Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Or, we could just cancel contracts. Simples.

 

The impression I get with Doherty is that we don’t have to compensate him for anything unless he can’t find a club after his half season at Athletico. Could be wrong there though.

 

Looks like tomorrow’s gonna be interesting:

 

Looking forward to the "Yeah, but..." energy of their response

 

As a long suffering Spurs fan, I recognise, appreciate and fully understand your pessimism.

I'm of the belief though, that if I had to choose any manager to achieve this, as unlikely as it might be, it'd be Conte that I'd bet on above most I can think of.

Glass half full and all that, plus there is always the option of going ALL IN on the CL and the FA cups, winning both, and swerving the top four argument all together. (Yeah, I know. )

 

Here is Ally Gold's account of the Doherty farce. He is unusually scathing and it beggars belief that some posters on this forum are attempting to spin the situation as a positive one reflecting a well-thought out strategy:

Then there is the curious case of Matt Doherty. Early on in January, few people believed the Irishman would be leaving the club in the January window, not least the player nor his close friends Harry Kane and Eric Dier.

Yet as the weeks wore on and Emerson Royal was proving more and more difficult to shift, it became clear that Doherty might have to move on for minutes if an exit route opened up.

It ended up being Atletico yet again who raised their hand, having clearly become fascinated by Spurs full-backs after signing Kieran Trippier, then Sergio Reguilon and trying to buy Emerson and Spence. Now they turned their attention to Doherty.

That's when it all got a bit messy. On Tuesday morning Doherty was all set to leave on a loan deal without an option or obligation to buy and he was in Madrid to complete the final details of the move.

However, at some point during the process somebody within Spurs must have realised that with Spence heading out on loan, the club had now reached the limit imposed in recently-changed FIFA rules that dictate you must have only eight players out on international loans at any one time.

Spurs already had Tanguy Ndombele, Giovani Lo Celso, Reguilon, Bryan Gil, Harry Winks, Rodon, Spence and Destiny Udogie out on loan. From that alone it's worth noting that the club's transfer policies have been so poor and their ability to sell players so bad that they have seven signings that cost them around £215million sitting out on loan at other clubs.

What it also meant was that Doherty could not, by FIFA rules, go out on loan and a compromise had to be found - one that nobody was expecting. The decision was taken to mutually terminate the Republic of Ireland international's contract and he joined Atletico on a short six-month deal.

Spurs had mutually terminated Serge Aurier's contract in 2021 but the Ivorian's deal only had a year remaining, while Doherty had a full 18 months to go. The Irishman would have needed assurances that he would be financially recompensed in case Atletico did not choose to keep him on beyond the summer.

It meant that the Tottenham squad lost a popular, senior player who was doing a job for Conte in the role asked of him. The club also lost any potential fee they might have got for him in the summer, however small, and meant that in essence the decision to bring in Porro was even more expensive than first thought.

football.london understands that Doherty's Spurs team-mates were shocked when they suddenly found out the news on Tuesday that he was leaving permanently.

 

No pessimism whatsoever. Going solely on facts.
Time will tell soon enough on all of my statements.


"Glass half full and all that, plus there is always the option of going ALL IN on the CL and the FA cups, winning both,
and swerving the top four argument all together. (Yeah, I know. )"

1. That is one way to qualify for the CL next season,

2. It would go some way to restoring the Spurs tradition
of being a "cup team" . < Happy now, Billy !!?? >

 

It doesn’t reflect well on the club, particularly the late realisation that we couldn’t send him on loan. That, and the mixup with Porro’s release clause, smack of poor organisation and that is to be condemned. While we’ve ended up (eventually) with 2 good players this window, the whole process of recruitment appears to have been a bit of a mess. Maybe we’ll find out more when the club make a statement in response to THST, which is due tomorrow.

