Gylfi having a medical

Spurs are a big club but, like Everton, will never be able to afford the big signings unless they sell someone first. Just because they hadn't spent a penny yet doesn't really mean anything.

Get your point about Liverpool, but could we wait for a bidding war? You want to get your players in early and Sigurdsson had already missed our pre-season tour. We saw how late Bony came into the squad last season and, as a result, how long it took him to integrate and get up to fitness.

Look, you're underwhelmed. I am not. I'm extremely happy with this deal for the reasons I've stated in this thread. So I'm happy for you to continue your negative ramblings, but you won't bring me down to your level on this one. Agree to disagree.

 

The answer is of course, he didn't.

We had the transfer lined up, then Brendan left....Siggy decided to wait and see what happened....Brendan decided to **** us over and bid the same as us with higher wages...Spurs continued their strategy of scuppering Liverpool's deals (they are direct rivals).
Laudrup said what our board wanted to hear but anyone with any sense whatsoever knew we had no chance.

Laudrup then brought in a better player for £2m.
Also brought in Hernandez and De Guzman to score and make goals from midfield.
We had 3 players who could score and make goals for the price of Siggy.
That's "achieving" in the transfer market.

Monk on the other hand swaps a player worth £15m for one worth £8m because he had no realistic alternatives.

I like Siggy and think he'll do well but this summer is costing us.

 

They just sold Jake Livermore to Hull for £8m
FFS they are a much bigger club than us, in attendances, fan base, merchandise. ..they finish higher and get more TV money...they charge London prices.

Simply not having that £10m was the most they could go to...you just tell them fine then, f** off...they still have a left-back problem to fix...same as Liverpool. ..if it were possible to find cheaper on the continent they would have done so...Sevilla said no to Liverpool's £16m, the boy at Wolfsburg won't go for less than £15m either.

some fees Spurs have paid (pre Bale sale);
- Moussa Dembele £15m (Fulham)
- Jan Vertonghen £12m (Ajax)
- David Bentley £15m (Blackburn)
- Jermain Defoe £15m (Portsmouth)
- Wilson Palacios £12m (Wigan)
- Robbie Keane £12m (Liverpool)
- Roman Pavlyuchenko £13.8m (Spartak Moscow)
- Luka Modric £16.6m (Dynamo Zagreb)
- Darren Bent £16.5m (Charlton Athletic)

In 2001 they paid £8.1m to Southampton for Dean Richards for f**'s sake.

They can perfectly well afford to pay the going rate in 2014. We've been stiffed here.



As I post this I read that Burnley and Leicester are up to £8m for Troy Deeney but Watford are holding out for £10m.
We've just let a proven Prem performer, 21 years old, full International, left-back (not too many British home-grown left-backs about that are good enough to play for a top 6/7 club) go for £10m!
AaaaargghhhhhhfffffffuckkkkkingMOOOOOONNNNKYOUCUUUUUUUUNNNNNNT!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Pretty much all of the players you listed are midfielders/strikers. Positions that naturally are much more expensive than defenders (especially full backs) as midfielders and strikers are the players that can directly win you games.

The only defender on your list is Vertonghen, who quite frankly is in a different class to Davies. Vertonghen had been playing well internationally, had just won Eredivisie Player of the Year, was team captain at Ajax having won the league 2 years running, and was playing well in Europe - yet he was still only sold for £12m. Only £2m more than reported for Ben.

It's very easy to make a list of stats, not look at the context, and get wound up.

 

"...proven Prem performer, 21 years old, full International, left-back..." - Change that to 25 years old and it's Neil Taylor.

People seem to think that just because Ben has kept Taylor out of the team, Taylor is awful. If Taylor hadn't had his ankle broken, we probably wouldn't have even heard of Ben Davies, and that's the truth. We were all raving about Neil. How do we not know that, given a solid run of games, Gwion Edwards, Jazz Richards or Lee Lucas wouldn't have performed just as well and become as pivotal in their positions as Ben? Ben Davies was extremely lucky and privileged that, unfortunately, the only player ahead of him in the squad missed an entire season through inflicted injury. If we'd had experienced back-up, Ben wouldn't have even been thrown in. We're all glad he was given the chance and that he took it, but it should, in no way, be used as a slight against Neil. It's not easy to get back up to Premier League speed after having an ankle snapped when you're literally given a couple of games here and there. It took Aaron Ramsey 3 or 4 years to come good again after much patience and persistence from Wenger. The Arsenal fans were desperate to get rid of him.

Back to your post, my guess is that Sevilla and Wolfsburg don't have a ready-made replacement like we do.

 

We have Taylor , Ben wanted to go , we made good money..... easy decision imo . Ill be very anxious to see how Davies does with the Spurs and Taylor does with us . I think Davies value and minutes will fall as the season progresses and Taylor will slot in perfectly .

