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Transfers The Winter Transfer Thread - 25/26

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Notabadsquad said:
United have shown their leg at Baleba, so forget that, and it's a perfect example of if it went badly it was us taking the easy option and not going for proven ability. If it went well there would be silence and we got lucky. It won't happen so all moot.

Mitoma can't get into the Brighton first team, is 28,and we should sign him. Rightio.
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Yeah and they didn’t follow it through and there’s nothing suggesting they will do this window either.

So you don’t rate Mitoma because he’s had an injury? Fit and in form he’s one of the best wingers in the PL 🙄
 
FOK said:
LOL some people's need for attention genuinely amazes me.


like who's this fckn loser.


View: https://x.com/_TottenhamTalk_/status/2007425269796053397?s=20
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It's nuts. Once knew a bloke at work who was a compulsive liar. A few years later I randomly had a look on his reddit handle and turned out he'd become one of the biggest ITKs on the red devils subreddit.

The man was perhaps the biggest bullshitter I've ever met and had tens of thousands of people lapping up his every word on United signing Ruben Neves or whatever crap he made up that day. Tragic stuff.

Eventually they found him out and there was a massive fallout. Very funny to see.
 
GirthenHungswell said:
Yeah and they didn’t follow it through and there’s nothing suggesting they will do this window either.

So you don’t rate Mitoma because he’s had an injury? Fit and in form he’s one of the best wingers in the PL 🙄
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We are desperate for strong-minded players, who can cope with the demand and rise to a challenge.

I don't want us to sign players because they look decent here and there ,so that's the likes of Kudus, Mitoma and a few others.

We need to buy consistently good performers and do our due diligence.
 
Don Pedro said:
Frank can't be backed right now. He just can't. We'll only be digging a bigger hole for ourselves. We aren't going to make top 4 this year anyway so what's the point panicking on short term signings just to move a few places up the league table?

I'd rather see us play the youth and start the proper foundations of a rebuild
Get ready for a new manager next summer. If Frank turns it around in between then great, we can back him in the summer. But not now. Its not the time. We aren't ready to take the next step.
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So we're back in the Spurs feedback loop:

- New manager gets hired in the summer
- Not sufficiently backed in the transfer market
- Struggles because he has to work with a Frankenstein squad without the players he needs
- Don't back him in January because he may be sacked in the summer
- Sack him after he continues to struggle with the Frankenstein squad

Don't you see the problem with this?
 
Tio Martin said:
So we're back in the Spurs feedback loop:

- New manager gets hired in the summer
- Not sufficiently backed in the transfer market
- Struggles because he has to work with a Frankenstein squad without the players he needs
- Don't back him in January because he may be sacked in the summer
- Sack him after he continues to struggle with the Frankenstein squad

Don't you see the problem with this?
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It's why we need a coherent model and an actual long term footballing vision. There's a reason why Brighton and Brentford can replace their managers and stay stable while we lurch between extremes and piss money down the toilet.

If the new board have any sense they'll get a decent DoF to replace Paratici/Lange, decide what type of team we actually want to be and then get a manager that fits that style. Then if/when that guy flops or doesn't work, we find someone who at least somewhat aligns with the previous guy and can use the same players.

Until we do this, it's just the old Levy lottery where you throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks. Worked with Poch but you need to get lucky.
 
Don Pedro said:
Frank can't be backed right now. He just can't. We'll only be digging a bigger hole for ourselves. We aren't going to make top 4 this year anyway so what's the point panicking on short term signings just to move a few places up the league table?

I'd rather see us play the youth and start the proper foundations of a rebuild
Get ready for a new manager next summer. If Frank turns it around in between then great, we can back him in the summer. But not now. Its not the time. We aren't ready to take the next step.
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No matter who is right now or will be manager.in the future - this team needs proper LB, ball playing CM and left winger.

If proper players are available right now in those positions - we need to act immediately.
 
Notabadsquad said:
We are desperate for strong-minded players, who can cope with the demand and rise to a challenge.

I don't want us to sign players because they look decent here and there ,so that's the likes of Kudus, Mitoma and a few others.

We need to buy consistently good performers and do our due diligence.
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So you think, bar his recent period of injury, Mitoma hasn’t been consistently good in the PL? Who do you think we can sign that’s better?
 
