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Transfers Summer 2019 transfer thread

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If a foreign player had played 115 games and scored 25 goals and got 18 assists and they were only 18 years old, I would be absolutely AMAZED if they weren't highly rated.

He puts up a lot better numbers than the likes of Pulisic who was also very highly rated at such a young age and just forced a huge money move to Chelsea just this past window.
C'mon now the Bundesliga is a tad better than the Championship.
 
C'mon now the Bundesliga is a tad better than the Championship.

It is.

And it's worth noting that Pulisic's numbers haven't exactly been much better than Sessegnons despite mainly playing as an attacking player..

Also, The Championship is a lot tougher league to play in than the Eredivisie for example but that wouldn't stop people wanking over any 18 year old who does well in that league.

FFS, our own fans wank over Marcus Edwards and he's 20, couldn't even get in a Championship team and has barely had a hand in 5 goals in the Dutch league.
 
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This season is two PL games away from surpassing last season.
It’s in our hands to finish same position, 1pt behind last season, yet reach the CL final.

Yet here are a load of “told you so’s” claiming they were right that the last summer transfer window was a disaster and the club is going backwards.
 
This season is two PL games away from surpassing last season.
It’s in our hands to finish same position, 1pt behind last season, yet reach the CL final.

Yet here are a load of “told you so’s” claiming they were right that the last summer transfer window was a disaster and the club is going backwards.

If we win the next three games, I will absolutely acknowledge that the thing I think I'm seeing right now in our team was wrong. I would be shocked and overjoyed if that happened.
 
This would be my choice if I held the keys to Levy’s safe.

Incoming

Jonathan Tah £40m £65k week
Wan Bisaka £40m £40k week
Neves £45m £60k week
Brooks/Maddison/Grealish £35m £60k wk
Sargent £30m £30k week

Total spend
£190m
£255k weekly wages

Outgoing

Toby £25m 60k week
Trips £45m £60 week
Erickson £110m £100 week
Jansen £10m £50k week
Wanyama £20m £50k week

Total received
£210m
£320k week wages
 
This is obviously a difficult thing to work through. But it's also the bread-and-butter job of people in professional football, you don't just throw your hands up and do nothing because of uncertainty.

And Youri Tielemans or Jack Grealish definitely would have helped us on Tuesday when we desperately, desperately needed just one more guy in the middle of the park in one of the biggest games in the club's history.

We're too thin at a crucial moment. The transfer committee made a mistake. If you need to deny those things in order to feed some years-long message board meta-narrative, you need to pull yourself out of your own ass a little bit (not you specifically).

I'm generally on board with what you've been writing tonight, and you are right, we definitely made mistakes, but where I think you are over simplifying a little is just claiming the error was with the "committee" for not buying last summer. Firstly the committee has pretty much become Pochettino, there is no-one overseeing our transfer strategy (or even a transfer strategy) who sits above Pochettino, or even astride Pochettino.

Secondly, I don't believe there was a lack of desire to make signings by Pochettino, he definitely wanted them last summer - anyone peddling the "be brave and sign no-one bollocks" is talking out their arses - or a lack of will to make signings by Levy, but we pretty much know now, because Levy has said as much, that the problem was a simple one of "no room at the Inn".

Our salary roster was over bloated. We couldn't name people in squads. We literally could not accommodate any more non HG bodies and HG ones of requisite quality were thin on the ground and/or way over priced.

By making Pochettino the manager, as opposed to head coach, and de facto head of recruitment, we've stumbled into a malaise. We've made some dubious and in some cases unnecessary signings that haven't advanced us at all as a group, and I get that all transfers are risks and many don't work out how they are hoped for all teams, but we used to play the market quite well, but we haven't made a signing that has significantly increased in value since Poch's role changed.

We've seen one of our most valuable assets allowed to run a contract down to 12 months. We all laughed when this happened at Woolwich.

And I'm not someone who generally wants signings for signings sakes, I don't mind us shopping prudently, it's pointless getting into arms races we can't win, but for a club who has always been run sustainably, with transfer dealings as part of it's business model, we've become pretty bad at it lately.

And lastly, for someone who was hired with better academy integration in mind and spent a good chunk of his own book telling us how much he likes being brave with youth, and considering all the aforementioned circumstances, plus the fact that we had a WC weary squad this year as well, I think Pochettino has not made enough use over his tenure of our better academy resources. Resources which cost us a fraction of purchases and are all HG.

They don't have to be world class, just good enough to provide team, squad, bench relief for injured, fatigued, out of form or inadequate senior options.

Could have some fresher legs by now, with maybe the odd kid with a vastly increased value.


Bottom line, we need a DOF to oversee all this, make sure we are signing players with the right profile, finding homes for those that need moving on, making sure contracts are tight and occasionally telling the head coach, we don't need to chuck 50m in fees and wages on Aurier before we've given KWP 12 months as back up to see how he does. And we need a proper recruitment/scouting/analytics set up. Not Poch watching MOTD.
 
