Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction
- Thread starter remembercolinlee
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So one really good reason to get Mateus Fernandes signed: it will really, really piss Mark Goldbricker off if he spends the remainder of the summer having Spurs fans spam him with "food chain" comments
Anderson to City seems to be happening.
I've always found it surprising that a player in the middle of a world cup is expected to drop everything and do a medical and signing for a new club.
Bergvall to Forest will no doubt heat up now.
Meanwhile we're apparently at an impass with both Tonali and Fernandes.
I've always found it surprising that a player in the middle of a world cup is expected to drop everything and do a medical and signing for a new club.
Bergvall to Forest will no doubt heat up now.
Meanwhile we're apparently at an impass with both Tonali and Fernandes.
Alfredo Pedulla says we have a few offers for Bergvall for around £45m-£50m.
Take it and run I say. The best of our youngsters don’t get me wrong but that’s already a huge profit on a player that’s very likely not going to play much this coming season if we bring in the players we’re linked with.
Take it and run I say. The best of our youngsters don’t get me wrong but that’s already a huge profit on a player that’s very likely not going to play much this coming season if we bring in the players we’re linked with.
There's so little evidence that he's the best of our youngsters.
What has he actually done outside of maybe six good performances?
Archie is miles ahead of him.
Miles ahead based on what?
People have just been sympathetic towards Gray because he’s been thrown about in multiple positions but the sad reality is barring a small handful of games he’s often been out of his depth wherever and whenever he’s played.
If both were sold tomorrow, we’d make a huge profit on Bergvall yet a loss on Gray.
I don't agree.
I get the bar was very low, but over the past few seasons there have been so many games where we've singled out Archie as the best player on the pitch. He's miles away from being the finished article of course, but from a developmental point of view he's shown much more than Bergvall who looks exactly the same player now as he was two years ago.
Having Gallagher come in for Gray was a disastrous decision only solved by the return of Bentancur.
There really hasn’t been so many games, there’s been about 5 where Gray’s genuinely stood out, the rest of his praise has come from sympathy at being thrown about the team.
Bergvall’s run of form in Ange’s second season is still the best by a country mile of any of our young players so far, it was roughly a 2-3 month spell of consistently strong performances. He still shouldn’t have won our POTY year though, recency bias robbed Kulu of it who was excellent for the first 5-6 months.
I agree on Gallagher, mess of a signing. Hopefully if we bag the two CMs then Bentancur and those two keep him away from the starting XI, then cash-in in January.
One noticeable criticism of Gray is he often doesn't make himself available for the pass, which is especially problematic in systems where teams pass out from the back
Like, you know, ours
There’s a fair bit both need to improve on to ever really be at the level required. Unfortunately for them and it’s not entirely their fault, we’re just the wrong club for them at the moment.
Cash-in (same as Tel and Odobert) go with experience for the next year or two then hopefully with some stability we can then try and start nurturing youth again. Been a graveyard for youth for years now, better to accept it than keep wasting tens of millions on youngsters with little way of developing them.
I think that applies to most of the team. The only players I see who constantly look to get on the ball are Simons and Porro. The rest piss themselves and hide.
The underlying problem at a boardroom level is the belief that all we really need is a couple of the right signings and everything will click into place, and that' been the case since around 2018
That's why Mourinho was brought in under the belief he'd get those extra 8-12 points that kept slipping through our fingers with increasing regularity under Poch, the problem was that he was brought in at a time where the mileage catching up with certain players and others that he inherited just weren't up to snuff so more than some light tinkering was required
Similar can be said for Ange onwards: the belief was there was a solid core so if we did another Jol/Poch we'd have jam tomorrow, when the reality was that Kane & Son were doing a hard carry just as much as the Keane/Berbatov pairing were masking the underlying issues with the squad under Jol or Ramos
There's also the other issue that we don't have the stones to treat the League Cup as a testbed for youngsters like Man Utd or Arsenal regularly do, mainly because the two times we have done that (vs Arsenal in 2010, vs Colchester in 2019) it didn;t work out...though the first one can also be pinned on Harry Redknapp sacking off any non-CL matches that season
Yeah that’s definitely the impression I’ve gotten of the board too. It’s always felt half hearted and looking to do the bare minimum to achieve success, well that and then going stupid by overpaying on mediocrity.
