Only a couple of times, as they mainly played him as a RW Girona and Mineiro spread him around more, albeit still primarily on either flank, which does beg the question if Fraudiola was hammering him into a role in much the same way he has with Grealish
This level of whining in weird to me. Whether we like it or not, and you may well be correct, these people do own/run premier league clubs. This is the fight that we are in. I'm not envious to the point wish our owners were different (I've never been Levy out.), but for goodness sake, are we gonna sit and complain that they are not 'fighting fair' whilst having no fight ourselves. So we didn't fire dinner ladies to make money, we held Beyonce concerts and NFL games instead. Well done. Gold f-ing star. Now throw some damn punches Levy, otherwise what is the point? Anybody who 'loved' Ange loved him because he had some fight in him for the club. It was refreshing. Frank in contrast is like a... let's just say he does strike me as a fighter. The club has to do that for him, just and Nottingham Forest and Manu are doing for their managers. Do you get the impression that the club is trying to kill opposing teams? I think Levy has been playing chess against Man U in particular for years, and has finally gotten close to 'winning', to trading places in some respects. To move like a wet lettuce at this point whilst they fight for their lives with purpose and intent to kill is a sad watch. You're probably right on the point about Frank not being able to sign players from Brentford, that's the only explanation that makes any sense, unless the players themselves are not inspired to play under him again, which would be way more worrying if true.
I think your analysis is entirely wrong. Levy isn't playing chess against anyone and we are not in a fight. He simply recognises that the clubs with the most resources are the most successful. His only mission is to increase revenue so we have more to spend. He hires people to buy players and coach the squad and leaves football decisions to them. We are spending every penny we can to help them. What else can he do?
I think judgements should wait until the transfer window is closed, then we can have a true perspective on how we have done. I recognise, however, that it is very frustrating waiting and wondering when we can all see what needs to be done. I just hope the clubs response is better than it was after we reached the CL final when a huge opportunity to build on that team and back the manager was lost. I appreciate that trying to buy and sell players on a very uneven playing field is very difficult and we should understand the need for secrecy during negotiations but, Thomas Frank's latest reported comments, if accurately reported are worrying so early in his Spurs career. It would appear that frustrations are running high inside the club as well. All this is the down side of continual changes of management.
I think Levy has definitely changed his approach since the Carrick and Berbatov days. Mourihno more recently said 'they can't buy Tottenham's best players anymore'. Raising the revenue of the club in relation to other is exactly what I mean by playing chess. I am speaking metaphorically of course. I don't think it's that personal, but he has definitely been changing the club's status in relation to the Man United's of the league since those days. He has also been proactive in raising the profile of the club in the USA and in Asia. Definitely a thing that he saw Man United do, and decided that Spurs can do too. If you think we are not in a fight for the fifth place in the league, or top four, or for wins in general, I don't know what to tell you. What is the league if it's not fight between 20 teams? Also, if you don't think that Man U shudder at the thought of being below Tottenham in any significant ways then you are naive. They are definitely fighting against us to succeed and hated the fact that we in particular beat them in the Europa. If that were Chelsea of Arsenal, it would have hurt them so much. What else can he do? Back the managers in timely fashion. We have a Super Cup final next Wednesday and we're going in with less weapons than last season. How is this acceptable, or sensible to you, or to anybody in the club? Back the managers with consistency over a number of years. (Hopefully this happens with this one. Finally.) Get more ready made players. Gray for example was ok signing, but we also needed players that would impact the first team from day one. I hope his confidence isn't shot from last season's experience. Hire the right people to get the jobs done that need doing to make the other two happen. Hopefully Paratici will be back in the mix soon and that might make a difference.
Since I have no clear idea on what causes the timing of transfers I am not going to find it 'unacceptable' that we are in this position currently. If we get to the end of the window and have not spent all we can I will be as annoyed as anyone. I don't like the terminology 'fight' because it gives the wrong steer on how to proceed. You do better in the League by having better skilled or better trained players who are calm under pressure. Everyone tries to hire the right people but in football few succeed because there are not enough of the right people to go around. That's why coaches, managers and DoF's have such a short tenure. Most of them are simply not up to the job and get hired based on very short term performance which often seems to be based more on luck than judgement. There doesn't seem to be any alternative for us because any football staff who stay long enough anywhere to have a proper track record will be snapped up by richer clubs. I don't see how we can back the coach more than spending at the limit of our abilities.
