Something must surely have gone on behind the scenes with Stambouli? It seems a crazy decision to sell him for a relatively small fee with no other DM in the squad. Its not as if he was really given a chance on the pitch and the fact he's gone to a club like PSG says something too.
Yeah, I get your point. But I think you know what I mean. If he's contracted to an English club, he can't nip back to France every 5 mins. And if he's getting **** from his missus too!....
Schneiderlin was interested in joining us last summer, even threw a strop on Twitter when Soton rejected our advances. Shaw, Lallana, Lovren and Lambert were all snapped up by other clubs and Rodriguez had a long term injury (though some ITK's suggested he was interested in joining us before signing his new deal, take a pinch of salt with that though) so there wasn't really anyone in Soton's side at the time who we needed, maybe apart from Wanyama who ironically we're linked with now. Back to Dier, I fully agree with you in that he's not at Schneiderlin's level (though he does have 5 years on Dier) but he's shown enough ability to make me feel comfortable with his selection at DM while we're hopefully working on bringing a more established one in. Good DM's seem to be becoming harder and harder to find or get, because the importance of having a good one these days is as much as having a 20 goal a season striker. One's in their prime are costing a fortune, Matic cost about £25m, as did Schneiderlin, Fernando cost City £20m while Fernandinho was £30m, Martinez cost Bayern about £25m I think too, so it's getting a lot harder to find a good solid option. We got lucky with Parker - or unlucky in fact, as we didn't sign him earlier - and when Sandro was injury free he was unbeatable. Others can be a risk, Capoue looked great in some games and then just dopey in others while Stambouli didn't really get a fair crack. I think we should look at the German market, there are some really good solid players over there, the German's have that mentality of they can't be beat so I think a German DM would be perfect. The likes of Kramer (who we were linked with I think), the Bender brothers and one or two others would be great additions.
Does Joey Barton count as a DM? He certainly has some fight in him and he's the right price for Levy. Can you imagine the threads on here?!
It's a shame that Barton went down the Balotelli/Suarez psycho's-gonna-****-you-good route, because he was, actually, a very good player.
The idea may be that since there’s probably nothing much to win or lose this season, best to leave one of our most promising players on the field, and count on him being able to learn his role. I agree he’s not Schneiderlin, but he’s very young, and has a tendency to make good things happen since his first game. I agree he and Mason look good. He and Alli might be very good as well. But he and Bentaleb between them don’t do enough to get the ball forward quickly. But I don’t know why he wasn’t helping out Walker and Alderweireld more at the end of the Stoke game. Did he think he was supposed to stay on the left? It puzzles me, because for 1 1/2 games he was so effective breaking up attacks. I can only hope it is an issue that is being addressed.
I think Mason gets the ball forward very well. They'd be a good partnership if they put a bit more into covering the defence, especially when we're winning. Anyway, his latest quotes suggest he's still finding fitness but he's not far off: "There is nothing like match fitness and like I said, I was starting to feel it on 60 minutes but hopefully if I'm playing next week (against Leicester) I'll be able to complete the 90 minutes. "Perhaps I blew up in the second half (against Stoke), my legs went a bit but I'll feel better for it next week and hopefully I'll chip in again.
Your answer is in the question. Because for that period in the second half when we conceded the two goals-Bentaleb was on the pitch.
Correct. Within two minutes of Nabil coming on my the bloke sitting next to me turned to me and said 'they're both trying to do the same thing. Watch - we'll confuse ourselves'. From what I've seen of Bentaleb throughout his Spurs career is that his role isn't quite defined and set in stone. I was very, very pleased with the interview Mason gave the other day because it showed that his own understanding of his game and his role in the team is maturing and solidifying. He identifies himself as a 'box to box goal scoring midfielder', much in the Lampard role - and that is the identity he is working towards perfecting. A worry about Nabil is that although he is undoubtedly a superbly talented lad, his role on the pitch isn't as clear. Is he a box to box engine? Is he a playmaker? A destroyer? A goal scorer? Many people hailed his cameo at left back last season. I, being the miserable git that I am, saw it as worrying evidence of a highly gifted young lad who hasn't yet got his feet down on planet earth. THIS is where the clubs needs an Edgar Davids to come in and coach players like Nabil into their best role and help them to master it. It's no coincidence that it's taken Ryan to almost 25 years old to really start to define himself on the pitch - he's had no one to bloody well show him! It pains me to say it but until Nabil follows suit, we can't really afford to play him as the bottom line is that in an hour of the 'Dyson' partnership we looked more defensively solid than we did the whole of last season.
"No, wait, that would imply I don't believe House of Jealous Lovers by The Rapture isn't a war crime" I assume you : 1. think there wasn't enough cowbell 2. prefer the Erol Alkan Bugged Up mashup he did on it (using Josh Wink)
And today's two purchases proves why we are not/ can not compete at the very top. Two best teams in the country have just gone and splashed £21mil and £32mil on strengthening their already expensive squads. we dither over how much to spend on Berahino.
But would you rather have Pedro for £21m or Berahino for (the rumoured) £25m? The trouble is we can't get the Pedros of this world, so we have to decide whether to gamble on the Berahinos. As for Otamendi, he may be a good player, but that's a Man City price - we're not the only ones that can't afford to do that
Chelsea are also rumoured to be splashing out £39m for Anthony Martial. I think that the fee was about half that when we were linked with him.
It's not that we can't get the Pedros of the world, as his release clause was within our means, it's their expectations of a six-figure salary that scupper us. In the case of Otamendi, the price was inflated because he only joined Valencia a year ago. However, something does spring to mind here: when he was at Porto a couple of seasons ago he was on around £15k per week, before moving to Valencia for €12m and trebling his wages last summer - so how the hell did Baldini come to the conclusion that spending €9.5m on Chiriches was a better decision? At the very least, an Otamendi/Vertonghen partnership last season would've kept the £8m we spent on Fazio last summer in the club's coffers.
Poch made it very clear in the press conference today that we are actively pursuing reinforcements, don't want to hear anymore of that we are happy as we are nonsense.
