Is it any worse than say, picking a name completely at random here, Djemba Djemba? Bought for £3.5m, sold for £1.5m and costing approximately another £1.5m in wages during his 20 months stay at..... oh...... Manchester United. Or bad business to sell him for a £3.5M loss after 20 months (effectively costing the club an extra £40K for every week he was there)?
I'll repeat what I said when it was first suggested he was headed to Evergrande I've heard some quite remarkably creative accounting for this being viable: in 2013 you would get three real to the pound, but now it's more like five real to the pound, so based on that we'd be breaking even - but that only works if we agreed a fee of R$52m and we were paying that in installments, and I'm sure that's just too much of a stretch even with Levy's financial witchcraft.
Or that Portuguese lad they signed for £8mill and sold for peanuts... or Kleberson... or Zaha... or any number of United flops. Of course buying for £17mill and selling £10mill isn't good business but getting the more than expected for a player that's not needed is. Personally I don't think £10mill(if it is that) for Paulinho represents a better than okay deal but depending on the contract length it might have been pointless to loan him out for a season as he may have been going into his final year of the contract by the time we tried to sell him next summer.
The larger consideration is that the club is doing well financially overall, and will do better when relatively large salaries are offloaded. Selling Paulinho for 10 million after buying him for 17 million means we cleared most of his portion of what amounted to the Bale windfall. So in this case, and in the case of any large salaries we offload, it is good business, I think, considering we’re tending to replace the large salaries with young players who earn less. He’s a bad buy but a good sale, to my cockeyed way of thinking. I’m not convinced we gave Paulinho enough of a run to find out if he should be in the team--but that will keep happening until we shift more of our players. Too many are too near the same level for many of them not to get lost in the mix. That said, I think Paulinho looked too skittish when he came back from his injury to be useful in a deep lying role (understandably, I’d say), and never looked like cracking the front four. He also seemed more of an entertainer than someone determined to win, so his move to China may suit him and us. In any case, good luck to him. But I hope we’ll keep pruning the squad. One of our problems, I think, is that Bentaleb is too good to leave out, but it’s unclear where he should play. The team had a better balance with him at LB and Mason and Dembele as the "2". Mason doesn’t shield the defenders at all, but he was the player who did the best job getting the ball forward as quickly as we wanted. Bentaleb can be a good DM when he wants to be, but for whatever reason, he stopped shielding the defenders as well as the year went on. So either he has to play like a DM, or Dembele should pair with Mason (or Carroll, or Alli). Still, I think the players are talented enough, they just need to be selected and directed properly. It’s possible a Schneiderlin could really improve the team, no doubt. But it’s a big risk. We could spend 25 million, not make much difference, and hold Alli and Carroll’s development back. If we need anything, it’s right-sidedness and attacking pace. Lamela has done his best, but is very left-footed and not particularly fast. Townsend is better on the left as well, I thnk. I’d like to get a top, young, pacy striker/right-sided winger. But it needs to be a young player with some quality nobody on the squad has, whether it’s pace, right-sidedness, or, preferably, both. I’m comfortable with Pritchard, and possibly Lamela, deputizing for Eriksen. We clearly need to rest him and Kane more than we did. I guess Ade spelling Kane isn’t a wildly popular idea at this point. Finally, Spurs’ history says not to spend more than about 12 million, since all our good buys are around that amount or less. So a good buy will be tricky at best.
Getting 9 million for paulinho is the best business any team will do in this window. Truly awful player
Do you mean Bebe? Anyway , every team has a bad buy-or in UTD's case a bad loan- How about Falcao who cost Man Utd £6 mill plus 1/4 mill a week (which in my books is £1 mill a month for 9 months ) a total of £15 million!!
That's the one! Wasn't there a strange story about how they hadn't really scouted him properly too. Probably just United money laundering
An ITK (supposedly reputable) has stated we won't be getting MS and also we won't be getting Alderweireld. If true the latter especially is a little disappointing
I personally think that offloading Paulinho for almost £10M and cutting your losses is very good business. Lots of stories about how Spurs are looking to do the same with Lamela - as well as Adebayor and Soldado.
Moving on Adebayor’s and Soldado’s big salaries would be wise, I think, depending on who we bring in. Lamela was our best player the last few games of the season. He improved over the course of the year, led us in assists, and is among our leaders in work rate. It would be a mistake to sell him, I think. On the other hand, he or Chadli making way for a first-rate right-sided player would improve our balance. Would Alderweireld really be better than Dier, though? Dier is supposedly one of the fastest players in the PL, and if there’s one thing Pochettino’s system can use, it’s a fast CB. He and Schneiderlin seem big gambles. I’m disappointed we missed out on Martial, and will probably miss out on Orrasco.
I didn't see enough of Southampton last season to judge, but I seem to remember the general sense from his Ajax days was that Alderweireld was not as good a prospect as Vertonghen. Then he went to Atletico and didn't do much before going out on loan...
I think Lamela will stay this Summer unless a really really silly bid comes in, although I'm not sure how I feel about it. At least he appears to demonstrate the right attitude and the occasional flash of ability, but I'm not sure he'll ever really make it with us, especially on the right. I don't think I'd want him on the left either but he might look good at no. 10. On the attitude front, I saw a rumour on twitter that people would take bets on when Paulinho would pull up with his next 'mystery strain' in training. I have no idea if its true - it was twitter after all - but if it is, its pretty damning on the Brazilian. Alderweireld has looked a good player but we are well stocked for CBs even discounting Kaboul and Chiriches, and we have Carter-Vickers and Velkjovic amongst others from the academy who look strong prospects too. Having signed Trippier and Wimmer we should now be more focussed on signing a wide midfielder and a striker IMO, unless we sell Fazio as well as Kaboul and Chiriches, which I think is unlikely.