If we win the next three games, I will absolutely acknowledge that the thing I think I'm seeing right now in our team was wrong. I would be shocked and overjoyed if that happened.

There’s a couple sides I’ve noticed to the whole thing.
Some can see the bigger picture and wider improvement but can still get pissed off during specific poor performances and certain players underperforming to their abilities, and the manager making silly mistakes in some big games.
I’m in this category and I’m pissed off that we could have had third wrapped up weeks ago.

Another group are all very big about “backing the players” during games. This usually refers to Kane, Dele and Eriksen while the rest of the squad are fair game for an absolute tirade of abuse.
The manager is absolved of all responsibility and the chairman is seen as the first person who affects how we play. The overall and wider progression is dismissed out of hand.....you can see that by the entitlement of demanding Levy’s head for losing the first leg of the CL semi final without Kane and Son and not being above City and Liverpool in the league.

Apparently this season is proof that the team has been neglected. I can only conclude that these people think the PL and CL double is what we should be winning.

They are “cheering on” a squad next week, hoping it can get to play Barca in the CL final, and after sticking 3 goals pst them already this season and drawing away with them, hoping we can turn them over in a one off game.
Yet they think this squad is shit and the chairman is a cunt, and we got here because of three players.
 
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If we win the next three games, I will absolutely acknowledge that the thing I think I'm seeing right now in our team was wrong. I would be shocked and overjoyed if that happened.

If we win the CL it won't make you wrong. A team can win a cup and still be regressing. Woolwich did it and are still doing it. ManU won the Europa whilst doing it. Chelsea have got to two cup finals in the last couple of years doing it. If it wasn't for PSV getting a goal at Inter we'd already be out, or VAR at ManC meaning we lost 3-4 not 3-5 we'd be out and the way we played at ManC nobody would have said "what a travesty, Spurs are so much better this season". You can't hang your hat on such slim margins, you measure progress over longer and more controlled tests, such as the league, and we have clearly regressed.

Anyone can see this with their eyes and measure it too. The way we are playing, the amount of games we have lost, the luck we've had even when winning this season, we are not just conceding more, we are conceding more chances per game, making fewer. We don't control games like we used to.
 
This would be my choice if I held the keys to Levy’s safe.

Incoming

Jonathan Tah £40m £65k week
Wan Bisaka £40m £40k week
Neves £45m £60k week
Brooks/Maddison/Grealish £35m £60k wk
Sargent £30m £30k week

Total spend
£190m
£255k weekly wages

Outgoing

Toby £25m 60k week
Trips £45m £60 week
Erickson £110m £100 week
Jansen £10m £50k week
Wanyama £20m £50k week

Total received
£210m
£320k week wages
Add 20% to the purchase prices at least
 
It goes back way further than that. It started with Frank Arnesen and Jacques Santini.

For 15 years now, we've always been better off with just Levy and the manager, and anytime a prominent DoF-type figure has been added it's been an unstable equilibrium that ended in someone leaving in acrimony.
I think one of the main reasons for this is that Levy, unlike many of his counterparts actually does have good football knowledge. He instigated deals for Modric & Van Der Vaart for example. Both Levy and Poch are very picky, and whilst this can result in frustrating inactivity, it ensures that we don’t end up with the kind of bloated mess you see at Man Utd.
 
We've seen one of our most valuable assets allowed to run a contract down to 12 months. We all laughed when this happened at Woolwich.

Agree with a lot of that post Blakey but this bit is just giving the wrong impression ...

The only players out of contract this summer are Llorente (34) and Vorm (35) - both of whom would accept one year extensions

Next year ( so your 12 months window ) -

Eriksen (27) who has refused to sign a contract all season, you simply can't make a player sign
Toby (30) who has made it clear for a while that he will wait until the summer to make a decision
Vert (33) who good as he is will be 34 when his contract runs down
Janssen (24) - and he'd bite your hand off for a new contract

So you just got this emphasis all wrong - we have not done a Woolwich and allowed all our most valuable assets to run down their contracts, in fact with eight players signing new contracts last year it's almost the exact opposite ...
 
If we win the CL it won't make you wrong. A team can win a cup and still be regressing. Woolwich did it and are still doing it. ManU won the Europa whilst doing it. Chelsea have got to two cup finals in the last couple of years doing it. If it wasn't for PSV getting a goal at Inter we'd already be out, or VAR at ManC meaning we lost 3-4 not 3-5 we'd be out and the way we played at ManC nobody would have said "what a travesty, Spurs are so much better this season". You can't hang your hat on such slim margins, you measure progress over longer and more controlled tests, such as the league, and we have clearly regressed.

Anyone can see this with their eyes and measure it too. The way we are playing, the amount of games we have lost, the luck we've had even when winning this season, we are not just conceding more, we are conceding more chances per game, making fewer. We don't control games like we used to.

Oh there's no doubt we aren't the team we were two years ago. Winning the CL won't change that. But what I'm seeing right now is a team that's completely shot and that wouldn't be a good bet to get a result against basically anybody.

If we take three from three in the space of eight days with big pressure against good teams clearly that's not true.
 
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