I blame Football Manager or what ever the game is called. We've already got a player in Aspas that should add 10+ goals and 5+ Assists (at least) this year. Is it financially beneficial to us to spend £100K in wages (maybe less) + close to £30M on a player that may not add any more goals than Aspas would? Saying that, he could go to Spurs and go nuts, fair play if he does! Shoot me down if you wish but I like the way were doing our business, we have identified players, we have a value we're prepared to pay, if someone tops that, so be it, we move on to the next target. I'd rather we build our team by being self sufficient than blowing money we don't have trying to chase the CL drean and be the next Leeds.
how do we know? do we think we dicked around for a whole 3 days negotiating or what? I mean what do we know.... 1. did we make an actual offer? 2. did we actually talk to the player? 3. have spurs made an actual offer? 4. Have they even talked to the player? I've no clue so until we see him at spurs training ground for a medical how can we know? Oh we know wenger submitted a bid for a kebab cos pardew used it as his excuse... but nobody from anhzi or us or spurs have actually said there's a bid.
Example, all the clamour to get Dempsey, where is he now? Who did we end up getting to fix our striking options, Sturridge and Ford.. I'd take that bit of prudent management any day of the week!
Going to try and spin this positively... Willian is class but he's more about creating chances than putting them away. We already have a very creative attack, we just fail to convert most of them. Maybe that £30M might be better spent elsewhere? A real quality CB would still be nice, and another defensive midfield player to cover for Lucas or give us a bit more versatility against midfield heavy sides. They're not really glamour signings the way Willian would be, but we might actually be better off for it in the long run.
I blame this for a lot of things,tbh. There seems to be a belief amongst many fans that all you have to do is identify a player and go out and buy him if you've got the dosh. The real world is infinitely more complicated- it might even come down to where his mrs would prefer to live,ffs. We moved quickly earlier in the window to get players for whom there was no significant competitor-it's much, much more difficult to get the sought after ones. I also agree that it may turn out we don't actually need them. I'm happy enough with the creative end of our squad, I think we need more steel bringing into defensive areas first.
Most important word in that paragraph was "like" fill in the very obvious blanks: It was basically: "I know LFC want me so if I end up there fine but, you know, if any team LIKE them, you know higher up the PL, playing European football then great, even better" Why do people insist on reading what anyone in football says literally? Like "valuable part of team" "not for sale" " As Saint said, we're not in Europe we've not been at the pointy end of a competition anyone on the continent would recognise for quite some time (footballers are generally very young guys who also play FIFA lol) and we've got a relatively unknown manager. It would have been luck to snap a marquee without every team playing European football waiting to see the price, match or add to it then Steal player. I'm happy with what we got so far, knew the teams above would also move forward and didn't expect a leap up the table. A place maybe two. Anything quicker will obviously make me ecstatic!
We missed out on Dempsey because he was to old for our recruitment policy. £7m was not considered good value for money for a player of his age. By standing firm we put out a good message and probably avoiding over spending on a short term option.
I hear you.... But (sorry, there's always a but) this year the squad need not be as deep in past seasons. We're not in Europe for a start.. Unless we get a tough team in the Milk Cup we could probably get away with playing the kids with few senior players. Only competitions we'll need our main players for is the League and FA Cup, with a couple more shrewd purchases, as far as I'm concerned they need to be "Marque" signings, then I think we'll do just fine. Spurs had player of the season last year, they didn't get CL footie, apart from Van Persie, Utds "TEAM" was full of average players (when compared to their past squads), they won the league because the sum of their parts was pretty damn good!
