...while also getting riled up at reports that we might spend £25m on a youngish CB who has played in the PL and who we actually have seen play, not least in the three games he played 90 minutes against us
We probably need 2 or 3 if we get all the ones out that we want. But we need a balance between younger players with very high ceilings and more experienced players who can work under Ange more or less straight away. This will not be a one window rebuild of the squad and signing too many players who are low floor/high ceiling in one go is a recipe for the wheels coming off early doors, which we can ill afford.
Technically we signed three more players today: Herbie James has joined our U18s from The Sheikh Mansour Team, as slyly revealed in the article on U18s intake https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2023/july/introducing-our-new-under-18s-players/ This was rumoured back in March, as hinted at in last season's Academy Watch thread Also joining were Roman Egan-Rile, also from the Mansour Academy, while Calum Logan signed from Ipswich (which was mentioned by Lilywhite Rose back in April)
So the most important question of pre-season so far: who has the worst blonde dye job out of Troy Parrott or Tanguy Ndombele?
Oscar Gloukh is being linked again With him costing 3x what he would have last summer Thanks, Conte...
van de Ven Watch Kicker have decided to appeal to the r/soccer hivemind by claiming there has been no contact between us and Wolfsburg whatsoever ...which is either a kick in the yarbles for the likes of Romano and Eccleshare who said there was an agreement on the fee, or Kicker being overly dramatic in reporting we've agreed personal terms with van der Ven but not thrashed out a fee with Wolsburg, or Kicker is throwing a strop because we won't sell Harry Kane to poor wickle Bayern
L'Equipe report we rejected a €20m offer from Napoli for Ndombele Hopefully we're trying to squeeze and extra few €m out of this...
Foolish. Take it and run. It's just not worth quibbling over a few million at this stage. We are in urgent need of a rebuild and are talking about a player who we've been trying to get rid of for 3 years.
IIRC there was an option to turn his loan into a permanent for €30m, which Napoli are obviously not taking Depends how the €20m was broken down, because if less than half of that was upfront I don't begrudge a little haggling, but if we're looking to get anything more than €25m getting rid of him will drag on way longer than necessary
And yet..... Gareth Bale has said that Tanguy Ndombele surprised him when he saw him in Tottenham training and that the Frenchman reminds him of Brazilian legend Ronaldinho. Ndombele struggled in his first season following his club record move from Lyon but he became much more of a regular presence in the last campaign for Tottenham as he began to adapt to the rigours of the Premier League. https://www.football.london/tottenh...kCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar
Seems to be some debate as to whether a concrete offer for Tanguy was actually made. Regardless I would take 20m in a heartbeat if I was the club. Go and get Hatate if you want a ready made 8 for Ange, or Scott if you want a project. 20m would pretty much cover most of either of those fees and either of them would be far more likely to make an impact than Ndombele. I get Ange wants to see if he can turn him around, most managers would want the challenge to try and get a tune out of such a talented player if they had the chance. But I can’t see him having the discipline, either personal or tactical, to build up his conditioning and stick to the plan on the pitch.
I'm not sure where he fits in to the plan anymore. Ange prefers a 433 formation and our first choice midfield is presumably Bissouma and Bentancur slightly behind Maddison. There is perhaps room to switch Ndombele for Bissouma but that is only against opposition we expect to dominate play, which sadly these days isn't many teams. If anything, what we're really lacking is a proper DM who can shield the defence and disrupt opposition attacks. We haven't had one since Wanyama broke down and unsurprisingly our GA gets worse year by year. Ange plays such a full-throttle system with the FBs constantly on the front foot, it could be useful to move on Tanguy and Pierre and use the combined fee to push for someone top quality in that position. No idea who that would be but I wouldn't mind us trying to hijack Chelsea's move for Caicedo for example.
I think you’d usually think of a 433 midfield setup as a 6 and two 8s or two 6s and a 10. In the former you’d have the sitter and then one 8 who is more progressive and one who is more focused on attacking the box. In that sense you’d consider Bentancur and Hojbjerg the shuttling, pressing 8 and Maddison and Ndombele the more advanced player (mainly because Tanguy doesn’t have the stamina to do the running, if he did, he could do anything). Ange’s midfield system (at Celtic at any rate) worked slightly differently, with both 8s being more all rounders who play a very specific role in buildup and occupy specific positions on the pitch so they can dovetail with the FB and winger on their sides, then attack the box once the winger beats their man out wide or the FB gets slipped into the inside right or left channel. At the moment I’d place Bissouma as the starting 6 and Maddison and Bentancur as the 8s. Cover is probably Skipp, Ndombele/Devine and Hojbjerg/Sarr for each of those players respectively. With some positional flexibility within that. With all that said we’re assuming that Ange will replicate the exact system from Celtic in terms of the tactics and the profiles and roles of the players. He may make some changes that might accommodate the strengths of the existing squad - getting width from FBs rather than wingers for example, but that would also have an effect on how the midfield sets up, as you can’t invert the FBs to fill midfield space if they’re the ones providing width. Personally I hope he has a go at replicating the Celtic system as I think there are some interesting tactical things about it. But he might change. Having read and watched a fair bit about Ange in the run-up to his appointment and since, he does change the specifics of his system, but the principles (dominate possession, move the ball fast, press) stay the same. We’ll have a much clearer picture of what the midfield ins and outs might be once we see the first game in pre-season, from the shape and tactics of the team if not the personnel used. Until then it’s all speculation.
£20m , we would save that in his wages alone , unless Ange has an unlimited supply of high energy blood
