IMHO Spurs could make initial advances on the premise that we qualify for the CL. On that basis, get a sounding for what his wage demands might be (the Toon are not in UEFA land yet - no FFP - so they can offer silly money) .
Two or three years ago having Muller od Dybala behind Kane would have made a lot of sense, but given how deep Kane often drops these days realistically if we're looking for a partner we would have had to look for somebody who plays off the last defender's shoulder like Vlahovic does Oh well, here's hoping Juve play to his weaknesses and we get him for a snip in eighteen months, because otherwise we're paying through the nose for Jonathan David...
Football BSider claim that The Sheikh Mansour Team are already getting buyer's remorse over Jack Grealish Hopefully that will significantly reduce the volume of whinging about not signing him...
Ally Gold has put out a very interesting article on Steve Hitchen, his role at the the club, what he was a part of and his departure... https://www.football.london/tottenham-hotspur-fc/news/hitchen-email-tottenham-levy-paratici-22969661 I've nothing personal against Hitchen and I've little idea whether he was any good at his job in total, in part, or at all. What this article confirms is that there was a consistent lack of an agreed list of transfer targets and signings at the club. Gold cites the signings of Bergwijn for Mourinho and Lucas for Pochettino, where the incumbent coach was presented with players they didn't want. You can add the names of Aurier, Sissoko and Llorente to the list for Pochettino. Bale and Rodon are definitely part of the list for Mourinho, although I've also seen it suggested that he didn't want Reguillon either. Now, there are plenty of clubs who employ a DoF and present their coaches with players and they're expected to get on with it. That's great...if the coach accepts it. Neither Poch or Mourinho did. It caused real problems between the coaches and the chairman. So pissed off did Poch become that by the summer of 2018, the 3 man transfer committee was utterly ****ed and we signed nobody. The following summer, after the enormous windfall from the CL run, Poch was (unfortunately) given a free reign of the players he wanted and we all know how that worked out. Was Hitchen caught in the middle of deteriorating and difficult chairman/coach relationships? Yes, he was...and that may very well not be his fault. However, his picks were regularly excluded by the coach and then only used in extremis. You just can't run a club like that and be successful. Levy sacked the coaches but not Hitchen. When Ramos went Comolli walked too and that was the right move. Truthfully, the lot of them should have gone - Pochettino, Mourinho, Hitchen and Levy. They wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on poor players and even usable players went under-used because these employees couldn't work together. It would be sad, if it wasn't so ridiculous. So, no tears for Hitchen. He enjoyed Levy's patronage in a flawed and catastrophically unsuccessful set up, but even Levy's involvement in this nonsense had to have personal consequences eventually and we are better off rebuilding without any of them involved. It's an outcome that they all earned and we deserve a whole lot better.
That's on the manager on both counts, for me. It's also why we need to sort out our footballing identity and fix our identity issue. Constantly chopping and changing managerial styles makes squad stability impossible. We can't afford to match the transfer turnover required to keep up with it, either. This has also contributed to our academy to first-team issues, in my opinion.
No Spurs fans wanted him last summer as he was too expensive. The annoying thing is the club could have got him for a 1/4 of what City paid. If he flops at City or not, that’s still annoying.
Of course, he was a major part of it, but his boss needs to be able to get his head back on straight. Levy's job is to effectively manage his managers. He didn't do that, he just presided over it getting worse and worse...just as Comolli's appointment became increasingly damaging. The whole thing was a complete ****ing mess. I'm sure that, given his French contacts, that Hitchen knew that Ndombele was a massive gamble, but we signed him anyway. Working together was over, it was everyone for themselves and that's on Levy.
No, what's annoying is hearing is name brought up whenever we get the the whinging section of every ****ing transfer window until the end of time as if there wasn't the very real possibility of him being a big fish in a small pond at Villa, something which looked the case as soon as he spent 90 minutes in Tanganga's pocket in the first match of the season On the wider scale though, the biggest question that needs to be asked is why Levy and/or Hitchen always get blamed for not bringing Grealish in, considering our bid was made in the exact same period where Poch was ignoring Hitchen's suggestions for Tielemans and Ascensio because if he couldn't get Ndombele he wasn't going to settle for anyone else - a decision which worked out brilliantly for all invovled
I agree he could well have not performed at Spurs. Personally I think he would have been class but it’s a question we will never know the answer to. Poch definitely made mistakes when it came to transfers but fans will always be more forgiving of a popular manager than the chairman and his cronie.
The real issue with Grealish is where he would've played for us, as I'm not convinced he'd have played in the pivot so would have either been fighting with Eriksen for minutes or dumped out on the wing to fit him into the team - and neither are brilliant options That's why I get more irked when we miss out on a player like Eze or Olise, because those are players who can become a part of the squad without causing selection headaches and bloom into regular players a season or two later - or earlier if it turns out that the supposed creative fulcrum we signed is now Exhibit A for how any of our players appearing in a Getir ad dooms them for eternity
Since a few people have mentioned that our central midfield doesn't look creative enough, that does beg one question: what happened to creative midfielders? They're a dying breed In the past decade the Pirlo/Modric role has moved ever deeper so that the modern equivalents are somebody like Marcelo Brozovic or Manuel Locatelli, both of whom play closer to a DM role than a CM, while the creative role in midfield has given way to the box-to-box midfielder such as Nicolo Barelli or Franck Kessie (or, before them, Mousa Dembele) while the weight of providing creativity has been pushed either forward to the AMs or outwards to wingers or, more often than not, wingbacks However, it's still weird that there doesn't really seem to be another Modric, Xavi or Pirlo coming through anywhere in Spain, Germany, Italy, Holland or Portugal and instead every midfielder coming through seems to be molded into a Brozovic or a Barella, barring the most gifted who are molded into an Eriksen
Mike McGrath has claimed that we already have a list of summer CB targets, namely Sven Botman, Simone Bastoni and Josko Gvardiol He also threw in Blackburn's U23 CB Ashley Phillips
Got to be truthful didn't know anything about Gvardiol. Just did some research and he looks very impressive . Very strong, quick and comfortable on the ball. Certainly one to keep an eye out for.
