I've been somewhat AWOL from these boards all summer. Numbed and somewhat speechless from how last season ended. So close. Again. Something about how Bale stormed off the pitch when the news hit, gave me a hunch that he'd be gone by now. That and the interview he had with Garth Crooks earlier in the season, spelling out the fact that he would review his options if we didn't get champions league football. It still didn't stop me from voting optimistically that he'd stay in a recent poll on here though. Naive. On the bright side. Levy, Baldini and AVB have been doing the business in the transfer market. Good times it would seem. Then Ozil to Arsenal. Lukaka to Everton. Moses to Liverpool. The top six teams all look a little tastier. Are we tasty enough? It's that time again. Time for your vote......
Yes, we can't worry or influence what the other teams do and i think we are a better team/squad this year than last.
On paper they are all good signings,time will tell if they can cut it in the P/L,if they all do then i think we will easily finish op 4 and even be contenders
I'm still unhappy. Sunday blues have turned into Tuesday blues. The poll need more grey. Baldini - oh yeah. AVB - meh. Levy - why you no spend profits? I'm sure I'll be happy after 10 games.
I wont be happy until I see us carving teams open, creating chances and scoring 2, 3 and 4 goals a game. Starting against an ordinary Norwich team at WHL next game, in our 3 games so far we have bossed possession without creating many clear chances, that has to change.
I'm always happy As I said in another thread when you look at how many positions we needed to strengthen at the start of the summer and at the end, I think we have to be happy. Bale leaving gives us a big hole in our first 11 though but I don't think we had a choice in that and we should improve overall if our new signings are up to their billing. Time will tell but right now I'm happy
Asking if Spurs fans are happy is like asking Activision if they have scruples. For the most part I am, as we addressed several things we needed (a striker, a creative midfielder, cover in midfield, replacing Bale) and shifted some deadwood (Bentley, Gallas) but on the other hand we needed a left back and cover for Lloris, Gomes is still here, loaning Pritchard out seemed odd, whilst selling Caulker was a head-scratcher. January should see the left back issue addressed...hopefully.
I am happy that we strengthened and didn't panic as we have in the past but only time will tell if we have spent wisely...it could take a while for avb to find the right system for this squad and for the players to gel.
I would have voted 2 if it said No, too many changes, less is more, too many players with potential, we're gonna struggle to reach our targets.
Sounds like a clear NO to me Boss, but I hear your point. Who do you think we should we have kept? (aside from the obvious.)
Do we know what Levy's and AVB's target's are this season?,with all the new faces i would imagine they know it will take time
Overall I'm very pleased with this transfer window. Baldini gets top marks. Step one to getting where you need to go is get the players. We look to have done that. Step two is for the manager and players to forge a top side. As far as that goes, we shall see. I think AVB did a remarkably good job with what he had last year. But he's got a different problem this year, and I have some worries, the biggest one being that he just doesn't seem to like playmakers. We've got two good ones in Eriksen and Holtby, at least. Let's see if we can develop and utilize them to create a team that scores freely. The bigger problem is that while our squad keeps improving, so do our rivals'. A CL spot looks at least as far away now as it did at this time last year (assuming this squad needs time to do its best, a fairly safe assumption.) Finally, back to our transfer window. I wish we'd gotten Hailovic. Lamela may be the next big star, but it would have been better to have two with that potential. I wish we'd kept Beni. On the other hand, I like Jan at left back, though I'm not sure how much he'll feature. But these are minor points. There are two major ones, more or less imponderable: Should we have kept Bale another year? I raise the point partly from Levy's interesting claim that that was his plan, and that he only changed it due to pressure from Real and Bale. The fact remains he had Bale under contract for three more years. From the point of view of players as investments, the answer is no, it made sense to sell this year. But when you consider we've lessened our chances of getting a CL spot, I'm not so sure it was the best thing to do. Should we have worked out a Bale for Ozil deal? In other words, would we rather have Ozil than, say, Erikson, Chadli and Paulinho? That may be an even tougher question, because we would have to know who Arsenal would have gotten. Still: we've continued to improve our squad by buying and selling better than other clubs, and this window looks to be the best yet (though only time will tell).
I really hope so! I wished for Holtby to come on in place of Dembele during the Arsenal match. We looked too much like the frustrated Tottenham of seasons past without the creativity.
According to my scientific data analysis, every single Spurs fan in the world wanted us to bring on Holtby. Hence some of the concerns stated above.
I agree with you. Hallovic would have been the icing on the cake. The Modric replacement. It does seem strange, AVB's reluctance to field playmakers, especially since he tried so hard to get Modric at Chelsea, and his use of Mata for that team. It's a strange situation when our best window in ages sees us lose our key player. Keep him and we challenge. Sell him and, who knows?
This season we should have integrated Carroll and holtby, holtby may still feature but doesn't look likely. Caulker said he wanted to go but I would rather we replaced him with someone who has experience of the English game. Dembele is basically non existant, does anyone know what his role is anymore? I appeciate the Lamela, paulinho, eriksen and capoue signings offer excitement but we have Sandro, dembele, paulinho, capoue, siggy,holtby, eriksen all competing for midfield. Then we have Defoe and Soldado. rose left back and no real competition. that for me shows we're overloaded in certain positions, lack of depth in others, and overall I just see too much potential.
Also lockstock, I would say this if we was an Italian, German or a polish team, we need a strong native influence, and there is a chance soon our starting XI bar rose, will be foreign. I don't believe thats healthy. Two of my favourite foreign teams Dortmund and Juve, both have a strong native influence to go with what foreign talent brings and thats the ideal balance.
Dawson's probably got a good shot of retaining his place and both of our right-backs are English. I do agree with your overall point though, to some extent. We need to start bringing through more youngsters and balancing up the signings a little
we have to blame the topteams for that,when a few years back they kicked off when eufa tried to limit the teams foreign players