On the flip side, if it was Emerson with 18 months left and we did this, I think less people complain. Doherty was a popular player in the squad and though we didn’t see the best of him, he always gave his all and was appreciated for that despite the jokes about him being a closet Gooner. I’d rather he was here with Porro than Emerson, I think we all feel that way. That the club ran out of time to sort this out properly is ridiculous. But ultimately I can see why they did it. We’d have been liable for Emerson’s wage until the end of his contract unless he found a club, and Doc already had an agreement in place right at the end of the window so the club did what they could in the time they had.

I don’t approve of the whole process and would rather have had a different outcome. But I understand it in the context of the situation they found themselves in. But it’s ridiculous that they effectively put themselves in that situation in the first place.

 

When you see the list of loanees you realise the amount of money we have spunked over the years and how bad the recruitment has been, add to that the two RWBs that have had their contracts terminated I'm glad it's not coming out of this weeks wages

 

Really speaks to the lack of a long-term footballing strategy and vision, which has been a problem since the late Poch years. A real shambles that is only now beginning to be turned around.

 

What's Paratici doing now? He can't operate in Italy and we brought in an intermediary to negotiate with Sporting, so it almost certainly isn't transfers, given his forthcoming criminal trial and likely UEFA ban for 30 months. I think I trust Levy enough to realise that would not be a good idea. So, who is captaining the ship...and do they know what they're doing?

The club's a ****ing mess again...Conte's ill, Paratici's time must be over, very soon and ENIC are busy trying to negotiate a partial sale to the Qatari's. It's got to the point where I'm more pleasantly surprised that Porro's here, than I am disappointed by the lack of any new talent at centre back and the Doherty nonsense.

Where next...? I have no idea...which I fear is exactly the same position with our owners.

 

Worth noting that the intermediary who was negotiating for Porro before Levy stepped in and closed it is an agency we use regularly to represent us, so it wasn’t that unusual. I don’t think using them for this was solely because of Paratici’s situation, though it may have contributed to it.

There’s a lot that the club need to clear up though and I’m hoping they will over the coming days. They’re due to respond to THST’s letters tomorrow and Paratici (or some other poor soul) would usually do a post-window statement. What they do with Don Fabio is a big question though. He will obviously appeal and the court haven’t released the full reasoning for their ruling yet. But I wonder if the club will ask him to fall on his sword.

 

I'm not sure we (i.e. ENIC) know or understand how to manage the transition from medium club to big club. Doing things like appointing Mourinho after Poch, then not really backing him at all in the market, then repeating the same process with Conte, indicate to me that there is a real confusion right at the very top. It's almost as if we're playing at or pretending to be a big club without really knowing how to hold ourselves. Bit like that scene in Titanic where Di Caprio joins all the posh folk for dinner and has to borrow a suit/doesn't know which fork he is meant to use first etc.

There have been signs in recent years that were more positive imo. Appointing Paratici and allowing him to assemble his own staff was a huge step forward, irrespective of the man's personal abilities - it was more symptomatic of a realisation 'we don't really know what we're doing at this stage'. That however will now meet the same fate as said ocean liner as he is almost certainly going to be out of a job from late March. The other slightly smaller indicator was how we stood firm over Kane - we acted like a big club is meant to act, not a feeder club.

But the whole Porro saga and now what has happened to Doherty were a disappointing step backwards imo.

 

I tend to agree with you, broadly. I said a while back that Levy knows how to build a club but not run a big on - this is not uncommon in business and it seems like it’s similar in football. As you said, there have been promising signs of this changing, but this window has felt like two steps forward, one step back.

 

As soon as UEFA and FIFA ban him, he's not working anywhere in football, unless Juve can bribe enough people to get that decision overturned.

Given that ENIC are supposed to be in negotiations for a (partial) sale, I would presume that they're keen to avoid making any major decisions - like sacking the manager or appointing any new, senior officials. They'd also be seeking to avoid spending large sums of money, which is likely to contribute to our current desire to loan players where at all possible.

It all points to too many things being uncertain...again.

 

There is a lot of uncertainty. We need the Paratici situation to be clarified. To my understanding it’s not guaranteed that he will be banned outside Italy and we’re waiting on the full court ruling to be released towards the end of this week, and the outcome of the appeal (which will almost certainly happen).

