Was looking ok until pre-Asia trophy. With Bale's situation becoming more and more annoying, Vertonghen getting injured, selling Caulker with no replacement lined up and the fact a few first teamers have either had no or very little pre-season minutes with only one game left before the season starts is a little concerning.
Pre-season purchases have arguably been our best in yonks. We rarely bring in more than 1 who's guaranteed to be a starter with the rest either squad players or youngsters, so signing these 3 players who'll likely slot straight into the first XI is great and just what we needed. Though our departures have been pretty poor. I've rated Caulker for years and so seeing an academy product of his talent leave was hard to take, especially as no replacement seems imminent, I mentioned yesterday that I personally would've kept Dempsey around. Smith going on loan to the Championship AGAIN was a bad move in my opinion and Pritchard to League 1 even weirder (though if no clubs in higher divisions were interested - which I'd find surprising - it's understandable).
I'm not that pissed about Caulker to be honest. The coaching staff obviously don't rate him at the moment, and if he turns out to be good I have no doubt he'd love to come back to us in a few years time (albeit at a higher fee).
Caulkers' personal circumstances are such that a move to Wales suited him, and for a player who was not going to be a 1st team regular, the money offered was considered to be too good to turn down. In fairness to the club, he had an average season last year, and as I have mentioned on here before, if Harry had remained in chage, it was his intention to send out Caulker on loan for last season as he didn't consider him ready for a full season in the PL. Seems AVB is of the same mind. Regarding Adam Smith, all of Harry Refknapp and his coaching staff, were unanimous in their belief that Smith could make it at Spurs. This view is shared unanimously by AVB and all his coaches, so I agree it is disappointing to see him return to the Championship for another season. However, it should be remembered that for the last couple of months of last season, he was being left out of the Millwall side and I guess that had an influence on the decision. As for Alex Pritchard, he undoubtedly did well for Peterborough in the Championship, and he was outstanding for our fringe squad for the past 18 months, but he does need a sustained run of games over a longer period and whilst a return to Peterborogh was an option, our relationship with Swindon is equally as suitable and of , it is closer to home for us to monitor his progress.
Apparently, someone mentioned that we had a 20% sell on fee inserted in the Caulker deal so knowing Levy if Caulker impresses he'll try and wrangle a decent deal to bring him back. £8m (if correct?) was a good amount but I'd still have preferred to keep him. He got a few consecutive games at one point in the season but bar that, most of his appearances were sporadic so he never had a chance to fully show what he can do in a sustained run of games. Yeah I noticed Smith was being benched for a few games towards the end, do you know if that was due to his form or fatigue Spurcat? Whenever I've seen Adam play he's very hard working so it wouldn't surprise if he started to tire towards the end if that was the case. As for Pritch, I remember you or soemone else saying that a return to Posh was an option, Swindon though seems to be a decent club in terms of the way they play plus the fact they can offer him and our other lads good game time but I'm just amazed no one else was in for him from the Championship, there's a number of clubs I'm sure he could get a good amount of game time at. Any how, no point in dwelling, here's hoping both lads do well with their teams and come back looking to challenge for places next season
it looks that way, but remember we nearly sold Dawson last year and it would have been easy to say "the manager never rated him" yet look what happened? so I'm not 100% convinced about caulker leaving from the sense he wasn't rated, as that was my initial view but I believe its more a) caulker wanted to leave for personal/development reasons b) levy saw the chance of striking a good deal this leaves us now with dawson as the only fit centre back and having to scramble around trying to close a deal or play fryers (who has been a full back).
It's slightly worrying that I can't think of a single realistic signing we could make at centre-back though. We need someone who's going to be happy sitting on the bench most of the time, and there aren't that many of those around. This is one for the scouting team in my opinion, I doubt we'll bring in a player who any of us know much about.
As desperate as it sounds, I would ask Gallas back on a 1 month contract, yes we're that desperate! Thankfully we start agaisnt Palace who will basically have their backside ripped open each week but after that we need someone.
I'd be happy with any of... Garay (Benfica) Papadopoulos (Schalke) Chico (Swansea) Williams (Swansea) Luisao (Benfica) Barzagli (Juventus) *** Godin (Atletico) *** Spahic (Atletico) *** Demichelis (Malaga) Arribas (Osasuna) All of them could do a job and all would be affordable although the 3 players marked with *** would be fairly expensive and probably only be available if Bale was sold.
Affordable? I don't know all of them, but those I do, I don't consider them to be affordable considering our spending already this summer - considering all we really NEED is a 3rd/4th choice centre back I wouldn't like the club to be spending in the region of £15m on the player - that's pretty near our transfer record prior to this summer.
Luisao is 32 we'd get him for around £6m at a guess, Garay maybe looking at £12m. But considering we have no idea how bad Kabouls injury is (or how many times it could come back to haunt him) Garay could be considered 2nd choice behind Verts. Again, Godin and Demichelis have age against them so wouldn't cost a great deal (expecially Demichelis with malaga needing money). Chico and Williams probably abit pricey but again, if we take the £8m from Caulker, £6m from Dempsey, maybe give them Huddlestone as part of the deal we could get one of them. **edit*** apparently Godin is only 27 he seems to have been around forever.
Garay, Papadopolous, Williams, Barzagli would all be in the region of £15m or more I reckon. Luisao at £6m? For a player who'll be 33 halfway through the season it's too much imo. EDIT: Barzagli is also getting on so perhaps wouldn't be £15m, but would he go from being a starter at Serie A champions to us? Unlikely.
How can the club not see caulker as a first teamer when we have zero fit centre backs? If they had him behind fryers and Livermore then we have now hope
Having attempted to give some justification of the deal in my earlier post, I do accept the club has acted somewhat hastily here. There are movements towards bringing someone in, but as we have seen before, no signing is 100% done and dusted until everything is in place. So yes, potentially we have left ourselves short and very reliant on the new signing to go through. In addition to all this, there are a number of players who are way short on match practice with less than 2 weeks to he big day. As I previously mentioned, there was a scheduled game behind closed doors set up for last Thursday which was cancelled, and then we had brought over from Spain, an under 21 Real Sociadad squad to give our under 21 lads a test before they start their season his coming Friday. This game was due at the training ground for Saturday and then we called it off at 6pm on Friday evening, leaving a well pissed off Spanish side phoning around non-league sides trying to arrange a game at less than 24 hours notice (they eventually went to Histon in Cambridgeshire).
Thanks Spurcat, i'm sure its not as slap-dash internally but from the outside a few of our decisions on personnel and friendly line-ups seem a little, how do i say this, bat-**** crazy
For the Monaco game we were missing Gomes, Kaboul, Dawson, Vertonghen, Assou-Ekottu, Sandro, Paulinho, Holtby, Bale, Soldado, Adebayor You could make a case for this being our best 10 outfield players. On form they would probably have beaten our actual line up 5 -2 or thereabouts. But there were reasons for not picking all 11 of these: so why was our selection crazy?
Not just the selections, the transfer of Caulker now looks absolutely insane. Why are the following "first teamers" not getting any match practice: Kaboul (supposedly been training) Sandro (ditto) Benny Paulinho Holtby Adebayor So now we have 1 preseason match left to bed in new players and get exising players match fit.
