Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Oh so you are including the £60m or so we have had to pay in this window for Porro and Kulusevski, 2 players that were signed 6 and 18 months ago. We spent nothing in January then, so a decent net spend in this window is the least that should be done.

 

Oh, another one

 

The biggest dampener has to be that some players are apparently attached to the club (and our wage bill) like barnacles and we apparently need a few sticks of dynamite to shift them

On the one hand I can sort of respect Hugo for not wanting to be Nazio's backup keeper, which is presumably why he also told the Saudis to do one as the window was drawing to a close, although at this point if he's looking to be No1 somewhere and we're hoping on getting a fee we'll both be waiting for the MLS window to open in a couple of months

On the other hand Eric Dier refusing to budge has been aggravating in the extreme, because while wanting to fight for his place does make sense, he's been told loud and clear that he would have to literally fight for his place because he only way he's getting on the pitch is if he beats both Cuti and Micky in hand-to-hand combat at the same time - and the fact Sanchez is getting picked ahead of him, and we were reportedly turning down bids for Sanchez while encouraging bids for Dier should make it extremely bloody obvious he should find a new club, yet instead he's been turning down overtures from Fulham, Burnley, Bournemouth and (IIRC) Palace

And then there's the drain on resources that is Ndombele, who reportedly turned down an offer from Genoa while I'm not entirely sure if we ever received a concrete offer from either Galatasaray or Fenerbahce - although as I mentioned concrete, anybody fancy making Ndombele some concrete footware and taking him to the nearest swimming pool?

 

please log in to view this image

 

I think the thing that frustrates me is, having seen us challenge for the title for 95% of last season, and playing such an attractive style of football while doing it, how did the recruitment team think Havertz is what we needed to close the gap on Man City? We could have signed so many other players for less than the £65m we paid for him that would have been an instant improvement. It was a pointless gamble and now we just have to hope he somehow finds his feet here.

As for the strikers issue, I'm not overly bothered because we scored a club record amount of goals in the Premier League era last season without a reliable striker. When you factor in Jesus missing 50% of the season too, scoring goals wasn't my worry. It was our lack of defensive nous that bothered me. And it still is.

In an ideal world where money is no object, I would like a different type of striker to Jesus/Nketiah. Someone who is good in the air, can play with their back to goal, is technically secure and is an outlet. Osimhen is naturally my preferred choice, but he'll have the pick of top clubs next Summer and I don't think we'll be in consideration. Prior to his betting charges, I've said before I would love Ivan Toney at Arsenal, and I still believe he'd suit us perfectly, but I think he's scuppered his chances of joining now with his behaviour.

It's difficult to see who else is out there. I wouldn't want us to spend £70m+ on an unproven teenager like Hojlund, so it's slim pickings on the striker front.

 

I’d imagine when everyone is fit, this will be our XI:

Vicario
Porro, Romero, van de Ven, Udogie
Bentancur, Bissouma, Maddison
Kulu, Johnson, Son

With Sarr getting plenty of game time. I can see Davies and Perisic being regular subs too. With then Emerson, Hojbjerg, Skipp, Solomon, possibly Gil and Richarlison (until Veliz is ready) battling it out for other appearances off the bench.

Depth, especially in terms of people stepping in for Vicario, Romero, Micky, Udogie, Bissouma and Maddison if they get any injuries, is a major, major concern. The drop in quality is astronomical and basically takes us back to Conte-ball.

 

One obvious question regarding the likelihood and/or inevitability of injuries is whether Ange is willing to dip into the academy to plug any gaps should they appear

Case in point, if Richy gets a knock is there any likelihood of Donley or Soonsup-Bell making the matchday squad and, if they are, is there any chance of them getting on the pitch unless we're 6-0 up in the 88th minute? Same goes for the other end in the event of Phillips, Dorrington or Paskotsi being needed to fill a place in defence (and, you know, give Eric Dier the hint YOU SHOULD'VE SIGNED FOR FULHAM, YOU TIT at the same time...)

 

If you don't have a realistic shot of winning something worth having, you shouldn't buy players for depth. The reason is that the less a player plays, the more certain it is that he will become unshiftable. When one of the things preventing you from building a good first 11 is the number of unshiftable players taking up roster places and costing money, the last thing you want to do is willfully add to it. Until you can shift your unshiftable players or until you're a decent shot at winning something important like a CL place, your priority should be assembling the first 11. Is it really worth finishing sixth instead of seventh if it means two more unshiftable players?

