He's not a timebomb, at all. They'll do what they're doing with Sancho: sell and replace. They attract top prospects entirely because they're willing to do what they're doing. Give them game time, improve them, sell them on at a profit to top clubs and repeat. Bayern's financial dominance limits Dortmund's options, as it does with other Bundesliga clubs. Others have failed to replicate this model and they've paid for it with their position in the division. Hamburg beat Schalke yesterday in Bundesliga II's opening match. That would be like Arsenal and Everton playing each other in the Championship. Next season, hopefully...
Comparing an example of a player who accepted to bid to one rejecting a bid because they feel they deserve to play for a select group of teams which we are not part of is not "so small that it is irrelevant" - it's a difference so massive you have to not be looking at it to fail to notice it Kounde called us a second tier club a few weeks ago when rejecting our offer, FFS. Do you really think that's not a player who'll only begrudgingly join us because Sevilla reportedly want to cash in on him but the team he didn't want to join showed no interest?
Must say I really like Dortmund’s way of operating. It probably means you can’t get too attached to players as after a few seasons they’re leaving for mega money (Reus being a pleasant exception) but you are getting to see some of the best prospects in Europe play for your club, year in, year out and it’s also a semi successful strategy too as Dortmund pick up an occasional cup here and there. I’d have zero problems if Don Fabio adopted a similar approach here at Spurs.
Having the next Haaland bang in a goal a game for two years before being sold on for big profit is something I could accept at Spurs
Erm….. That would make his current club second tier also. So what?!? Has he been begrudgingly performing well enough for them to be noticed by us? If his begrudging performances are better than our current CB's in the opinion of our DOF and manager I genuinely don't care. Come and play begrudgingly well for Tottenham then! Are you suggesting that we are currently first tier with Real Madrid? Is it more offensive when someone else says it than when we say it about ourselves? We have fans who don't believe we have the smallest chance to win the league before we've even started, yet I'm gonna be offended at a professional players opinion? All of that emotional stuff is why we have contracts.
Schalke didn't really follow Dortmund's model, though, theirs was probably closer to Everton's under Moyes because they always had a bunch of journeymen padding out their first team Case in point, if you look at their midfield in the 2015-16 season you'd think they were following Dortmund's model as they had the likes of Goretzka, Draxler and Sane, plus Hojbjerg on loan from Bayern - but when you look a little further up the pitch you see their options up front were a 32 year old Klaas Jan Huntelaar or former Wigan striker Franco Di Santo But the problems really started between 2016 and 2018, because in that period they did receive a combined €120m for Sane, Draxler and Thilo Kehrer, but the following players all left them for €0.00 Leon Goretzka (Bayern, of course) Joel Matip (Saltypool) Sead Kolasinac (Arsenal) Klaas Jan Huntelaar (Ajax) Johannes Geis (Koln) Max Meyer (Crystal Palace) Eric Maxim Choupo Moting (Stoke) Roman Neustadter (Fenerbahce) Atsuto Uchida (Union Berlin) That's at least €180m worth of players there (mainly front-loaded, but still...) and they didn't receive a pfennig At that point Schalke started relying more and more on loan players to fill the gaps, with the likes of Benedikt Howedes, Nabil Bentaleb, Baba Rahmann, Marko Pjaca, Jeffrey Bruma, Jonjoe Kenny and many, many others all coming in for a season to fill the gaps, but eventually there comes a point where you run out of Band-Aids to put over the holes, and that's what happened last season (although it has to be said they were adding a lot of dross to their squad in the last couple of years like Pablo Insua, a superannuated Huntelaar, and loaning Kolasinac back in) coupled with some of the players they hoped would succeed such as Breel Embolo or Yevhen Konoplianka all flopping It's similar to what happened to Swansea a few years back, because while under Rodgers and Laudrup they did have a system in place, from the moment Garry Monk became manager instead they only focused on keeping their heads above water at the end of the season, and that only lasted so long before they couldn't
Would you like to mention which European competition Sevilla are playing in next season and where you think which tier that competition should be ranked? The fact is that, realistically, we're at the same level as Sevilla - and yet he's dismissing us, publicly, as "second tier" because he thinks he deserves to play for Los Ladrones and is waiting by the phone for an offer This is the exact same attitude Aubameyang had a few years ago, signing a new contract with Dortmund then ****ting on them and telling anyone who would listen how he deserved to play for Barca ...and when that offer didn't materialise he was literally begging Milan to sign him ...and when that offer didn't materialise he ended up at Arsenal ...and then a couple of years later started talking up how all the big clubs wanted him ...and then nobody bid ...and then Arsenal were dumb enough to cave to his demands of £350k a week ...and then he had his worst goals return for a season in his entire career Gee, I can't think why having players with the attitude "you'll do" could be seen as a problem...
Precisely. You've just demonstrated why Dortmund can't afford to turn down that sort of opportunity. Schalke may have been slightly blindsided by the rise of two outside-money clubs. They got a little complacent, took their eye off the ball and now they're in tier two. A couple of poor seasons and they go from competing at the top to getting relegated. Dortmund's best hope is to keep doing what they're doing and hope Bayern **** things up. The attacking football and top youth prospects also helps them attract more support. It's ambitious, just not in a naive, toe-to-toe fashion, which would almost certainly fail.
As far as I am concerned, Kane and go and help Citeh win 100 domestic trebles. As long as they never see ONE CL trophy during both his or pseudo messiah Peps' time there.
Schalke got blindsided by a whole batch of their players letting their contracts run down in the space of a couple of years, so rather than having fees in the ballpark of what they got for Draxler/Sane/Kehrer instead they had fees in the ballpark of what they ultimately ended up getting for Franco Di Santo And it has to be said Schalke weren't competing at the top even in 2015-16, as their form was all over the shop 2015-16: 5th 2016-17: 10th 2017-18: 2nd 2018-19: 14th 2019-20: 12th 2020-21: 18th And their team in 2017-18 again was all over the shop: on the one hand they had Goretzzka and Meyer in midfield while McKennie was getting his first games, on the other they had Bentaleb, Stambouli, Konolyanka and Daniel Caliguri, their top scorer was career journeyman Guido Burgstaller, and their main defender was the 34 year old Naldo, so the only way they could hope to repeat that feat is with a rebuild - and they couldn't, as that summer Goretzka and Meyer left for nothing while they only got €5m for Howedes
They weren't really blindsided by players running down their contracts. It's entirely predictable. You either get them to sign new ones, move them on or accept it's happening. They ****ed up. From 2000 to 2018 they finished 2nd 5 times and were only out of the top ten once. They were consistently one of the better teams in Germany and are one of the best supported. A couple of poor seasons back-to-back and they're out of the division.
As long as the money is there. Potentially inflate the price Citeh have to pay, and raise the "tight-arse" + "no ambition" banners if they fold and Spurs buy.
Sissoko is expected to move on this summer and has numerous clubs interested. (YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!) Spurs are also understood to be open to offers for Winks but he wants to stay. (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)
Been a top player for us. His pairing with Vertonghen was superb for many years. Good luck to him with his new club.
