What annoys me is we have missed out the winning part and just jumped straight to 4th place is out everything! :contefacepalm2:
As much as I hate Levy I understand the need for the club to become more financially successful to compete , it’s just we don’t seem like we have a proper plan , we just seem to have got lucky with Poch and have had a scatter gun approach since.
Poch had inherited a young group of players - Lloris, Vorm, Rose, Walker, Vertonghen. Dembele, (Mason and Bentaleb - Poch's preferred CM's in first season), Eriksen, Kane and added following summer Alderweireld, Dele and Son, but after that pretty much nobody of quality joined despite Sanchez at about £40m (Poch liked his play in an EL final of Ajax v ManU), Janssen (Poch again scouting him at an |England v Netherlands match), Moura at about £25m but nobody at the same level as the inherited batch. But the original group formed about 2nd youngest team
Roll forward to 2019, team run into ground and no longer young - probably about 4th oldest. So it must have been obvious to all a significant rebuild was needed to get younger players. Covid screwed us in 2020 with income drying up and european clubs worse off than PL so cannot buy our unwanted players - and that extended into summer 2021.
Step forward Mr Paraciti to handle a rebuild, initially with little cash (same as rest of PL) bringing in initially Romero, Emerson, Sarr and Gil in summer 2021, followed in January 2022 by Bentancur and Kulusevski and summer 2022 bringing in Richarlison, Bissouma, Forster, Perisic (I suspect Conte's wish), Spence (no decent RWB's available so Paraciti's choice) etc.
Paraciti cannot be blamed for Richarlison being out injured for about 3 or 4 months, Bissouma injury/illness and indeed Bentancur's injury. Its just bad luck this season (not helped by World Cup taking out 6 weeks out of season, increasing game frequency and resulting in player fatigue/risk of injury), and their absence might be a factor in Conte seeming to abandon anything except the league - and that's his choice.
So I don't agree there is no plan in place. Even with the players we have now we have the semblance of a decent squad, and if we can bring in 4-6 players in the summer (eg GK and at least on CB, an alternate for both Son and Kulusevski and possibly a 2nd LWB) we will have covered most of the remaining gaps in the squad.
With a decent manager in place and that squad, then next season 23/24 we should have enough quality and depth to do well in PL and either or both CL and a domestic cup ..... although I'm sure another player intake in summer 2024 will be helpful in adding more quality and depth to the squad.
But in short, since Poch left, 2 summer transfer windows badly affected by covid screwing up everybody's economics, but Spurs in particular as we most needed a rebuild. So the squad rebuild has taken a lot longer than it should - fans don't like it and I doubt if Levy likes it either..... and 20/20 hindsight is that I haven't liked our manager choices either (ManU fans had 6 years post Ferguson of poor manager choices so we are not the only ones). But c'est la vie
