Completely rudderless is exactly right. When the stadium build really started to kick into gear, everything else suffered. Sporting matters of every kind were left to run themselves or rot. It's going to take a long time to put things back together again and achieve the required results. It's regrettable, but now, it is what it is. Paratici is restructuring the scouting network, we've brought in someone to work on players moving from the academy into senior football and the academy itself needs to look at recruitment and success levels. I'm sure that's on the list of jobs for the DoF, as it's one of those things that just got left to rot.. The hope has got to be that Levy's distancing from sporting matters is genuine and permanent. Ally Gold confirmed my fears from the summer, when he revealed that Paratici's appointment only came about because Levy couldn't appoint one of his front line choices and he had no clue as to what to do next and no desire to cop the flak that was coming. When Paratici leaves, the last thing that we need is Levy back pulling the strings and instructing Hitchen to go and buy players that the coaches don't want and won't play.
The scariest thing about Ally's comments was the fact that Paratici was essentially a plan B that only became necessary once plan A failed. And what was plan A? To rehire Poch. Levy has the footballing intelligence of a 14 year old. Possibly younger. Brilliant businessman, comedic sportsman.
Paul Scholes says that Man Utd could still hire Antonio Conte, even though he's contracted to us **** off, you diving ****
Ally Gold’s said some of the players are beginning to fear Conte could walk next month if not backed but that the hierarchy feel after a positive meeting with Conte that there’s little chance of that happening.
It's a perception of a lot of fans too. Conte's been asking for patience. I'm going to believe that he's not going to ask for that and show none himself, 2 months into his contract. Of course, if he does walk before 2023, it'll be Armageddon. Levy's really stuck himself between a rock and a hard place...
Conte seen building a catapult and aiming it in the vague direction of Bergamo this morning Can't think why...
I honestly don’t know what to expect anymore. Feels like nothing will surprise me at Spurs these days and it ain’t the good surprises either. He’s probably had more **** to deal with here already than the years at Juve, Chelsea and Inter combined. I think that Jose, Nuno and Conte likely didn’t realise just how bad many of these players were when taking on the job. Managers haven’t helped themselves by any means and we can all pick faults with them as well as Poch’s final 12 months but I reckon they all got smacked with a hard case of reality when seeing some of these players in the flesh, where from an outsider’s perspective they really didn’t realise the level of **** the club’s in. Do I think Conte will go next month if we have continue to have a **** window? Probably not. But summer? I can’t say with certainty either way.
I don’t say this to excuse inactivity in this window, because I think there’s potentially deals to be done which will improve us. But the summer window is the real litmus test. If the backing isn’t there then Conte will walk away from this ****show and rightfully so. This summer should be a big window across Europe, with the likes of Vlahovic, Haaland and Mbappe all likely to move. I don’t think we’ll be in the running for any of them, but the knock-on effect on the market should create opportunity. Clubs will by and large also have had a full season of fans in stadia, so the financial recovery will be underway. Plus no summer World Cup to disrupt business. All in all it should be a less cautious window than those we’ve seen during Covid. Hopefully that’s where we can thrive, especially when it comes to shifting players.
Depends what he was promised when he took the job. If the club said money was there to buy 1-2 in January and then go back on their word then I wouldn’t blame him for walking out on them so soon. He could walk now and get the Utd job lined up for the summer easily or even another big job. If he did and exposed Levy and Co then they’d be in huge trouble with fans
If he's been sold a pup, he'll walk. I'd agree with him too. Why the **** would he stick around here if he's been misled? My guess was that it'd take until the summer for that to be revealed...but with ENIC and Levy, who knows? There's obviously no money sloshing around this TW, as we scrabble about to get a loan deal on £20m Adama Traore. If it's 'sales + profit on income' this summer, Conte's gone.
