Cases in point: In 20/21, we spent £68m on Hojbjerg, Rodon, Reguilon and Doherty. In 21/22, we spent £47m on Royal and Gil. Every penny of that money went on players who were nothing more than squad options. Now imagine a scenario where we give 4 squad places to academy products and spend £115m on 2 players who actually improve the first team.
If we have the budget to spend £50-70m on a CM plus £70-90m on an ST and then another £30m to upgrade Werner, I'm all for it. I don't think we have that kind of money, especially if we miss out on the CL. My only point is: upgrading squad players at the expense of urgently needed first team investments is insane. So if we can find a better option for the same price, or Levy magically finds an extra £15m down the back of the couch, fair enough.
I don't want to qualify for 4th off the back of another team's failure. If we don't get it on our own merit, we almost certainly aren't ready to compete at that level. It happened under Conte and look where that ended up.
Agreed. There is still alot of surgery to do on that squad of players in the summer though and you just hope Levy has the balls to see it through to the end. I am old and a bit cynical now so not expecting much but would be delighted to be proved wrong...
I wouldn’t take Werner if he was on a free with zero wages. The chances he misses on a regular basis are beyond ridiculous. Next season Son as LW and Solomon as back up if Spurs don’t have spare money after signing a CM and ST. I’m assuming Bryan Gil will be moved on and it looks unlikely Ange will bring through anyone from the academy to play LW
I think Levy is aware that regardless of where Spurs finish, they need a couple of big signings in the summer. Qualifying for the CL will be a nice unexpected bonus but it doesn’t mean job done.
1. Spurs over the last N games of the 2021-22 season were about 2 pts better than them lot. That the Goon bottle went in a period of 3 games meant nothing if Spurs had not been playing well enough to be within striking range and then capitalise. 2. Conte fell apart in 2022-23, and that IMHO did more damage to that season than the latent strength of the squad. A return to more serious UEFA competition by definition forces all on-pitch personnel to literally raise their game. As it was for BMJ in 2006, Arry in 2010, Conte in 2022, so it may come to be for Ange this summer.
In your initial post your exact words were: We have to stop this nonsense of signing stocking fillers for the squad. Why then are you advocating spending £15m on a player that fits that exact sentence to a tee? Because if as expected we spend on a new starting calibre striker then Son moves back to LW and we have Solomon to back him up. There is then absolutely zero logic on spending even £5m, let alone £15m on a foreign player that’s likely to be a third choice option in a position where even the second choice will struggle for game time due to Son’s importance to the XI. It’s far more sensible to put that £15m towards a starting calibre midfielder. The aim for the club should be to sign players that either push the current starters down a peg or at least come in and provide the current starters with genuine competition, Werner does neither. If we do end up signing him, more fool us.
I totally agree. I might have misunderstood what you and others have been saying for weeks, which was (I thought) to spend £30m+ to upgrade Werner. If we can find options better than him who'd cost the same or less, I'd be more than happy to see him go back to Germany. I'm nervous about Solomon. We saw glimpses but the guy has made 5 appearances, all off the bench in the league. He has since then missed almost the entire season and had two surgeries. If I was more confident that he's actually a better player than Werner, again I'd be happy to wave goodbye to the German. Of course in an ideal scenario we'd have a much clearer and stronger path from academy to first team and we'd be talking about Donley or Moore as understudies for Son.
I’d be open to spending £30m on a Werner upgrade (after we’ve sorted pressing concerns at ST and CM) because that would then give some hope we’d be signing someone who could challenge Son, more so than just back him up. Mediocrity felt like our club motto for a number of years until lately, it didn’t matter how much we spent, whether £55m on Ndombele, £42m on Lo Celso or £11m on Rodon, everyone of them done nothing for the club. Paying £15m for Werner just takes me back to that period where it’s a guarantee of mediocrity. I’d rather spend more and hope for another van de Ven but risk it being a Gil, than spend less and guarantee a Werner.
