What makes it all the more pathetic is that, somehow, these people have convinced themselves that Spurs Community ITKs are Tier 3 sources To underline just how much gibberish this is, here's the tier list from r/coys Tier 0 Club Announcement Tier 1 Dan Kilpatrick Alasdair Gold David Ornstein BBC Tier 2 Sport1 Times Athletic Fabrizio Romano Tier 1 for the other club involved (think Paul Joyce, Di Marzio, James Pearce) Tier 3 Guardian Skyte Sports Independent Telegraph Tier 4 i.e. Try and find a better source TalkBALLS Everything else Tier 5 These are BANNED The Sun Metro Express Daily Star Daily Mail So, reading that, does a single person with more braincells than somebody pining for Jeremy Kyle's return to TV honestly think some gobshite on Spurs Community is as credible as any of the sources listed as Tier 3, or is it finally dawning on them that Tier 5 is where they belong? What's actually happening here is some ITK claimed Traore was signing, and when reality ensued they tried to cover their backside by blaming Levy rather than admitting they made it up
I'm not basing anything on SC ITK. I'm saying nothing's changed based upon events unfolding in exactly the same way as they have done before. Since the club appointed Paratici, the line has been that Levy has distanced himself from transfer matters. I've never and will never believe this. It'll be like this until Levy goes. He will intercede/interfere/overrule as he sees fit. If that suits you, then great. I'm sick of it and will agitate for change based upon what we do...or more accurately don't do.
What about if the line is "Some Spurs Community ITK is making **** up rather than admit they were talking bollocks from the start"? What next, blaming him for pulling the plug on signing N'Geme?
Kessie Watch The Gazetta dello Sport claim that he's rejected Milan's latest contract offer worth €6.5m a year, so either he's playing contract chicken with Milan's hierarchy or Paratici is going to be on the blower in January - especially as PSG are reportedly hovering
Like you said earlier we don’t know what’s happened internally re. decisions on the Traore transfer and bids. We do know they’ve restructured the football side of the club and bought in an MD of Football. I take this to mean that Levy is stepping back a bit. Ultimately this is all speculation right now but I just disagree with your take on this one, is all. I was happy that we took the above actions because I also think Levy was too involved and was trying to be DoF and build the new stadium at the same time, which caused some errors in recruitment.
Do you think Levy's interfered or overruled this summer though? I'd have agreed with you if we were excluding this window because we know even in January he vetoed a move to ship out Dele to PSG but I've gotta be honest, this window has felt like it's all Paratici and for that I'm happy about it, even if I do think we've missed out on a couple of key positional targets. We know Nuno was on Fabio's shortlist and not Levy/ Hitchen's. The incomings all feel like Fabio's work to me. The two Serie A lads especially seeing as he signed Romero for Juve. Gil for Lamela plus money is a very European type deal in my opinion, don't often see English clubs do these. Fabio briefly spoke about Sarr during his interview and mentioned he's part of the plan that he, Hitchen and Nuno have for the rebuild. Emerson seemed like a last minute purchase once he became available and Fabio was said to be in Barcelona to try and sign both him and Moriba, succeeded on one, failed on the other thanks to the latter's greedy Father/ agent. As for outgoings - lot of senior players let go for miniscule fees. Definitely doesn't stink of Levy business. He'd probably prefer not to sell than accept lowball offers. Again, reports have also said Fabio directly spoke to players telling them they weren't wanted. I think, depending on the success of Fabio's work, Levy is taking a few steps back and should Fabio prove a success as time goes by, he'll take even more.
Troare averages a goal every 20 Premier league game (7 goals) and an assist ever 10 games (14 assists) in a total of 143 games. That's why the club didn't value him at £40m-£50m. Don't disagree about wasting money on Clarke...or others for that matter, but wasting yet more (£40m-£50m on Traore would have been a huge waste...way worse than Sissoko, or Janssen, or Aurier, or Soldado etc.
