For me, Defoe does score goals, when he is given regular game time. He's also a bit of a confidence player. His premiership record is good. According to Premierleague.com, he has made 375 appearances, it doesn't say how many of those as a sub, but I suspect quite a few, and scored 123 goals. Not great, but not too shabby either. ..again, absolute madness to sell him at the moment, unless they have a very good replacement lined up....
But lenny, you've inadvertently backed 'the line' in saying only 3/4's of the PL would love to have him, the other 1/4 don't for the very reasons we're saying here. Both mancs, the goons, chavs, etc, have never remotely been interested in him throughout his career. Even out of curiosity you'd have to ask why. In a nutshell, without goals he offers little else other than a slight fear factor, meaning defences are aware there's a goal out of nothing in him if they don't keep an eye out. We all accept strikers have dry spells so you're looking for contribution in other ways, and JD doesn't really. I said elsewhere that there is no greater fan of JD who sings his praises about what a great finisher he is than Harry Redknapp, yet he left him on the bench for a season in favour of Ade because he didn't fit the style of play...says it all really. If a striker has to be got rid of for a better one it should be Ade, shouldn't be too costly, or difficult to find one with better attitude.
This is an interesting point, cause it would assume that Bale was sold very early and the to and fro with Madrid was just for show. It would also mean AVB was a liar or not in the know. We spent a lot quite early - Paulinho, Soldado, Chadl etc, so if Bale hadn't gone, we'd have been very unlikely to recoup our spend. Allegedly Paulinho only signed on the condition that Bale stayed (if so, that must have been an interesting conversation down the line). Was it even a done deal when we bought Lamela, Chiriches, Eriksen. It could be that we were prepared to invest - possibly on the understanding that it was for one season whereby we would recoup some of our overspend. If so, we might do it again?
I think Paulinho just said that he was told Bale was staying when he signed, I don't think it was a promise. I think the point with the Bale money was that we didn't want to bring in even more new players all at once, it's caused us enough problems so far with 7. The fact we went in for Willian suggests to me that the early transfers like Paulinho were not dependent on selling Bale so really we should have about half that money left.
Both of AVB's two main targets where Moutinho and William. Did Levy really want to sign both? I'm not convinced as overall I don't believe Levy likes to trust the judgement of the manager that's why he likes the advice of Baldini. But Levy should remember while having a Dof in the past has helped us discover Bale and others, our best period of performing and getting top four has come when we had no Dof. I'm sure Baldini is good at his job but if we have more money to spend then it has to be used to bring in players the manager wants, players that the team is crying out for.
I think Spurcat said awhile ago that both AVB and Baldini wanted Willian. Maybe it was true of AVB last season but I'm not so sure, it looked to me like Levy sold VDV expecting to sign Moutinho. Long term I think the DoF's job is making money. With a new DoF in and a big player to replace this was never really going to be the summer for fighting hard to make sure we get value for money, I think we were more concerned with missing out on targets so whilst Levy might've shunned the transfer values placed on Willian and Soldado the previous summer he was happy for us to pay the same or more on them this summer(even if Willian got whipped from under our nose). Going forward I expect we'll be signing players based on extensive discussions and scouting and even then I'm sure we'd turn our backs on a deal if it became too expensive.
WIllian I could be wrong on, but Moutinho like I said at the time, I never believed Levy was intent on making the purchase, as he needs that assistance of a DOF to help him make a big signing. If Avb & Baldini sat down and assembled this squad together, thinking it gave the manager the best balanced squad then they got it wrong and luckily Chelsea did come in and take WIllian. WIllian, Soldado and Lamela, that would have been nearly 90 million and the high possibility only one would be a success. I mean if you put all these players into a computer game, it may look like it works, but with such a high number of unproven players in our league, surely someone at the club must have stopped and said " we need players proven at premier league level", which we know are harder to sign, but we have too many players who need time to settle.
Going by this principle and logic., Spurs should be putting up the whole squad, except maybe Sandro, for sale.
Looking back, Bale must have been a gonner from early on. if we hadn't have been selling him, we wouldn't have bought 1 or 2 of our new players as we wouldn't have needed them, but regardless, there would have still been a £60m+ net spend on those we did need/want. if bale had stayed, I can't imagine that our net spend would have been any more than £30-35m. There's just no way that we've got £60m+ to blow. Well, maybe we have, but it's completely out of character for us. Even £30-35m seems like a lot based on our history and the recouping of monies in recent years. The more i think about it, the more i think that Bale being sold was sorted early on, but perhaps even AVB was in the dark. The blow was softened by a few faces coming early to show AVB the board is backing him, only to then let him know towards the end of the window (media lockdown period) that he was leaving. That way, things were easier for him as he had some new arrivals already, and it was also easier for the fans at the time. But going back to Defoe, if this buying policy is how we play things (no net spend year after year) there's two questions i will ask again: if we aren't selling anyone, who is going to be better for £6m? or Who do we sell to give us some additional money on top of the £6m to replace Defoe? (another striker that's got Defoe's ability or better will cost us more than 6m, that's for certain.)
I dunno, the itks were saying we had £50mill to spend in the summer anyway weren't they? I'm sure there would've been more sales had we kept Bale and needed the cash though. I'd be surprised if there's not money still there, although I don't particularly expect any big spending in January.
We can just use one of our midfielders as a false nine as we play with false wingers. No need to buy any new strikers.
