Baldini's transfers: 2/14 successes in and 7 good ones out

So I just mentioned this on the Villa matchday thread and thought it was worth its own thread because really it looks pretty stark to me. As I said I think that it is very fair to say that over the last two seasons, out of the 14 players who have come in only two (Eriksen and Dier) have really, clearly, strengthened the team and bench. I will not go through every player and give my reasons for not classing them as a success - the reasons I'd give for Chadli, Lamela, Chiriches etc are all ones that we're all familiar with just as I'm familiar with the arguments about "potential" and "youth". I just do not see that anyone can say Chadli or Lamela (for example), two years down the road, could be called successful signings. Dier's young. He makes mistakes but you can see there's a player there and currently our most trustworthy defender (though that is pretty damn easy these days). Thats' what a good signing looks like.

And then on the other hand we have sold seven players in Dempsey, Huddlestone, Bale, Siggurdsson, Defoe, Dawson and Sandro who would strengthen either our first 11 or our bench. Again - there is no question in this for me. Defoe or Soldado? Dawson or Fazio? Sandro or Mason? Siggurdsson or Chadli? Bale or [insert any of seven names here]?

14 in, 2 come good. And in that time we sell 7 players better than what we have. Basically, put like that, hasn't it been, at least at this not-at-all early stage, a total bloody shambles?

 

The fact that we try to have a zero net spend every window and like to get a good fee out of players before they are too old has not helped, we have let some players go too early in order to get a decent fee and their replacements have not been as good. Some of them are not suited to the PL and need time to adjust, others are just not very good. This has also left us short of experienced heads and leaders around the place.

Whoever chose some of these players is lucky to still have a job. I hope Poch can overhaul the squad this summer and is given the players he wants, only then can we judge him properly. We have plenty of deadwood to move on, finding takers may be a problem though.

 

Bale demanded to go...there was nothing we could do so I think it is unfair to say we sold him like the others. We pretty much did what united did with Ronaldo. .. kept him for another year and got top money for him. If united couldn't keep Ronaldo what chance did we have with bale?

As for the others...i liked dawson but he was awful last season when we were being battered by Chelsea, liverpool, city etc...not a defender for a club hoping to get into the top 4.
Defoe has scored 3 goals in 4 months so can't see anyone being happy with that if we'd signed him in january.
Dempsey? Sorry but i just dont get that.
Sandro is a crock and mason has been very very good until he has run out of steam.
Huddlestone, sandro, dawson and defoe are all involved in a relegation strughle and dempsey is not in the premier league so i think you are way off in your thinking.
But i agree about siggy...and our signings have proved to be poor in general... soldao, chiriches, stambouli, paulinio and capoue have all failed and lamela has disappointed. .. chadli has done ok and i will give him a break as he is a shell of the player he was before his dad's deaths

 

Why do all our top players never want to stay ?
They have no chance of silverware or any sustained success at Spurs.
The club is the new WHU .

 

If united couldn't keep hold of Ronaldo when they were winning leagues, cups and CL what chance do we have.
Gooners have lost countless players and liverpool came second last season but still lost their best player and are in danger of losing both henderson and stirling who are both refusing new contracts.

 

I would criticize Chadli in just the same way I criticisised Dempsey during his time here for adding nothing to the team but the odd goal. Difference is that Dempsey's scoring record was better in his season with us than Chadli's has been so far. And say you need something from a game late on. Wouldn't you rather also see Dempsey than Paulinho or Lamela on the touchline getting ready to come on?

I'm not saying he or Dawson or Hudd etc were superstars. I never thought Dempsey was good enough for Spurs. But several players brought in after him were clearly worse. Today we needed a goal and we turn to Soldado and Lamela. Sorry but give me any two attacking players of the seven I mentioned over them. I include Hudd as an "attacking" player category cos getting him into the midfield can get attacks going. Oh and of course our best winger is playing for Everton nowadays. Crap as his final ball might be we have absolutely no one in the squad who can stretch the opposition, take players on and create width and space like he can.

 

And as I said on the match day thread: none of the players but Bale had to be sold. It's not just the best players that we've sold that we miss - it's the less-good ones too! The ones we ship off to Hull and MLS and Swansea!

 

I think you are in danger of comparing the players we have sold AT THEIR BEST with the players we have signed BELOW THEIR POTENTIAL. One of the secrets of good management in football has to be when to move players on. It's all too easy to hang on too long. There is no doubt in my mind that we, post Bale signed too many players at one time. It didn't work, it was too big a change but let's not be fooled into dismissing the talents of individual players because they have appeared in an under performing team.

