Stephen Warnock shared that he thought Tottenham had been defensively poor at times when predicting them to finish third in the Premier League.
The Sky Sports pundit was graded Spurs’ 2018/19 campaign so far, he awarded them an A-, and shared that at times they had missed key defenders such as Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld.
While Warnock pinpointed that weakness for Spurs, he did go on to back them just to finish behind Liverpool and Manchester City in the final league table of the season.
“Attack-wise when we look at the players on display – Harry Kane, Heung-Min Son, Dele Alli, Lucas Moura and Christian Eriksen – you know they are a threat going forward because there are always goals in the team. For me, the attack was never a major issue,” wrote Warnock when grading the Premier League’s top-six’s seasons so far for Sky Sports’ website.
“Defensively, there have been questions asked. I think they have been poor at times. They have missed key defenders, whether that is Jan Vertonghen or Toby Alderweireld.
“The transfers is the most difficult one to grade because in the summer people were saying they had made the wrong decision and needed to buy.
“I was one of them. But has he got it right? It was his decision that if he didn’t get the right players he was happy to leave it because he was happy with the squad size. But if he’d gone into the market would they be even higher?
“1. Liverpool
2. Man City
3. Tottenham
4. Chelsea”
OPINION
Warnock’s assessment of Spurs is fair even though he does want to directly say that the club should have spent in the transfer market. Warnock admits he was among those that believed Mauricio Pochettino should have welcomed new players in the summer and questioned whether they’d actually be higher in the league if fresh faces had been added to the squad. However the pundit steers away from directly reiterating that Spurs messed up by not signing anyone in the summer and it’s easy to see why he avoided doing that. As it stands Spurs sit second in the Premier League after the events of Boxing Day and it’s hard to confidently say they’d be top if they had made signings in the summer. Pochettino has silenced the doubters by continuing to make progress with Spurs despite not seeing his club spend money on recruitment in the last window and he deserves all the praise in the world for the job he has done so far.