Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Tanganga wouldn't, as he's stagnated from years of not playing
KWP at the very least would give us reliable cover for both FB positions
Edwards is tougher to answer given Sporting play him as an AM this season rather than on the wings, when we need wing depth

 

But isn't that the whole point?

Better to have outfield squad players who can play a part instead of 3rd and 4th choice goalkeepers who to the surprise of no one have contributed around 10mins of football in five seasons.

 

True but none of them were really up to it. Squad dumming down.

Just goes back to overall squad building - or lack of it.

 

On the other hand, why waste £15m (and a hell of a lot of time) signing N'Koudou to be a pacey winger off the bench when we had both Edwards and Madueke on the books already and could have invested that £15m elsewhere?

The place we habitually went wrong in the Poch era is we didn't generate value in our youth players either by playing them or loaning them out (barring a couple of outliers, like Conor Ogilvie), which makes the difference between getting £8m for Alex Pritchard or hoping maybe this summer will be the one where somebody pays £40m+ for Marcus Edwards so we get a big slice of the sell-on fee

 

Can see Spurs resigning him tbh

 

I don't get the hype.

Looks great on a highlight reel but doesn't seem to do much on a regular basis.

English Adama Traore.

 

Same here but because of the sell on business and the fact he’s home grown etc, it could appeal to the club.

 

If we move Deki into the centre permanently we have an opening at RW

...which is an issue as Sporting play Edwards as an AM this season

 

We need squad players. There are four club-trained slots to fill and our lack of depth is extremely obvious.
Our bench today was utterly threadbare and our inability to rotate or leave players out of games entirely is draining everyone.

 

This is the issue when people say we shouldn't sign depth

We should, as depth is happy to start cup games and get minutes from the bench, and if we're aiming for CL football then we need to look at football as a squad game and not a first team one

 

No argument with that PNP but I'm not sure most of those, Madueke excepted, would provide that much depth or quality.

I don't get to see as much live Spurs as most of you but when I have seen Tanganga (most recently for Millwall at Cardiff) I have not been impressed. Edwards seems to be a bit of an enigma and it looks like we off loaded Skipp as soon as we got a decent offer.

The problems come down to a lack of squad building and an apparent resistance to sign and manage good players who have to compete for positions. Dragusin is possibly an exception that proves the rule.

Our signings of Gray and Bergvall, both great prospects, saw us focus on the future, not the now.

I think it will be the start of next season before we have a squad that gives good cover across the park. Giving time for the very good group of young players to develop into their roles.

 

Tanganga had stagnated for a couple of years before we sold him, so it's not really fair to judge him since Conte seemed to go out of his way to destroy his confidence - but that being said, much like CCV the amount of people who'd pick him over Dragusin or Davies as our CB cover can probably be counted on one hand

Skipp on the other hand was undone by the second major ankle injury as he just didn't seem to be the same player after that, and seems to be struggling with fitness at Leicester at the moment as well

The real issue is we spent a long time looking past the academy and hit the market instead, with Nkoudou being the worst example of that as common sense was saying to walk away from Marseille playing silly buggers and use the opportunity to give one of Edwards or Madueke at least half a season to prove themselves, or for that matter KWP having a head-turning debut only for us to sign Aurier meaning we had three RBs to juggle all season and KWP was always the one to miss out

 

I agree to an extent but we (not for the first time) went into the season seemingly purposefully leaving ourselves short in certain positions.

LB and CB are top of that list and has had a domino effect elsewhere.

We knew Sess and Reguilon had no futures at the club, yet entered the season relying on Davies to cover LCB and LB, which means Spence or Gray now need to play out of position at LB when the Welshman is needed in the middle.

Meanwhile the baffling decision to leave Spence out of the EL squad compounds this problem, as it means Gray is our only real FB cover in that competition and he isn't actually a FB. As a result of this, Gray himself is less able to provide cover in his actual position of CM (which we're really feeling now with Bentancur's suspension). Udogie went into the season carrying an injury and we've overplayed him since then, and that never needed to happen.

 

Gray got established at Leeds as a RB, keeping Spence out of their squad

 

Mike McGrath claims that we're looking at Lens CB Abdukodir Khusanov, with talk of a £25m deal (which, frankly, smells of a buy-and-loan-back deal)

Positives
- Young, at 20 years old
- While he may be right-footed, he does seem versatile as he's played LCB in a back four as well as RCB and CCB in a back three
- Similar to Dragusin, as he sits deeper and has accurate long passing in his locker
- Very good at reading and cutting out passes
- Has an interesting combination of pace and physicality when challenging

Negatives
- As he's an Uzbekistan international, that's a lot of travel for every international break
- He does go to ground quickly, and there's plenty of teams in the PL who will milk that like a very large cow

So for the curious, here's some comps

The first one will make you want to look up that White Town tune on Youtube

You can mute the other two...

 

Dan KP says another forward is a January priority, though somebody who can cover at both CB and LB may emerge

Yeah, about how our midfield needs an overhaul...

 

Don’t need another midfielder as Bergvall and Gray impressed so much in pre season and have been given plenty of minutes… oh wait

 

In pre-season we had Bentancur available for the glut of league fixtures over Christmas

Now we have him for the Europa league games while Bissouma gets increasingly Ndombele at the exact time we need him giving 100%

 

Probably would've been a lot less damaging if we'd have sorted out the fullback situation.
Having Reguilon and Spence available and playing Gray in those roles, then not having him for the midfield hasn't helped.
Now he'll almost certainly have to play at centre-back for several weeks, too.

 

I'm not sure we need yet another forward. We've got Odobert, Moore and Pigeon to return from injury plus Yang joining soon. It's becoming a bit of a stockpile.

LB/CB and midfield are critical though.