Oh. Must have missed this crucial news. Hope the club survive without a DOF. It'll be tough but we have to be brave.
This whole Berahino saga reminds me of a line about divorce, "There are no winners in this, only degrees of losing".
So many mixed feelings about this window. I'm taking scant consolation from the fact that, incredibly, none of the teams above us bar Man City look much stronger than they did at the end of last season. Arsenal have failed again to strengthen key positions. Chelsea's lack of activity has been positively baffling and with an increasingly dodgy looking defence and paranoid manager may well continue the season as they've started it. United have comically swapped one set of vastly expensive players for another set of vastly expensive players without actually addressing the areas that needed addressing. Plus they now have the best goalie in the PL sulking on the bench until further notice. Liverpool's transfer activity has been as erratic and trigger-happy as last season. And then there's little old us. My greatest concern is that surely Son will be a regular starter for us? It's all well and good that the club are now calling him a 'striker' but the question still remains: who on earth do we play up front in the cup competitions?! There's no way Kane and Son can play 50-odd games in a season. My biggest worry right now isn't the teams above us, it's being caught and reeled in by the Swanseas, Stokes, West Hams, Southamptons of the league. We could get dragged into a mid table scrap not because we are further from the leading pack, but because the chasing pack have used TV money to basically skip a few pit stops.
It was announced at the start of last month that Baldini would be gone when the transfer window closed: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/aug/06/tottenham-franco-baldini On the face of it, I'd say Baldini was still an improvement on Comolli because at no point did he sabotage the manager he was supposed to be working with in order to get the one he wanted to work with, as Comolli did with Jol so he could work with Ramos, but both made similar mistakes: the moment the club was flush with cash they forgot their remit of getting players for reasonable fees and just started throwing around money around without thinking about the consequences. And just like Comolli, Baldini didn't seem to be thinking of the team when bringing in players. For example he signed two left-sided attacking midfielders in Lamela and Chadli, which had several obvious problems: no right-sided attacking midfielder was signed, to fit both of Lamela and Chadli into the team one of them would have to be played out of position, and we already had Sigurdsson and Holtby as left-sided attacking midfielders. And I'll repeat what I said about Capoue yesterday: it made sense to sign a defensive midfielder as Sandro was having constant injury problems, but Capoue lacked the workrate that Sandro had so was a poor fit for AVB's system.
Well we first showed our interest then and whilst I can understand that we weren't moving things along quickly so early in the window, surely by the time the season started we should have been pressing on with this. That's my problem with the way we've handled it, we just waited far too long before eventually finding out that Peace really, really, really wasn't going to sell.
I don't think he has it in him tbh; never seemed like the spiteful type both on and off the pitch. Besides for which it would only make us angrier than we already are. I was about to say it's a sad day b/c he was the last remnant of the CL squad, but then a quick glance at Wiki revealed that Kyle Walker and Danny Rose both appeared in the PL that glorious season. May Lennon's memory live long through them. Every time Kyle loses concentration and gets caught out of position, let us remember the nobleness of our baby-faced winger and how he so tirelessly and selflessly came to his RB's assistance time and time again.
What a complete omni-shambles of a transfer window: missing out on any of the most important target positions (DM/CF), getting rid of a few makeweights, but also some players who all appear to perfectly fine at other clubs - and to top it off by being completely outshone in the market by the Spammers!! And we still have Adebayor on the payroll, but have ostracised him to such an extent that we can't even use him as a back-up. WTF!!! The omens haven't been good so far on the pitch and whilst there's talk of 'talented youngsters', there's not much sign that the likes of Mason, Bentaleb, Rose, Davies or Carroll will ever be anything more than journeyman pros at the top level. God help us if Kane fails to find his form of last year or Eriksen is out for any protracted period. And the way that Aaron Lennon has been managed by the club over the past year or so is appalling. Bloody good servant of the club and deserved better.
Around the time of Moutinho-gate, there were loads of ITK rumours doing the rounds that Levy had known from day 1 about the intricacies of the 3rd party ownership clauses, and purposefully left it so late because he never intended to spend north of £25m on a player for a manager who he didn't quite trust. The end result? The window closes without a man named Joao in the Spurs squad, and 'Teflon Dan' can turn around and say 'Well I tried to bring him in - look, cost wasn't an issue my cheque book was open! It was those dratted unexpected 3rd party problems that came up at the "last minute" and scuppered the whole thing'. There have been a number of similarities between that and the current Saidogate soap opera. The Beeb's Tim Murphy reported that he spoke to a Spurs representative on the phone in person, who told him that Peace didn't actually ever name a price that would turn his no into a yes. He explained that in hindsight, it became clear that what Pulis was saying in press conferences (that he'd be sold if an irresistible offer came in) wasn't quite toeing the party line. Peace never intended to sell, at any price. Did Levy know that from day 1? Did he leave it to deadline day to lodge 1 then 2 then 3 failed bids to make it look as though WBA are the criminals and he can again say 'Well I tried...'?
Apparently Villa tried to sign Berbatov but couldn't agree personal terms. This begs two questions: 1) They were clearly desperate for a striker so why the f**k is Adebayor still at Spurs? 2) Can we please now sign Berbatov? If for nothing other than to remind us of the BMJ days when things still made a bit of sense.
I'd be surprised if that was the case. Part of the problem seemed to be that Moutinho initially rejected the chance to join us as he expected a bigger payrise for moving to the Premier League. After that was resolved it was pretty late in the day and we were always pushed for time. I'm sure plenty of players have had a "not for sale at any price" slapped on them by the chairman and then gone onto move so I don't blame Levy for trying, just that he tried too late and without any backup in place(unless we didn't hear about it). Overall I'm just so disappointed that yet another summer transfer window has gone by where we've failed to properly address the issues in the squad. There are excuses as always and whilst I'm usually willing to accept them we've had over a year for Pochettino to assess the squad and choose who he wants to keep(this has clearly been done), find targets that he wants and we can realistically sign(done) and then try to sign them(this seems to be done at snails pace with much left to the last minute). It's just depressing how we let the wheels fall off what was such a good start to the transfer window.
Look I explained this the other day: Berbatov can't tackle, isn't much help defending set-pieces and tries to do all kinds of horrible things with the ball that may result in us losing possession rather than keeping possession so Lloris can get a touch. He has none of the qualities Poch seeks in an attacking player. Won't happen.
1.) God said that Villa was not the right move for his bank balance...sorry, "career" 2.) Just as long as nobody points out it took three attempts to sign somebody who played for Monaco last season... In terms of Adebayor saying it is god's will to cost us £5m in wages, is that grounds for us to have him sectioned? That'd get him off the wage bill without having to pay a penny!
Well no surprises . Another cock up . Still on for the net spend trophy . Well done WBA . You had a price , levy tried his tricks and you held firm . Levy pay up or shut up . while these disinterested cretins control Spurs we are stuck with a strategy of defeat ,
I'm not sure that I buy this 'Peace was never going to sell' if that were the case, why all this guff about our bid 'not reflecting Saido's potential' etc? That doesn't sound like a man who won't sell. It sounds like a man who wants more money.
Indeed... 362 games for the club, a cup winner, played for us in the CL. Frozen out to leave without much fanfare through the back door. Sad end for a could have been Spurs legend.