 

Dawson and Huddlestone (and Livermore too actually) are hardly tearing it up at Hull now are they, come on. Dawson was great sometimes for us and was a fantastic servant to and ambassador for the club but as often as we praised him we all know his lack of pace was exploited time and time again. Hudd we were right to sell because he needed game time to get his career back on track and we weren't prepared to give it to him, so selling for a good fee was a good decision at the time and I wouldn't change that view right now based on his form at Hull. Dempsey had had his last 'glory' season in the spotlight with us and wanted to go back to the US for a few big paydays, and we were offered $9 million for a 30 year old journeyman. Another no-brainer. Selling Gylfi has looked a suspect decision at times so far but that did play its part in bringing Vorm and Davies, the backup GK and LB to compete with Rose we all knew we needed last summer, to the club. Sandro hardly looks like staying fit nowadays and selling him was good business IMO, even though I was as big a fan as any of his abilities when he was fit and firing.

In hindsight in the Bale summer, we bought too many middle-of-the-road players in the hope they'd step it up a notch and none of them have. We also bought too much at one time. Our three record signings look a long way from being good enough, I suspect Lamela will never make it with us. Eriksen has been a great success, Chadli decent, and the rest bang average to poor, all for various reasons but the fact remains that they are just that. If we were to sell them all tomorrow we would perhaps make a profit on Chadli and Eriksen. 2 out of 7, even from that strictly financial point of view, is awful going.

 

Huddlestone and dawson and livermore all in a struggling hull team and all playing average at best.
Dempsey is playing in the MLS
Defoe playing for a relegation threatened team...3 goals in 4 months
Sandro...injured virtually all season. ..playing for a relegation threatened team

These players were not the future of spurs.
Siggy and Lennon i agree and bale was not our choice with but in no way should we have kept the others.

Most of our signings have been a failure but thats the risk you take. Chadli needs time...he was improving and impressing until his dad died in january.
I think lamela will go as he does not seem to effect many games. Soldado needs to be sold...his confidence has completely gone. Paulinio is a waste of space, does nothing and doesn't seem to try. Chiriches is an accident waiting to happen, fazio is a red card waiting to happen, capoue...do not see enough of him to be honest. Stambouli doesn't seem to have settled at all.

eriksen has obviously been a hit.
Dier has done well and davies has begun to show some form. Vorm did well apart from the Leicester FA cup match so would call him a success.
yedlin and alli will be shown to be good signings or not next season.

i honestly think this is a little ott...this season has delivered what most of us hoped for...a good cup run and 6th or 7th place

 

Also siggy went and we got davies and vorm which is a decent deal imo

 

We will continue treading water for a while yet, this new Stadium will not be cheap and obviously funds are being pumped into that. The constant revolving door of player ins and outs to make a zero net spend every season also has negative impact.

If you believe this site http://www.transferleague.co.uk/tottenham-hotspur/english-football-teams/tottenham-hotspur-transfers

In the last 4 or 5 years we have made around £40m profit on transfers, if you add that to say a £20m per season transfer kitty, then you have around £140m that has not been invested on players in the last 5 years or so.

The result is signings have not been good enough, as we will not pay the extra £££ to acquire the required quality, Moutinho being a prime example.

All too often we have settled for second and probably third choice targets, it is no surprise we continuously take a step forward and then a step back.

 

I'd agree that it's been pretty much a disaster. We have bought average players at grossly inflated prices (Paulinho, Lamela, Soldado) The only real success has been Eriksen, IMO. Chadli is just so, so, too inconsistent.

It was right to sell Dawson when we did. But to replace him with a Spanish cart horse?? Defoe went because Levy wouldn't offer him what Sunderland did. I would have liked him to stay. I also regret that we sold Sigurdsson.

 

Eriksen's been a huge success, and the only one at that.

Chadli, Vorm and Dier have been good value for money.

After that you've got the middle ground with the likes of Stambouli, Yedlin and Davies who are either decent value for money or still need time to prove themselves.

Then there's the poor signings, Fazio, Capoue and Chiriches might not have cost much at £8mill each but they've shown themselves to be unreliable as anything more than squad players.

Finally there's the disasters. Soldado, Lamela and Paulinho arrived as record signings and between them have only produced a handful of quality showings and obviously that's nowhere near what you'd expect for the money.

We have to be much better with our signings than this and if you look at the fees paid it's little surprise that the club have talked about returning to signing players in the £5-15mill price bracket as if you take out the disasters(the ones that cost more) then it's actually not a bad record in the market. I do hope we're still open to the idea of spending more if it's for a player that we really want though.

 

You can't always judge the merits of a signing individually. You have to look at the team as a whole. If a player is coming into a settled side, then it's more likely that he will succeed individually and the team will succeed collectively. If 7 or more players are coming into the team at the same time, then it's far more important that those players can be quickly blended as a team, rather than one or two showing their particular skills. That has been the problem for Spurs. Since Bale was sold, there have wholesale changes to the team, not helped by a change of manager, who bought more yet players to fit in and almost certainly had different views about the worth of the players his predessor had signed - whether they should play and if so, in what position and/or formation. Constant change rarely brings the best out of anyone. It's not coincidental that the one signing who stands out as a success is Eriksen. That's because he is clearly gifted. But his major contributions haven't been as a cog in a team playing well, but as an individual producing brilliant and/or decisive moments when the team has been struggling.

 

Just to remind people: My point is not that Huddlestone, Dawson etc are world-beaters. It's just this: Would you really say that Chiriches is better than Dawson? Would you not rather have him starting a game instead of Fazio? Really?

20 minutes to go in a game where we need a goal. Who do you want on? Soldado or Defoe?

These questions are no-brainers to me.

Same situation as above and we need a goal. Which midfielder do we bring on? Can anyone honestly say that they think Lamela or Dembele or Capoue or Chadli or Townsend is more likely to affect a game than Huddlestone? **** - I'd take one pass from him midway inside his own half (with players knowing what they can expect and making decent runs) over Lamela getting on the ball ten times.

Hands up who would rather see any of our midfielders run at a tired defence over Aaron Lennon? Again - no way on Earth would I choose any of our current lot over him.

It's not that these players are so good. It's just that they're better than what we have now. Or, at the very, very least, not a great deal worse.

The playing squad is a total mess and nothing like the level that we have had over the past six or seven years. The latest revolution has been been a disaster and one of the more likely ways that this will get sorted out is if we start next season so poorly that Poch is sacked (shame for him cos the problems won't have been his making) and an unglamourous, proven EPL manager is put in place and is given the freedom to sell the vast hoard of deadwood and get one or two decent, proven EPL players in.

Of course maybe Poch will sell nine or ten players over the summer and maybe this head scout from Southampton will make a difference to the current woeful transfer dealings. I really hope so because otherwise we're heading for mid-table obscurity again, we're that poor.

 

I was, and am still not a massive Huddlestone fan - blows far too hot and cold for me. However, the rest of the above I agree with.

Whoever has been in charge of our transfer policy deserves the sack, it's very little short of disastrous. Again, Kane and Eriksen have papered over a lot of cracks this year. Without them we'd already be in mid table obscurity.

 

Yeah - I might be going a bit far with Huddlestone (though I definitely *would* rather have him come on instead of any of our current midfielders bar Eriksen). And I know he did have anonymous games at times. It's just that I had cause for optimism at least when he was gonna connect to a pass or a strike. None of our current lot fill me with any confidence at all. Well maybe Townsend might hit a worldie but that's about it. Plus I'd seen him change games. It would just be nice to have something more than simply blind optimism that someone's gonna come on and do something that I've never seen them do before in umpteen previous occasions.

 

Yeah, Eriksen and Dier are definitely the only successes under Baldini's DOF tenure, theoretically if both were sold now we'd get more than double what we paid. Chadli could arguably be added, we paid about £8m for him I think and could probably get between £10m-£12m.

Pretty much agree with you about the replacements for the ones we sold, with exception of Mason and Sandro. A fit Sandro, yes, there's no doubt he's better but his injury problems and loss of form makes it a no brainer for me to say Mason is currently the better option. Sigurdsson for Chadli could possibly be debated, both blew hot and cold for us, probably equal in terms of what they offer/ offered.

 

I think you're viewing some of our players sold through the rose-tinted specs of hindsight.

We sold Dawson because he got caught out by being slow and didn't have great control. Fazio may not be quick but he's good on the ball, the trouble is he's still responsible for a lot of our defensive lapses. I'd agree no improvement but I don't think he's any worse than Dawson would be in this side. Chiriches is pretty much in the same boat too.

Defoe's a difficult one because he wasn't happy about being a sub and made it clear in several comments in interviews. Sure he'd be better as an impact player than our current options but he'd be starting on most occasions

Huddlestone and Lennon could be great at times but those occasions were all too few and far between, same with our current lot, other than Bentaleb and Mason, to be fair.

Overall I think we're getting pretty much the same out of our transfers in compared to the players sold in those comparisons. The trouble is that whilst Kane has been excellent and Eriksen very good, Soldado, Lamela and Paulinho needed to offer something and they haven't. Over the last 3 summers we've lost Bale, Modric, King and VDV, who were huge influences on the rest of the team and performace, currently we have Kane, Lloris and sometimes Eriksen. Is the squad unbalanced? Yeah, we have too many midfielders and too many wastes of space but I don't think the quality of our first team and bench has gone down in general, we're just missing that one or two more exceptional/influential players we had before.