Not entirely true. We can spend more on wages than we’re doing. It’s even worse knowing that our wage bill has also decreased in recent years, we shaved off a lot of big earners in Ange’s tenure with the likes of Kane, Lloris, Dier, Hojbjerg and Perisic all departing, if I remember rightly at the time I think I calculated it was roughly £500k shaved off after working out the differences from those signed in that period, we’ve now just sold our highest earner in Sonny too, Ange and Frank were/ are on less than Poch, Jose and Conte as well. I believe we now have just four players earning over £100k a week - Romero, Maddison, Kulu and the newly acquired Kudus. Arsenal have around 16. Chelsea around 14. City around 17. Utd around 17. Liverpool around 12.
Just get the players that the manager wants. With Ange we fell short of what he wanted. I'm hearing that Savinho to Spurs may have legs. Something tells me City want Rodrygo, and us getting Savinho allows that to happen. He's raw, but I wouldn't be mad at that. If Frank wants him, get him. Get him, Eze and another striker and I'll be happy. Even getting in Savinho, and Paz instead of an Eze if that can't happen, and using Tel as backup striker would be progress, even if a little riskier.
Yes Savinho had a poor return goal scoring wise last season at City but tbh most of the city wide players Didnt contribute many goals either . It seems City’s system is very much centred around Haaland and assisting him. Frank has a great track record improving the output of his attackers - Mbeumo, Wissa in particular and would trust him to get more goal contributions out of Savinho and Kudus. If he signs I think Savinho is a fantastic little player.
We could spend more on wages if we spent less on transfers. I actually agree that the right strategy is to sign fewer but better players. But I can't see many, if any, better players that would have signed for us even if we had offered them much higher salaries.
One suggestion our Reddit fanbase seems to like: as we're already talking to the Mansourites about Savinho, how about chucking in James McAtee?
Plus Werner’s loan ended and Spurs were paying his wages, he was earning around £180,000 a week I believe.
Again though this goes back to what I said to you yesterday with regards to we’ll never actually know as we rarely try to sign such players. I’m just plucking random names here but what would’ve happened if Spurs went in for Gyokeres, Sesko or Ekitike and offered to make them our best paid player? Would they have definitely rejected us for Arsenal, Utd and Pool respectively or would we have won the race? No one can possibly know and that’s the frustrating thing for me. We don’t seem to try for these in-demand players. We often look for alternatives and in many recent years that just hasn’t paid off most of the time.
Whining? Really? Having morals and not wanting a club run by mafioso is whining now? I'm happy for the club to show some fight, but not in the sense of murdering people. These scumbags just destroy the sport. Who can trust any of the results that they've achieved? Marinakis has already been implicated in match-fixing and murder. He's one of the less powerful ones. What are Chelsea's previous owners and City's capable of? Signings mean nothing under such circumstances. Postecoglou argued against the media narrative, but the only thing that impacted it was winning. Frank hasn't had to do either yet, so it's impossible to judge how he'll react. Suggesting that his players weren't inspired to play under him doesn't reflect reality, though. Mbeumo and Wissa scoring 20 goals each after Toney doing so previously? Unheard of for Brentford.
Savinho is going to cost a minimum £50m by all accounts. He's currently on around £40k pe making him one of City's lower earners. I imagine he'll be on £70-80k here, which is the sort of ball park figure Levy seems to love and also seems to be driving our entire wage bill towards as a golden average. We could show real ambition and put £70m plus £220k pw on the table for Eze and see what Palace (and the player) say, or we can opt for what we continue to see as the 'cheap' option - those middling £40-60m signings on wages that simply don't match their transfer fee, most of whom end up barely improving the team at all. It's like we're scared to act like a proper club.
And as if on cue, Steve Parish has said Guehi is for sale this summer. Will we go in for him now as a long term replacement for Romero? Of course we won't. Leave that sort of behaviour for the big boys.
