Summer 2019 transfer thread

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Park Lane Mark Twain said:
Good point about Schneiderlin, I forgot about that pursuit.

During Pochettino's time with us we have apparently been after players like Schneiderlin, Berahino, Kovacic, Keita Balde, Jay Rodriguez, Luke Shaw, Danny Ings, Yannick Bolasie, Grealish, Pape Cheikh. Add those those the likes of Aurier, Nkoudou, N'Jie, Janssen and it's borderline with Sanchez purely for the outlay and how flustered he gets around top opposition occasionally and there's around £350m-£400m worth of players that would and could have massively underwhelmed.

Levy is as tight as arseholes but when looking at that list people can hardly blame him for not wanting to spend over the odds on some of our apparent targets it has to be said.
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We do all talk about Poch as being excellent at improving players, in fact it was only a year or so ago he was “the fullback whisperer”.

But how many players has he actually managed here that have improved? Kane certainly. Sissoko (from a very low base). Winks. Son. Last season Eriksen, Dele, Trippier all regressed.

And you’re correct. We’ve spent a lot of money and little of it has worked out well. Where does the problem lie?

Levy for not pitching up with the cash for number one targets?
Poch for not being as good as we think?
Poch for not rotating enough?
Scouting for the quality of their reports?
Us for having too high expectations?
 
harry7 said:
Earlier this year we were flying and looking like we could in fact win the league. Then the Burnley match happened and we couldn't buy a goal. Our star players - Kane, Eriksen, Alli all accused of losing form over the season and Trippier scapegoated for our poor form.

So, did our star players suddenly become crap? People suggesting Llorente get picked ahead of Kane in the ECL final. Calls to bench our most productive player in Eriksen.

No...Our weakness was exposed and other teams took advantage of it.

Previously we relied on 2 options to bring the ball out from the back.

1. Dembele step through their midfield and pick out Eriksen. Obivously; we lost Dembele. Sissoko did a great job defensively but wasn't able to pick out a clever pass. As a result Eriksen needed to drop deeper to get the ball and was not afforded the time on the ball required. With Eriksen now deeper, the defenders could closely mark Dele and Kane without the threat of Eriksen in an attacking position.

2. Toby play the long ball to our fall backs on the wing. Oppositions picked up on this and simply closed down Toby. This forced our full backs to drop deeper to pick up the sideways pass rather than run onto a long ball. This meant that Rose and Trips were under more pressure defensively and Trips was caught out on a few occasions by short passes he didn't want/expect.

3. In attack we don't tend to push players early into the box. As a result, early crosses are in effective as it is usually 4 or 5 against 1 striker. Oppositions knew that they therefore could afford more space to our full backs since an early ball wasn't an option. This allowed them to cut out the passing lanes to Dele, Eriksen and Kane.


In short : We weren't able to adjust quick enough due to not having the skillset available in our squad. Poor options in midfield crippled the ability of our creative players to find the ball in dangerous positions as they were forced to seek the 'easy pass'.

What we need : A midfield combination with good passing range to take or 3 opposition players out of the game with a clever pass. This will allow Eriksen and Alli to get on the ball in more dangerous positions and be able to play that clever ball for Son / Kane / Moura. It will also allow our full backs to move up the pitch earlier and thus draw their midfielders wide; creating more space.
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Very good post.

I think you’ve not articulated all our midfield issues, and there’s plenty in this post that could be elaborated on, but this does hit one of the key fundamental midfield tactical nails squarely on the head.

Another would be that, along with being crap at transitioning onwards to forward areas with Sissoko in our midfield, we also struggle to play out, even more than we did with Dier, who also didn’t like the ball under pressure.

This resulted in us

And despite the illusion his unit like frame gave when trundling into his 1.2 tackles a game, he really isn’t good defensively, because he’s not an intelligent reader of the game and he’s not defensively dynamic like Wanyama (was) for example. He just reacts.
Spursdem said:
We don't need two 8's.

We need a partner to Winks and Ndombele.

CM options of Winks, Sissoko, Ndombele, A.N. Other and Dier will be great for the new season. With Dele able to deputise when needed. Wasting money on a 3rd CM signing when we can use that on an AM or RB after is overkill.
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No. Winks is the only one of our existing midfield options you list that I ever want to see in our midfield again. And as much as I like Winks, I even have reservations about him going forward, not least because of his injury problems.

I want us to have a proper midfield in the future. Preferably a midfield 3. We maybe can’t do three in one window, and we can maybe utilise players from our academy like Skipp, Marsh and Amos - we don’t have to buy - but no more “units” masquerading as midfielders please.
 
Spursidol said:
Think you are going to be disappointed this TW then.

I can see Ndombele and a 2nd CM/AM arrive but no more.

Assuming Wanyama is done, and exits, that leaves us with the 2 new guys, Winks, Sissoko, Dier plus youngsters Amos and Skipp.

That should be more than enough, and leave us well placed against most sides - I doubt if Winks or Dier will have the length of time out with injuries as last season, and with more fit bodies, rotation should not lead to fatigued players which of course is when players tend to injure themselves.
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See above post, we don’t have to buy all of them, we’ve got options/solutions in house. Just need Poch to be braver.
 
pipes said:
Barkley is another on the list of Schneiderlin, Berahino, Kovacic, etc who we were linked with but didn’t get. Players who failed to hit the heights at the club they ended up with. The argument being “they were shite for them, so they’d have been shite for us”.

Utter nonsense. So many variables have to be taken into account that there’s no way that argument works. Barkley may well have played a pivotal role for us last season. He may not have. But to argue that he didn’t play well for Chelsea so would’ve been the same for us is crap.
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I still think Kovacic is a good player, but he’s no more than an unfussy CM that can move the ball around and maintain possession . His attacking play is limited - it’s all flicks and cute passes rather than incisive forward play.
 
Park Lane Mark Twain said:
Good point about Schneiderlin, I forgot about that pursuit.

During Pochettino's time with us we have apparently been after players like Schneiderlin, Berahino, Kovacic, Keita Balde, Jay Rodriguez, Luke Shaw, Danny Ings, Yannick Bolasie, Grealish, Pape Cheikh. Add those those the likes of Aurier, Nkoudou, N'Jie, Janssen and it's borderline with Sanchez purely for the outlay and how flustered he gets around top opposition occasionally and there's around £350m-£400m worth of players that would and could have massively underwhelmed.

Levy is as tight as arseholes but when looking at that list people can hardly blame him for not wanting to spend over the odds on some of our apparent targets it has to be said.
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You have to take each individual deal on it's merits though.

Schneiderlin for example, I think he would have been an excellent player for us had we signed him in Poch's first season. You can't legislate for the shitshow he went into at United. Likewise Berahino, was a phenomenal talent at West Brom before Pearce royally fucked him over and his career never really recovered. The rest you've listed barring Grealish and maybe Ings are players who we were never seriously linked with really, some of whom went on to moderate success.

Point being, it's a bit of a weak argument saying "well we were dead right not to sign that player" without factoring in the set up he would have come into had they joined us, as opposed to the one they did end up in.
 
mikes01666 said:
Yep. And we could have done with him last season when we didn't replace Dembele and at times struggled to put out a coherent midfield that:

a) didn't involve playing people out of position
b) bringing back players too soon from injury
c) playing those that had clearly lost form.

£30-35m would have been a steal in this market.
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Wasn't 3 years ago tho was it...?

He hadn't played for more than a year either.
 
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