Bazunu's been utterly dire this season While a chunk of that can be laid at Southampton's door for being poor across the board, he's made a ton of costly errors of his own that somebody like (ironically) Forster would have dealt with tidily
Mundle’s apparently rejected a 5 year deal. Unsurprising yet still disappointing. That’ll be another potential £30m+ we’ll have lost for nothing. Can’t blame him though, there were at least one or two times he could’ve come off the bench, but no, we let Lucas Moura continue to stink it up. If I’m a promising young player who’s having a very good season and seeing dross like that continue to get chances in the first team, especially after they’ve confirmed they’d be leaving, I wouldn’t stick around either.
Putting aside the mental image of his agent planning to add a second island during his next kitchen extension, this does demonstrate the Catch-22 of trying to get youth players to sign contracts by putting them on the bench for a couple of games: at the same time you're saying that now they're good enough to be considered for first team football, yet given how rare it is for those players to be subbed on - not just with us, but across world football - you're also saying that they've been bumped up from the 19th man just in time to stick a contract under their nose Putting aside r/coys overreacting to our PL2 relegation as if that has any bearing on anything, hat does stand out is the matches he was on the bench for Portsmouth - certainly could have brought him on, given Alfie Devine came on, especially as we only used two subs that day Forest - given we were 3-1 up and subbed both wingers, with Lucas and Deki replacing Son and Richy, there was certainly an opportunity there Everton - while it can be argued he should've come on instead of Lucas, that is clearly hindsight overriding logic given we let Everton back into the match for a good 15-20 minutes and that isn’t ideal for bringing him on, especially as the logical sub would have been adding a body to midfield Brighton - considering what a ****show that match was for all involved, and with us protecting a narrow lead, there wasn't really the opportunity Newcastle - **** no, chucking him on would've probably seen him buy a Dutch phrasebook before he'd reached the dressing room at full time Man Utd - given we were chasing a two-goal deficit, realistically he wasn't an option There were certainly games where he should've been in the squad outside of these, Preston being the most obvious d the recent Palace match certainly springs to mind, while hindsight adds the first Palace match to the list (while foresight would add Southampton and Leicester, and the way those matches went would guarantee he wouldn't have got on the pitch...), and that’s the point: it's not actions in the last 3-4 weeks that have him rejecting the contract offer, it's the last 4-5 months where he was getting used as a living training cone instead of playing that tipped the balance
Carrick to Zokora Berbatov to Bent Dembele to Ndombele Ginola to Korsten It's like members of our fanbase don't want to have opinions of their own, because some reactionary is telling them what they should be mad about...
Joined-Up Thinking Watch As it's been decided that Arne Slot must be taking over as manager, that somehow means that Orkun Kokcu must be following him from Feyenoord to N17 On the one hand Kokcu does have the Gundogan-like qualities that our midfield sorely needs, as he's the player who sets the pace of Feyenoord's attacks by receiving the ball in transition and has the pass and control to move into the next phase, he's lethal from set pieces, plus has an insane workrate and stamina which means he'll be knitting things together all match long. In other words, he's best positioned as a Hojbjerg upgrade (or, if you find the right highlight video, a potential Dembele successor) On the other hand, though, there's some issues: the first is he's a box-to-box CM and we have a ton of those at the moment, in fact we pretty much have nothing else, so he wouldn't add much-needed steel to our midfield in the way that someone like Manuel Ugarte likely would, so as an upgrade on Hojbjerg he could be great but he wouldn't fix the fundamental issue with our perpetually overrun midfield on his own The biggest issue, though, comes from how he caused uproar in Holland earlier this season by refusing to wear a rainbow armband and saying his religion forbade it - only for basically everyone to point out his religion forbids gambling, yet he has no issue having the name of a gambling firm on his sleeve every week, and given it's been open season on us in the press for the last 4-6 weeks (seriously, between Matt Law and Jackshit Brook, how many times can we read "Tottenham LOL" presented as an article?) signing a player who will likely not feature for us during the annual Rainbow Laces campaign is a tap-in for them
Random Striker Watch Nazaar Kinsella at the Standard claims we're watching Gent striker Gift Orban, with Man Utd and Chelsea also monitoring him ...and no, he has nothing to do with the NatC conference sending birthday presents to their favourite Hungarian despot On paper Orban ticks a few boxes, not least the fact he's scored 14 goals in 13 appearances in the Jupiler League this season, having scored 16 in 22 for Stabaek in the Norwegian league last season, and as well as being a lethal finisher he also has lightning pace and his dribbling ability, hence he has got a lot of joy dribbling in from the right and unleashing a thunderbastard past the keeper - meaning he's capable of things like... (Yes, that was Nacer Chadli with not one but two hospital balls giving away possession in the first clip) The only potential stumbling block is he's contracted until 2027 and Gent are clearly expecting a big fee (albeit big by Jupiler League standards, not Bundesliga standards), but there's certainly a raw talent there
He's very raw and erratic, but there's plenty of talent there. Didn't do enough against West Ham, but caused them quite a few problems.
please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
Remember, if we don't get Bastoni this summer, it's Ron DeSantis' fault https://www.sportico.com/business/real-estate/2023/desantis-disney-tottenham-tavistock-1234723491/
Font of all knowledge Paul O'Queef claims that several contracts are going to be torn up this summer He claimed this barely an hour after the final whistle, so apparently Levy decided to tear up several contracts and this leaked to POQ within an hour While there's one or two I can see, Perisic being top of the list, he's so clearly talking bollocks
Romano Watch Well he just did an infodump of potential summer arrivals Goalkeepers: David Raya or Jordan Pickford CBs: Kim Min-jae (take a drink) DMs: Sofyan Amrabat AMs: James Maddison CFs: Dusan Vlahovic (take a drink) or Paolo Dybala (take a drink)
It’s the Mail so think what you like but they’re claiming Raya prefers a move to us over Chelsea and we’re gonna make a first offer of £20m. However Brentford are said to want double that. If we’re happy to pay £60m for a pigeon, £40m for a good keeper and new number one seems a snip.