I realise I'm a Gooner, but I am surprised seeing some people begin to turn on Postecoglou. He's not perfect (what manager is?), but he's over performed relative to what I expected from Spurs at the beginning of the season. There's no way I had you as Champions League contenders this season off the back of how awful things looked last year. And sure, I get expectations change as the season progresses, however, it's important to not lose perspective from where he's had to pick you up from. I get it's frustrating when you lose by large margins and he isn't defending as pragmatically as some of you would like, but there's always going to be teething problems in a manager's first season. Particularly after 4-5 years of poor transfers, incoherent squad building, a new philosophy, your best player/talisman leaving and players still around from previous regimes which haven't been shifted for whatever reason. There's a lot of mistakes that need to be rectified and an identity implemented with a squad that isn't largely his. Vicario and Van der Ven have been contenders for players of the season, Maddison was a shrewd buy and has improved your creativity, Porro has been one of the best fullbacks in the league, Brennan Johnson looks like he's starting to find his feet. Ok, jury is still out on a few (Kulusevski, Dragusin). Nonetheless, I think that was a decent window with players you can clearly build around, coupled with players who have developed under him that looked a level below under Conte. If he's backed in the Summer window with the players he wants, and you're still facing the exact same issues throughout the whole of next season, then you've got more justification to question whether he's the right man. But for now, he's done well overall all things considered. Any conversation about him being at Spurs/not being at Spurs is far too premature.
Taken me a while to feel like posting. I like to think that I am reasonably level headed as a fan and I don't get too high after a win or too low after a defeat and I am certainly not turning on the manager. But this season could now easily end in a similar fashion to last year. If Newcastle can do that to us (and Wasn't Gordon good), I hate to think what City and The Goons will do and we don't win at Anfield or Stamford Bridge and that leaves matches against two sides who are down and by the time we play them will. I do think that we should get 6 more points and that should get us 5th which actually be a good first season under Ange, but it will then be a big summer because we need better players as others have detailed.
I am OK with signing Werner as long as we sign another top quality CF and Son moves back to the left, Solomon is a complete unknown and may never return from injury, the little we have seen he didn`t look any better than Timo anyway, Werner is not a clinical finisher but has assisted quite a few goals and creates chances. Son + Werner, New CF, + Richarlison, Johnson + New RW, move Kulusvski central to compete with Maddison for the 10 role. Plus sort out CM and back up full backs & GK.
Well said. Expectations were delusional after our opening run of games and while the injury and suspension plague (triggered by Chelsea of course) hit at an awful time, the relative 'collapse' in form and inconsistent results was a matter of when rather than if. What we saw at the beginning of the season was typical of an average to good set of players who were playing in a way that the rest of the league hadn't seen before, so they had no idea how to stop it. Most PL teams employ a small army of scouts, sports scientists and analysts to work out how to stop opposition teams, so once they worked us out the writing was on the wall. Even Sheff United under Chris Wilder were the talk of the town for a year. No one had ever seen overlapping CBs before, so no one knew how to deal with it and they finished 9th. Twelve months later, they finished bottom. They'd been found out. And without a tactical edge, it became apparent that their players weren't actually that good.
There’s been an overreaction to this result. Newcastle have improved recently and played very well. Their front three of Gordon, Isak and Barnes bring a lot of pace and movement. On a day when van de Ven’s skills would have been useful to counter that, he had a day off. They were clinical whereas Spurs wasted some good chances - Werner, in particular. I think Spurs fans accept that it will take a few transfer windows to reshape the squad and add some depth. The club has already brought in some very good signings since Ange was appointed. But at present, he doesn’t have many options to change personnel or style of play if Spurs need some impetus to change a game, like yesterday because the quality in depth isn’t there. So there will be off days. Overall, Spurs position in the league is a fair representation of where the team is at - which is an improvement on where it was last season.
