Tomiyasu Watch Calcio Mercato report that we have agreed personal terms Three guesses what Di Marzio popped up on Skyte Sports to claim in response...
"At the prices (quoted) we are not going to buy any strikers. It is impossible, we cannot afford it. "All clubs are struggling financially, we are not an exception. We have Gabriel (Jesus) and Ferran (Torres) who have been incredible in this position. "We have young players in the academy and we play many times with a false nine. There is more of a chance we aren't going to buy a striker for next season." - Guardiola What a shame. I really feel for the bloke and his shoestring budget.
He really is a grade ‘a’ whiny little ****. His comments the other day of “if Madrid or Barca received a £100m offer for a player I’m sure they’d be happy” stunk of sheer arrogance. I’m hoping Fabio makes a £100m bid for de Bruyne just for ****s and giggles and we’ll then see how he feels about £100m bids.
Barca would be happy, as they're ****ing bankrupt and none of their players are worth that now. I wonder which pillock helped put them in that position? They currently need to cut about £200m off their wage bill or they can't register any new players. That would include Messi, apparently, as they allowed his contract to expire. Oops!
Nah A £10m bid for De Bruyne, followed by Nuno Holy Ghost asking for the tiniest violins to be played for him due to the club's abject poverty
PSG should sell Mbappe, who looks like he's going to try to run down the last year of his contract, and sign Messi and Ronaldo. Give Pochettino an interesting front three to work with for a season or two!
a few years back maybe. Signing both ronaldo and messi, whilst both are still superb would be problematic imo: both are great at controlling the ball (messi in particular) and pinging it on. Ronaldo cannot dribble past players anymore imo (lost that burst) and Messi can only do it intermittently. Theres no out and out pace. Messis never run hard and even less so whilst Ronaldo still does a bit but far less than he used to, imagine how much defending the rest of the team will need to get through. This might win them the league as they will still probably dominate teams. In Europe i think it will leave the team far too much to do against the more elite sides. Financially wise though, it makes total sense
Apparently we’re looking at Pierluigi Gollini, Atalanta’s goalie. Everton and a few others also interested. They’ve signed a keeper from Udinese and are apparently now looking to move Gollini on. I can’t say I’ve watched any of Atalanta but interestingly he was at United’s academy and also made a few appearances for Villa before returning to Italy. Wonder if he counts as HG? Could be a smart pickup if so and if he’s any good, at 26 he could be part of the succession planning for post-Hugo Spurs.
Great name too, similar to the legendary ref. I said the other day that Atalanta have been like the Leicester of Serie A in recent seasons by making some seriously smart signings, hence why I’m quite excited at the Tomiyasu links because even though I know little about him, if they’re interested he’s probably a good player. So if Gollini is part of that impressive Atalanta recruitment then I’d have no problems if we tried going for him.
Of course that's an extraordinarily sensible strategy because it's nearly impossible to tell which of two similar players is better. But apparently not according to the responses....
Would have thought that’s how being a DoF works. Identify a group of players with the correct attributes you and the coach want in a given position, sound out their clubs and agents and make a decision based on availability, price and any additional data points that come to light during further analysis and scouting. Sounds too sensible for Spurs though.
You would think so. But every time we don't sign a player we are linked with, Levy gets stick. Because if we like a player we ought to pay whatever salary and fee is asked or something.
So to summarise, when we go all-in on one player we're stupid, and when our DoF has a broader net we're stupid Nothing to do with a fanbase who would respond to us signing the entire Ajax first team by saying we should show amBisHUn and sign Barca's reserves instead...
Man's a grade a twat but saying that means you're bitter! His teams play beautiful football but where is the skill in inherenting De Bruyne, Kompany, Aguero, Stirling, Fernandiniho and then spending £850m in 5 years...not including this window! Every pundit and plenty of fans refuse to acknowledge he was brought in to win the CL and spent the better part of a BILLION pounds only to fail miserably on that score.
He doesn't, as he was on the books at Man Utd for just two seasons and, by the time he joined Villa, he was a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday There's two other things to note about Gollini i.) He looks uncannily like Erik Lamela ii.) Contrary to appearances, he is not The Real Slim Shady
CB Watch/Bundesliga Rando Watch In a welcome break form being linked to half of Serie A's players, Giuseppe Di Marzio has said we're looking to sign Wolfsburg CB Maxence Lacroix for €25m...and then Romano jumped on it trying to pretend it was his scoop all along On the one hand he looks like an obvious Kounde alternative, a little too obvious given he's young, French and a CB and has similar control, pace and dribbling (although he's 6'2", so has a few inches on Kounde since that's apparently really, really important now) - but on the other hand that fee sounds like utter bollocks, as he's got three years on his contract and only signed for Wolfsburg last summer, and there's the small detail of Wolfsburg qualifying for this thing called "the Champions League" In other words, sounds like chaff to nudge Sevilla over Kounde (or Inter over Skriniar, as his name's back in the mix) more than anything else