 

I would have rather gotten Orban, David, Fati and a number of other players. But I'm still glad Johnson is coming. I would be interested to know what Ange has in mind, but am praying fervently it does not involve Richarlison unless the phrase is "slow boat to China." Johnson played 3/4 games this year in the center. I realize he looks like a winger, but think Kulusevski-Johnson-Son has possibilities. In any case, Spurs need somebody to start knocking them in, and at least there's one more option now. If I had to bet at suitable odds, it would be that Veliz turns out to be Kane's successor. I think he's got the right profile: big, good hold up player with a pretty delicate touch.

 

I think you may see a massive difference from now on (call it Angeball) where you actually score more goals than you have previously but spread around a wide variety of players instead of having a central 25-30 goal striker.

 

7/10 window I think, would have been higher if we’d have got another centre back. Decent cover for the rest of the pitch though and hard to say we strengthened the first xi when we lost one of our best ever players but I think the first xi as a whole has definitely been improved.

Shame some of the hangers on are still knocking around but for the first window of this new era, I don’t think it’s as bad as people think.

 

I know it was a January transaction, but Udogie 'completing' his transfer and to cement a first team place in 3 games has to feature somewhere in the 'Good' list I'd say.

 

In terms of incomings, it’s a mediocre window, IMO. Similar to any other.
Maddison has been much needed, and was a great purchase, and VDV looks like a really promising CB. Vicario’s made some good saves and seems good with his feet, but due to our new style of possession play, we’ve not had as much of a chance to see what he’s like yet, so making a judgement at this stage is hard, and also unfair.
When making signings, you never know how they’re going to turn out, and there’s often failures amongst the decent additions. That happens at every club. However at this stage, I don’t think we’ve adequately addressed the gap in quality that Kane’s departure has left us. As has been said a million times, we can’t replace him with like for like. But if we look at who we have brought in in forward positions as part of a new way of playing, it’s essentially Kane out, Solomon and Johnson in. Personally, I find that underwhelming. Goals will obviously be spread around the team in Kane’s absence, but I’m not filled with confidence that we have addressed that accordingly. Despite bringing in new players, I still find myself thinking that Son and Kulu will be the ones to rely on, and that requires them to find their old scoring form.

as for the defence, centrally, I feel we’re an injury to Romero or VDV away from looking very fragile. I’m amazed we didn’t bring in another defender, especially as we have made it clear that Dier and Sanchez were allowed to leave. What incentive do they have to put in performances this season if they’re called up on?

and as for the other outgoings, we’ve had all summer. To have not done a better job of reducing the squad, and ultimately scrambling around on deadline day trying to find homes for them… well it’s poor to be honest. And ultimately it affected out incomings. In addition, when we got offers, we played hardball with other clubs. So unless we see contact cancellations in the next few days, we’ve got the same problem in January before we can continue to rebuild.

 

We are averaging £100m net spend a year for the last 5 years. That's exactly what the new stadium is worth in terms of extra income. I can't see how that's in any way bad.

 

So before the new stadium they were spending nothing, I am yet to see a player signed since the new stadium opened that was out of reach before we left old WHL, in those 5 years the football team has gone backwards and lost it`s star player.

 

My beef with Levy/ENIC is not the details of the rebuild under way, but the fact that it's taking place at least five years later than it should have. That's five years where the essential thing I want from Spurs, which is enjoyable football, was lacking. Not winning anything I can deal with. Watching Mourinhoball I can't.

Regarding my rating of the window, I guess I'd also give it 7/10. I'm extremely pleased with Maddison and VDV II. I'm glad Spurs got a young forward to provide hope for a failing group, but disappointed he was my least favorite of all the often-discussed candidates. The one player I think could have made Spurs real contenders for a CL spot was Fati. It will be interesting to see how he does versus Johnson. Another negative is how poorly Spurs do at marketing their flops. Somebody needs to go to Everton and learn how it's done, because Richarlison is the gold standard. Feigning noble resignation at losing a great servant to the club was effing brilliant.

