Firstly, the 'quote' is from Matt Law. He's a journalist. As I put earlier, to my knowledge, nobody has actually told us who was responsible for what was, for the most part, some extremely poor recruiting decisions. Secondly, Baldini's title is DOF - Director of Football. That suggests to me that the ultimate responsibility for any recruiting decisions is his. Even if he was not personally responsible for signings like Soldado, the ultimate responsibility is his. The buck stops at the top of the chain, as it does in any other job.
Because Paul Mitchell is a scout and performance data analyst, whilst Baldini is not? Baldini had been in the job a couple of months by the time we'd spent £100mill. Chances are our scouting team hadn't just booted up Football Manager and picked players but had scouted those signings previously, making it not Baldini's responsibility as he wasn't even around to oversee any of it. Why do I believe Matt Law? Because he's the only journalist/pundit, that I've seen, that has offered any incite into what Baldini actually does. All the other stuff has been people criticising him based on what they assume he's done(ie buying all the players). If it were true that Baldini was responsible for those transfers don't you think Levy would have sacked him? Comolli got the boot after a big spending spree that went badly(initially at least) and Levy has shown on several ocassions that managers will be removed if they don't meet expectations. Whatever it is Baldini's doing, Levy clearly sees value in it and that's why he's still here.
Surely somebody is going to oversee the expenditure of £100mill? If not Baldini, then who? I find it very hard to believe that Levy just said, "yeah o.k., go and get that lot then" Surely Baldini would have scrutinised the prospective targets of a £100mill spending spree?, despite being in the job a couple of months. Maybe Levy does see some value in him, but then he also saw value in Santini, Ramos, AVB, etc.
I think Baldini was more concerned with higher profile purchases. As our current direction is to go for academy and lower profile players there is not really a purposeful role for him and so he is moving on. Perhaps when the stadium is built and/or we get into the CL and we can afford and attract high profile (expensive) players we will have a DoF again.
They weren't around for long when things under their control(results) started going badly though. That's my point, we all know the £100mill was poorly spent and if Levy felt it was Baldini's doing, he would have been gone.
I'm not so sure. Given his previous disastrous record of appointments, it would have been highly embarrassing to have to dismiss his much vaunted DOF so rapidly.
Levy is not perfect but he is the only Tottenham chairman in my lifetime to have the club finishing in the league above its entitlement when compared to its available resources.
The dickhead who employed him should take a running jump. "Never in my lifetime" have we gone so long with no chance of ever winning anything .
Never before in history has the game been so reliant on money to drive success, we have the 6th highest turnover and the 6th highest wage budget, we have never been as consistent in the league as we have in the last 6 seasons. Whilst I agree that we should be more competitive in the cups, we reached a final last year (so did have a chance of winning something).
Christian Eriksen (£11.5m) Nacer Chadli (£7m) Eric Dier (£4m) Roberto Soldado (£26m) Erik Lamela (£25.8m) Paulinho (£17m) Etienne Capoue (£8.6m) Vlad Chiriches (£8.5m) Federico Fazio (£8m) Benjamin Stambouli (£4.7m) DeAndre Yedlin (£2.75m) Dele Alli (£5m) Ben Davies (swap with Gylfi Sigurdsson) Michel Vorm (£3.5m) Kevin Wimmer (£4.3m) Kieran Tripper (£3.5m) Toby Alderweireld (£11.5m) Total: 151,65 Million One signing a success (Eriksen). Chadli has to prove last season wasn't a fluke. The rest are a combination of average, complete duds, unsuited to the league or in the case of Ali a punt on a young player that may be great, but likely to be a failure. How many of them are the choice of Baldini, none of us actually know, but Baldini/Poch and Avb before all represent how the club want to move "forward" so this long list of players are the type of players we sign and as you can see, nearly (to a man) failures (or average)
Have you got a toothache Boss? Your comment is extremely negative and way over the top. Your attempt at certain opinions in a game of uncertainties doesn't really work. If buying in new players was as certain as you seem to think it ought to be Spurs would have won the league many times since 1961. Most of these 'dud's' and 'average' players are competing quite happily with the top clubs in arguably the toughest league in the world.Many are still to prove themselves and a number have only just joined us. Fair enough the Bale money has not produced the results we would all like but it's always unlikely in our 'nearly there' position that we would easily find replacements for players like Bale or Modric or VDV. The present squad is nowhere near as bad as you imply and has far more potential than any Spurs squad for years. To say for example that Ali will likely fail is ridiculous considering we have just witnessed the teenager make a considerable impact in a game with arguably the best team in the world. Our current manager has yet to prove his worth at Spurs and like most he may fail but it's in our interests that he does not because finding the right man for this job has always been hit and miss and always will be in a game of uncertainties.
