No but he was the manager of Aston Villa and knew how desperate their finances were before the takeover. Grealish should’ve been signed before the new owners came in. We just decided £3m plus Onomah instead of the supposed initial £15m-£20m valuation was good enough.
No none at all. That's why we have the best training ground in the world, one of the best stadiums in the world, are in the semi final of the CL for the first time ever and will likely finish in the top 3 four seasons running for the first time ever. You don't know how much dross we've avoided buying because of our penny pinching....
I am saying that the bid was probably already in place when the window opened so it made no difference what our valuation was.
One thing we have to avoid in the second leg is bookings, if we win we don't need players suspended for the final. I'm still angry at Son for shirt pulling.
I do know how many pretty good opportunities we’ve missed by his penny pinching. The reasons we’re in the CL and the top 4 are all down to MP. Yes, Levy has done well for the club in general, but his penny pinching over some potential signings has definitely meant we’ve missed out on some very good players.
You need to understand that buying dross isn’t the only option. You always make out as though we would buy dross and no one to improve us. I find that shocking or maybe you are just admitting that we have bought a lot of dross under Levy hence your lack of belief that even we could land a decent player like teams like Lesta managed with Tielmann, for example. I could also name a few players we didnt go for due to penny pinching yet proved to be massive successes. I don’t understand your hellbent attitude against buying players for our team. When you say ‘we don’t have the money’ I can accept that....but then you say we will only buy dross anyway Are you Levy Are you Levy Are you Levy in disguise? Are you Levy in disguise?
Not at the initial time of our first offer it wasn’t. It’s why Bruce said in the interview he expected Jack to go, he wouldn’t have been so downbeat if he had even the smallest of inclinations the new takeover was happening. Grealish himself even liked a tweet that said something along the lines of “gutted we won’t see you in a Villa shirt this season”. Everyone at Villa expected the deal to happen. It should’ve been a deal we had sewn up at the start of the window. Instead our lowballing offer(s) coupled with the eventual takeover meant too much time was taken/ wasted and Villa eventually decided not to sell. In some ways good on them, we were trying to take the piss and it backfired.
A bit off topic but much sympathy regarding this. The people that "plan" this I don't think are accountable to anyone. The road construction people seem to be a law unto themselves with the amount of time they take and how much they close off / dig up / inconvenience people. No doubt they have to make a request of the appropriate government office, but I'm sure it's just a matter of ticking a box rather than to be subject to any sensible control.
I am just saying that you have to look at everything in the round. Over the last five years our transfer dealings have been sensationally good. The difference between the value of our squad and what we paid for it is amazing. It's unreasonable to choose one or two poor decisions amongst all that success and bleat about them. But I do believe, I think with good evidence, that most signings have a poor outcome so generally have a more sympathetic attitude to failures to sign anyone than most on here. As for being Levy in disguise, I am honoured by the comparison.
There is a newspaper article that said "It transpires that Villa had been putting the feelers out for fresh investment even before the play-off final defeat at Wembley on May 26 exposed their bleak finances." If that is true there would have had to have been a prospectus detailing the club's assets and it would have prevented a sale of any of them.
Putting the feelers out is a lot different to actually having a takeover bid in process. The club needed to pay their tax bill or face a winding up order, it’s why they were open to selling Grealish as at the time there was no assurances the takeover would happen in time and it’s why Spurs and Villa were locked in talks for the player. Ultimately we just lowballed and luckily for the Villa, their new owners came in at the 11th hour to save the day. They’re still in danger of failing to comply with FFP IIRC too, there’s a still a chance of Grealish happening, it’s just a year too late.
A couple of days before the window closed, Jack Grealish played what he believed was his last game for Villa. He was taken off with a few minutes to go. He waved to the fans who said their goodbyes to him. He went to the fans after and everyone knew he was coming to us. I have no doubts that a deal was done with Villa and he was coming.....and then something changed. Maybe it was DL's fault but from Spurs immediate reaction, I doubt it. Immediately, we put out that we weren't interested anymore, rather than continuing negotiations. Criticism where it's due, we hugely ****ed up getting nobody in, but I'm certain we did agree a deal for Jack Grealish until Villa backed out.
I think it was Villa getting their own back. With reports of Grealish initially being available for £15m pre-takeover, our first offer was supposedly £3m plus Onomah, who'd just completed a loan spell there and hadn't always been in the side. £3m and a player who'd likely be in and out of the XI for their version of Harry Kane is pretty low from our part. I'm very much in the pro-Levy camp and for the most part I like how he handles negotiations but that saga just seemed to be him really trying to take the piss because of Villa's situation, which don't get me wrong is him only trying to get Spurs the best deal but sometimes a bit morals wouldn't go amiss. As Villa's new owners came in we still seemingly wanted Jack and then rumours surfaced of the fee being around £25m-£30m, I think near the end of the window which you've spoken about was when we finally met that valuation but the owners seemingly said in so many words; "now you know how it feels to be messed around".
It might depend on their FFP situation. They've spent a fortune since being in the Championship and with failure to make the Prem it's massively hurt them. If they don't come up this season they might be in a similar situation to last summer but for different reasons. It won't be about a tax bill that needs paying but needing to comply with FFP or face potential points deduction/ transfer ban. Tbh, I'm probably one of the very few Spurs fans who wouldn't even be against us spending £40m on him, genuinely think he's a superb player who'd fit into this side with ease and add that creative spark from the midfield we so desperately need, but £40m on a Championship player would raise eyebrows and I don't think Levy would ever sanction that.
We ended up in the region of the Maddison to Leicester deal, which is about right for Grealish, who is a similar talent at the same stage of development. Villa's new contract with Villa has a supposed buy-out clause of £40m, which suggests that there was a fundamental issue on value. He's their superstar but for us? Possibly just a squad player prior to injuries. We were apparently trying to negotiate with Ajax for De Jong and United for Martial, so Grealish may have been a secondary option, so we tried to do a deal on the cheap. I can understand that and we did seem to get an agreement, I guess we were hoping that the player would force the issue.....he didn't. It's interesting that there weren't any other serious takers at an increased price.
I can do a bit on Harry Haslam telling us that Diego Maradona was available in '78, if you like......?
