From BBC Gossip: The image of Real Madrid target Gareth Bale, 24, has been removed from the official Tottenham Twitter page. Full story: AS (in Spanish) http://futbol.as.com/futbol/2013/08/05/primera/1375722634_812975.html please log in to view this image Don't suppose the image change could have anything to do with Dempsey leaving for America
Hi CJ, thanks for the welcome. All the ITK I've read says that Daws is out 'for a while' so I take it he won't feature v Palace. As with JV we'll surely know more after the Espanyol game. My take ATM is that NONE of our 'proper CBs' will feature v Palace. Maybe JV might make it, maybe he might be 100%, maybe, maybe, chips and gravy. As you say the situation is a joke and immensely frustrating. The minute Gallas left we should have been looking for a new CB, and the minute JV got injured on that farce of a pitch, looking should have changed to action within a week. At that stage (of JV's injury) we had only one fit quality CB, Daws, plus Caulker who hasn't 'trained on' and his subsequent sale shows wasn't 'rated' by the hierarchy. Talk of Kaboul playing was the stuff of 'la la land'. He's been out for nearly a year now, it's pointless relying on him. This has been an horrendous piece of miscalculation and recklessness by the club, even by our standards! It's simply unforgivable, but no surprise as despite all the money in the game are football clubs yet run in a 'professional way'? You have to wonder. Re Soldado, it's a hell of a gamble. I welcome it and praise the club for getting him in, but it could easily go wrong. I think Paulinho though is a copper-bottomed superb signing and again congratulate the club on getting him in.
I don't mean to doom-monger *cough* but it does seem a weird thing to do. Surely we could change the picture of Dempsey and keep Bale on there. If it really is meaningless then what a silly thing to do, they must realise its just going to lead to even more speculation. Twitter has become almost as important if not more important than clubs official sites these days so you can't blame people for finding it suspicious that he was removed. I should think its all meaningless but I can see how they drew conclusions from it!
Hi TJ, Chivu sounds an interesting call. No idea if it's a goer, but hey. Can you explain why Dawson is not in your list of CBs? Have I missed something here? Daws is our captain and for me, up to his injury, our best defender. So why are you not talking about him yet talking about Kab who's been out nearly a year,and may never be the player he was? Certainly up until Daws got injured, he was way behind him in the pecking order. I hope Daws hasn't picked up a 'serious one', if he has then it's really gutting, but yes then he's not a realistic consideration either for the foreseeable future. We need players in now, not talking of players who are probably months off from being up to speed, and indeed may never be the player they were again.
The thing with the lack of CBs is that AVB said last year that his ideal is three established CBs and a young up-and-comer which is why he was happy to sell Daws. Well to me that already seems a bit dodgy. It's basically only allowing for one injury at any one time. Cos once Verts, say, is injured then our up-and-comer is on the bench and our only option in the event of injury or suspension! And if that injury or suspension happens then we have zero back-up! Since Verts is arguably our best back-up LB and Kaboul is our best back-up RB then surely it makes sense to have 5 CBs anyway (since two of them double as FB back-up). For me AVB's stance on how many CBs a squad should have is one of the more questionable aspects of his management and has been from day one.
Sorry didn't make myself very clear there - I absolutely love Dawson but I was referring to if we signed Chivu and Sakho and when Verts and Kaboul are back up to speed as Kaboul is, as much as I love Dawsons spirit / attitude, not as good a defender as the other 4 in my eyes. But for the foreseeable future Dawson would of course be there Also worth mentioning I'm looking at it through AVB's eyes. I'd love Dawson to finish his career with us even if he is a back up but don't think AVB is that keen on him (he tried to sell him last summer I believe)
1. How could Twitter, a format where there is a character limit of 140, be more important than the OS? Sounds like you're too lazy to visit the OS so get all your news on Twitter. I've worked in digital marketing and read extensively on it - I don't think anyone in this field would argue that an organisations social media output is more important than their official web content. 2. It's not 'people' finding it suspicious, it's Spanish journalists with a specific agenda who will distort any action to back up said agenda. 3. The background image is a single image of Bale & Dempsey, not two images - one of Bale and one of Dempsey, as anyone who is unfamiliar with Twitter might be inclined to suspect. So when Dempsey leaves they have to change the WHOLE image. The likelihood is they have a number of these images so once they couldn't use the Bale/Dempsey one anymore they had to switch to the Dembele/Lennon one. Harldy a fvcking drama, and probably more due to the fact that we no longer have the right to use Dempsey's image in marketing material than any pending Bale transfer.
