After the cycle of optimism, brief success, monotony and misery caused by the appointment of former Chelsea managers, Ange Postecoglou has brought good times to Tottenham.
Spurs, who play fearless and uncompromising attacking football, are one point behind neighbors Arsenal and hot on the heels of the top four after 20 Premier League games this season.
We have an exciting 2024 ahead of us. Only they have just signed a former Chelsea striker.
“A lot of things attracted me here, first of all the conversation with the manager,” said Timo Werner after joining Tottenham on loan for the rest of the season from RB Leipzig, with Spurs having the option to buy him outright.
“I thought it was a very good talk. It immediately gave me the feeling that I needed to join a club. [which is] “What I want to feel when you talk to a coach, and also the tactics and the style, how he wants to play, how he lets the team play.”
Werner is not the first person to be carried away by Postecoglou’s positivity and, along with Son Heung-min, Richarlison, Dejan Kulusevski and Brennan Johnson, will be part of what looks like a devastating array of skilful and pacey attacking options on the paper. .
On the other hand, a 27-year-old player who should be in the prime of his career returns to the Premier League after losing his starting job at Leipzig, leaving the German national team and with the biggest transfer of his career widely considered. To be a failure.
It will be fascinating to see how this develops.
Why did Tottenham sign Timo Werner?
Postecoglou’s excellent start at Spurs came despite losing the club’s all-time leading scorer, Harry Kane, to Bayern Munich.
Any player stepped directly into Kane’s shoes would have been asked to carry an impossible load and the Australian tactician has shrewdly redesigned the attacking line, with Son coming off the wing to play predominantly as a centre-forward. During the opening months of the season, new signing James Maddison filled the void for playmaker Kane and is nearing his return from a hamstring injury.
Overall, under ‘Angeball’, the power of the collective and the versatility within it is key, something that was sold to Werner.
“This was part of what I spoke to the coach: it is important for him and also for me to be able to play in all positions of the attack,” he told Tottenham’s official website. “It’s always good to have some players who can play in different positions, who can change in the game.
“I think it makes it even harder for other teams to defend if they never know who is coming from this position now. So I think that’s one of my strengths, being flexible up front and playing all positions, and that’s important .where I can also help the team.”
Very broadly, Werner’s Leipzig-style education, focused on hard racing, transitions and counter-pressing, differs from Postecoglou’s approach, which is based more on the Catalan Cruyffian style.
However, there is a lot of overlap in terms of how the two dominant ideologies of modern football have developed and it is easy to see how a technically sound, tactically intelligent and hard-working striker like Werner will improve a Postecoglou team.
If he prospers, Spurs have the option to sign him permanently for around £15 million ($19 million) at the end of the season.
Timo Werner Chelsea record, transfer fee
“When I joined my old club, I said I wanted to be a winner and I wanted to win titles and, in the end, we won the Champions League, so I think it shouldn’t be so bad to say that I come here also to win titles and win something,” Werner said. Everything is very precise in the message, from not mentioning Spurs’ rival Chelsea by name to giving the most optimistic assessment of his career at Stamford Bridge.
In many ways, Chelsea’s 1-0 UEFA Champions League final victory over Manchester City in May 2021 was Werner’s Blues career in microcosm.
Thomas Tuchel’s team, especially before the break, had City’s numbers in the counterattack and in transitions at the Estadio do Dragao. Werner’s pace and intelligence were a key part of that. However, had it not been for his haphazard finishing, Chelsea would almost certainly have enjoyed a more emphatic victory.
In general, he noted 23 times in 89 appearances for Chelsea. Compared to other big-name strikers who have endured torrid times at Stamford Bridge during the modern era, it’s certainly not terrible and Werner didn’t always play as a centre-forward.
But considering what Chelsea signed, it is undeniable that it was a very modest return. In the 2019/20 season, a voracious Werner scored 34 goals in 45 games for RB Leipzig. He convinced the Blues to shell out £54 million ($58.3 million) to sign the German international, which seemed like a very good deal.
Throughout his two spells with Leipzig, Werner has 113 goals in 213 appearances, a record that should not be despised. However, the low fee Spurs will have to pay to sign him outright shows how much his stock has fallen.
These should be Werner’s best years, but form and fitness issues meant he won the last of his 57 caps for Germany last March. The most recent of his 24 goals for Die Mannschaft was a brace against Italy in the UEFA Nations League in June 2022.
Germany hosts Euro 2024 this summer, plotting the possibility of a memorable redemption arc for Werner. It is another aspect of a transfer in which there is much to gain for both parties and relatively little risk. When it comes to doing business in January, that’s a pretty solid equation.
