Do you truly believe Ange would prefer to keep and play any of the three out of favour CBs? He threw Micky into the XI about 48 hours after joining. Tanganga and Dier still couldn’t even make the squad yesterday after he (stupidly) heavily rotated. For whatever reason, Sanchez is the one that’s won the “**** player lottery” but I don’t believe for a single minute he actually wants him playing, we just haven’t delivered him another senior CB to work with yet.
I think it’s clear why because Levy is greedy he doesn’t care about how it affects our season he’s never getting his money back but he will risk our season in trying to get that extra few quid
Absolutely wrong. Even if Levy knows nothing about football, then as a businessman he knows that sunk costs are irrelevant to any decision. If he won't deal below a certain price it's because someone in the football staff is telling him not to.
That's you absolving levy of all blame. He's the leader so he has to take responsibility of the decisions just as he takes credit for all decisions. If he prefers to not deal below a certain price because he believes he can get more then he'll get the credit for not being ripped off (hence he has his own levying phrase). This may or not be to the detriment of the team (no new incomings, team harmony, good backups) but everyone has an opinion on what is important. The key is that he hasn't bought in any replacements and he is struggling to offload the deadwood even when there have been firm offers.
He may know that but his ego is in the way and has been for a long time now when it comes to making a financial ‘loss’ and anyway there is no evidence to suggest that Levy actually listens to anyone when it comes to financial decisions so I dont see why all of a sudden he is that man who would but is being advised wrong by others all of a sudden…if anything there is lots of evidence to suggest that Levy likes to dig his heels in…at times to our benefit and at other times to our detriment we just rejected £8 million to get rid of deadwood who’s latest performance cost us again last night…that is definitely Levy digging his heels in because he overpaid in the first place. Therefore his ego won’t allow him to bite the bullet therefore our managers war chest is not as healthy as it could and should be
The thing with the deadwood is there haven't been many firm offers, merely offers of loans - and we want them off the wage bill IIRC the only players we've had firm offers for are Sanchez, Winks and Lloris - and Lloris didn't want the move to Nazio because he wasn't going to be first-choice
Sessengon £35m; Sanchez £42m; Lo Celso £45m (including loan); NDombele £55m; They have three things in common: 1. They were all bought by Pochettino 2. They are all in our top 6 most expensive signings (along with Richarlison and maddison) 3. They have all been disastrous Danny Rose; Eric Dier; Dele; Aurier; Winks; Trippier; All have one thing in common: They were continually picked for Pochettino no matter how poorly they played week in week out. We only got money for winks and trippier... we actually had to pay 2 of them to leave (Aurier and Rose) and gave Dele away. I love a lot of what Pochettino did for us but his mistakes continue to cost us. Only hopes he ain't learned and ****s over Chelsea
To be honest I have no idea. I don’t watch La Liga as much as I used to nowadays. Just know at one point Fati was being tipped as the next La Masia superstar.
Missed almost a year with a knee injury between 2020-1, and he missed half the 2021-2 season with two separate hamstring injuries There's better ways to save the £40m+ earmarked for Brennan Johnson
If we sell Hojbjerg and N'Dombele goes out on loan do we look a little bit light in CM? Bissouma, Sarr and Maddison look nailed on Skippy can cover for Bissouma and Sarr and Lo Celso can cover Maddison. Obviously we have Bentancur coming back but not sure how long it will take him to get back up to speed.
Levy's actions are usually consistent with us having a financial model in the recruitment department that is used to value players both buying and selling. That's a perfectly reasonable way to operate but it will often lead to mistakes. To blame that on some perceived weakness in Levy's character is not justified by the evidence. Particularly when Frank Arnesen says the opposite.
That's also why the summer of 2019 was such a flashpoint: that summer we bought the specific players Poch wanted, which is certainly the case with Ndombele and Sessegnon as our inability to land them in 2018 and lack of alternate or stopgap players to fill the gap makes this clear, and their failures doesn't reflect on Levy ...to a point, anyway, as having Pini Zahavi on a retainer to get Ndombele across the line was obviously a mistake even at the time
Arnesen was our DOF 18 years ago. And therein lies the problem. A generation ago, Levy was a revolutionary. His footballing strategy was sound. But the game has moved on. In many ways, Levy hasn't. Caught in between trying to outsmart the mega money clubs and outspend them, so we've ended up doing neither.
Levy was never a revolutionary. He simply noticed that the only way to make Tottenham a top club was to increase our income to match that of Man Utd, Arsenal and Liverpool who left us behind decades ago. We have closed the gap a bit and continuing to do the same things will close it further.
It's not so much that the game has moved on, but more money ahs moved in to certain clubs Take Arsenal as the best example of this: in the mid-to-late 90s they knew that they could not compete with Man Utd's finances as that would be a brawl that they would lose every single time, so instead they chose to compete with them by having a vastly different approach to tactics and player acquisition that meant they could stand toe-to-toe with them on occasion and come out on top - but as soon as Uncle Roman arrived on the scene they were fighting for scraps instead, as there were now two teams who could dwarf them financially and, crucially, one of those teams immediately set out to hamstring Arsenal by pursuing a key component of their system in Ashley Cole Levy's plan is somewhat similar, albeit with some of the parameters changed: we already knew Chelsea were an issue so planned for that, as the plan wasn't to immediately target first place like Arsenal's was but break up how the same four teams monopolised the Champions League places every season first and then build from that, considering at that time there were four teams we couldn't compete wit financially for different reasons (Man Utd being a goldmine, Chelsea being bankrolled by a liquid goldmine, Liverpool and Arsenal having plenty of CL cash sloshing around to offer bigger wages upfront) - but then along came Thaksin Shinawatra to potentially blindside that plan albeit the focus at that time was helping themselves to Arsenal players, but when Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan came along we that's when the plan got undone, specifically when they targeted Kyle Walker to give a sort of symmetry with Chelsea breaking Arsenal's back with their tapping up Ashley Cole
As I've mentioned before, there could be some 4D chess with Amrabat in play Amrabat has been linked with us, as well as both Atletico Madrid and Man Utd Amrabat wants out at Fiorentina, to the point he's been banished to the U21s Coincidentally, at various times Hojbjerg has been linked with Atletico Madrid and Man Utd There is a scenario where, by selling Hojbjerg to one of those clubs, we engineer a free run at Amrabat
In terms of the coaches preferred players I think I can see one thing that he and Conte have in common. They don't select players who don't follow instructions. This is why Sanchez gets picked....he tries his best to play how Ange wants him to. Similarly Emerson Royal.