It's just like a yard sale, really. However stupid your purchase, and however big an albatross it's turned out to be, there's always some bigger idiot out there somewhere who will be desperate to take it off your hands with the right prompting. Richarlison. Havertz. Mount. I rest my case.

The main thing I feel at this point is enthusiasm for the new manager and his style of play. I can't believe he's got Spurs playing good football already. I'm still in the Levy/ENIC out brigade. They remain good at business, extremely slapdash and far too often simply wrong-headed regarding football. They've inexplicably in my view failed to follow the simple formula of providing a young, attacking team, which suits Spurs' heritage, its fans' tastes, and, I believe, its business model. That said, they do periodically make genuinely good choices for manager, beginning with Jol, and Ange looks like another in that mold, though it's early days. Paratici was also another excellent choice, since IIRC he's responsible for the brilliant acquisitions of Udogie and Sarr for next to nothing, by current standards. Spurs fail so often to pick up really promising young players, then come back a year or two later and pay big money for them, usually to no avail.

 

The biggest change is obviously the new manager with a refreshingly straightforward approach. With the addition of Maddison and the use of Bissouma and Sarrr our midfield has been massively transformed. Van de Ven looks likely to make a another massive difference to our defence. Of course with a number of our posters there is a fear about losing Kane. Goal-scorers have always been hyped in football and once they coined the term 'striker' it only increased the mythology around this position. Great goal-scorers like Greaves, Shearer and Kane are rare beasts. They all have in common a habit of making the job of putting the ball in the net look very simple, but as I said they are very rare. Kane has spoilt us Spurs fans and as is often the case, teams with such players tend to rely on them perhaps too much. When they go other players in the team often step up and raise the effectiveness of the collective.

We are simply not going to replace Kane, so getting concerned that we have not is a bit of a waste of emotion. I think we are lucky, very lucky that coinciding with Kane's departure we should find ourselves with a new attacking manager. Losing Kane with any of our previous few managers would have left us in a far worse position IMO. Ange has to build a new team in his image anyway and not having Kane from the beginning of the season enables him to shape his team without that distraction.

As an aside I will be very interested to see Kane in an established and strong Bayern, a team used to a higher level of player performance than Spurs, will Kane change and become more of a striker and less of a playmaker or will Bayern change to accommodate all Kane's skills?

Getting back to Spurs, I am genuinely excited to see how our 'new squad' performs this season. There are new possibilities throughout the team and we have already seen more exciting performances with completely different methods from last season. I have long noticed Maddison at Leicester and admired his rare skills, his acquisition and the addition of Van de Ven alone has made for a potentially very successful transfer window. Time will tell it's true value.

COYS

 

Ange still relied on Kyogo at Celtic to be his primary goal scorer though. He had goals from Jota, Abada, Hatate and O’Riley but Kyogo was top scorer for them in both of his seasons, with his second season being the SPL top scorer and POTY year too.

With Kane’s departure we’re gonna roughly need 10+ league goals from about 4 players in order to finish in a good position in the league and I think that’s a big ask as unless mistaken, I believe Spurs have only ever had 3 players scoring 10+ league goals in any given season and that’s happened 3 times I think:
Kane, Chadli, Eriksen
Kane, Son, Dele
Kane, Son, Eriksen

In each of those seasons, Kane hit 20+ league goals too, one of them 30. Hence why I think we now need 4 players to hit 10+ goals or 3 hitting around 14-15.

 

The club was essentially bust when ENIC took over and didn’t have spare cash to spend on players. There are only two ways to solve that....you get dirty money in like Chelsea, Man City and Newcastle or you grow organically like ENIC have tried to do. There are no examples of anything else working.

 

On the subject of potential revenue, is there any update on the stadium naming Rights and what that should bring in? It must surely be in the high £m's
I would argue that as it will certainly happen, is virtually guaranteed significant income and could/should have been taken into account for on field development over the last 4 years. It's a risk of course, but a very low one.

An old and well worn argument, but if the club has made a couple of truly marquee signings in the 2019 window, on the back of a CL Final, then I don't think we would have been in this ground up rebuild now. The catastrophe that was the 19/20 season would have been averted.

Trouble is that at that vitally important time, Levy/ENIC had not just taken their eye off the ball in footballing terms, they were suffering with macular degeneration - only able to focus on the one object directly ahead of them - the stadium.