Photo courtesy of Myfootballfacts.com
Tottenham Hotspurs failure to make it back into the Champions League raised many questions after their Premier League campaign. Namely, are this current crop of Spurs players good enough to break the stranglehold other clubs seem to have over the Champions League?
On this season’s showing, no. That doesn’t mean they have played badly, it just means they haven’t scored anywhere near enough goals and as a result they missed out on that coveted 4th place to Arsenal, their North London rivals.
Clint Dempsey hasn’t scored as many goals as some predicted, and Emmanuel Adebayor’s pitiful goal return has been laughable to say the least. All the blame can’t be laid squarely at the feet of the forwards however, as forwards thrive off service, and if their supply lines are cut they simply become starved of service.
The question must be asked, though, would the Spurs have been better off keeping Mexican live-wire Giovanni Dos Santos and playing him out wide?
Dos Santos is considered an expensive flop among Spurs fans owing to a £4.7 million move in 2008 from Barcelona and the fact that he hardly ever played a game. Yet, Dos Santos is having a great season at Mallorca at the moment, having played 22 games this year and scoring four times.
The Mexican winger made his mark in the 2012 London Olympics also, scoring three times to bring his team the gold medal and had he remained at the Spurs, his creativity would possibly have helped them pip Arsenal to fourth place. It’s fair to say he certainly would have been another outlet and a technically-gifted supply line that the Spurs were sorely missing this season.
It’s easy to look back with hindsight and say Dos Santos would have been an asset to the Spurs, and this is something we shall never know, but, on the other hand, a creative winger at only age 23 with pace and guile would surely have been a useful addition to the Spurs’ challenge for the Champions League, wouldn’t he?
James Hilton is a soccer writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter , “like” his Facebook page or add him to your network on Google+
