Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

I think that the whole system collapsed, as we let some people go and others left.
Inglethorpe and Allen seemed to do a lot of good work. Things have gone a bit awry since they left.

 

There's some additional factors that helped Winks get established when he did
i.) Poch was drip-feeding him into the team when he was cultivating his squad, so he had the same chance of getting established as Benjamin Stambouli did
ii.) Mason's injury in 2015 and subsequent departure a year later moved him up the pecking order, albeit behind various players
iii.) Bentaleb getting himself Unpersoned in 2016 created a place in the first team that Winks was able to claim

What stands out for me is that Skipp really should be on the second step now, as he was being drip-fed into the team last season (and it has to be said he was given bigger opportunities at an earlier date, as Winks didn't feature in the league until 2016-17, while Skipp had a couple of league starts last season) and there's certainly a place in the first team for him as Dembele's long gone, Wanyama's broken and Dier isn't capable of playing 90 minutes...but that's where the comparisons stop dead

 

No.

Regardless of whether they made the grade long-term, the academy was
producing a batch of players, many of whom who came into the senior squad
after doing a final spell on loan at a PL club.

Walker. Rose. Livermore. Townsend. Caulker. Naughton. Kane. Mason.

Irrespective of whether the manager was Arry or AVB (ie the academy was manager-proof) .

That stopped in the Pochettino era, to the detriment of the squad (KWP being a
notable example) . IMHO we need to get the pre-Pochettino machinery up and
running again as it was.

 

You're making the same mistake the Reddit crowd do believing that "youth" and "youth teamers" are the same thing

For the best example of why this belief is wrong, look at Poch's time at Southampton: while a few of the youngsters did come through their academy (Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, Calum Chambers) that ignores how several other youngsters who were key parts of the team (Morgan Schneiderlin, Sadio Mane, Jay Rodriguez, Nathaniel Clyne) were brought in and developed - which, in terms of Spurs, means they need to pretend the likes of Son, Dele or Dier don't exist in order to say Poch didn't develop any youngsters during his time at Spurs

 

Piatek Watch

 

Some reports saying fee for Bergwijn has been agreed, it’s just sorting out the structure (£1m a year sounds about right ). Once that’s sorted he can have his medical and sign.

Meanwhile Piatek supposedly had a video chat with Jose. I reckon it went like this:

Jose: Hi Krzysztof, wanna join?
Piatek: PUM PUM PUM PUM!
Jose:

please log in to view this image

 

I'll just leave this here...

 

Always deft and understated when on song...... and that was the problem when things stopped going to plan for him! He began to look weak and incompetent. Very sad. But wonderful on his day and in his day!

 

When our team would pull apart teams at will, with Kane and Dele creating space because defenders were terrified of giving them that half second head start while Dembele was creating space by force through the middle, Eriksen could create magic precisely because the team created the time and the space for him to do so

That, more than anything else, is symptomatic of the problems of the last year: Kane and Dele haven't had that half second head start because they've been frequently injured, and we lack somebody who can go through the opponents like a wrecking ball as consistently as peak Dembele could, and that means Eriksen hasn't had the time and the space to create

Of course this leads to one of those great "What if...?"s because if we were able to field Eriksen, Ndombele and Lo Celso in the starting xi from the beginning of the season we could have had a midfield that would create the space for him by the end of October...even if it would involve using THAT BASTARD DIAMOND to do so

 

I'm sorry RD but I think you're somewhat guilty of cherry picking history with this assessment. For starters, of the list you've cited, Rose and Naughton were not academy products.

Harry's era was marked by an outstanding recruitment drive for young talent - impressive for a manager with a reputation for just signing Defoe, Crouch and Krancjar everywhere he goes - that drove so much of our success in that era. Lennon, Bale, Kaboul, Bassong, Charlie, Huddlestone, Rose, Walker, Sandro. They were all purchased from other clubs. The few actual academy products, such as Livermore, Caulker and Carroll, featured extremely sparingly during Harry's reign - mainly in pointless EL games against nobody teams (although Jake featured heavily in his final year as manager).

In many ways, what followed during the subsequent 2 years before Poch was a collapse of our recruiting prowess as the likes of Lennon, Walker and Huddlestone became the likes of Falque, Holtby and Fryers. The nail in the coffin was Baldini's Travelling Circus and collapse of our prowess in recruitment in general, so that by the dawn of 2014/15, the average fan was fed up of trying to recruit the future, fed up of journeymen senior players, and the clamour to turn - properly turn - to the academy was overwhelming. This was helped by the fact that the overall quality of our squad in 2014 at the time of Interim's departure was the lowest it had been since Ramos, so that the likes of Mason, Townsend and Bentaleb had a pretty low bar to improve upon.

So in many ways, Poch walked in to the perfect storm with a great crop of academy products who all happened to play in positions drastically in need of improvement (CM, AM and ST). Interestingly, we also urgently needed improving at CB yet we chose to ignore the likes of Caulker (sold) and Veljkovic (loan then sold), instead opting for the expensive option by purchasing Fazio and Dier. So perhaps the academy has always been hit and miss? Perhaps even its best and brightest products will struggle to break in to a top 4/6 side unless circumstances align perfectly, as they did in 2014? Perhaps Poch was actually better than Harry in both promoting and developing rather than buying youth?

 

Lennon was bought by Jol/Arnesen in 2005.

 

Would now be a bad time to say that Bentaleb and to a certain extent Kane got their chance under Tiger Tim Sherwood! Harry was actually relegated by Poch to the Europa league squad where he was scoring whilst Poch perservered with Soldado in the league, until Harry came off the bench at Villa to score and the rest is history

 

Rose, Bale and Kaboul were all Commolli purchases. Huddlestone was either Commolli or Arnesen, I forget but not anything to do with Harry..

I recall that Harry didn't have a great deal (anything?) to do with the signing of Sandro and said as much at the time.

 

Bergwijn Watch
Rafa doing the hard yards for us

 

But Palacious and Parker were important Harry signings.

 

De Telegraaf saying fee has now been sorted and Bergwijn will sign a 5 and a half year deal.

My guess is we’ll announce Eriksen’s departure and then Bergwijn will either be announced later in the day or first thing Wednesday morning.

 

Bergwijn looking close...if it happens ..should I be excited?

From what I know he will provide serious competition and not be a Nkoudou. I get the feeling Jose isnt interested in signing players that might come good in 2028 as they are of no real use to him.

3 days left

 

Steven Bergwijn: Tottenham agree deal for PSV Eindhoven forward

 

I'm not sure that Scott Parker counts in this conversation...