In football as in life, hindsight is always 20/20 and there are some dissenting Spurs voices that have greeted the impressive displays shown by Jonathan Woodgate in his first two outings as a Stoke City player.
Woody played half a game for Spurs last season after being beset by injuries over the last two years. The irony of that sole outing – a solid performance in the San Siro against AC Milan which led to another injury just seemed to sum up a dreadful couple of seasons.
There had been talk of Woodgate being offered a pay as you play deal at Tottenham but the club let him go, allowing Stoke to take him on a free. After a solid start against Hajduk Split in the Europa League, Woody was arguably man of the match in Stoke’s first Premiership game against Chelsea yesterday.
“I thought he (Woodgate) and Ryan, the two centre-halves, were absolutely fantastic,” Tony Pulis told reporters after the game.
While there are some Spurs fans already wondering whether the club have done the right thing, there is a long time left in the season and while we all hope that Woody stays fit and playing, he is now off the wage bill and ultimately the club has made the right decision on this one.
we already have 1 dodgy CB in King so we definitely couldnt keep woody – good luck to him. dont think stoke will get more than 15 games out of him this year
Ever since the days of Sicknote Anderton, our Physio team at WHL have been less than good.
Players being out for 3 months instead of 6 weeks and now, Woodgate ! never fit enough to finish a training session with us, ventures up north and all of a sudden can go 180 mins+ feeling ‘remarkably good’ (in his words.)
Our physio team need a transfer or 2 in/out.
sorry i meant ‘dodgy’ in terms of injury prone. Ledders is a LEGEND imo
i think its a little early to say whether we made the right choice or not, the issue has never been about his ability, we all know if fit there are only a couple of better CB’s in the league, he proved that with a masterful half hour in the san siro, the problem is that we dont get enough games to be worth taking up a squad place when we already have a similar situation with Ledley so Woody had to go (lets face it there are a large portion of spurs fans who would rather sell their kids then see Ledley leave). if woody goes on to make 20 appearances this season then the answer is definitely yes, we made an error by not giving him one more chance, but his track record suggests 5/10 outstanding appearances then a large chunk of time on the treatment table. its not good to see because he proved on Sunday against not just one but 2 of the best strikers in the world why JW is one of the best in the prem era! and us spurs fans will always be left to wonder ‘what if’ JW & Ledley could have spent a little more time together on the pitch rather than in the treatment room!
Woody looked very comfortable for us on sunday , torres looked a lot sharper than he had done all of last season and woody played him like a trout , agree with some of the comments , will we get more than fifteen games out of him ? who knows however on saying that he looks like a great signing ….at the moment ! and we do have a great physio team at stoke … we have to cuz according to everyone else we kick our way through games he he .
Having spent more than half of my life battling a spine disease and not done a bad job myself. his lot leave a lot to be desired just look at there record Bales back harry kept saying Crouch has a worse back Huddlestone played all year with injection finally had what he should have had at the beginning his operation. These cortisone injection caused me to have a plastic hip when i was 34 they could have ruined Hudds who is still struggling like Freddie Flintoff did lets hope its not the same. Then we have Lennon sickness and his groin trouble where he missed three months then they sent him to see a german doctor who recommended more rest he ended up walking off the pitch. Then Ledley who needed a groin operation and Spur desided to play him in the last two meaningless games he has now had his knee operated on why now he could have done this last year . When Harry gets asked about a player he says i don’t no what going on why cant he ask lets hope this new Medical center helps to make us more professional ad liike a lot of clubs my area the north west run a lot longer and a lot slimmer like Rooney Young and others they will be a lot faster when we play them i no.
A player who had so much great potential but like King, was too injury prone to fulfill it. Agree with DJ that with the 25 man squad rule we could not carry another walking wounded warrior – let’s not forget about Gallas who also has his injury problems. Bassong had a poor season last year but his debut season was great and he’s still relatively young so let’s not write him off yet. A few games alongside King could be the making of him. In a worse case scenario, Corluka and Huddlestone can play CB and Caulker can be recalled from loan in January. No need to waste money on Samba: he’s a decent, strong CB and will put his head in front of a freight train if it would stop a goal but I’d prefer our finite resources to be used towards areas of genuine weakness such as a new striker or two.
and woodgate goes up for the header!!………chelsea 1 spurs 2 ! ….wembleys gone wild!
For me although I think he had to go, is when fit one of the top 5 defenders in the country. Top class player, if he plays at least 15 games, stoke in the top 7 for certain.