As I've pointed out before if Barcelona had bought Eriksen instead of Coutinho we would have been in Liverpool's position. What the outcomes would be no one knows.
True, but Eriksen was pretty important to us at the time. Liverpool sold a player they didn’t have to replace, we’d have had to replace a key player as well as investing elsewhere, spreading the fee and potentially inhibiting us getting players of the same quality as VVD and Allison, for example.
The fact they had £100m burning a hole in their pocket after selling Coutinho is completely unrelated, of course...
A more pertinent example is spending something like £60 million on N'Koudou, Janssen and Sissoko when we could have gone after a top notch player instead. Had we received £100 million for one of our players then we probably would have spent it on 4 or 5 players.
Villa’s owners : we would like 25 mill for Grealish…we do need the money due to financial issues at our club so we will do business at that price for our equivalent of your Harry Kane. Levy : Sounds good to me, how about a compromise? Josh Onomah and 3 mill? Villa’s owners : what? Levy : ok, ok….6 mill? (Meanwhile Villas owners are in discussion with potential new owners in order to save the club) Levy : Hi, it’s me, so 6mill? Villa’s new owners : Hello Darth Knobhead it’s new owners here and you know the club values Grealish at 25 mill and we won’t be budging. Levy : Oh ok lol…was worth a try, you lads don’t seem like your pissing about…ok 25 mill? New Owners : Naaah cba with you anymore, **** off.
It’s money, we’ve got money too or it’s a lie we are not in the top 10/15 richest clubs in the world. I can prove the latter if you want. The problem at Spurs is Levy is clueless with money and football in general so baring that in mind you have to wonder wtf he is doing at a football club.
Dier could have gone for 50m? Probably could have sold Alli/Eriksen for 100m in 2017/18 Jose really wanted Alderweireld for 40m at the time
And now we have a chance to buy last season's Serie A Defender of the Year and it looks like we're going to do our best to screw it up. I imagine Fabio has been nobbled by a Levy who can't help interfering.
When you see rumours that Winks is in talks with another club But then realise the source is FootyInsider who never get anything right
He owns 25-30% of it. That's the top and bottom of it. If he was just an employee, he'd have been rightly sacked for overseeing a catalogue of **** ups in the last few years.
Yeah I think we could have sold 3/4 players and made similar money to what Liverpool made off one. Neither Alli nor Eriksen were 100m players on their own, but together they’d have fetched that much. But all these players were fairly important regular first team players who would have needed replacing with that money. We didn’t have a player who a wealthy club was so enamoured by that they would throw Coutinho money at, let alone one who we wanted to phase out. Sure in hindsight cashing in on Dier and Dele then would have been sound business but at that time, that wasn’t in most people’s thinking.
I think selling any of those players (apart from maybe Dier) at that time would have been a mistake but we still could have got some decent money for them after the CL Final when Poch requested just that. Poch clearly had a good view on the trajectory of certain players
Think United and Real Madrid were interested in Alli and you'd have got big money out of it. I think it's just the thought of dealing with Levy that puts clubs off even going for Spurs players who aren't for sale. I don't buy the key first team player thing as Coutinho was a key first team player. Liverpool got an offer they couldn't refuse (they didn't really want him to go) and he also went on strike which forced their hand. They then spent the money really well
I think Levy definitely puts people off but I just don’t think the fees we’d have got for Alli would have been anything near what Coutinho fetched. He was still playing (and scoring) for them, sure, but the summer before they sold him, they bought in Salah and Robertson, Trent was also coming into the team more as that season went on and though it’s probably giving too much credit to say the transition was all planned in advance, by the time they sold Coutinho it was fairly clear they were moving towards having a more functional midfield with the creativity coming from the fullbacks and Firminho, and the goals from the wingers. Coutinho wasn’t going to be a key player much longer. I’m sure they’d have gladly kept him if he hadn’t gone on strike and such a huge fee came on the table, because he’s a great player to have around, but for that money it made a lot of sense to sell.
We know that Liverpool didn't have to buy a replacement now. But at the time I don't think it was that clear. But I hear that it was Levy's fault anyway. Together with Covid and Dr Who being rubbish these days.
Even if with hindsight we did sell someone like Dele for about £100m around 2017, based on our spending over the last 5 or so years we’d have just pissed the money up the wall anyway. I mean: £30m on Sissoko £25m on Aurier £40m on Sanchez £55m on Ndombele £42m on Lo Celso Horrendous track record of big spending by this club. Painful to look at to be honest. Hopefully Don Fabio changes our luck. I’ve got faith in him.
A lot of people here wanting to spend more money and buy more expensive players, but the truth be told we don’t have a great record of getting value for money when we spend big. The list of expensive failures is growing season on season, Sanchez, Ndombele, Lo Celso, Paulinho and Soldado were all very expensive and to date not one of them has been worth the money that we spent. Jansen arrived as the top scorer in his league and appeared when we signed him to be a very astute signing he looked very lively for the first month and like Soldado before him he could score from the spot. I liked both these players who never stopped trying, but neither could replicate the goal scoring form that had shown in their own country. Obviously that doesn’t mean we stop trying, but recent experience doesn’t offer a lot of encouragement that spending more will bring better results, and whilst we may have a new Director of football negotiating transfers, if we are relying on the same scouting network, then expecting better results in terms of getting players who actually improve the side is going to prove difficult. Having said that if we can’t improve the quality of our central defenders then it will be a long season!
