I think that summer was less Poch trying to show he could manage big players (read: fees) and more to do with what he was saying about how he was seen as a coach and not a manager With that in mind the summer of 2019 certainly makes more...well I don't want to say "sense" given his apparent inability to identify an obviously needed DM, but it certainly did have a feeling of him saying "These are the players I want, pay what needs to be paid" hence we had Pini Zahavi on retainer to get Ndombele's deal through (and didn't that work out well for the Spurs side of that equation...?) plus the chicanery to get Lo Celso while minimising the fees Betis would have to send to PSG And then Sessegnon arrived injured, Clarke went months without football because Leeds had six loanees in their side, Lo Celso got crocked during an international friendly, and Ndombele was content to put his name forward to be forever spoken of as one of Spurs' worst-ever signings alongside Barren Dent, David Bentley, Paulinho and Helder Postiga
"Ndombele was content to put his name forward to be forever spoken of as one of Spurs' worst-ever signings alongside Barren Dent, David Bentley, Paulinho and Helder Postiga" That's very harsh ...on Postiga!
RWB Watch L'Equipe have linked us to Lyon's Malo Gusto Of course, the Chavs are also linked, which begs the question of whether he's a backup target in case Porro doesn't happen, or a distraction tactic As for the player himself, he's actually younger than Porro (and Djed Spence) and since breaking into Lyon's team has five assists in Ligue 1 - which does pale in comparison to the nine assists Porro has in the Primeira Liga in roughly the same period, but on the other hand there is the difference in level of opposition to take into account The main reason Gusto looks more like a Plan B, though, is he has 18 months on his contract...although Ligue 1 being Ligue 1, that likely doesn't mean £15m upfront and he's yours
Ziyech was rumoured to be part of a Chelsea bid for Bissouma and he's been linked with other moves. Forget the Bissouma part. Would people want to see him sign apart from that? Was very impressive for Ajax and looks the part for Morocco, too.
Seeing talk of that summer of 2019… bloody hell that really does still haunt me (us!). I think it has to be the worst window we’ve ever had. 4 signings, circa £140m spent and it took us backwards! Clarke in fairness never got a chance so I can’t be as brutal to him but the other three… oooft. In Ndombele we had the promised prince, the Dembele heir, the maestro! Poch said he wished he had a younger Dembele and we thought he got him; debut day goal and an assist in his second game vs City… we thought we were onto a winner. Oh how we were wrong. A fat, lazy mess with a chicken mentality ensued. Every once in a while he’d show his ability (Sheff Utd goal, the occasional exquisite dribble or through ball) but the lump was too worried about getting his next Big Mac than his next good performance, all whilst crying to the chairman that Jose was a meanie and football was difficult. Lo Celso, the winner of the battle of “do we sign Bruno or Gio”. A bit part player at PSG who shone in Spain and showed the French giants up. Could we be signing a Dembele replacement and an Eriksen heir in the same window fans asked? No… was the answer. Quite possibly the most useless player I’ve witnessed in a midfield role and we’ve had Harry Winks play for this club, a player who at times looks confused as to what a football was but a player who certainly knew the location of the treatment room and flights to Argentina. He was so bad he got his own “StopThatGLC” Twitter handle but instead of quality highlights it was a reel of embarrassment. Ndombele was certainly the bigger disappointment due to the hype but Lo Celso was by far the worse player. Then we had Sessegnon. The boy wonder of English football. The new and possibly improved Danny Rose signed from our west London neighbours. The attitude was there, a young, determined lad ready to take the next step in his career. Unfortunately for us, his next step was to become the new Gilberto. It almost defies footballing logic that a winger-turned-WB could be so bad at going forward, what we witness week in, week out with Sessegnon is what we’d expect to see if we put Lloris on the flanks. For him it’s truly a shame though, because he’s as professional as they come and seemingly as humble as they come to, but on the most important footballing part? Well… the less said the better. Damn you, Summer 2019, damn you!
Apparently Blackpool’s made a loan offer for White. Can work under the absolute legend, Mick McCarthy. No brainer.
Blackpool's last league win was in October. They did beat Forest in the cup though, which we couldn't manage. Is it fair to send a young man to the Paris of the North? Seems like a cruel and unusual punishment.
Well he said it just before calling them one of the best clubs in the world, so that bit does come across as a less than subtle dig at a certain other club in London who seem to have forgotten how to develop young talent.
The thing with the summer of 2019 is that Poch set out the stall to buy a bunch of possession-based players, yet forgot the minor detail about how we were going to actually gain possession in the first place Lo Celso is probably the best example of this: he was signed as a sort of Dele/Lamela hybrid, which makes perfect sense as injuries were blunting Dele's edge while nobody was expecting Lamela to be fit for 30+ league games a season by that point, so signing a player with the ****ehousery of Lamela and ability to pop up in the area at the right time of Dele made perfect sense...except no thought was given to how he would take advantage of that, as Lamela and Dele were players expected to press high up the pitch and he was replacing both of them meaning there was a 50% reduction of players pressing high up the pitch, and that's before the obvious issue of our midfield pivot as the Winkssoko pairing were hardly the pair of Necromorphs we needed to savage anything that came their way the previous season which put a lot of pressure on Ndombele to pick up the baton to impose himself on the midfield - which he didn't, as he doesn't The fact that the Ndombele fee could've bought us Hojbjerg and Tielemans that summer with some left over really does stand out, because imagine if Poch began the rebuild at the start of the 2019-20 season with a Hojbjerg/Tielemans pivot with Skipp waiting in the wings while Winks and Sissoko were there to rotate in when needed, that would've been a much firmer base to build off of and actually got the ball forward at some point in a match - which the dodecahedron of death most certainly did not
The main problem there though was Lo Celso ended up being more of a Winks/ Lamela hybrid but the part of Lamela he got was the injuries, not the ability or ****housery. Said before we signed Ndombele we should’ve spent the money on Tielemans and Grealish, and at that time it was nothing against Ndombele as it was before we knew he’d be a lazy lump, just more that for a similar amount of money we could’ve got two for the price of one. Somewhat similar to what I said about spending so much on Richarlison last summer when it could’ve been put to better use. And then we got fooled into thinking Sessegnon was a boy wonder. When all we do now is wonder how he’s a footballer. Nightmare summer. Someone needs to invent a Time Machine to go back and warn Poch, he might have still been in the job if he made a few better choices back then.