I think that he has. Whilst i can't even prove that we were in for Traore, as there's pretty much unsubstantiated reports or silence, most people accept that to be the case. It's largely accepted that we went into TDD with a deal still open as a possibility, although there's no way of proving it. So, we've ended up without adding the creative, attacking addition that the manager must have wanted (and the squad needs - whether it was Traore or someone else) and the DoF was pursuing...and ended up with nothing. I don't see Paratici as contemplating failure in fulfilling his brief, especially in his first window. He will have been working to get the player that we need and it just died... It's an all too familiar tale to Spurs fans. We leave it to late and the big ticket signing doesn't quite happen. I've not believed or one second that Levy was going to relinquish control over a single aspect of the club. So, do I believe that he pulled the plug on this? Yes, I do. He has bought players not wanted by Poch or Mourinho. He wouldn't sell Winksy or Dele or replace Big Vic when the bloke couldn't run anymore, why wouldn't he refuse Nuno and Paratici a player they wanted because he didn't rate him or want to pay the money? It's what he does...and as he owns about £0.5 billion of the club's value, he's not going to stop doing so, until he's removed as Chairman. As I said, there's nothing to prove what he did or didn't do...but it looks like business as usual to me.
But Traore like you say is not a creative attacking player, so if we need a 10, why were we basically not linked with a single one (maybe Damsgaard?) all window? What’s more likely surely is that Nuno asked us to bid for the player but not as a priority, Wolves asked for more than what we value the player, and we backed out because it wasn’t an essential deal. For me the holes in this transfer window, in fact the only hole, is a replacement striker. A 10 would have been nice but we’re not strictly playing with one and we have 3 or 4 players or more, who could play there if we insisted on playing a 4231 or 4411.
Just to clear one minor point up, The Goat on SpursCommunity isn't even one person. It's an ITK aggregator for anonymous information. When supposedly confirmed ITKs don't want to put their name to something, they use the Goat.
So are The Pathetic going to cite me as a source for this story, given that's exactly what I suggested was the case on here two days ago?
The suggested transfer was mooted and possible for days, maybe up to a week. It was definitely more than an enquiry, a rejection and done. It was being reported on TDD that we were still in for him and that it came to a close around lunchtime. This was a concerted effort to sign the player and there seem to have been no alternative options. Over the days that this ran, it became pretty clear that Wolves weren't looking to sell him and he'd have to be prised away from them. We seem not to have been put off, until it seems a price was reached and we walked away. To me, it has considerably more than a whiff of Levy about it, Goat or no Goat. As I've said before, I'm no fan of Traore and don't see that he answers our problems with creativity and goal scoring beyond Kane and Son. However, Nuno and Paratici must have done to a level where they spent the final week of the window trying to sign him and nobody else to address those issues. Having done that, we're short on creativity. I'm struggling to see how those 2 would have painted themselves into such a corner and ended up with the outcome we now have and have often seen before....without an additional player in the piece.
I don't think he has, not this window anyway. I've not once gotten the impression that Levy was behind any significant decision making this window. It's always felt like Fabio was the one calling the shots. It was Fabio in Barca trying to get Emerson and Moriba, it was Fabio bringing in a player he'd signed for Juve, the Gil-Lamela deal stinks of a European thing and something Levy wouldn't do. Selling players for lowball offers - when has that ever been a Levy thing? As for Traore, that was a case of them demanding far more than we were willing to pay, never got the impression a plug was pulled, just more about us offering £30m (which is very generous for someone like Traore) but Wolves deeming him more valuable to them than that and wanting £20m more than we offered. We'd have been mad paying that, would've felt exactly like how we did when we spunked the £30m on Sissoko and I'm almost certain that had we paid their asking price, in a year or so's time we'd be talking about him just like we do with Ndombele and Lo Celso. I agree that in the past he has bought his own players without Poch or Jose's approval and he has chosen to block outgoing transfers but this window just gone has been different for me. Whether it proves a successful or unsuccessful one will be down to Fabio and not Levy.
For me it was Son, Hojbjerg, Skipp and Kane I'm convinced that Clarke is rock bottom for every single person who does the poll
