Now, we are not suggesting that were champagne corks bouncing around the Tottenham Hotspur dressing room when the news broke that Antonio Conte had finally been put out of his misery.
But there are certainly a few Spurs players who may have been affording themselves a slight smile and a sigh of relief. Take Yves Bissouma, for instance.
Graham Potter is not alone in finding out the hard way that the grass is not always as green as it appears outside of The Amex Stadium. Bissouma was one of the Premier League’s most complete midfielders at Brighton. But, in the words of Sky Sports pundit Alan Smith, he is performing ‘nothing like the player’ he once was on the South Coast these days.
The palest of pale immitations.
How much of that is down to the restrictive tactics of Conte? Or was this simply a new player struggling to adapt to a new club and a new environment; Bissouma’s debut season littered with unhelpful injury issues.
Either way, whoever takes the reigns from Conte – be it a Julian Nagelsmann, a Ruben Amorim, a Mauricio Pochettino or even a Brendan Rodgers – the new man at the helm will arrive at Tottenham with the aim of jump-starting Bissouma’s stalling career right at the top of their to-do list.
Yves Bissouma can be reborn under Brendan Rodgers at Tottenham
Rodgers, for the first three-quarters of his Leicester spell anyway, proved himself to be a manager nicely-aligned with the principles Spurs chairman Daniel Levy laid out in his now-infamous 2021 monologue about Tottenham’s so-called DNA.
Rodgers, unlike Conte, Jose Mourinho and Nuno Espirito Santo, prides himself upon an open, progressive gameplan. The likes of which Spurs fans haven’t seen since Pochettino’s heyday. He relishes working with young players too.
And, more pertinently as far as Bissouma is concerned, Rodgers is a paid-up member of the 26-year-old’s fan club; his understanding of the Malian’s strengths perhaps indicating that he should – or at least could – get far better out of this underperforming £25 million misfit than his predecessor ever did.
“I think he is a top player,” Rodgers said back in 2021; a time in which Bissouma was just starting to blossom at Brighton (The Argus). “He does a great job defensively. He can press the game. He’s aggressive, he intercepts, he blocks, he tries to get them on the front foot.
“He’s got good physicality. He gets around the pitch, he is mobile, agile and tactically he looks strong around the game.
“He utilises empty space and technically he is very good. And he has good awareness of space.
“I said when I first saw him come into the team I really liked him. And since then, he has developed and improved. He is a top-class player in that area of the field.”
The post 'Top class player': Bissouma should be delighted if Tottenham hire 50-year-old appeared first on HITC.
from HITC https://ift.tt/Vp7LyPS
No comments: