When you haven't made a signing in the summer and the team are now evidently suffering as a result of it, January should become a window for signings to be a necessity. We only have ourselves to blame for our struggles but refusing to do anything about it will only make things worse. I'm a huge fan of Pochettino but I do think he has too much faith in this squad. Ultimately you can't expect better results with the same formula which is what we're seemingly trying this season. The notion that this squad can't be improved I feel is massively naive, I don't buy that there isn't a player in Europe's top five leagues, or in Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Portugal etc that the club can bring in to help relieve the burden on a number of players. We're running this team into the ground, Poch said himself pre-Palace that Eriksen was shattered, Son himself said to the Korean press that he was "empty", if that isn't evidence enough, coupled with the amount of injuries we have, then I don't know what else to say. We are battering this group of players, they need help.
I remember when it seemed a month wouldn't go by without Gerry Francis signing yet another winger to cover for injuries, be it Ruel Fox, Andy Sinton or Jose Dominguez (and there's probably one or two I forgot) and, while we obviously needed cover for Anderton as his injury problems were getting started, signing players for the sake of having a body on the field isn't the best option - and that's where Francis went wrong, as he kept replacing one short-term fix with another That's why I agree with Poch about not wanting to make Stambouli-type signings, at least in theory: it's one thing to sign a depth option as the plan is always there to have them involved in their fair share of matches (potentially more, should injury strike) but we shouldn't be signing players to fill in for a player that we wanted going elsewhere, i.e. Stambouli for Schneiderlin or N'Jie for Martial, because they're at best a pale imitation of the player we were after and they likely won't be in the squad a year down the line - or, if they are, it;s because they're a bugger to shift like GKN has proven to be
How is this the same formula? I don't think anybody has said we can't improve this squad, the question is how you can improve it. I have to believe that Pochettino with his experience and day to day contact with the players is in a better position to make these judgments than you or I. Plus he has invested his life and his money on these decisions I have no doubt he is even more keen than us to resolve the injury crisis than we are.
We've had the baulk of this squad for 3 or 4 years now and despite impressive results we don't have anything to really show for it. We've been knocking on the door for a few years but we've yet to push the door open in terms of reaching that "next level". Strengthening the squad doesn't mean we have to spend £70m on a single player, as nice as that would be, it's not the only option. Many of our best players were bought for sub-£15m, now granted we're in an inflated market these days so the chances of repeating that sort of success is slimmer but it's not impossible. As I've said, I don't buy the idea that in Europe's top five leagues plus other strong ones in Europe (or South America), that there aren't players out there whom we could pursue to help strengthen this squad. The squad needs strengthening if we're to improve, we won't improve with the same players, hence why I said about expecting better results with the same formula.
I have to say that I have complete confidence in Pochettino because although he has made mistakes from time to time (bearing mind we have the benefit of hindsight, he doesn't) I totally trust his method of reaching decisions. Week after week he shows his intelligence in the way he handles interviews, in a language that is not his own. All the greatest managers have essentially been highly intelligent guys who happened to have a knowledge of football. Spurs have got one, Levy's first priority is to keep him happy and Poch saying he want's to stay for 20 years suggests he just might be.
DH I agree it's not just about spending more on a player, United have a host of very expensive players we bought the same quality for much much less. Which suggests we have a good scouting network or some good connections and also suggests we would be looking for such players and yet have not found any. I don't know enough about how we have found players in the past to put up a good argument on this area, but I do trust that our management would be on the look out.
While there are ways to improve the current squad, the means are the issue Case in point, while the Dier/Dembele pivot was very effective a couple of years ago it could be improved with a Dembele-like player capable of playing two games in a week without his hips or knees exploding and a defensive midfielder who was more proactive taking the ball forward than a hatchet man like Dier That's the ways, but the means are where it gets complicated * Does that player exist? * Is this player first team ready now or first team ready in a season or two? * Is his agent Mino "****" Raiola or Jorge Mendes? * Is there room to negotiate for that player or has he recently signed a long-term contract? * What sort of fee are his club expecting? * What sort of wages is he expecting? * Are there other clubs vying for his signature? * Similar to above, what are the odds some club with a ****load more money than us attempts to gazump us? * Are there other extenuating circumstances, i.e. the Copa Libertadores? * Does this player affect our non-HG quota and necessitate selling/loaning somebody else? For an obvious example, take Tanguy Ndombele * Yes, he exists * He looks first team ready now * No, his agent is Duro Ivanisevic * He signed a five year contract with Lyon last summer * His agent is saying a bid of £70m will do it * He's reportedly on £34,500k a week at Lyon, although would likely expect a significant increase on that * Several * The Sheikh Mansour Team have reportedly been sniffing around him of late * No * He's a France international, so he certainly would
And as with ENIC, they are nowadays constrained by FFP about the whats and hows of owners injecting capital into a club. Their on-paper worth is moot.
Yes, IMHO tis a generation thing. I am one below you, and I note that those one/two below me too often have this delusion of entitled instant gratification in most aspects of their life (as I say in life : when do you play ?? and when do you pay for your play ?? ) .
It's not a generational thing, after all I use my debit card only when shopping online and my credit card so rarely my bank tries to talk me out of renewing the damn thing, and more to do with this attitude of it being your duty as a consumer to spend rather than save that crept in during the late 90s that in turn led to the rise of payday lenders a decade later as they were merely a logical extension of that logic, as they were saying you can keep spending like a good consumer as long as you take out an unsecured loan with an apocalyptic interest rate The fact that more or less exactly describes the hole Leeds dug for themselves is conveniently lost on everyone who thinks football clubs should only spend, spend and spend some more without checking the next column of the spreadsheet
You just need to check what your debit covers in terms of protection because they do vary from bank to bank.
Best thing I ever did was get an offset mortgage. I buy everything on credit cards and pay it off at the end of the allotted period on a direct debit. It costs me and Mrs B nowt and gains us the 2.25% that we should be paying on that portion of our mortgage. Plus, anything that I've paid off the mortgage, I can spend again at a cost of 2.25%, provided I've got it at the end of the 25 years. So cars, holidays, etc. can easily be budgeted for. Currently, I'm lending a family member money on a foreign development he's got going, at a rate that he couldn't dream of getting anywhere near commercially. He's good for it and I'm very happy to help. The only losers are the banks. The bank keep trying to buy off me some of that borrowing capacity that I've paid off the mortgage...no chance, it's too good to be true....
Boom. Those offset mortgages are good. Cant say i know enough about young people and how much debt they are in. Obviously they have debt from university but personal debt i dont really know about. As a young person myself i can say i dont have any personal debt
Yeah its great. Not only can i change the size of my house whenever its really easy to relocate whereever i would like to go. Also if i want to have a great night out i can get home real easily hassle free
I've got this plan. All ENIC have to do is start a loss-making airline which exists solely for the purposes of "sponsoring" their other interests, say Spurs for example. Sure it can fly a few people around as a cover, but basically it will exist to get round FFP. And nobody will think it's really part of the same company because we'll call it by a different name. That'll fool them!
It’s great to read posts from such intelligent people on a daily basis, and as a result, some of our conversations do have a habit of going off on a slightly different tangent from time to time. But never did I envisage the transfer thread morphing into a conversation about mortgages and credit cards!
N'Koudou's off to Monaco on loan, apparently. They're trying to cleanse the stench of Goon, it seems.
