We've also had quite a clear-out of fringe players. They might not have brought in huge bucks, but they have added to our bank balance.
Well as the Eagle's song goes, "Two out of Eight Ain't Bad." At least I think that's how it goes.....
Common sense dictates that for every midfield position, we should have a first choice, an understudy, and a youngster coming through the ranks. At present it looks like this: Lennon - Parker - Modric - Bale Kranjcar - Sandro - Huddlestone - Pienaar Townsend - Luongo - Carroll - Falque A few problems, though: * Dos Santos is also an understudy for Lennon, but never plays * Huddlestone has been out injured all season * We loaned out Pienaar in January * We loaned out Townsend in January * We loaned out Carroll in January * We loaned out Falque in January That's half a midfield with no valid replacement for half the season!
Harry has recently bemoaned his lack of squad depth for not coping when the blip hit deep into the season. I suspect these players were loaned out to free up funds for the Saha move. That gamble didn't quite come off this year. Where would Bently fit into the overall picture; is he completely frozen out and moving on this summer?
The stupidest thing of all was that the main reason we loaned out Pienaar was to free up a space in our squad for Milos Krasic - but that move fell through, yet Pienaar was still loaned out. As we'd already loaned out Falque and Townsend by then, it looked like an error at the time (especially as Harry has no interest in using Dos Santos) and that's exactly how it played out. If he at least rotated in Dos Santos more, whilst he may not be the player we thought we were buying, he's a player who isn't knackered! The only reason Bentley is at the club at the moment is his loan with West Ham was terminated when he broke his leg, and there was no effort from us or any other club to loan him for the remainder of the season.
Defoe? Keane? Oh God - he can't mean Pav, can he? OK - I give up - I have no idea who the second one is. The first one is Modric, right? And talking about the good business we've done in selling good players (and please notice that Berba and Carrick aren't even on the list of top 8 most expensive signings) that is not the point at all. Fine - we can sell well. But we are very often crap at buying. And if we think that selling players such as Modric is a good idea to free up funds it's worth pointing out that even if we do our usual good business and get top dollar for him the likelihood that we spaff the money up the wall on a pair like, say, Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing is very high indeed. Depressing but true.
I was joking when I was wondering if the first was Modric. Yes - totally agree about Harry's signings. Compare the hit-rate of his signings with those before and it's another world. And yes - without breaking the bank for any of them. HANG ON A MINUTE - Keane, Defoe and Palacios were all signed by him and are all on the List of Shame above (Prestigious List Of Spurs' Most Expensive Transfer Fees)! Mind you - all three of those were when he first took over and everything was a bit Ramosy still. Anyway - I hope you're not saying he's a wheeler-dealer: he's a fahckin' football manager!
Wikipedia: £15.75m Sky Sports: £14m Telegraph: £9m but also whilst waiving £10m which is a bit odd cos the headline reads "only £9m" but the last paragraph makes it clear that it's sort of £19m all in all. Just the first three three that came up on a google search. And lots of "a fee thought to be...". Quick scan down the results does make it seem like the consensus is around the £15m mark. Apparently £9m went their way but we waived a £4m sell-on fee and £6m that they owed us, according to the Telegraph. I guess most calculations of the fee include the £6m owed to us but not the waived £4m sell-on fee, hence everyone else saying £15m. But who the hell knows? I find it very annoying that so many transfer fees are undisclosed nowadays. According to the Telegraph above any fee over £10m has to be declared to the stock market but you can work it so that a deal that actually totals £19m does not have to be. Plus many clubs aren't floated on the stock market so are not compelled to disclose fees at all if they don't want to (I guess).
All of our transfer dealings with Pompey that season were based on us collecting on their not paying for a list of players (Defoe, Kaboul, Pedro Mendes, Sean Davis, No Pamarot) so that was deducted from the fees we paid for Defoe, Kaboul and Crouch, whilst Kranjcar's fee was reduced by us chucking Boateng their way, presumably so we didn't look like angry debt collectors...