I think it's a dangerous game to be putting too many eggs in the summer basket. Our last 6 summer windows have been nothing short of shocking really. Our last truly great window as a collective would've been the 7th summer ago - 2015/16, where we signed Son, Alderweireld and Trippier, all three became important players over periods of time for the club, whilst Wimmer proved to be a solid backup in his first season and was eventually sold for a nice profit, we only had the one flop and that was N'jie, 4 out of 5 successes/ 80% success rate is brilliant and in general anything over 50% would be considered good in my opinion. Since then, whilst we've made some decent squad additions we haven't brought in a single player who's really elevated Spurs with their performances barring Wanyama in his first season. Lucas, Llorente, Sissoko, Sanchez, Hojbjerg and Reguilon can go down as players who weren't/ aren't flops but never really took Spurs to a new level. Jury will obviously still be out for the most recent summer signings but as of right now, half way into the season, none have overly stood out for various reasons, whether it be game time, injury or adjusting, albeit Gollini has unfortunately been very poor and as I've said before I don't see us taking up the purchase option. So my worry is, if we're going into the second half of this season with the mindset of "we'll take it relatively easy in January then go mental in the summer", what if we end up having another summer like the last 6?
Rumours from elsewhere that additional finances are delayed and so... ...yes, it's 'one out/one in' this window...again... ...and we'll be expecting to do business later in the window....yet again! Borrowing DH's catchphrase...."This ****ing club!" Fabrizio Romano's running the 'sell to buy' line, which is bloody obvious given that we're trying to do a loan for Traore but with Paratici leaking like a sieve to Italian journo's, he might well have heard something
My greater fear is that for all the pull Conte and Paratici have, particularly in Italy, the overwhelming majority of players who could buck the trend you describe and actually elevate us will want CL football. That's currently all the noise coming out of Kessie and Vlahovic's camps and it makes total sense. Fiorentina or Milan to us is sadly a sideways move at the moment and one they just won't make without the guarantee that better times are on the horizon. And that's the Catch 22. Unless we add 1 or 2 in this window, I don't see us getting CL football, simply because our margin of error is so damn slim compared to most other top half teams. We've seen it over and over again with our own eyes. 1 or 2 injuries to any member of a select group of around 6 players who are genuinely integral to our chances, and we are totally fecked. If we don't make CL next season, it's back to either overpaying for dross or gambling on young talent come the summer. And as you said, we've done appallingly on both fronts in recent years.
Conte leaving will result in fan protests. There has been noticeable booing at games recently at the the end of halves or at full time and at Ndombele. There are a lot of empty seats and while this might be in part due to covid it is telling that the club closed parts of the ground for ECL games and our FA Cup match. Many fans will not tolerate paying £900 upwards for season tickets or £50 membership fees plus a minimum of £45 for a Cat C game or a minimum £55 for a cat B games or a minimum £65 for cat A gamesto watch the likes of Doherty, Lo Celso, Ndombele, Dele etc. Either the atmosphere will be non existent or poisonous and neither is good. Tbh I have no faith that the board are on track. They have done nothing right from 2019 onwards and tbh I will be pleasantly surprised if Conte is our manager on February 2nd and bloody amazed if he is still our manager for the first game of next season. Hope my bad mood with real life is just making me pessimistic about spurs but I can not see anything improving until Levy is removed from all transfer business.
Yeah that's partly why we need business done now; to give us that chance of CL football and that then itself brings a wealth of opportunities to Paratici and Conte to properly strengthen this squad. The only thing I'd just counter on though is that assuming we didn't have CL football to offer in the summer, whilst we would be a sideways move for players like Vlahovic/ Kessie or even a downwards move for de Vrij/ Skriniar, we have the luxury of being in the Premier League which is more or less every player's dream league to play in and we're also in a position to offer large pay rises to many of those players too, which will also always sweeten any deal. We only have to see how money talks when Tripps switched CL football and a title push with Atleti for the relegation scrap with Toon, no way he makes that move if Ashley were still in charge. Time for the club to act like the big boy it tries portraying itself to be, can't fill a champagne stadium with cheap cider, go and splash some cash.
It's not the diving, it's the potentially career ending thuggery that he got away with under the 'excuse' that he's a midfielder and can't tackle. And all the pundits seemed to buy into that. You even heard some laughing when he 'mistimed' one. You think one of them might have pointed out that a red card is a red card, there is no 'Scholes Exemption'.
