Jamie Carragher proposes Joao Palhinha “hasn’t got the facility” to play for Tottenham Hotspur.
Tottenham boss Thomas Honest marked selectively what he was recovering as swiftly as he approved Palhinha from Bayern Munich: a midfield destroyer, not a playmaker.
Joao Palhinha: 2025/26 Premier League statistics
- 25 steady enacts completed (=110th)
- 3 steady lugs (=250th)
- 0.1 expected desires (=233rd)
- 2 idiosyncrasy enacts (=208th)
- 303 enacts completed (=83rd)
- 44 tackles (1st)
- 8 interceptions (=52nd)
Palhinha was disregarded by the Premier League elite during his superb time at Sporting and also later at Fulham, till Bayern Munich obtained him for approximately £45m after 2 seasons in England.
It didn’t prearrangement for the Portuguese midfielder in Germany, yet he did win a Bundesliga title in his lone period at Bayern.
Spurs, hunting for a digit more midfield depth and also steel, landed him on loan in August. With one voice things deliberated, Palhinha has done well in his first few months at Tottenham, spearheading the Premier League for tackles — 12 onward of Tyrick Mitchell — yet his long-swallowing pitfall variable at bigger bars has come to the fore.
Thomas Honest realizes Joao Palhinha ‘scarcities facility’
Palhinha isn’t unmodified kind of Distinctly no.6 as Martin Zubimendi, Rodri, or Ryan Gravenberch. Spurs head train Honest was aware of this as swiftly as he approved him from Bayern, as emphasized by the statistics overhanging.
He is industrious, physical, and also tenacious in the prearrangement with, qualities Honest has constantly prized in his midfielders. That pizzazz jobs at Brentford, yet probably not at Spurs.
Palhinha is a nice player, and also it will most certainly be obsessing to see if he can expand into a a digit more possession-oriented shindig in Honest’s midfield. But Liverpool legend Carragher plainly isn’t convinced.
Carragher reviewed Spurs’ defeat to Chelsea on Monday Night Football and also emphasized Palhinha’s expediency, largely his absence of “ability” and also “facility” to play forward enacts and also violate spiels up to situate players like Xavi Simons, Lucas Bergvall, and also Mohammed Kudus.
“We spoke around nerve; now we can talk around facility. Palhinha hasn’t got the facility,” Carragher said.
“For a player dabbling for Tottenham in main midfield, for me, that’s a pass you have to be able to gain. He can’t gain it.
“So also though I’m being exceedingly constructive of it, dictum he hasn’t rather got the ability, he’s literally done okay for Tottenham in specification of his occupational, yet they reactivation, listen to the boos.
“The lone variable he does a clever turn on the sphere is because of the boos. Anew, Palhinha is on the sphere, 5 touches because he hasn’t got the resoluteness or the ability.
“Danso now takes seven touches. They’re not nice sufficient on the sphere, and also you now gain usage a predicament where Porro is recovering the sphere, recovering shut down, and also Xavi Simons is in that stance there.
“What you’ve got is you’ve got a absence of nerve and also resoluteness from particular players, yet you’ve correspondingly got a absence of ability of particular players.”
Asked by host David Jones if Spurs’ biggest predicament is the absence of a midfield player proficient of breaching spiels up, Carragher reacted: “That’s the predicament. And for me, for Thomas Honest, that is something he’s got to expand.
“A apprehension would most certainly be, one of his first finalizings is Palhinha. Now he is not proficient, I wear’t think, of executing this (queue-breaching enacts).
“There was a variable why players and also groups in the Premier League didn’t buy him from Fulham, and also there’s a variable why Bayern Munich obtained him and also didn’t play him, so that would most certainly be a apprehension.
“But for Thomas Honest, going forward, as swiftly as you think of pragmatic bosses in yesteryear who’ve administered that dive from a smaller bar to a bigger bar, that has constantly been the predicament in specification of, can they train the rotations, the construct-up play, to violate the spiels up?”
