Rival watch

Anyone can list a few players who have improved. Less than half of anyone's signings turn out well.

 

These are players we were strongly linked with, I haven't just plucked them from nowhere as a way to show they were good signings.

Maguire was a target for us at both Sheffield and Hull.
Maddison was a target at both Coventry and Norwich.
Pereira looked like our number one target to replace Walker.
Fernandes has said the Spurs deal was close.
Grealish has said the Spurs deal was close.
Soyuncu was linked for one or two windows whilst at Freiburg.

 

If that’s Nagelsmans idea of defending then I don’t think he’s the right man for the task ahead if he joins us

 

I agree about the DoF but it was a lot easier to improve a squad which was in fifth place than to keep one in second place. But our best XI of Lloris, Walker, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Rose, Dier, Dembele, Dele, Eriksen, Kane, Son was bought for under 100m. It needs at least 500m just to stay at the same level.

 

Last season we finished 6th and right now we sit 9th over half way through the season.

We've ended up regressing to beyond the point where we initially improved under Poch.

 

Not necessarily. The thing that has hurt us most is that we've seemingly lost the ability to do what we used to do better than 90% of the teams in the PL - spot young/unheard of talent, bring them in on the cheap, develop them and then either keep them or sell them on at a huge profit. The Pochettino years were built on a glut of 'smart money' signings. Dier, Alli, Davies, Wimmer, Tripper, Toby, Wanyama. All cost £12m or under - peanuts in the modern era. How did that sink to a list as useless as N'Koudou, Foyth, Clarke, Doherty and Hart?

The decline is mind-boggling and coincides with Paul Mitchell's falling out with Levy.

 

Not his fault, his players let him down

 

I was close!!

 

I get the feeling their 3142 formation was the result of a typo

 

everytime I watch that Upemecano, he’s full of mistakes

I’m trying to watch a game where he justifies the hype he’s been getting for a few years now tbh

 

Konate is the one who is actually doing the business at the back

...just saying that in case we trigger his release clause this summer

 

I will go with my usual theory....there is no way that I can see that any club can have a sustainable edge in picking young players. So I'm going with our success was random and so is our current failure.

 

He seems to have very similar qualities to Sanchez. Not sure I've ever seen Sanchez make as many mistakes as he did last night, though.

 

That’s exactly who he reminds me of. His mistakes won’t be so costly in a Bayern team and people will think he’s world class...he’s a ****in donkey.

 

I couldn't disagree more. I'll happily extend the sample group to 10 years, covering 5 years before we appointed Poch. Our 'smart money' purchases from that time include:

Eriksen
Chadli
Capoue
Lloris
Vertonghen
Siggy
Parker
Van der Vaart
Sandro
Bassong
Kaboul
Walker
Rose
Kranjcar

It is so abundantly clear that we used to be really good a this. The only other constant during the overall sample group of 12 years is that most of our big money signings have been utter rubbish.

 

I whole heartedly agree with this sentiment and Levy should save spurs plenty of money by sacking all the scouts and drawing names out of hats to choose who to buy next

 

I think that playing for Bayern will actually expose his greatest weakness even more than playing for Leipzig does.
He can't pass the ****ing ball.

 

A lot of those signings were similar to those of Sessegnon and Rodon recently, which gives me some hope for the future.
They were heavily scouted by other sides, but we pulled the trigger before they did and reaped the benefits.
It's why I was quite annoyed that we didn't go in for Aarons and Godfrey from Norwich and I hoped we've learned from that.

We need to go after potential from clubs who train their academy players well and pick up good players from poor teams.
Those who've failed at big clubs due to being a poor fit for the manager are another area we should be looking at.
There's some potential to pick off a few from the relegation battle this season, too. Lookman isn't a Fulham player, for example.

 

To be honest in the last 3-4 years, it's felt like we've done just that.

 

I didn't say we should stop trying, I just don't expect to succeed much more than half the time.