The loan for Porro was a favour to Sporting because they want his fee to be accounted for in the summer to minimise what they pay City.

I’m not sure about a full sale but there were obviously rumours about a minority stake being sold to QSI which we may also get clarity on in the near future. Obviously all the instability is less than ideal though.

 

It is less than ideal but more so when we stop and consider the fact that it has persisted more or less since the end of the 2016/17 season, for various reasons:

2017/18 - Played at Wembley, new stadium build
2018/19 - Played at Wembley, new stadium build
2019/20 - Sacked Poch mid season, Covid
2020/21 - Covid, sacked Maureen mid season
2021/22 - Sacked Nuno mid season
2022/23 - Juve legal case, QSI investment

It's a hell of a long time to not have real stability. Granted, a number of things were outside of our control but we hardly helped the situation with those things that were.

 

I’d argue that we’re still making decisions without genuine certainty or clarity.

The young first team players at the moment are in complete limbo. Spence and Gil managed to secure loans at the death at a time they needed Premier League football they’ve gone elsewhere.

Skipp and Sarr are said to be highly thought of by Conte but what he says and what he does implies two completely different things and because of that, we have two promising players getting KWP’d.

Alfie Devine’s development has been halted essentially to make him eligible for CG rules from next season but is that worth it at the cost of a player being held back?

Then moving on from young players, Bissouma was seen as one of the signings of the season by neutrals yet has been completely misused (and underused) by the manager, which begs the question if he was even wanted by him.

The club has always had a cautious mindset when splashing large amounts and often when we do spend big, we get it wrong. After previous big money flops like Sanchez, Ndombele, Lo Celso and Sessegnon, this summer’s big spend was Richarlison. A club record fee for a player that doesn’t improve our XI. Good backup? Possibly albeit we’re yet to even see that but where’s the logic in breaking the bank for someone that doesn’t improve the XI when there’s clear weaknesses in the XI that haven’t been fully addressed or addressed at all?

The Porro signing certainly makes sense (thankfully!), even if Spence hasn’t been given a chance but the way we went about the deal was an absolute mess. We longed it out, overpaid and then had to cancel a player’s contract because someone at the club forgot about the loan rules, showing a complete lack of planning and even professionalism - I mean what are you being paid for?

There is potential within the squad in some areas but question marks remain over:
Whether the DoF will be able to continue his rebuild and if he can’t/ is sacked, do we hire someone else?
Who the manager will be next season.
Whether the star player will be here next season.
Just what are the club’s aims and aspirations, both short and long term.

I feel like a lot of fans just have no clue what is going on.

 

The youth is an ongoing problem I agree. Devine’s situation is difficult. We have just seen why it’s so important to have Club Grown players in the team for Europe, so keeping him around is a difficult decision but ultimately a worthwhile one. The pathway and planning for youth is a mess in general though, and isn’t helped with managerial uncertainty.

In general the players we’re recruiting are becoming more sensible. But the manner the work is being done is far from perfect and the youth policy is also questionable.

 

The problem with Devine is that if he’s continuously held back and provided few chances, he won’t even be here by the time we’d like to rely on him as a CG option. I wouldn’t commit to any long term deal as a young player at the club at the moment, especially when I’m not being allowed to develop.

Player recruitment is a weird one, most signings have made sense to us fans (though is that partly down to blind optimism we have over a shiny new signing?) but then the manager’s use of some have reopened the debate about club and manager not being aligned, so then have they made sense? Then there’s also the lack of player recruitment in some areas that have left many scratching heads as to why we’ve not addressed it.

I can’t help feeling we’re in a bit of cliched situation in which we take one step forward but two (or three) steps back.

I’m very much looking forward to the board’s response to the THST tomorrow though, however I feel it’ll be a generic ball of nonsense which will further show how out of touch the club is with its fanbase and football in general, but I’d love to be wrong.