Lo Celso was also injured throughout the window. I suppose we should have signed Bruno Fernandes early on instead. That would have worked out well as we could then have bought Lo Celso in January. We signed Ndombele pretty early as I recall, though and he didn't even feature against Newcastle.
One thing I never understand is the way managers (and fans) get fixated on particular players. What we need are players ranked 20 or below in the world in their position (to make them affordable) who have the best potential to turn into a top 10 player. There must be at least 10 very similar players across the world that would fit this bill in each position. So buy the one we can get early within our budget rather than leave it late for a specific player.
It does have to be said there were countless players who could play the Dembele role in our team we could have looked at, off the top of my head we were linked with... Nicolo Barella (then to Cagliari, now of Inter) Tanguy Ndombele (then of Lyon, now of...oh, right) Franck Kessie (then of Atalanta, now of Milan) Stanislav Lobotka (then of Celta Vigo, now of Napoli) Amadou Haidara (then of Taurine FC Salzburg, now of Taurine FC Leipzig) Florian Grillitsch (Hoffenheim) And that's the thing: Ndombele was the statement signing, and because he was a statement signing we pushed to get him in early - which involved not just getting Pini Zahavi on board to smooth out the details but also paying a statement fee (a chunk of which going to his agent...whose name sounds a lot like "Zini Pahavi") - yet if reports of Grillitch having an £18m release clause are true, we could have got that deal done just as quickly at 1/3 of the cost, and while the moaners would've whinged about the cheapo option the fact is that Grillitsch has one hell of a workrate so we'd have had to look for scapegoats elsewhere Of course, that list also highlights two obvious issues: first of all the obvious conveyor belt from Salzburg to Leipzig that UEFA apparently can't see but everyone else can that means we may as well not bother signing anyone from Taurine FC Salzburg because they'll just be shipped to Leipzig to further inflate their price, and the way it's pretty normal in Serie A for loans-with-obligations to have lengthy loan periods before the obligation needs to be triggered such as Kessie effectively being put in transfer limbo for two years as that's how long Milan had between the loan and having to exercise the obligation to buy So essentially the options last summer were Ndombele, Lobotka or Grillitsch - but because we'd focused on making a statement signing, it was only going to be Ndombele even though it's not unreasonable to suggest that if we spent that money on both Lobotka and Grillitsch (and we'd have still had £20m left over...go on, somebody bring up Dybala's image rights) our team may have been less dynamic but more balanced, and sometimes balance is what you need...and ****ing hell did we need it last season
Our Football League players must be blooming awful today if we have to continue buying foreign players.Must be a few around that can do a job for us?
The championship is a hugely competitive league, there are many very good players but the top sides have as many foreign players as premier league clubs and many of the younger ones have failed to make the grade at premier league clubs previously. There are still good young players out there but there is a massive premium on young home grown talent even if you buy it from the lower divisions, Over the years we have done as well anyone with players like Dele and Walker amongst our successes from lower league clubs. You also have to consider that many players are playing at their highest level possible in the championship, there are many cases of players who are excellent in that division but struggle when they step up - Dwight Gayle is a good recent example.
The business which we have done - or haven't - has cost us far more in recent years. We'll now be missing out on circa £65m+ from the Champions League because of it. As for the fans, we're already paying the highest prices in Europe so we're more than doing our part.
Think Kane will be gone next summer anyway mate. Unless we have an absolute worldy of a season both in terms of the league, Europe and cups, I can't see him sticking around. He'll be 28 next summer, someone like him will want to be adding league titles to his CV along with potential European success too.
I think a crucial bit of business for us this summer and for coming years is getting a proper DoF in, whether that be Campos or scouring the staff at the likes of Ajax, Porto, Benfica, Dortmund or Zagreb for someone who may fancy stepping up into the role. A DoF can then work with the scouting team and manager (ideally cutting Levy out of the process) and work on improving our success rate in the transfer market which feels like it's dropped off in recent seasons. I can't speak too much on Steve Hitchin but I don't feel the current set up which supposedly involves, him, Levy and the manager is working well enough. We're averaging more flops than successes now and it never really used to be like that which is how we managed to build good teams in both the Harry and Poch eras on budgets that weren't anywhere near our top six rivals.