 

I think Terror ball is bordering on the insane?.........................


He expects us to believe that Huw Jenkins the ever present Ebenezer Scrooge of Swansea city has now blown a fuse and gone to throwing money away? Of course the true facts are that Terror doesn't have a clue to what the real figures are, and he is making assumptions I find laughable given Jinx's track record over the years, has he ever stopped to think that we might well have got Spurs to subsidize Siggy's wages to the tune of £20,000 per week? after all Siggy was on £60,000 per week at Spurs and no way would any player take a wage cut, so if you factor in that £20,000 per week over the term of the contract, then the deal looks even better from where I am sitting. Credit where credit is due Monk and Jenkins are having a very good transfer dealings so far, and if we get some of the other reported transfer targets then we will definitely be a much stronger squad than we were under Laudrup.

Good to hear on Sky Sports than Poz has gone back to Spain to Rayo Vallecano. We are getting back to where we should be with a winning philosophy, not one of a defeatist approach of Laudrup with his insipid disinterested disposition.................

 

No doubt in the current market ben was slightly undervalued but all in all its not a bad deal. Ben has flaws in his game that cost us plenty last season, maybe the players inside and in front of him didnt help but IMO he is not a natural defender,least not yet.

I have no doubt inmy mind that because the likes of michu,pablo and one or two more didnt fancy playing under monk we were pushed into making a purchase to RE dress that balance, because siggy was someone known well to us and a player who could slot right in we were obviously prepared to pay a premium.

Gylfi is a cracking player and should soften the blow of losing a world class michu. In an ideal world we would have told Spurs 14m or Stuff it but the bigger picture was more important.

It was clear that vorm was going around the end of last season, i have said that unrest will create casualties and so its turned out vorm didnt seem to fancy it and didnt seem as if his heart was in it, the fact we were sharp out of the blocks to sign fabianski proves it.

We have pushed our wage structure into the stratosphere in the last few months to accomadate monks transition, im not sure if its smart but time Will tell.

Gomis,fab,siggy,ash and probably montero Will be on a massive wedge to go along with what bony and ki already earn.

Say what you like about laudrup but he signed good players within our budget for low fees.


No doubt the club Are now over spending to try and sweep in a new regime but at least we know they wont be intentionally reckless with the money.

The recent signings show what happens when you dont have a certain profile manager, im not saying its good or bad im saying that if we want quality we Will now have to compete with financial muscle alot more, that has never been the way we operated , until this season .

Martinez sniffed out a few gems, so did brenden so did laudrup, its what we do to survive and it sets us apart from others .

When huw said he thought our football principles were being eroded away i didnt quite understand it, i certainly dont understand it now!


Anyway, all in all we arnt in bad shape, over to you Gary monk

 

To some extent I agree with you Norway, but I'm of the opinion that we had too many Spanish players in general anyway, and that was not healthy and it proved so, and I'm pleased that we are getting some balance back, it's a shame that Michu has done what he has done, but the club have done well in bringing in Siggy as his replacement he is a creator of goals for Gomis and Bony, and I just heard on Sky news that 'Monty' has signed, it's all Swansea on Sky news of late, at least we are in earnest about getting back on track, whatever your views of last season are, I'm very positive for our coming season!.........

 

It wasn't a prop em when we had loads of Spanish players before,including our manager !

The problem was not just with the Spanish lot it was with our own senior guys too! You and I both know 2/3 of our senior players bend the chairmans ear on a regular basis .

I'm not saying what is right or wrong but I am saying you can't blame just one faction.

Some of the biggest egos at the swans are the ones that believe they are untouchable, a recipe for disaster when they believe such things.

IMO nobody is bigger than the club,that includes the ones who have been there years, if they were good enough to have attracted interest from bigger clubs they would have been gone quicker than you can say "loyalty"

A case of "dimming somebody else's candle to make their own burn brighter". Is what has gone on last season.

With the squad we now have we should be pushing for top 10 minimum, the investment has been made.

 

How is that good buisness, we have brought him on and is now a full Dutch international. He has to be worth at least double the reported 2.5m we reportedly received for him.

 

I am still not so sure on this Valley. Fabianski out of contract and would have signed for whoever wanted him in the PL.
Gomis. No way did he come here have anything to do with Monk. It was all to do with us Paying him more than anyone else.
Emnes, would have come here no matter who was in charge, even you Valley.
Montero had said he wanted to play in the PL. We are the onlyPl who has shown an interest so he signed.
Siggy maybe choose monk in place of Pulis. But I dont think Spurs gave him much option in their chase of Ben and Vorm.

Saying all that they are not bad signings. Just need to sort out the fullback areas and defensive midfield.

