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Lewis Holtby has said that he feels he deserved more chances at Tottenham Hotspur, per The Independent.
The German midfielder spent two years at Spurs following a move from FC Schalke 04 but struggled for minutes, making a total of 42 appearances for the club.
What’s the word?
Holtby is currently with Hamburg in the second-tier of German football after seeing his stock rapidly diminish in recent years.
Capped 24 times by a Germany Under-21 team that also featured Mesut Ozil and three times by the senior team, it appeared that Holtby was destined for the top after breaking through at Schalke.
A total of 79 appearances at the club earned him a move to Spurs in 2015, with the north London club paying £1.5million for his signature. He had initially agreed to join on a free transfer in the summer but the transfer was accelerated and completed in January.
However, he struggled to nail down a spot in the team, falling behind the likes of Mousa Dembele and Christian Eriksen in the pecking order, and he soon looked for a way out, joining Fulham on loan prior to another short-term move to Hamburg, which eventually became permanent.
And he has told The Independent that he felt that, while he was perhaps naive, he was mistreated in north London.
“I loved the time in England,” Holby said. “You can’t compare Fulham or even back then Schalke to Tottenham. It was definitely frustrating though because I had good spells where I felt I deserved more game time. But I did expect more of myself, I had more expectations to succeed.
“I thought I had the quality but maybe I was a bit naïve. I made too many rash decisions. I wasn’t as professional as I am now in a lot of things. There’s a lot of things that I’ve gained now over the years and I think if I was there now I would act differently, I think I have more in my locker.
“I was so eager to play, so desperate to start week-in-week-out that I made the move [to Fulham and then to Germany]. You get very stressed in periods when you don’t get the game time. It’s different now, I have more experience.
“Sometimes, when you’re young, you’re eager, but you need a bit of patience and to push yourself even more. That’s how it works at the highest level and maybe that was missing a bit from my point of view at that age.”
Brought on himself
Holtby did not have the patience nor the willingness to stick it out at Spurs due to his delusions of grandeur.
A signing designed to add depth to the squad, the midfielder was, admittedly, used sparingly in the Premier League and was rarely picked from the start.
That, however, was because of his lack of ability in the first-team, rather than anything else.
Against the likes of Dembele and Eriksen, Holtby simply didn’t cut the mustard; a good passer of the ball and an industrious player, he was a water-carrier and nothing more.
His move to Fulham did not work out either. Indeed, he came in to help them avoid relegation. They went down.
Now at Hamburg, another club with whom he has been relegated, it appears he has found his level.
As for his fall from grace, he has nobody to blame but himself.