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Transfers The Winter Transfer Thread - 25/26

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I think this is a fair defense of Frank in a lot of ways, and it might be right across the board. But I’m skeptical of that third bullet point, the causal claim, as being too reductive an explanation of a more complex situation. Yes, at least a part of our struggles can be explained by our long history of poor signings and haphazard roster-building. You’re certainly right about that. BUT the way we absolutely rolled over for Woolwich, the way we showed nothing against Chelsea, the way we never even seemed to try to do anything going forward this last match against Brentford (maybe the worst professional football match I have ever seen in my life) leads me to think that his struggles may ALSO be due to him being overmatched in the job.

I’m wary of the sunk cost fallacy here, of sticking with the wrong guy because he also had the wrong players. I don’t want to do what United did with ten Hag.
I hear that argument.

I think it ignores one thing. Bad managers and good managers can look the same in the first year. Average managers and excellent managers can look the same too.

I think you can point to some differences but Arteta, Klopp and Poch all looked much worse in the first 6-18 months than they ended up being. Arteta and Klopp both finished 8th in their first full season during a time when the league was significantly less competitive than it is now.

Of course most managers who look average ARE average. But the tricky thing is you only know who wasnt worth sticking with in hindsight. You don’t know in real time those managers who will eventually exceed expectations.

If you can’t bring in a world class manager then this period is period of the process. And yes, the odds are still against Frank ever being right.

It’s tricky.
 
It's why we need a coherent model and an actual long term footballing vision. There's a reason why Brighton and Brentford can replace their managers and stay stable while we lurch between extremes and piss money down the toilet.

If the new board have any sense they'll get a decent DoF to replace Paratici/Lange, decide what type of team we actually want to be and then get a manager that fits that style. Then if/when that guy flops or doesn't work, we find someone who at least somewhat aligns with the previous guy and can use the same players.

Until we do this, it's just the old Levy lottery where you throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks. Worked with Poch but you need to get lucky.
We're currently looking on enviously at Aston Villa with the squad they've built, and you'd likely be suggesting that the DoF that built it should be one that we try to get. The irony is that we already have him.

None of us are privy to the remit that Lange was given regarding player purchases. For all we know, his remit was to go and get the best young prospects available so we could build towards a challenging team over say 5 years.

This may be true, it may not be, but my point is we simply don't know. What is clear is that we currently have a manager who isn't really getting the best out of what he has, whilst Villa do.

It should also be noted that Lange wasn't handcuffed in his spending, as Villa have been flirting with PSR for a few seasons now. His recruitment strategy was different to what he's done with us, suggesting that it was under instruction.

What I'm interested to see is what his remit is now, under a change of upper management. If ENIC are serious about spending towards success, then I'm expecting to see a change in the strategy. Not necessarily in this window, but during the Summer.
 
It's why we need a coherent model and an actual long term footballing vision. There's a reason why Brighton and Brentford can replace their managers and stay stable while we lurch between extremes and piss money down the toilet.
Brighton and Brentford. .....for God sake.

Two clubs that should never be used as some kind of benchmark or barometer for Tottenham Hotspur

Not now, not in the past, not ever.
 
So was Gray though.

Scott under the pressure to perform at this club wouldn’t have had the time away from the spotlight to develop that he did at Bournemouth,

Wharton as well, gets away with bad days at Palace that he wouldn’t at Spurs.

Still, I wanted us to sign both and we definitely should’ve. It’s just not the same in practice at Spurs
Archie proves rather disproves the notion our recruitment has been below par. All the above are better than him, cost less and now worth much more whilst we would struggle to get our money back.

Doesn’t really matter a jot whether we as fans rate a player before or after the fact, there are supposed to be professionals within who are highly paid to spot a talent and beat others to the march rather than dithering when the price was nominal yet going all out when it has increased ×4 as in Eze.

Not sure if you jest about players getting away with bad days so I'll give you a break.🤔
 
This is revisionist imo

A little bit at least.

Everyone was sure that was a window for the ages. Palinha was signing of the season, RKM was a genius loan signing, Kudus was an 80m player the season before.

And that’s how it looked to start the season. Then teams adjusted to the way we play and we saw the limitations of our system, manager and as usual, the form of our players dropped.

Nobody is forcing Frank to play RKM out of position. He has 2 LW’s fit with Tel and Odobert but he’s determined to play Richy. RKM is a striker who is historically better on the RW than the LW but he won’t use Kudus in the 10 and RKM on the RW either,

He spent 10 mins of the last press conference waxing lyrical about Sunderland. They would kill for Kudus and RKM but they could never sign them. He says they are doing an amazing job at Sunderland and I’m just wondering why isn’t he doing a wonderful job for us.
Its revisionist of course, until you see the signings playing for you it's hard to judge them on anything but their body of work for past and present club, no? Everyone was saying Liverpool had won the transfer window but it looks for all the world like they've spent £263m net and got worse as a team, Gyokeres was supposed to be smashing them in for Woolwich, it doesn't matter how people felt about the window at the time, it's only going to matter how well (or not) those players do over the length of their deal.
 
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If there is no change between Levy's tenure and the new board, then I'm flipping tables. No fucking way we wait until deadline day to replace BJ.

The coming week is going to be excruciating. But at least we'll know by mid-Jan what we've got upstairs.
 
I think this is a fair defense of Frank in a lot of ways, and it might be right across the board. But I’m skeptical of that third bullet point, the causal claim, as being too reductive an explanation of a more complex situation. Yes, at least a part of our struggles can be explained by our long history of poor signings and haphazard roster-building. You’re certainly right about that. BUT the way we absolutely rolled over for Woolwich, the way we showed nothing against Chelsea, the way we never even seemed to try to do anything going forward this last match against Brentford (maybe the worst professional football match I have ever seen in my life) leads me to think that his struggles may ALSO be due to him being overmatched in the job.

I’m wary of the sunk cost fallacy here, of sticking with the wrong guy because he also had the wrong players. I don’t want to do what United did with ten Hag.
There's so many examples of "they shouldn't have stuck with this guy" vs. "good thing they stuck with this guy" that I don't think they're worth much anymore.

But I think if you believe we have a midtable quality squad, expecting a new manager to come in and get anything better than midtable results is unrealistic. Frank is an experienced Prem manager who did extremely well at Brentford, mostly prior to every Prem club becoming gigarich. I think he at least deserves a season and a half to bring in his players. If we're still bad at this time next year, then we can have discussions to sack him.
 
There's so many examples of "they shouldn't have stuck with this guy" vs. "good thing they stuck with this guy" that I don't think they're worth much anymore.

But I think if you believe we have a midtable quality squad, expecting a new manager to come in and get anything better than midtable results is unrealistic. Frank is an experienced Prem manager who did extremely well at Brentford, mostly prior to every Prem club becoming gigarich. I think he at least deserves a season and a half to bring in his players. If we're still bad at this time next year, then we can have discussions to sack him.
Not a season and a half. A season imo. If there is no positive direction of travel then he needs to go. The club anyway normally have an end of season review. Atm imo hes well behind schedule.
 
Archie proves rather disproves the notion our recruitment has been below par. All the above are better than him, cost less and now worth much more whilst we would struggle to get our money back.

Doesn’t really matter a jot whether we as fans rate a player before or after the fact, there are supposed to be professionals within who are highly paid to spot a talent and beat others to the march rather than dithering when the price was nominal yet going all out when it has increased ×4 as in Eze.

Not sure if you jest about players getting away with bad days so I'll give you a break.🤔

They are all older than him and I don’t think they will be better than him when he’s at his peak.

How good was Elliot Anderson at 19?

MGW was in the Championship still?
 
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