A sky sports journo (Lyall Thomas or something?) reckons we have a shortlist of 3/4 young strikers, and are looking to ship out Townsend and Fazio. We'd probably need a CB in that case as Toby cover unless Poch trusts Velkjovic/CVC to come in, or will drop Dier into CB and play Bentaleb in midfield. Latter is possibly more likely at the business end of the season, if the worst should happen to Toby. Personally I'd like to shift Townsend and Fazio and buy Redmond and Ayoze Perez if we can. Both 2 young players who can improve us, and Redmond has the added bonus of being homegrown. I'd also rather buy from within the league in January, as players are more likely to have to hit the ground running rather than having a preseason to bed in. Obviously it can cost a bit more but if it is the right player then so be it.
http://www.fourfourtwo.com/news/sevilla-keen-re-sign-fazio-tottenham#:S0OCf00spZLraA Sounds like it's virtually a done deal, doesn't it? Probably won't be that simple though, unfortunately.
We want to sell the player...Seville want to buy the player...the player wants to leave us for Seville. Daniel Levy will tell us why this transfer is impossible. Last January, West Ham want Adebayor...Spurs want rid of Adebayor...You get the picture.
The difference is that nobody involved with Sevilla had been using the national media to slander us for several years - which cannot be said for those vaguely humanoid creatures grown from their absent fathers' ball sweat that run Wet Spam. There's a couple of utterly random strikers being linked with us today: Alvaro Negredo's name has suddenly surfaced, which is almost ironic given he was linked with us a couple of summers back before City's interest inflated his wage demands, while we've also been linked with Ebbsfleet's 17-year old striker Shilow Tracey (although he seems to be a potential signing for the academy side instead of the first team) As for today's obvious hack job: we're offering PSG cash + Lamela for Ezequiel Lavezzi...even though Lavezzi is out of contract in the summer, so there is no reason whatsoever to offer a player who is one of our first team in order to seal the transfer, as whatever change Levy finds down the back of the sofa would probably be enough to tempt PSG into making what little cash they can get now rather than make €0.00 in the summer.
The more I dislike a club, the more I want them to have Adebayor. Levy's refusal to sell is going to have cost us the thick end of £7.5m in wages. We sold West Ham Dumetresciu, Rebrov, Callum Davenport and Greavesie when he'd fallen out of love with football. When you positively, have to get rid...then East London is the ideal destination. The worse our player the more we can rely upon them to do us a favour.
It's actually worse than that: Rebrov joined them as a free agent (and there's certainly plenty of people happy to draw a link between Levy writing off an £11m player so early in his reign and the subsequent decade of Levying that followed) while Dumitriscu's contract had to be torn up within three months of him joining them due to a work permit problem. Come to think of it, there were a couple of years of lopsided transfers between the clubs... 2003-4 Spurs got Defoe and Kanoute Wet Spam got Rebrov, Etherington and Zamora 2004-5 Spurs got Carrick Wet Spam got Taricco...who got injured 27 minutes into his debut and soon after requested his contract be cancelled
Most people have probably forgotten Robbie Keane's attempt to make up for his... er, loan to Liverpool. He was sent to West Ham for the second half of the 2010/11 season and they had the option to buy him if they stayed up. Some terrible misses, a bottom of the table finish, Scott Parker's transfer to WHL and Keane was off to LA. They followed that up by borrowing a broken David Bentley while they were in the Championship.
The media are linking us with lots of strikers that we've been linked with before, rather unimaginatively. The Times claim that we're back in for Michy Matshuayi and have opened talks with Marseille, upping the previous chat of us just liking him: Inevitable shat music warning. He's big, athletic and Belgian, so it's hard to tell whether this is join-the-dots journalism or there's actually some substance to it. Our contingent of his countrymen would probably have some insight into whether he's got the required mentality for our squad. Newcastle have also been linked with him, but I'm not sure that's an area that they really need to focus on. With De Jong, Cisse, Perez, Mitrovic and Rivierre on their books, you'd think that they'd be looking at their defence first.