We're being linked with Fernando Llorente I might have been excited 4 years ago but he's 30 now. Haven't we learnt our lesson with Soldado yet?
I wouldn't spend anything like £26 million on Llorente...but if we could get a good price then he might be a good fit. He'd know what he was getting himself in for regarding competing for a starting spot, and physically at 6'5 he might be a better fit for the PL than Soldado is. I guess what we're really looking for (assuming Ade and Soldado leave) is a player who knows where the back of the net is and who isn't going to be kicking up a fuss if he's not guaranteed first XI football all the time, and another young striker. Llorente would obviously be the former. He's also won a plethora of trophies in his career, so he might bring some experience to a young squad. The temptation is to compare him to Soldado I agree, but he'd be coming in for a much lower fee (presumably), and he wouldn't be under pressure to slot straight in and perform, he'd be adding depth to the squad instead. Less pressure and expectation might yield better results in this case. I'm speculating though.
Paulinho's posted a farewell message on his Facebook page: Gostaria de agradecer o Tottenham e todos os torcedores que me receberam muito bem durante esses dois anos na Inglaterra. Estarei sempre na torcida pelo Spurs. #COYS Since it didn't occur to him to maybe bid Spurs fans a farewell in a language they speak, the translation is: I would like to thank Tottenham and all the supporters who welcomed me very well during those two years in England. I will always cheer for Spurs. #COYS
As far as our new striker is concerned I am still waiting for Chiquarito (or how about Joel Campbell?)
Eh? Am I going mad? Is my memory incredibly short? I know we differ on our opinions of the Poundland Ronaldo but this seems extreme. I can not remember one game in his entire Spurs career where he looked like one of the best players on the pitch never mind the best for a few games. Am I putting too negative light on it? No. No I'm not. Surely. He runs around a lot and stopped giving the ball away 80% of the time he had possession as he did before and maybe even managed to get his passing so that not every other ball was only just getting to a team-mate but really, truly MOTM performances? Can't remember anything close. I seriously feel like Lamela is some sort of psychological test dreamed up by scientists to give a reading of someone's personality type. Not sure if I pass the tests or fail and set off alarms and red lights. Also I had no idea Dier was that fast. No slouch, for sure but his pace never amazed me - where'd you hear that? Tricky one with Dier because he performed admirably from day one both at RB and CB (was he our best RB last season? Probably. Definitely our best crosser) when asked to step in and it's tough to hold back his progress. Easy to think that we need some solidity and experience in defence but then you think of how Fazio fits that description perfectly and you realise that "solidity" and "experience" are a bit vague - you just want a player who isn't going to be useless. Dier did have his off-days last season so I would still want another CB in (assuming we're losing at least Kaboul and Chiriches) but he showed that we can wait all we want for players to get better and better as they get older like they do in computer games - the good ones often look pretty damn good without being given two full years to "bed in". Out of two options; 1) This time next year we're having the same discussion about Lamela's "showing us in flashes what he can do"* and should we hang onto him? or 2) Lamela looks like a deserving starter who is a key attacking player for a team aiming for top 4 - I could only put money on the former scenario and I would not feel that that was a particularly risky bet at all (assuming evens odds). * I wold even dispute these flashes. He's scored a rabona and one decent goal in the league. Its not like he's gone past people with lovely bits of skill but messed up the final ball or shown amazing control but then misplaced a pass. It's just become the thing to say about Lamela - this myth about these "flashes".
The Lamela Rorschach test--what do you see?... I’m really not that positive about Lamela. I think he’s terribly one-footed, and for much of the year simply could not or did not play the one touch football the rest of the team more or less managed. But he was able to create through balls leading to goals like no one else. And in the last few games, with Eriksen and Kane both looking spent, and Chadli, as always, mostly invisible, he was the best of a mediocre lot of attackers, at least. I’ll admit Vertonghen, Bentaleb and Dier might all have been decent choices for best player of our last couple of games. Anyway, all I can say is what I think I see. You’ve been far more negative about Lamela all year than I have, for whatever reason, which I freely admit may be my myopia, poor judgment or mental instability. On the other hand, we seem to have about the same opinion of Dier. I’d like to see him continue to start most games next year, and also think he was our best RB. He has presence. As for his speed: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...-Sissoko-Premier-League-s-fastest-player.html I hadn’t noted it was the Fail. Also, how fast someone actually goes in a game, which seems to be the basis for this stat, may well not be a good gauge of who can actually run the fastest. Still, being faster on the field may be more useful than being faster on the track. He is fast, though. I’m sure of it. (Just like I’m sure Lamela was our best player for the last couple of games of the season. )
This will be Lamela's make or break season, his first was hampered by injuries and getting settled, his second was full of inconsistency, one minute he bags a rabona and the next he can't hit a 5 yard pass to a team mate, he seems to speak English now (albeit broken) so I'd like to think he fully understands of what's required of him from both coaching staff and team mates and so it's now time to show why we lumped out a record fee for him. As for striking options once we hopefully get rid of Soldado and Ade, I'd definitely take Llorente and/ or Chiqarito if they're both available for £10m or less. I don't think we need to spend a crazy amount on a striker(s) that would likely play second fiddle to Kane (providing he maintains the form he showed last season). If we are to spend a hefty bit then I'd go for Berahino, young, quick, bags of potential and can operate on the wings if need be as an inside forward, I reckon the Baggies would be looking for around £15m-£20m, which I think is worthy from what I've seen of him.
