"It wasn't Harry's job to plan for the long-term, his task was to manage the team we had." And in 2012, managing the team as he did appears to have had an outcome incompatible with the long-term financial planning of the board.
I think, SD, That it's part of every manager's job to plan for the future. Or any sensible board will include it as part of the job description
In the 2012/13 season, before his January injury Sandro had been by far our best and most consistent performer. Gareth Bale won all the plaudits for that season due to his goal scoring heroics, but pre-injury if you had asked me who our player of the season would be, I would have said Sandro without hesitation. FYI at that point in time I wasn't even aware of his social media presence, personality etc, this seemed to emerge during his period on the sidelines, possibly as a coping mechanism for the boredom of injury. If you want to see a midfield masterclass watch his display against AC Milan in the Champions League, truly magnificent.
Reading about the Falcao move by Utd, it would appear that a small consideration of some £265,000pw may have persuaded him that CL football wasn't all it's cracked up to be, after all.
Before his injury he was a better player. But in recent seasons imo he hasn't looked half as good. Hence why he is ended up at QPR and not a top foreign side like he used to be linked with.
This transfer window seems to be stuck ajar. Man Utd seemed to do all of their business after it had officially closed and they're still trying to loan Cleverly to Villa now. What was the point in setting a limit and then allowing various people to go past it for no apparent reason? Nice to know that we had a net spend that was lower than everyone in the division barring Southampton, though. Again. We're currently bottom of the Spending Over 5 Seasons league, yet have this ludicrous reputation in the media for splashing the cash. I know that we're saving up for the stadium, but it's getting a bit silly.
it wouldn't be half so bad if the media were like "look at Spurs finishing 6th while making a profit on transfers" instead of what we actually get which is "big spending Tottenham fail to make top 4". Its such bullcrap.
Stambouli's version of how his transfer went is pretty amusing. He had offers from a lot of clubs and was pondering where to go: “With Swansea, it was a good opening door to the Premier League, Fiorentina are a competitive team and Marseille are one of the best French teams, so I didn’t know what to do. “It was very complex. And then Tottenham came along.”
http://transferleague.co.uk/league-tables/transfer-league-table-last-five-seasons.html Not sure how accurate it is, but I doubt our figure's too far off.
Nice to see he values us somewhat superior to the other sides. Watched his Spurs TV interview, I like how he researched us due to his fondness with Waddle and Ginola. If his YouTube clips are an accurate description to what we can expect, he could prove a very astute signing. Montpellier have sold some really good players in recent years - Giroud, Cabella, Mbiwa, Belhanda so hopefully Stambouli is the next one in line.
The value of the squad is a much better measure of our likelyhood of success than the net spend. I'm sure you can argue with most of the valuations on this site but it seems to be a reasonable shot: http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/jumplist/startseite/wettbewerb/GB1
Why? We're only about £300m behind a bunch of clubs and a not too dissimilar amount on wages, too. West Ham have averaged about £20m a season more than us.
"it wouldn't be half so bad if the media were like "look at Spurs finishing 6th while making a profit on transfers" instead of what we actually get which is "big spending Tottenham fail to make top 4". Its such bullcrap." The headline figure is the gross spend on transfers. That will never change with the media hacks (which you can understand - ie their lazy intellect) . And even if they wanted to be more correct and note the wage bills, then without the true wage figures they could have to wait long after the event (end of that season) to know the reality (club financial reports for that season etc) .
"The value of the squad is a much better measure of our likelyhood of success than the net spend." Revisit the current transfermarkt table and compare with the PL table come May. No doubt the correlation will be near perfect.
Both our respective clubs have new managers who've made up their minds very quickly about the usefulness of certain players and shipped them out. I thought you'd get more than £6M for Sandro; I'm surprised Arsenal paid as much as £16M for Welbeck (that's a big chunk of the RvP money back!). Generally speaking, I don't like the idea of so many transfers in and out. Whether it might be considered necessary or not, it is naive to think that a completely revamped team can be instantly successful, however good the individual players might be.
I'd wager it will be a better correlation than the net spend table. Particularly at the top where the differences are very big,
Van Persie = £8m + Welbeck? That sounds like a terrible deal for Arsenal when it's put that way, doesn't it?
