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Transfers The Summer Transfer Edging Thread 2025

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Doom Funk said:
Make do and mend

Could help create a lovely wartime feel at the club where everyone mucks in

Levy could come to the training ground and sing "we're going to hang out the washing on the siegfried line" to the players

it could genuinely change their lives for the good

What a man
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Choked on my tea laughing,
Laugh Out Loud Lol GIF by Zypto
 
Looking forward to the flip flopping from fans over the next few weeks with the Arse links to Eze.

From "he's world class and would be a statement signing" to "yeah. he's shit anyway, we can do better, he's not a good signing for them"
And when they don't sign him, right back to "we have to get Eze, if we don't, Levy has no ambition"
 
Matt1882 said:
Looking forward to the flip flopping from fans over the next few weeks with the Arse links to Eze.

From "he's world class and would be a statement signing" to "yeah. he's shit anyway, we can do better, he's not a good signing for them"
And when they don't sign him, right back to "we have to get Eze, if we don't, Levy has no ambition"
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Signing Eze would block the pathway for Devine and Donley
 
CJJ said:

View: https://youtu.be/3F_m3wyZYHo?t=244


Not surprising to see John Thomas salivating at the idea of his denial with his post reaction, not that he likes to work on facts himself
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I think the absolute truth is somewhere in between the assertions of both the pro/anti Levy/ENIC factions tbh. From recollection the window of short arms and long pockets was at a time when Poch (or so he said) only wanted players coming in who were better than we had and therefore able to improve us. Therefore it is not difficult to understand why there are two takes to be had depending on one's agenda.

I think the kerb crawler is being truthful when he suggests Poch didn't want to buy ANY of the players that were offered to him but I also believe that they didn't want to or wouldn't fork out the amounts of spondoolas required to acquire those that Poch did want to bring in.
 
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citizenabel said:
Always known it....other half of the family are Palace ST holders.
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I'm a Tottenham season ticket holder and I have NFI who our players grew up supporting.
Nor does it always matter as their support is often different to us because most never play for "their" club.

David Bentley was interesting. Said he happily supports both.
Darren Bent is not so interesting. Unsure why on earth he signed for us when he's clearly 100% gooner.
 
bus-conductor said:
Maybe I didn’t explain that very well. Yeah, he’s nothing like Solanke, I just think he’s a better finisher and creator in and around the box. You can’t lump it up to him, but you can play it into his feet. As I said, think he upgrades Richarlison’s remit.
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I think Mikautadze is that great sweet spot of physical enough for the prem but quick enough and crafty enough to be a massive problem for the big donkey CBs like Burn that PL teams love
 
CJJ said:
I think that's about the sum of it. AVB did similar too, in terms of "I want Moutinho and Hulk".

Problem is that we don't always have that choice/ability. We compete with clubs that can afford to buy a Mudryk or Mutu and then have them drug banned doing nothing, or to buy a Sanchez and have him stink up the place on £500k a week. When we get it wrong with an Ndombele, it hurts the club for a long while.
So if Poch, for example, had said "No, I want Messi or no one" to add to his Argentine collection, or a Morata that claims he doesn't want to be second fiddle to Kane, then you kind of have to say "well we aren't able to get players who won't come here, but we can still improve the squad". The weird thing is that people throw it back with "We had Sissoko and Winks in midfield" as if it was scraping the barrel, but Poch loved that diamond and obviously thought they were hard to improve on. We had Wanyama/Dembele/Eriksen/Lamela/Dier/Dele/Moura/Sissoko/Winks/Son as our MF/WF options, so aside from the first two struggling with injuries/fitness, we should really have had plenty of room to bring in depth or variety even if they weren't "elite" options.

I feel like that whole thing was just a naivety and some character growth for Poch, because when he left us he managed two teams with unlimited budget and some 'elite' players, and it came across like he had very little pleasure out of managing the Neymar/Mbappe/Messi group.
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Poch's absolutely best quality as a manager was that he could improve and develop more or less any player into a better version of themselves. Or at minimum make them into a functioning cog in a team that was superior to the sum of its parts.

Him seemingly deciding that he no longer wanted to do that is definitely a reason for his downfall with us. He was the near perfect Levy manager who could work with what he was given. Tieleman's could have been great under Poch I think for example. But alas.
 
An issue the club may be facing and I agree to an extent is there’s very little value about at the moment unless you take advantage of a club in trouble. Semenyo, Mbeumo, Garnacho, Simons, Elanga - their clubs all seem to toeing the same line and valuing them all in the £60-70m bracket. It’s their right to set the fee but we’re now at the point where spending £70m will only get you an average to good player. We need improvements on what we’ve got, spending £300m on 4 good players both won’t drastically improve our squad and will put us in potential financial difficulties (by that I mean it will curb our future budgets and put us in strife if any of them flop).
 
Spursidol said:
He kept up his 'not one brick' rhetoric that stadium would never be built under Levy for at least a year after all the buildings around the 'old' WHL stadium had been knocked down and cleared, and even after foundations for new stadium were being put in.

And then he disappeared for best part of a year, and when he reappeared not one iota of an apology for misleading everyone with his zillions of posts that 'he knew the new stadium was a hoax'

So John Thomas disappearing when he faces criticism and no band of happy followers is far from new. Nor is the change of name stunt - John to Joan was a bit pathetic but an easy change for him.

And the worst thing for his narrative was Spurs winning Europa League Cup - so he disappeared for a few months.
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If your going to call people out at least be correct in your assessment. He disappeared for a week after the final.
 
citizenabel said:
I think the absolute truth is somewhere in between the assertions of both the pro/anti Levy/ENIC factions tbh. From recollection the window of short arms and long pockets was at a time when Poch (or so he said) only wanted players coming in who were better than we had and therefore able to improve us. Therefore it is not difficult to understand why there are two takes to be had depending on one's agenda.

I think the kerb crawler is being truthful when he suggests Poch didn't want to buy ANY of the players that were offered to him but I also believe that they didn't want to or wouldn't fork out the amounts of spondoolas required to acquire those that Poch did want to bring in.
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That's what people applaud Liverpool for doing, mind. They seem to save up 4 windows worth of budget for one player, instead of spreading a budget out over several players. It's why these threads get annoying, because people will recognise that but also be clucking and twitching if we only sign one player in 3 months of a window.

As we generally don't know what players he was offered (except the more notable Tielemens, Maddison etc) and we certainly don't know he wanted (but do know he wanted Ndombele, Sess, and GLC over Bruno) then it's pretty much not something anyone should judge too much. It happened, we got to a CL final, then we got shat on from a great height by signing three mostly useless players.

At the time, Poch was talking about being "brave and taking risks" and it seemed to be that was what he was referring to about sticking with his squad, but a lot of people took it the opposite way. He was a master of vague statements.
 
PointToPatrik said:
Poch's absolutely best quality as a manager was that he could improve and develop more or less any player into a better version of themselves. Or at minimum make them into a functioning cog in a team that was superior to the sum of its parts.

Him seemingly deciding that he no longer wanted to do that is definitely a reason for his downfall with us. He was the near perfect Levy manager who could work with what he was given. Tieleman's could have been great under Poch I think for example. But alas.
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Kind of the "Peter Principle" in manager terms. Made his name and his success based on being able to coach players, but got on Fergie's christmas card list and decided to reinvent himself in a way that did not suit his abilities
 
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