Just saw it on Twitter earlier. They’re kinda right but only hindsight can tell how good a window is. But I do fear the club haven’t done nearly enough
Surely part of Ndombele's wages were being paid by his loan club and I'm sure we must have budgetted for rises for several members of the squad. I would expect the net reduction is around £400k so £20m a year which wouldn't make a big difference to our transfer budget.
We seem to have spent quite close to the maximum we can afford but that in itself isn't enough to make a dent in the gap to City, United and Liverpool. As @"Thanks for that Brian" points out we've had a major change to our recruitment policy with four youngsters representing half the spend plus Lankshear, Moore and Devine kept rather than going on loan. So we could pick a very young team if we want. It will likely take three or four years before we can judge this window.
Again reflecting on the window overall, I'm not as disappointed as some. Of all the signings made across the PL, the only ones that were of any interest to me were Onana/Ugarte and Calafiori. I don't see how anyone else who moved elsewhere would have significantly improved either our team or squad. And when it comes to players of serious quality like Eze, Olise etc. I think we wildly overestimate how attractive Spurs are as a prospect. We don't win trophies, don't really have any huge world class names and can't offer regular CL football which means there are only two possible reasons a player would want to join the club: A) To earn lots more money. B) To become part of history in delivering trophies and CL football to Spurs. Ange isn't interested in Player A, as they will be off as soon as someone waves a bigger cheque under their nose. We're targeting Player B, and I hate to break it to everyone but Dominic Solanke is a pretty accurate measure of who we can attract in that category. Which means the only alternative is to start playing the long game, just as Arsenal have done, and Brighton at a smaller scale. As others have said, if we are serious about playing that game, we have to go all in. Levy has to stop hitting the panic button at the first sign of struggle or dissent. More so than poor recruitment, the constant chopping and changing of managers over the past 5 years has crippled us and directly contributes to the recruitment problem. In terms of outgoings, a genuinely superb window after what feels like an eternity of kicking lots of cans down lots of dead ends. 9/10 In terms of incomings, seen in view of the global dearth in quality and our inability to really attract what little quality there is, a solid window - IF we commit to the long game, I think we done very well. There are holes at LB and GK but hopefully they will be plugged in January before the FA kicks in and the EL gets serious. 7/10
We're dreaming if we think a player of Eze's quality sees Spurs as enough of a step up. He'll have seen Olise move to Bayern and it will confirm in his mind that that's the level he should (and can) now be aiming for. EDIT: Neto too much of a risk, wouldn't touch Toney with a barge pole and it seems the rest of the PL agrees with that, not sure which Gomes you're referring to? Joao?
There was some very public whispers of the Mansourites making a bid early in the window, which is enough to poison the well
Other than Bowen, who would be a huge upgrade on what we have at RW, I wouldn't take any of their forwards. Wouldn't say no to Paqueta, Soucek or Kudus in midfield, mind.
City and Chelsea also proved it, if you want a chance of signing quality players then you have to at least match the wages on offer elsewhere, no top player is coming to Spurs for 50K a week less than what he can get somewhere else, being an attractive club, winning silverware etc does not come into it.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_2912,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/34bb6b7b-0cb3-4c59-8112-89d20a35f5fb_2664x2030.jpeg Note the effect of the new stadium, essentially turning net transfer spend from zero to £100m a year.
I noticed this when the kvetching moved onto utterly ridiculous targets, such as go karts or that ****ing golf course
Paul O'Keefe is claiming that Westerlo are one of the clubs interested in loaning Alfie Devine. Might be an interesting one, as he could get some experience outside of the English game while playing with Luka Vuskovic.
