Ill tell you what.
You list me all the attacking midfielders we signed from other prem league clubs, just relegated or otherwise, during Poch's time at the club.
We didn't sign a player exactly like Maddison so therefore it proves we could never have signed Maddison. Sparkling logic, you're really good at this.
We had Dele and Eriksen under Pochettino, so no we weren't going bid for a creative mid, nor do under the radar players like Maddison pop up all the time. That and we were on our austerity drive to pay for the stadium.
The profile of the club was absolutely at a point where we had the pull to sign him. Its genuinely fucking baffling to pretend otherwise unless you're on some sort of mega propaganda drive to pretend we were nothing pre stadium complex ... oh wait, my bad.
Maddison's profile pre being signed by Spurs was more akin to Clint Dempsey than it was David Silva. Certainly somebody like Van De Vaart was a higher profile of signing, probably even Eriksen given he'd done very well in Europe and was courted across Europe.
