Why did we all pretend Harry Winks is rubbish?
Have we already forgotten THAT game at the Bernabeu?
I get it, Harry Winks didn’t play very well for Tottenham in his last games at the club. His role doesn’t fit the Conte system and might not fit many modern systems - not least for a club that wants to be challenging at the top of the Premier League (even if they’ve not been doing such a great job of it). His departure made sense both for himself and Spurs, but towards the end of his time at the Club his history was rewritten and it was seemingly decided by the larger fanbase that he was crap.
These days it feels like a central midfielder is either defensive or attacking and never somewhere in the middle - if at the very least just in public perception. Take someone like Pierre-Emile Højbjerg who, despite having a fair few critics - which is bizarre in my opinion, really seems to be able to do it all. He’s defensively sound and often turns over possession aggressively, hence the Viking moniker, but he’s frequently doing this far up the pitch in a system that sees him and his midfield partner pressing high in the opposition half. When possession is won, the Dane’s smart decision-making has made him clinical in the final third, shown perfectly when setting up Kane’s record-breaking goal, while his technique is also up to par to be able to pull off goal-creating passes like he did in the lead up to Emerson Royal’s opener against West Ham. So what does all of that make him? A defensive midfielder, obviously.
Players can rid themselves of these kinds of labels. Just think back to Emerson’s arrival where fans could be forgiven for thinking he was an attacking fullback given that he was quick, signed from Barcelona and, crucially, is Brazillian. It didn’t take long though before they all realised that was wrong - even if Pascal Chimbonda took a while to get the memo.
Public perception mini-rant out of the way, I almost feel like Højbjerg is an unfair comparison to Winks mainly because the former is honestly a bit of a freak of nature. He’s really got no right being so good at both ends of the pitch and he’s criminally underrated within the Spurs fanbase. Now the rant is definitely over, I swear.
Bringing it back to Winks, his problem is that he doesn’t really fit neatly into the mould of either a defensive or attacking midfielder; he’s in midfield limbo. He can be alright defensively, he’s not afraid to get stuck in and chuck himself about a bit but he’s not your typical combative number 6. He can be sound in possession (I know, sideways passing), and is fond of a cheeky shoulder drop to get a few yards up the pitch, but he’s not needling killer through balls like your number 10. The fact is he’s an 8, through and through. That wasn’t needed in Conte’s system, as explained, and so Winks was set up to fail during his final appearances. Add to that the discontent that many fans had growing for him, and the fact that he was down to rare Conference League/cup selections, and sadly his confidence took a hit. His safe recycling of possession became a bit less safe and he clearly still didn’t fit in either of the more extreme ends of the midfielder spectrum (and he obviously still wasn’t an outlier like Højbjerg that does it all either). But the player was still in there somewhere.
Take a look back at Winks’ famed Bernabeu performance in 2017 and you’ll never guess what he did… passes that very often went in a sideways trajectory! His defensive capabilities were the same with a few interceptions but no crunching tackles, and his attacking output was unchanged from the occasional 20-yard runs through the centre circle and his most forward-thinking passes usually out to the touchline-hugging fullbacks. The key difference in those days was that it fit the system. His main job was dropping in to pick the ball up from the defence, turning, maybe running a few yards, and then shifting the ball to Eriksen. It’s a simple job in theory, but when it’s pulled off as cleanly as it was by Winks on that occasion then these players are lauded for “running the game.”
Of course he didn’t play quite this well every game, but he was serviceable. There’s an argument to be made that you’d expect him to do it week-in, week-out for a team that wants to challenge for titles, but in reality Winks was hardly ever the first name on the team sheet and, most crucially, wasn’t ever touted as an elite, world-class midfielder. He was a good, classic number 8; nothing more, nothing less. That’s the part that makes his eventual dismissal a weird one for me - his style of play that saw him pull off one of Spurs’ most remember individual performances in the last decade was suddenly the reason that he was useless, deadwood.
It comes as no surprise then to see that, finally emerging from injury troubles, Winksy is now again turning out great performances on loan at Sampdoria in the exact role he played against Madrid. When his Spurs days were coming to an end, I thought that a move to La Liga would suit him - many sides (even lower-table ones) opt for possession-based tactics and Winks’ ability to recycle possession is at feeding-the-vegetable-garden-with-leftover-bath-water levels. Instead, it’s been a move to Italy that’s allowed the Harry Winks of old to reemerge in a league where the game is played at a slower pace and with more time allowed on the ball, making his receiving-turning-releasing a piece of piss with little challenge.
This is in stark contrast to £55m Tunguy Ndombele who is somehow looking lacklustre on loan at the team currently top of the league - all while Winks’ Sampdoria sits dead last. Ndombele has had flashes of brilliance, as always, and these have unsurprisingly led to fresh Twitter compilations and calls for his return to Spurs, but there have also been the all-too-familiar doubts about his effort, also unsurprising, and even an on-pitch spat with his manager. With Winks thriving on a struggling team then realistically he’s the one that should have fans craving his return, even if the recalling of either player doesn’t make sense tactically. If people can unironically want Ndombele to come back and play in a central midfield where he’s expected to press for 90 minutes then surely nothing’s off the table… get Mason back in the team!
The final thing to consider about all of this is that Winks is one of our own. On the “Harry” tifo displayed ahead of last month’s West Ham game to commemorate Kane on his goalscoring record, journalist Alasdair Gold jokingly tweeted that it was “Spurs acknowledging Winksy's excellent performances for Sampdoria since returning from injury.” Obviously Winks has never achieved anything to warrant this kind of fanfare, but so much of Kane’s deserved praise is amplified due to fans’ pride in the fact that he’s an academy graduate - a player that was moulded by Spurs and has spent the better part of two decades from youth prospect to all-time record goalscorer.
It’s a shame then that that pride was forgotten when Winks’ time at Spurs was coming to an end and doesn’t seem to have been remembered since. This is a player that joined the academy at 6 years old and went on to make more than 200 appearances in the first team, including a start in the 2019 Champions League final. And no, being “one of our own” doesn’t automatically make him good, but it should at least grant him the benefit of the doubt when we look back on his Tottenham career.