That said, whilst more than a couple, it feels like we can solve a lot of issues in this one window if we attack it right and we’ve made a good start.
Secure a CM, LW and ST to match the current level of the players we’ve added and I see little reason as to why we can’t have a good season (minus injury jokes), in fact drop the LW because I fancy us to be stronger without one in a 3ATB. I wanted a new first choice keeper but seems the club’s going all-in on Kinsky, that could end up being the reason we falter but hopefully I’m wrong on that.
Kinsky
van Hecke, Senesi, van de Ven
Porro, Bentancur, Tonali, Robertson
Kudus, Maddison
ST
Get a good striker and that’s a side well capable of getting top six.
Less doing the bare minimum, more not seeing the big(ger) picture
The obvious one was how many goals were in the team outside of Kane and Son, which less of an issue under Poch as Dele, Lucas, Eriksen and Lamela would all chip in with their share to make up around 25 goals a season between them - but it was hard not to notice that the number of players was steadily decreasing from Mourinho onwards
What really sticks out is there's an easy metric to measure the number of goals in the team at the end of every season, and you can definitely see patterns emerging
2014-15: 58
2015-16: 69
2016-17: 86
2017-18: 74
2018-19: 67
2019-20: 61
2020-21: 68
2021-22: 69
2022-23: 70
2023-24: 74
2024-25: 64
2025-26: 48
The obvious example of replacing goals comes from looking at our top five scorers for the past four seasons
2022-23: Kane (30), Sonny (10) Bentancur (5), Hojbjerg (4) and Porro (3) for a total of 52 between them
2023-24: Sonny (17), Richarlison (11), Kulusevski (8), Johnson/Romero (5), Maddison (4) for a total of 50 between them
2024-25: Johnson (11), Maddison/Solanke (9), Sonny/Kulusevski (7), Richarlison (4), Sarr (3) for a total of 50
2025-26: Richarlsion (11), Palinha (5), Tel/Romero/Mickey Van (4), Solanke (3), Simons/Gray/Kudus/Sarr/Johnson (2) for a total of 41
Ange did a reasonable job of divvying up the goals we lost with H leaving by sharing the total between Richarlsion, Maddison, Johnson and Kulusevski while Sonny stepped into the main role and increased his goal return - and even the injury-raveged second season you could see the goals once again shared Johnson, Maddison, Solanke and Kulusevski but it's impossible to miss the drop in contributions from Sonny and Richy
Which really sticks out with last season, as there's so many goals that we lost due to injuries and player sales that simply weren't replaced, for example in 2024-25 we scored 25 goals off the wings between Sonny, Johnson and Deki, but last season we scored just 8 between Tel, Kudus and Johnson
Nobody have faith in the marquee January signing of Souza then?
Or we all saying it was another youngster signed in the hopes (with no plan) that they’d just magically develop into a good player?
Or we all saying it was another youngster signed in the hopes (with no plan) that they’d just magically develop into a good player?
The current logic (insert inverted commas as you see fit) is Fernandes won't move until early July which neatly happens to be the Scammers' next financial year, as they need to paper over a bomb crater in their finances
One obvious flaw in that argument: the Scammers' internal financial year ends on May 31st every year and not June 30th like every other PL/Championship club so it makes no difference if he joins us today or next Friday
Tonali, on the other hand, I could believe is being delayed to fudge next year's PSR for the House of Saud
One obvious flaw in that argument: the Scammers' internal financial year ends on May 31st every year and not June 30th like every other PL/Championship club so it makes no difference if he joins us today or next Friday
Tonali, on the other hand, I could believe is being delayed to fudge next year's PSR for the House of Saud
January really was so bizarre. A player we didn’t need who contributed almost nothing and a youngster no one had heard of that likely won’t play for us again for another couple of years.
More and more I think about it, the more impressive it was RDZ kept us up. Board really didn’t help him out.
There’s a video doing the rounds of Archie Gray’s brother, Harry, doing some summer training in Spurs gear. His name has been mentioned before - wonder if there’s anything in that?