his own little safe 'bubble'?
 
Bald Archie - 21/9/2017 13:33

In most of his very small cameo's last season, he looked quite dangerous running at the opposition with the ball, making me quite excited and wanting to see more.

But after a nice performance he seemed not to show up on the team sheet for the following matches. Eventually there would be another similar cameo with the same result, until he completely disappeared.

Was he injured everytime he played? .... or simply another example of Porky going back to his own little safe 'bubble'?

Well as he had no preseason conditioning worth talking about last season and was injured for over half of the rest of it, it's not hard to work out.

Then he finally gets a preseason, looks good and gets injured., but of course to you that looks like a Poch failing ....did you take the same approach to Harry when he was manager?
 
We will see more of him this season. It's down to the player with regards to how much more. The injury was incredibly poor timing but from what I have heard, he looked sharp when he came on against Barnsley.
 
Spursex - 21/9/2017 13:38

Bald Archie - 21/9/2017 13:33

In most of his very small cameo's last season, he looked quite dangerous running at the opposition with the ball, making me quite excited and wanting to see more.

But after a nice performance he seemed not to show up on the team sheet for the following matches. Eventually there would be another similar cameo with the same result, until he completely disappeared.

Was he injured everytime he played? .... or simply another example of Porky going back to his own little safe 'bubble'?

Well as he had no preseason conditioning worth talking about last season and was injured for over half of the rest of it, it's not hard to work out.

Then he finally gets a preseason, looks good and gets injured., but of course to you that looks like a Poch failing ....did you take the same approach to Harry when he was manager?

Why do you insist on being so condescending?

Pre-season we all understand, and obviously he was fit enough to get given a short cameo, so answer my question - was he injured every time he gave a cameo last year?
 
Bald Archie - 21/9/2017 16:06

Spursex - 21/9/2017 13:38

Bald Archie - 21/9/2017 13:33

In most of his very small cameo's last season, he looked quite dangerous running at the opposition with the ball, making me quite excited and wanting to see more.

But after a nice performance he seemed not to show up on the team sheet for the following matches. Eventually there would be another similar cameo with the same result, until he completely disappeared.

Was he injured everytime he played? .... or simply another example of Porky going back to his own little safe 'bubble'?

Well as he had no preseason conditioning worth talking about last season and was injured for over half of the rest of it, it's not hard to work out.

Then he finally gets a preseason, looks good and gets injured., but of course to you that looks like a Poch failing ....did you take the same approach to Harry when he was manager?

Why do you insist on being so condescending?

Pre-season we all understand, and obviously he was fit enough to get given a short cameo, so answer my question - was he injured every time he gave a cameo last year?

Why do you insist on trying to paint negativity over anything at every opportunity.

You deserve the condescension because you clearly aren't able to use any pragmatism or insight into what goes on other than to find made-up reasons to be critical.

Dembele gave a great insight last year when he said he'd advised him to work harder and improve his game - he then had a niggling series of injuries throughout - it's all in the public domain and didn't warrant you, once again, trying to create another downer on Poch out of absolutely nothing.

We get, as you've amply displayed on thread topic after thread topic, you don't like Poch.

Constantly and repetitively making the same banal point, no matter what the topic is, is tedious and disingenuous,. ..and obviously irritating to the majority of posters who don't infect every thread with a singular obsessive pov.