Rival watch

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C. Kane said:
Not necessarily. The thing that has hurt us most is that we've seemingly lost the ability to do what we used to do better than 90% of the teams in the PL - spot young/unheard of talent, bring them in on the cheap, develop them and then either keep them or sell them on at a huge profit. The Pochettino years were built on a glut of 'smart money' signings. Dier, Alli, Davies, Wimmer, Tripper, Toby, Wanyama. All cost £12m or under - peanuts in the modern era. How did that sink to a list as useless as N'Koudou, Foyth, Clarke, Doherty and Hart?

The decline is mind-boggling and coincides with Paul Mitchell's falling out with Levy.
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Paul Mitchell's tenure at the club: November 2014-August 2016

Players who undermine the idea that recruitment was great under Mitchell and not great either side of his time at the club
Ben Davies (signed July 2014)
Eric Dier (signed August 2014)
Dele Alli (while he was signed in January 2015, David Pleat had scouted him much earlier)
Georges Kevin Nkoudou (signed August 2016, making him a player Mitchell identified)

Also, IIRC, Spurcat suggested that Mitchell was scouting players not via a scouting network or with contacts, but by booting up Football Manager
 
C. Kane said:
I couldn't disagree more. I'll happily extend the sample group to 10 years, covering 5 years before we appointed Poch. Our 'smart money' purchases from that time include:

Eriksen
Chadli
Capoue
Lloris
Vertonghen
Siggy
Parker
Van der Vaart
Sandro
Bassong
Kaboul
Walker
Rose
Kranjcar

It is so abundantly clear that we used to be really good a this. The only other constant during the overall sample group of 12 years is that most of our big money signings have been utter rubbish.
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To persuade me that we were really good at it I would need to know exactly what we were doing that made us good and why other clubs were not doing it.
In other fields where it is easier to research, luck is almost always a better explanation than edge. Fund managers in US equities are the best example. If none has an edge then over one year half will beat the market, over two years a quarter will beat the market eavh year and so on. But there are a few thousand of them so a few will beat the market ten years running and will publicise that heavily.This is exactly what you expect by chance but it's hard not to assume that these winners have skill.
There are about 50 clubs a bit like us, all trying to do the same thing. If you score them over any period you choose, one will be the best and another the worst.
The fact that we can apparently tell the difference between cheap players where the skill difference should be small and not between expensive players merely persuades me further that it is mostly chance.
Having said that, getting 52% of signings right rather than 48% would be valuable so we should definitely try.
 
Gonna watch the Dortmund vs Sevilla game. Two teams I’ve said I’d like Spurs to take inspiration from with regards to how they do transfers. Zorc vs Monchi, battle of elite DoFs.
 
Cracking game so far, 2-1 Dortmund at the moment, 29 mins gone. Suso scored a deflected shot then Dahoud scored a thunder bastard to equalise and then Haaland put Dortmund in front after nice play between him and Sancho.
 
Haaland with his second, Sevilla lost the ball and Dortmund countered devastatingly.

This guy’s a ****ing joke though, finishing is so similar to Kane’s. Him and Mbappe gonna be competing for future Ballon D’ors.
 
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Dier Hard said:
Haaland with his second, Sevilla lost the ball and Dortmund countered devastatingly.

This guy’s a ****ing joke though, finishing is so similar to Kane’s. Him and Mbappe gonna be competing for future Ballon D’ors.
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On the other hand, if you were watching Porto/Juve you would have seen Szczesny look a complete plonker after just sixty seconds

It's happening again...
 
C. Kane said:
As for Super Jan though...he's coming for ya.
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He had a decent game tonight, to be fair. Prior to the game, thought he was past it + was playing in a struggling Benfica team. Judging by what I saw today, he'd probably be a better fit for you right now than Davinson Sanchez or Dier would. Although I don't know how useful that is, as we probably didn't test him as much as we should have done.

That said, got quite pissed with the ex-Spurs filth as he was fouling Saka a lot and the referee didn't book him or have a word with him.

Taarabt was average. Like most of the Benfica team.
Shame we decided to play like **** also, though.
 
BrunelGunner said:
He had a decent game tonight, to be fair. Prior to the game, thought he was past it + was playing in a struggling Benfica team. Judging by what I saw today, he'd probably be a better fit for you right now than Davinson Sanchez or Dier would.
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Mate right now I'd be a better fit than Sanchez or Dier.
 
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