Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Gets on my tits...holds an important position in the team but squanders it. Too many players play like they are untouchable due to a squad lacking in quality.

Alli either does what he's doing with his pansy over rated and has been done before clothing range, fresh pussy and click click for the cameras or he knuckles down. We have a tendency to laugh at the Gerrard's/ Lampards for silly things but Alli isn't a patch on them and he won't ever be either because at his age they were breathing,eating and sleeping football

I'm telling you he doesn't have the minerals.

 

For me, Eric Dier has been desperately disappointing for most of the last 2 seasons and I would expect that we could significantly improve on his current level of performance for less than we could sell him for. Even taking into account that he doesn't count as home grown and his current level of performances.

Given his contract situation, he's towards the top of my list of players we should be thinking about moving on.I don't think the same about Harry Kane, Dele or Harry Winks.

 

It goes back to the issue of having positive role models and leaders in and around their career at such a young age. He has plenty of the latter but perhaps what he needs is a Dave Mackay, Roy Keane type presence in the changing room who commands the respect of the entire squad and isn't afraid to say it like it is. Ultimately managing team egos boils down to Poch and Hugo, and I have severe reservations that they can do it. Definitely not Hugo. And Poch, as I said last night, lacks the CV to really lay down the law to players when they need it.

It's a sad state of affairs that these overnight millionaires need to be micro-managed and molly-coddled so much to coax a performance out of them, but that's the reality of 21st century players. They are celebrities first, athletes second.

Look at Pogba. As big an ego as they get but outrageously talented. Stick that ego in a team containing the cumulative experience and authority of Pirlo, Marchisio, Evra, Buffon, Chiellini and Tevez and it flourished. Even the worst instagram primadona would be humbled in the presence of that lot. Then he moves to a United team packed full of dross and suddenly it becomes the Paul Pogba Show.

I can't remember who mentioned it last night but the risk of keeping a young squad together for too long is that eventually they aren't so young anymore so don't have that natural hunger of trying to prove themselves, and also lack proper role models they can look at and think 'I want my career to be like his, with just as many medals' to keep that hunger burning. Currently the only senior player remotely close to that is Llorente.

 

Dele seems to be one of these players that looks good in a good team.

Looks like a headless chicken to me for us

 

We're at a stage where as someone pointed out yesterday, a reboot so to speak is needed. For me there's only about 5 or 6 who I'd deem completely untouchable and 'unsellable' in this squad:

Kane, Eriksen (forgetting the contract situation), Son, Sissoko (imagine saying that last summer) and Vertonghen.

Then there's a list of players I'd only consider selling if the offer was ridiculously good to the point where we could sign two-three players to replace them:

Toby (again, forgetting contract situation), Sanchez and Alli (though he needs a rocket up his arse).

The rest for me would then be judged on a case-by-case basis (with the obvious few who just need to be shifted of course), as in can they be replaced/ is the offer adequate enough?

 

Players to sell,:
1. GNK (for obvious reasons)
2. Janssen (as above)
3. Lamela (just too injury prone...a real shame but he is rarely fit nowadays)
4. Eriksen (unless he signs contract)
5. Wanyama (see Lamela)
6. Aurier (not fit for purpose)

On top of those Toby looks certain to leave.

Apart from Eriksen I can not see us making any real money on the rest so the club is just going to have to bite the bullet and take the losses or they'll still be here next season.

As for Dele, Dier, Rose and Trippier I think they will all benefit from getting a rest and a proper pre season with the club.

As for players coming in I think that is dependent on where we finish but we need to get players in early which is something we do not usually do.

 

Said it 3 years ago...these players will get older...you look at our squad and there has been no real development. There's been alot of good fortune but seems like someone has worn the lamp out and the Genie has left the building.

You tell me how we have seriously improved the squad since when everyone's eyes lit up because we thought we had hit the jackpot with these young guns

Personally I think people sat on their laurels and daydreamed our way to success.

100% of fans would wake up if Kane upped sticks...people think these things don't happen because he's Spurs through n through. The man has more ambition in his right foot than any suit and boot at Spurs.

