Correct. Although if we were in Europe we would have only one non home trained slot as Davies and Rodon don't count and Sessegnon and Kulusevski would need to be registered.
Conte scathing in his remarks about our recruitment strategy in recent years. So happy we have a manager who says it like it is and calls a crap spade a crap spade.
Yeah he was pretty scathing and completely correct. If he’s being that blunt to the press then I can only hope the message is getting through in the club too.
Conte said: "These two players can help us a lot. "For sure now the squad is more complete. We tried to fill the right role with a midfielder - Bentacur - and Kulusevski, who can play as number 10 or a wingback. "Now we are more complete than before. Now is time to work. "In the transfer market we have to make not big mistakes because now I repeat there are many teams who started before us and stayed ahead of us - and if we want to reduce this gap the mistakes must be minimum in every aspect." At least it sounds like he wanted those two particular players.
In my opinion, he's definitely including Bryan Gil in the mistakes column. As he says, it's not that he isn't a good footballer...but with our squad issues, we really shouldn't have been spending circa £35m on a player who's some distance from being able to play in the PL and may never suit playing in it. I think that he'll be sold this summer, as we need the money to invest in someone who can get in the team. If Paratici buys another 'prospect', for that kind of money, Conte's liable to rip his ****ing head off...and he's right.
Let’s hope he actually does, and he’s not just lashing out. As Brian says above, we need players who can make more of an immediate impact right now, not prospects. Signings in the bracket of Bentancur and Kulu are smart because they have experience in a big team in a big league, but are still young. Signing prospects is fine but not when your house is on fire.
Neither of them were wrong about this issue though. Jose couldn’t find a solution though, I think in terms of personality and coaching he just couldn’t get a tune out of anyone apart from Kane and Son, and obviously he’s a divisive personality by nature. Conte seems to be building more of a unit and the whole team look better coached, with many players we had written off improving themselves. Conte is finding a positive route out of the negativity while addressing it head on, Jose moaned and couldn’t or wouldn’t find a solution on the pitch or off it.
I think he does. He ain’t a stupid bloke, he’s got the fans on his side, he won’t be naive to the tension with fans and hierarchy, he’s improved the team quite considerably albeit there’s still a hell of a long way to go, and so I think that within reason he’s in a position to make demand and call some shots, knowing that the hierarchy can’t always so “no” as they can’t afford for him to bolt at this moment in time through fear of fan upheaval. We don’t know if Bentancur and Kulusevski will definitely be smart or correct signings but we certainly hope they will be, on paper they look like they bring quality to the team but we won’t know for sure until about 12-18 months down the line, as with most signings. I disagree with the idea of not going for prospects though, especially ones being coveted by a lot of clubs, most of Spurs’ best players of the last 15 or so years have generally started off as a prospect/ young player with high potential. Realistically if Spurs didn’t sign players like Gil and Sarr last summer and someone like Leicester or elsewhere did, we’d all be saying “why aren’t we going in for those sorts of players?”. On that front the club can’t win because supporters have become hard to please, and people are judging players so ridiculously early in their Spurs career too, Gil’s seemingly being written off as is Emerson… for me that’s just madness, both may or may not make it but it’s far too soon to tell. Harry Kane would’ve never made it through the ranks if some fans had their way and we would’ve sold Son after about 6 months.
I disagree. Maureen initially was peddling the same tired "this is a brilliant group of players" line so many managers have used. He was even talking about challenging for the title in his second season for crying out loud! It wasn't until our form collapsed that he reverted to form and started laying in to the squad. Conte on the other hand iirc said nothing of the sort about the squad, aside from his need to thoroughly assess its overall quality. Since completing that assessment he has been consistent in his remarks both about individual players and the squad - the most notable difference being that Maureen is only negative when things are going badly for him. Conte was saying these things in the middle of our unbeaten run even as we pushed for 4th.
Yeah it’s impossible to judge signings now obviously but we can judge the approach. While Paratici just going back to his own club late in the window to sign players he knows is perhaps slightly underwhelming, they’re players the coach likes and we probably were considering anyway, so I’m not down about it. Overall I think they’re quite sensible. I agree that signing prospects has been a sweet spot but I think there are areas of the squad we didn’t address in the summer but still spent money on the likes of Sarr and Gill who we’ve barely seen any of, if at all. You obviously don’t want to miss out on these players if you have the chance to secure them but I wouldn’t want to spend resources on them over getting the squad of players who are actually going to play the majority of the games sorted first. FWIW I’m not writing any of the players off, but I just think our priorities have been off.
There’s not a manager around that wouldn’t have come in, looked at the squad and thought it didn’t need major work. Better to have an honest manager who will work to fix the issues than a yes man who pretends everything is fine and then spectacularly fails
I think big clubs in general have a proactive mindset and if we want to be a big club we need it too. We need to plan both for the future and the present. When opportunities to sign some of the highest rated young players in Europe arise we need to pounce, because we're likely not going to be the team that's going to be able to sign them in 3 or so years from now where they're potentially worth £70m+. We won't know for sure if Gil and Sarr will definitely be those players but I know for sure that it's impossible to tell right now that they won't, and yet fans on here and on social media in general are writing players off after half a season. Our squad's been an absolute mess for years and I think it needs a mix of experience, talent and youthful fearlessness to get it back on track. When the summer comes I hope we look at plugging some obvious gaps but if more opportunities come about to sign some more Gil's and Sarr's I'd want us to be all over that too.
Signing the likes of Gil and Sarr is fine as long as you can also afford to add in ready made players too. Unfortunately only the likes of City and Chelsea can spend £50million on prospects without it cutting into their budget for ready made players.
