He did say upon leaving he felt like he needed a new challenge. Not many fancy a relegation battle but if that’s his thing then fair enough.
Genuine headline from the Woolwich section of FootballDotLondon Why Arsenal let Tottenham sign Emerson Royal and let Mikel Arteta get his best tactical fit Oh that's nice, they "let" us sign somebody and most definitely didn't get turned down to being an utter mess who don't appear to actually have tactics judging by how the players never seem to be doing anything other than mentally composing angry text messages to their agents
We had a deal for Tomiyasu sorted weeks ago. We let them sign him, if anything. Still not sure that was a great idea. Can't be any worse than what they've got, can he?
I wonder if Tanganga pocketing both Sterling and Grealish single-handed in our opening game is what caused us to drop our interest in Tomiyasu Obviously it sucks for Tomiyasu if that's what happened, as he was expecting to move only to see the move evaporate, and I have a bad feeling that some of their fans will assume he's another Inamoto brought in to sell shirts in the Far East and dismiss anything he does (which, it has to be said, some of our fans were still doing with Sonny in the 2016-17 season)
I think that he's just an example of Paratici doing his thing and working on multiple bids. Royal was the aim and Tomiyasu was one of the other possibilities. Walker-Peters was another we enquired about, apparently. Southampton rebuffed us and Everton.
Our lack of either at various points Case in point, early in ENIC's tenure, I saw a few newspapers mistakenly call David Buchler our chairman because he was the one addressing the press while both Lewis and Levy were practically invisible
Possibly the interview on Spurs TV with Paratici which was released today, reflecting on our transfer business. I watched the first few mins and he comes across very well and clearly has a well thought out strategy for the club. Also very clear that the "going back to our DNA" comment meant going back to signing bright young talents with scope for huge development, an approach which characterised our window and was no doubt part of the reason we didn't go for players like Pjanic.
Assuming Zenit doesn't "disappear" him. It is Russia after all. He must avoid any Belarussian airlines.
It does have to be said that a lot of players in Russia let their contracts run down and join their rivals on a free Aleksander Kokorin is pretty notorious for it, letting his contract with Dynamo Moscow expire so he could go to Zenit, then a few years later his Zenit contract expired and he moved to Spartak Moscow
Which players from the Russian league has this happened to before? Must be quite a few for you to make a sweeping generalisation like that.