 

The point was you said they couldn't go up to that kind of money, they can and have.
Makes no difference what position they are or whether they are better footballers than Davies.
In this market in the summer of 2014 young home-grown International standard left backs who are good enough to slot into top 6 teams are changing hands for £30m. Even young left-backs from the continent (that are desired by top 6 clubs) are not changing hands for less than £15m.
We got £10m, or in another way, we got Siggy....whose market value was £8m.

 

Mate, you could say this about any player.
Shaw/Lallana wouldn't have been heard of if....
Fact is Laudrup spotted him, chucked him in, trusted him and developed him. As a result we had a 21 year old, proven Prem performer, home-grown talent who 2 clubs in the top 6 wanted....and we swapped him for a player who's market value was £8m.
Levy is laughing his cock off right now. 2 ex-Spurs managers couldn't even find a regular place for Siggy in the side. They had a big ****ing problem at left-back.
Spurs and Liverpool had the money and we held the cards, we folded.

 

You are right, Davies' quality would have come to the fore without the injury to Taylor. I just dont understand why we just didnt hold out and Spurs would have paid more. They are despearate for a LB and a home grown one. They dont see either Danny Rose or assou ekotto (apologise for spelling) as good enough and the LB spot was one of their priorities as they didnt stregnthen there last year. If we had played this in a more shrewd way we would have got our 15, just as Spurs were desperate for a LB and Davies was their choice. But no as per usual when a club comes calling we let them have what they want. Levy is a master at negotiation and HJ has just shown he is way behind him.

Please dont see this as a negative post in terms of the Siggy signing as I think it is a good one and am more than happy to have hime back. This is a dig at our board undervaluing our players, along with other clubs, which seems to be a regular thing with the Swans.

 

Incorrect. Shaw and Lallana didn't have their roads paved for them by injury. In fact, when Taylor got injured, Laudrup signed Tiendalli. That was his reaction. Tiendalli was signed as a player to play either full back position and replace Taylor. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19541329). That was Laudrup's thinking. He got dumb lucky that Ben turned out to be a revelation. Dumb lucky.

Why can't you understand that just because you're not in the first 11, you aren't useless? Siggy was first team squad for Spurs two seasons running. You don't make 85 appearances without being class.

 

Again, incorrect. Homegrown doesn't really have much to do with it. English does. Scottish and Welsh players change hands for less than English players for some reason. Maybe it's because playing for the English at International Level is seen as a much bigger achievement than playing for Wales - which it is unfortunately.

Ben is still a raw talent. He's not the finished article, and Spurs could make do with Rose and Naughton if they really had to, they aren't terrible players. Ben is nothing more than solid. He's athletic, is reasonably quick, reads the game well, but his crossing is still poor on the run and he's got no 'special' feature like a venomous shot, great aerial presence, or lightning speed. You seem to think that if you aren't brilliant, you're awful. You need to calm down and start seeing sense. You're wound up and letting it affect your judgement. We could have started a bidding war, but it may have taken an extra 2-4 weeks to get the deal done. Not good preparation for either club I'd hope you'd agree.

EDIT: I should add that I am disappointed that Ben left, he was progressing nicely and I would have kept him ahead of Taylor. But once the player's head is turned, sometimes you've just got the get the deal done, and with that in mind we've done well. Wait 3 or 4 weeks for a few million more, or kill two birds with one stone by getting Siggy in. Easy decision. Time is money, preparation and fitness.

 

BK I dont really care if it is good preparation for Spurs and as everyone is saying we already have Taylor so it wouldnt have affected us that much if at all. It isnt a case of Brilliant and awful. Mind you if you listen to spurs fans they actually do think Rose is awful. They are pushing and hoping for Champions League. So they dont want to make do. They want their top tragets in place so they are ready to go in their pursuit of CL. It is only my opinion but if we had held firm for a little longer we would have achieved a better deal for us.

 

If they're pushing for Champions League right now, I hope they're willing to wait 2 to 3 years for Ben to develop to that level. They'll need to.

Furthermore, Taylor was apparently having cold feet before Ben was transferred. You wait 4 extra weeks for £5 million, Taylor looks after his own future and hands a transfer request within that time not knowing what's going on, Ben leaves, the season starts in a week. Then we're struggling.

 

Taylor would be completly aware of what would be happening and would have been going nowhere, but if he was to leave no problem and he may still we dont know what is happening behind the scenes, you bring in a replacement which is what we should be doing now anyway or you play Kingsley, which is what we would have to do if Taylor gets injured now. No ones squad will be finalised before the start of the season anyway.

I just think that there was a little more to be made from this deal and Spurs have certainly had the best of it. Levy is very good at what he does and he has done it gain. You wont find anyone on the Spurs board thinking we have had the better deal. I havent checked that mind so it might bite me on the arse.