There is an argument for building a bigger Belgian contingent as we are (hopefully) more likely to know if they will fit in with our squad/team when members of our squad/team have played with them before or internationally. Obviously if they are good enough, but Belgium seem to be one of the top international sides at the moment and I wouldn't want England to be facing them at the Euros. Also fits in with the idea of putting out the best team, which may not always have the best individuals. Belgians might tick a couple of boxes before considering the other requirements.
Read earlier that Njie could be out for up to 3 months, which with Poch's strict criterium for what constitutes 'match fit' means we can basically rule him out for the rest of the season. I'm becoming increasingly worried that we've signed a bit of a crock. He was injured when he joined and, despite barely playing this season, has picked up another 2 injuries since then - the latest being quite serious. Further underlines the urgency to sign an attacker in Jan as I'd rather have Sandro kick balls at my groin than see Chadli play up top again.
Strange that you should mention Sandro, as we've been linked with another one - Sandro Ramirez of Barcelona. The 20-year-old striker has provoked a variety of almost identical media reports, all claiming that we're strongly considering him. It all seems rather made up, though. He supposedly has an £8.8m release clause in his contract, which we're looking to activate. The hitch is apparently down to Barca wanting to insert a buy-back clause in any deal. I wouldn't have thought that they'd have any right to if we activated the release clause, though. Sounds suspiciously like media or agent mischief, to me.
"Strange that you should mention Sandro, as we've been linked with another one - Sandro Ramirez of Barcelona. The 20-year-old striker has provoked a variety of almost identical media reports, all claiming that we're strongly considering him. It all seems rather made up, though." Is that the kid who played up front for Barca in the Nextgen game at WHL ?? If so, he was quite a handful.
Signs that we're having a good season: today's Standard devoted the best part of a page to blatant speculation that Eriksen may move to PSG or Juve in the summer. Has anyone seen an actual copy of the directive given to 80% of Premier League clubs that they should know their place, because if they have ideas above their station the media corps will respond by going out of their way to unsettle their key players and keep doing so until things are back the way they should be...with the same four teams win everything year after year in an endless procession that borders purgatory that the plastics can enjoy at the expense of everyone else.
It comes the day after they ran a story with Thomas Sorenson saying how happy Eriksen was at Spurs. They dredged up an 18 month old quote from Laurent Blanc to support their story. What next, Arsenal in for Hugo? Villa want to keep Walker? Must be a slow day for London football news.
West Ham pretty much wanted us to pay them to take him on loan, to pay his wages and for us to sing stop singing "oh when the spurs" and to start singing that stupid bubble bath song
...but don't worry, our good friends at The Wail have that beat, linking Wimmer with Marseilles because he's not playing as often as Vertonghen or Alderweireld. Errm...anyone with a brain could've told them that Wimmer was always going to be backup to those two, just as those brain-owners will tell them that Wimmer won't be going anywhere as it's pretty much a given that Fazio will be leaving in January. Moving ever so swiftly on, I've noticed a couple of forums are once again gravitating towards Timo Werner as NEW (BACKUP) STRIKER...some of which can easily be explained by his being German, as nationalities carry a certain amount of weight online ahead of anything else, some because he develops into a beast on Football Manager - although those who regularly watch the Bundesliga have noted that he's very good getting into scoring positions and making late runs with his rapid pace, only to be let down by Stuttgart having the creative edge of a tub of margarine. Based on that, if we have a player with the positioning of Kane and the pace of N'Jie who can play up front or on the wing as an option on the bench, he does sound like a smart signing - but then again, we said similar about Holtby.
Am I the only one who thinks we need someone to give Eriksen a wake up call? Strolls a bit for my likeing. Think he needs to do a bit more off the ball. play Lamela there with Son on the wing, he's ok on the wing. I play him there on Fifa16. To be honest I don't think we are buying anyone in the transfer window. I was a bit unsure about Berahino, due to his tantrums. However we should go for him and I'd play him up top with Kane behind him instead of Eriksen in order to bring the workmanship up in our last third.
Mason coming back from injury certainly gives us another option in the attacking trio for games where Eriksen is off the boil.