Tio Martin said:
So we're back in the Spurs feedback loop:

- New manager gets hired in the summer
- Not sufficiently backed in the transfer market
- Struggles because he has to work with a Frankenstein squad without the players he needs
- Don't back him in January because he may be sacked in the summer
- Sack him after he continues to struggle with the Frankenstein squad

Don't you see the problem with this?
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I think this is a fair defense of Frank in a lot of ways, and it might be right across the board. But I’m skeptical of that third bullet point, the causal claim, as being too reductive an explanation of a more complex situation. Yes, at least a part of our struggles can be explained by our long history of poor signings and haphazard roster-building. You’re certainly right about that. BUT the way we absolutely rolled over for Woolwich, the way we showed nothing against Chelsea, the way we never even seemed to try to do anything going forward this last match against Brentford (maybe the worst professional football match I have ever seen in my life) leads me to think that his struggles may ALSO be due to him being overmatched in the job.

I’m wary of the sunk cost fallacy here, of sticking with the wrong guy because he also had the wrong players. I don’t want to do what United did with ten Hag.
 
tedesco23 said:
I think this is a fair defense of Frank in a lot of ways, and it might be right across the board. But I’m skeptical of that third bullet point, the causal claim, as being too reductive an explanation of a more complex situation. Yes, at least a part of our struggles can be explained by our long history of poor signings and haphazard roster-building. You’re certainly right about that. BUT the way we absolutely rolled over for Woolwich, the way we showed nothing against Chelsea, the way we never even seemed to try to do anything going forward this last match against Brentford (maybe the worst professional football match I have ever seen in my life) leads me to think that his struggles may ALSO be due to him being overmatched in the job.

I’m wary of the sunk cost fallacy here, of sticking with the wrong guy because he also had the wrong players. I don’t want to do what United did with ten Hag.
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The point is the squad needs work regardless of who the manager is or will be, especially since at this rate we'll never see Deki, Madders or Solanke alive ever again.
 
I think adding a 28 year old mitoma would be a very sensible option. Great touch, dribbler always probing for that opening and offers good service. I think he is very sensible in possession rather than head down blind alleys type.
Character wise also I think hes a good suit for us. Last thing we need is a cocky showboater who thinks he's big time.

Brighton would sell for a reasonable fee.

Then go get the best CM we can thats comfortable on the ball and can play a wide range of passes.
 
Said this before, but Ndiaye could very well be the ultimate Frank winger in terms of being able to wrestle the opponents in a way not dissimilar to Kudus while also being more neat and tidy on the ball.

One number to summarize the way Kudus has been utilized this season would be 233: That's the number of ground duels he has been in so far. He leads the whole league. The top 10:

Mohammed Kudus-233
Elliot Anderson-222
Iliman Ndiaye-192
Joao Gomes-187
Neco Williams-184
Yankuba Minteh-184
Antoine Semenyo-178
Gabriel Gudmundsson-176
Morgan Rogers-175
Bruno Guimaraes-174

He's 91 / 192 in them compared to Kudus' 96 / 233, even though it must be added that the latter regularly gets the ball in situations where the odds are stacked against him.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUMcaXjf51M
That goal against City (?) in 0:30 in particular requires amazing technique; I don't see a player like Kudus that's rather rough around the edges pulling something similar off.

Comparison:



First of all, I'd like to note that I'm hardly the most graph literate person out there. I could be reading the graph horribly wrong.

The graph admittedly paints Kudus as the one with the better end product in most dimensions. But the one thing to keep in mind is that these are volume stats: They're about how many times a player has dribbled the ball succesfully, how many of his actions have directly led to his team getting a shot off / scoring a goal etc.

Everton having another high usage player on the left in Grealish could very well be the confounding variable here. We keep giving the ball to Kudus in a way that has allowed him to accumulate these numbers; but this by itself doesn't mean that Kudus is the better player in the tasks in question.

And they're very comparable in a lot of departments anyway, including dribble success percentage that measures rate instead of volume.
 
GirthenHungswell said:
So you think, bar his recent period of injury, Mitoma hasn’t been consistently good in the PL? Who do you think we can sign that’s better?
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GirthenHungswell said:
So you think, bar his recent period of injury, Mitoma hasn’t been consistently good in the PL? Who do you think we can sign that’s better?
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As of early January 2026, Kaoru Mitoma has accumulated 12 assists in the Premier League for

And about 21 games in 3 or 4 seasons

So no I don't see why we would sell a player just to buy nothing better.

When we like players we often see what we want to see, as in the person who thinks a player is tbat or tbat

Mitoma does the exceptional once in a while. We need more than tbat. As for who, who knows.
 
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