What I meant by twitter becoming more important is that more and more clubs 'Break News' on their twitter before a story goes up on their official site. Fans of other teams will and do follow us on twitter but wouldn't necessarily visit our official site. I of course visit our site for absolute confirmation or proper news but my point was that our twitter page / posts get viewed / perceived by the rest of the world more than our official site. I know on my twitter I follow Norwich for instance but have never visited their OS, and if during the Holt saga last year I visited their page and he was suddenly nowhere to be seen I'd think 'that's abit weird'. In terms of the image, if its 1 image fair enough but my point still stands the club should n know removing bale would cause a stir. It'd take me an hour to remove Dempsey and keep Bale on there - surely someone in charge of that stuff at a business like spurs could have sorted an image in half an hour? Demps left 2 days ago.
Well said LP. He/the club very nearly sold Daws, which would have been a huge mistake. I think we got very lucky when we didn't sell him. I did some stats, and in the first 12 games when Daws didn't start, we averaged about 1.5 pts per game. When Daws returned, thereafter, when he started we averaged over 2 pts per game. Extrapolated over the season that was a huge points difference. Now Daws wasn't the only factor of course, but he was absolutely vital in our improved form after those first 12 games, which did so much damage to our CL hopes. Massive, massive mistake by AVB, and in general like you LP, I have big question marks over his understanding of what we need defensively. And, don't even get me started on the goals from corners, which we were at it again v Sunderland, then the poor defending from the free kick v Monaco.
Fair comments TJ As you can tell I rate Daws a lot more highly than your good self or, it seems AVB, and I don't rate AVB's CB approach at all. But it's all about opinions, etc. AVb's is the one that counts in these matters. Had we got CL or won a trophy, he would have been proved right. However, we didn't so to me he was proved to be wrong and continues to be proved wrong on this matter. I fully expect to be flaming mad with him and the club after the Palace game, here's hoping I'm wrong and we somehow win.
To be fair, though: when has the OS actually had NEWS on it? Especially with regards to transfer news or injury updates? Any information about the club tends to be available through other outlets days if not weeks before the OS. That's OK, in my opinion cos you know that once something is announced on the OS it is properly, properly, definitely all done and dusted. Twitter might be 99.9% bullshit but there's a hell of a lot of twit-twattering. That 0.1% of Twitter which contains actual information constitutes a fair chunk of stuff. I'd imagine that any transfer/injury/sacking will come out on Twitter or the like before anywhere else most of the time. Trouble is that so will all the other 99.9% of the "stories" that are total arse-water.
Just one thing to say,why did we sell Caulker,and then have a makeshift centre defence v Monaco,i really don't understand AVB sometimes,we need two C/B immedietly
They're desperate for a story. These new ones appear to be from real photos rather than photoshopping the new kit on and so are better quality anyway.
It makes sense to replace Bale just in case (given an update was already needed for Deuce). I don't think it says the club have decided he is going, but maybe they don't want to get rid of the Dempsey pic and then possibly have to to lose the Bale one in a week?
There's more to it tots. - notso hinted at this a couple of pages ago. I expect there'll be an update on chiriches today or tomorrow. There has to be! Last I saw, it was very much like the bale deal. Some saying he's joining real, some saying he's staying. With chiriches, some are saying it has collapsed, some are saying it's very much on. One thing is for sure, very little truth is getting out. Spurs have done a good job this year keeping the transfer business quiet.
As I said a while back, there is a "zip it, keep it zipped or pay the consequences" enforcement throughout the club at the moment, further emphasised after a rather unsavoury incident recently where a member of staff was severely reprimanded after exchanging inside info for cash with a national newspaper journalist.
Good to see that Spurs are cracking down on inside 'ITK' While I love reading the stuff, I'd far rather deals weren't endangered by 'careless talk' I'm quite happy just to read made-up ITK, it all adds to the fun of the fair
I wouldn't read too much into the "Bale removed from Twitter background pic", surely the club just wants to rotate it's background with all of our stars? They did last season. Even though Bale is becoming a huge marketing asset to us, the club still has a number of stars it can promote. Bale's face is plastered all over times square, he was one of the players chosen for our kit launch and was in all of the photos released for that too plus he's usually somewhere on the OS... It's only natural that another player gets a bit of exposure isn't it?
I just want to say: Has anyone who considers the Twitter pic relevant asked themselves: Would the contents of top-level, secret negotiations actually be passed on to the guy who does the IT? To, er, pass on subtle messages. Messages that you wouldn't want to pass on. Or maybe the guy who sorts out the website etc is kept in the loop so he can put appropriate pictures on a Twitter feed. The accuracy of these pictures is at the fore-front of Joe Lewis' mind, I'm sure. If anyone is familiar with the Spurs OS the idea of the people who work on it being given and then disseminating inside information is pretty funny. I think the last update on the OS was confirmation that Gazza's signed for Lazio.
