This is why the Tel deal stinks. We urgently need cover elsewhere and upfront we need proven quality.
-
The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...
Transfers The Summer Transfer Edging Thread 2025
- Thread starter Fattynomates
- Start date
Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports
That’s all we can do but then most who support can’t then complain we didn’t buy a proven quality first team starter.
I don't get this term.
What is 'a proven quality first team starter'?
We all have different ideas on what qualifies as this.
Everyone was up in arms about the Brennan Johnson purchase. He took loads of abuse from our 'fans'.
But he was our top scorer this season and scored the winning goal in a final to win us a trophy.
Some will say he's still not good enough and fine but then what does a player have to do to achieve the 'proven quality first team starter' tag?
I get that, but he is a world cup winner who seems to be planning his exit from the club.
I think I'm right? in saying Branthwait is a right footed centre back who is equally comfortable playing on the left, If I'm right, we would have a defender who could potentially play across the whole back line.
If we showed the ambition to sign the calibre of player a world cup winner deserves to be playing with, and our ticket prices justify, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to stick around.
We've been down this road so many times before, mate.
Who may turn out to be another dud when he plays for us, as do so many.
That's a slightly different argument. Plus his partner at centre back (VDV) isn't exactly chop liver.
I'll take that bet.
But more to the point, I think Sesko has the makings of a decent fulcrum guy, who even when if not scoring loads will facilitate team play. His hold up play is miles better than Tel's as a 9. Tel is just more versatile in that he can play wide left forward too.
So what meets this criteria for you?
Buying a £100million player?
Buying a player with x amount of Prem games?
Buying a player with x amount of international games?
Buying a player over 25?
Buying a player with x amount of winners medals?
What signings show ambition to you and why?
Problem is that if Romero wants to leave or not sign a contract extension (he's only got 2 years left on contract) then any replacement CB we bring in is going to seem like a downgrade.
And the number of CB's 'only slightly less good' than a world cup winning captain who are available is pretty short. And Branthwaite is probably on that list with a couple of seasons in PL (still only age 22, so started playing PL very young) and called up by England. So he's past the description of a 'high potential player', he's arrived as a top level player, just not known how good he could become.
Did we even put a fucking bid in?
How it started;
Eze
Mbeumo
Semenyo
How its going;
Tel
Manor Soloman back from his loan
And some geezer Danny Rose couldn't even find on Google
But Levy wants to win the league apparently....
That's possibly one of the better interviews Levy's ever given, but he always comes across as a bit of an awkward dweeb who's out of his depth. He just doesn't seem to really understand the football side of the business and really really needs to step the fuck away from it completely. He's done a fantastic job on the business and infrastructure, regardless of whether ENIC are going to ultimately benefit hugely from that, because we as a club will too for years. But the decisions he's been making on the football side have been really fucking poor for almost ten years now - and even in the previous ten there were some bad decisions too. He needs to understand his limitations and capabilities and get the fuck away from running the football side of the business now.
Venkatesham comes across a lot better, a lot slicker. I wonder if this was Levy introducing the guy who's going to step more across the football side of the business. I fucking hope so, because Levy needs to step the fuck away now before he completely fucks all his good non football work.
He never answers my attempts to drag more information from him beyond his usual standard soundbites.
Unless he thinks he thinks he has a gotcha on me.
But it's a genuine question for not just him.
Every transfer window we have 'show ambition' or 'get in some quality' but no-one ever really elaborates on how the club should show ambition. I'd argue you never really know if the club have shown ambition until you have hindsight.
Ndombele was considered a big exciting coup when it happened and that turned out shit.
As previously mentioned, Johnson's signing was met with mostly anger but his goals helped win us a trophy.
We hear cries of spending big money, then others complain we overpay with fees.
These transfer threads are never going to have a consensus. We can't adopt every strategy that is put forward by different individuals with different ideas to build a squad. There's also the matter of people taking every single tweet as gospel and getting irate/excited depending on the made up news.
Can always rely on John to stir the pot though with his cries for ambition and purchases to match the ticket prices. Obviously he'll also...
Paying big wages on proven players. I.e players who have a good track record in a top league, preferably the PL.
You know exactly what the criteria is, you are just an apologist for Levy and will lap up whatever shit he serves you up.
The league table in any given year pretty much correlates directly with wages.
Lol...'Levy apologist' just cos I asked for clarification. I've said time and time again...I don't lose sleep over Levy running the club and I won't lose sleep if he left tomorrow.
To be fair to you though, that's more of an explanation than John ever offers. It's a criteria at least.
Who was the last player we bought, if any, that you felt got close to meeting your wishlist?
How fucking stupid were Eze's Agents to allow him to be locked into release clause of 60m that has to be paid in one immediate hit. Also seems counter intuitive for Palace in that it scares off a lot of buyers and may well force him to run his contract down and go for nothing, where if they'd not insisted on the upfront payment, they probably could have got more for him than 60m
The last signing that really excited me was probably Romero. We paid I think £55m on a proven player, Argentinian starter, and was best defender in Serie A the season prior.
Maddison I was kind of excited as he looked like a good fit for Spurs, but I was wary about how he drifts in and out of form in a given season.
That's about it really in the last 10 years.
Don't get me wrong, some of the signings like Bergvall are decent signings. But you have to have a balance between bringing in excellent young players and bringing in ready made experienced players.
And we don't have that balance anywhere near right.