Agree on DoF but the issue we always have seems to be player valuation (both buying and selling) and that process needs sorting whover is in charge. For example who decides what Ndombele is worth now? If it is the same person or team who decided to splurge out our record transfer last year then they are conflicted. We've always had more flops than successes. Some of the real bargains have been the mainstay of the team. All the way through our big signings have been slightly more likely to have been flops though. I don't think this is unusual but it has prevented us from taking the final step towards a PL winning team. Arsenal are currently in the same boat, Chelsea don't have many lives left.
A couple of players in 18/19. The knock-on effects of that season is what's costing us today. Grealish and Tielemans for instance could/ should have been Spurs players, Levy messed up with Grealish in the summer, Poch turned down Tielemans in the winter because he wanted to wait for Ndombele. Both of them would've helped cover the loss and declines of Eriksen and Dembele, two vital parts of our team for years. In that time frame, too many players have declined and/ or left, some of those without a replacement, we've therefore persisted with too many mediocre players, especially in the middle of the park and then the poor recruitment this season just compounded matters. We're constantly playing catchup because of that season.
While I think the criticism of the current set up is justified, it's part of a larger problem, or question.Spurs have had a somewhat consistent identity as a club that would try to overachieve through some combination of youth, bargain signings and attractive football. Now it seems Spurs want to compete successfully with the biggest clubs. But that isn't an identity, and I'm not sure anyone understands what that new identity is. What it has amounted to so far is a recipe for underachieving. Ndombele was exactly the sort of statement signing the club made that it wouldn't have made in the past. So far, it hasn't worked out at all. I would suggest Spurs ought to get back to the overachieving mindset, to looking for bargain signings, to youth and attractive football--after Mourinho gets a fair chance. If ENIC doesn't want to do that, it should communicate what its vision of the club is.
I meant who was the original source of the income lost, if not us fans? Grealish was not available that summer because the Villa takeover discussions had already begun before the window opened and Heads of Terms always ban asset sales during negotiations.
The champions league was the original source. Depending on how well a club does, you can earn between around £50m-£100m in prize and TV money, so based on our history in the competition where we’ve often made it out of the groups, the prize money would’ve likely been around £60m-£65m. We made £100m from our run to the final, I think we made about £55m-£60m from this season. Grealish was available. Villa wanted £15m pre-takeover, we offered £3m and Josh Onomah. During takeover his price rose to £25m. We made two or three lower bids and by the time we offered £25m a few days before the deadline, having dragged it out for about 6 weeks, Villa’s new owners gave us the middle finger for trying to low ball them for so long.
I agree our identity was a team who'd overachieve on a lesser budget. I think our aim was to become a team who'd finish in the top four and win trophies with a solid budget. We started finishing in top four and earning the money that should in would've allowed us to bring in that 'elite' quality which would then help reach that 'next step'. We finally flexed that financial muscle last summer on the marquee signings but it sort of proved too late as we'd left the team with so much work to do due to negligence. Ever since roughly the end of the 16/17 season, far too many players had declined/ left over the years and we done little to rectify that. It felt as if the board just expected Poch to continue pulling rabbits out of the hat and for as brilliant as he was, he couldn't continue being a miracle worker. Since that 16/17 season, Walker, Trippier, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, Rose, Dier, Dembele, Wanyama, Dele and Eriksen had all either declined and/ or left and the only meaningful signing we made until last summer was Sanchez for £40m with the aim of him being the future of CB. So even though our aim was to be a top four side winning trophies, our failure to push on in recent years has set us back to likely needing to go back to the "punch above our weight" mantra for another year or two. Hopefully Jose can fast track that, or at the very least bring a trophy, he's a specialist at winning them and we've been sorely due one for far too long now but I have a feeling it may be a rocky couple of years unless we nail it with recruitment, any of our new signings need to be successes and that's extremely difficult to get right 100% of the time.