 

As an initial big fan of Trippier, I'd say his time is done now, mate.

Not only has he had a poor season but there are now numerous RBs in the Prem who have surpassed him in terms of quality. If Spurs want to be a top 4-6 team, the general idea is that we have a player who is regarded as top 4-6 in their position in the Prem.

In terms of RBs; Walker, TAA, Azpi, AWB, Perreira and Doherty have all easily been better than Trippier. Even Bellerin, who I don't particularly rate, was having a better season prior to his injury. Meaning at best, Trippier is now the 8th best RB in the Prem playing for a side who wants to be finishing in the top four each season.

 

Janssen and GKN are the most aggravating players in our squad, not because they're aggravating to watch (as that would require them to, you know, be on the pitch...) but because any attempts to move them on seem doomed to failure

Take a look at the last eighteen months of Janssen's career for example: loan to Fenerbahce with no clause to make the loan permanent, plays about half a season and then picks up various foot and ankle injuries that mean he not only misses the run-in, but he required surgery so that means he not only missed pre-season but there was basically no hope of moving him on in the summer due to his injuries. Yet it didn't stop there, as the club were reportedly willing to sell him at a loss in January with a £12m fee bandied about...but he reaggravated his injuries to miss another transfer window, so the best case scenaio is we somehow find a willing buyer this summer and we're probably going to get little more than £8m for him as he's in the last year of his contract and it's not like we could haggle much due to form and injury problems for the past three seasons

Similar can be said for GKN: he missed pre season due to OM doing a Marseilles, he's been picking up knocks in training on a pretty consistent basis the entire time he's been with us, his loan to Burnley was a waste of time as he rarely played yet his loan to Monaco is somehow even worse as he's not even getting into matchday squads - and it says a lot that there's whispers of a hamstring injury, yet Monaco can't be bothered to confirm or deny if this is the case

That's what gets me: we were able to shift Stambouli and N'Jie without any real issue after just a season, while it took a couple to move on Fazio - but Janssen and GKN have been with us for three years and are proving harder to shift than Arseway Sheet Metalworks

 

And if I was the Club Chairman or Head Coach I would be arguing against signing stop gaps like this for exactly those reasons.

 

I don't think Janssen was a stopgap in the way that Stambouli, N'Jie et al were but very similar to Kaboul's first stint at the club where he wasn't supposed to go straight into the team but be slowly introduced so he'd be valuable to the team late in the season...but injuries to the players he was supposed to be understudy for meant he was thrown in at the deep end and expected to perform on the level of those he was replacing, and when he didn't that obliterated his confidence and meant he was not only not the player we needed when he was thrown in at the deep end, it also meant he wouldn't be the player we needed in the late season when he was supposed to come into his own

Of course that doesn't excuse turning down the Brighton loan, which is probably what earned him unperson status at the club while also setting off the chain of injuries that happened when he went to Fenerbahce instead

 

Stop gaps aren't generally stop gaps until they've flopped. Janssen especially wasn't a stop gap, the hope was that he'd be able to really challenge and compete with Kane or even play alongside him. He'd just finished Eredivisie top scorer and was of similar age to Kane. The signs were that we'd gotten the Dutch Kane to play with the original. Instead we'd signed the Dutch Soldado.

Even ones like Nkoduou/ Njie etc, whilst they may not have been signed with the hope of being the best player, they were still signed with the expectancy to be able to do a job.

 

We have 3 core issues that need addressing:

- Lack of squad depth
- Decline of starting XI (largely due to Wanyama & Dembele declining and Walker leaving)
- Lack of experienced players with winning mentality and glittering CVs

Signing players like Grealish, Tielemans and Sessegnon will probably tick boxes 1 and 2 quite convincingly. They will bring back some of the hunger of youth we've lacked this year and will certainly add quality options in key areas. But £120m later and box 3 remains empty. And that is a growing concern for me. That ruthlessness. That 'dehwing do'. That authority and command of respect. That player who hauls the rest of them through tricky games through sheer force of will. Eternally relying on young players to develop into experienced veterans without ever actually having the experience itself is illogical.
There were hints of that in Ajax's performance last week. Their fans were elated at FT but I couldn't fathom why. They will never have a more fortuitous time to face us, team down to the barest of bones and both top scorers missinh entirely. They dominated the game for 37 minutes and should've been over the hill and far away by HT. But they weren't. The fact that we are somehow still in the tie is as much down to our 2nd half effort as it is to their lack of nous costing them, potentially badly. Pool showed the same problem against Barca...could and should have had the game under control by HT. Didn't and got punished by the ruthlessness of Barca's key players.