I think this kid, Oxford, demonstrated yesterday that if you're good enough, you're old enough - he's just 16! From what I've seen of Alli, he's good enough, and I'd have no qualms about starting him in a P.L. Game. Big reputations mean nothing to guys like these, they just go out and play without fear. Something we've seen very little of in a Spurs team recently.
Spurf, you have read my post and made assumptions as nowhere have I said signings are easy, or that there should be any certainties over signings, more I'm commenting on the overall transfers and overall the signings in the main have been average, flops or failing to address issues within the squad. Case in point, 151 million spent and we still have no suitable Dm or second striker but we're overloaded with average defenders and spent the bale money on duds (in the main). Remember, we're not glory hunters otherwise we wouldn't follow spurs, no one expects us to be winning trophies every year but this is about me commenting on the transfers, a transfer policy I have always believed was wrong and would result in dud signings, so if you want me to be positive, then let's hope the next batch of signings are decent as currently I see an average dull team with an average dull manager. Hopefully this new striker will surprise me and Ali will be a fantastic player but I'm still waiting for Zeki Fryers to be the new Rio, or has he left the club....
This. If you look at Chadli and Eriksen as our successful transfers then one took 5 months to start really performing for us(despite a good debut) and the other took until the next season to start playing well. Suarez scored 15 goals in his first season and a half, by the time he left he'd score as many in half a season. I don't expect some crazy turnaround and I do think a lot of our signings over the past 2 years have been disappointing but transfers are like that, it's always a gamble. The most important thing we can do transfer-wise is make sure we've got a balanced squad. After the £100mill summer we nearly had that, we were just missing another left back and with Rose picking up injuries we were punished for it. Last summer we rectified the problem at left back and covered ourselves with a new 'keeper, which we needed. This summer we started off well enough, getting in a new right back, a decent centre back but since then we've done really poorly as there are glaring problems upfront and in midfield which have gone unaddressed. I'm sure we have been trying to sign players for those areas but the lack of urgency has been a big let down. I don't mind us holding out and waiting to see who becomes available when you're trying to sign quality players but you can't start a season with just one striker, it's just mad. That's where my frustration lies and if Kane gets injured before we get a new striker in then it will be what the club deserves for creating this mess.
Wasn't Osvaldo available on a free recently? Pochettino signed him at saints for 15 million, hopefully his judgement on this new striker will have improved.
Still too many subjective views based on flimsy evidence IMO Boss and you still stick to your view that we are overloaded with duds and average defenders. Fair enough but the implication remains that this team and manager are failures. Boring they may be but this season at least they have not failed YET! and last seasons 5th cannot be classed as failure IMO. We all want to see exciting football, that's the nature of most Spurs fans, but I'm not convinced YET that this group of players are not capable of it. MP may have his plans and strategies but things can happen in training and in the games that can change things. Bale emerged despite the manager as do many players. There are always conflicts with the manager and the team individuals, the good manager adapts to these, like Redknapp did, the lesser manager falls out with his players like AVB did. The gossip so far is of a good understanding between players and manager in the current set up, that augers well for the team. This season will tell us all much that atm we can only speculate upon.