You cannot manufacture experience. It grows organically over time. And it needs to be fed with success.

This is why although it may be true that Pep will go down in history as citeh's greatest manager, the watershed moment was when Roberto Mancini took a bunch of very expensive yet very inexperienced players and made winners out of them. And it almost failed. Almost. They so nearly blew an 8 point lead and were within seconds of losing out entirely. But they pressed on. Yaya and Tevez were the only serial winners in that squad. Mancini took the rest of them and gave them the experience of winning.

This was the value of players like Davids, VDV and Gallas. Problem is are now far too good to take on top players at the ends of their career and expect them to be able to contribute. Llorente demonstrates this. Compare his contribution with that of Gallas. No comparison. Not his fault, we are just a better team now that we were then.

Signing a player who truly ticks all 3 boxes is probably financially impossible right now. But if Eriksen wanted out and Madrid were open to Bale heading in the opposite direction? I'd fly him back to the Lane myself. That's who we need. An experienced player with a glittering CV and winning mentality. A player who spends all season getting jeered by his own 'fans', dropped by his manager, yet still had the cajones to pop up in a CL final and a Copa del Rey final and score 2 of the greatest goals of all time.

But we'll never go down that path. No resale value, extortionate wages, dodgy injury record.

And we also can't afford £100m for top players in their prime. So we'll continue down the route of Sessegnon and Tielemans type signings, probably giving us enough oomph to get top 4 every year, but never that cutting edge to win the big pots.

 

A lot of interesting thoughts there.
I think its a myth that we don't have depth on our squad. I actually think our second eleven would beat anyone's other than Man City. But the players you mention would probably make us stronger. Losing Walker defintely made our first team weaker but i don't think Wanyama or Dembele would be in our first choice team now anyway. Winks and Sissoko play really well together.
As for the winning mentality that will come from actually winning something.

 

Let's hope we get the business done early this window, come on Daniel no more of this last minute ****housery unless messi falls out with Barca

 

Based on a few of the players linked, here's when we should bid
Sessegnon - a week Monday
Ziyech, van de Beek - there's a couple of scenarios still to play out for these, I'll get back to you on that...
Andersen - 27th May looks like a good time to lodge a bid
Ndombele - sometime between 26th-30th May would be a good idea
Tielemans - this is a tough one, as his loan expires on June 30th so not too soon or six other clubs will have the same idea, but not too late or two or three will have lodged bids...hmm, how about June 17th?
Rabiot - August 19th, because he may have lowered his wage demands by then...

 

...cue all of this happening on August 18th and none of it working out.

 

"NOBODY ****ING MOVE..." Watch
Le10 Sport are reporting that we have met with Tanguy Ndombele's agents and have made a contract offer, with assurances that he will be a first-team player if he were to sign for us (which files under "Well duh..." but, considering The Sheikh Mansour Team and Los Ladrones do Madrid have been linked, that may be an ace we can play but they can't...)

 

Oh man, I don't know what's worse...

The anticipation every close season of adding quality to the squad and being let down right at the death or when the season actually gets going anticipating great things, only to be let down right when it counts.

It's a never ending heartbreak supporting this club.

 

The heartbreak is the rumours linking us to Victor Camarasa, whose currently on loan at Cardiff from real Betis

Not sure which would be the greater heartbreak to be honest: signing a stopgap who I can't remember doing a damn thing for Cardiff this season, or finding out the club's arranged for him to fly back to Betis in a light aircraft to say goodbye to his former teammates...