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Paul Mitchell and recruitment in the future.

spurs9

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
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Find it hard to believe this because there's been so much hype about those two players for so long. Somehow, despite that hype and with most clubs looking at them, we had cut price deals available?!
The Dembele situation was before the hype not sure about Isak.
 

guiltyparty

Well-Known Member
Sep 21, 2005
9,023
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Stobart used to be itk but his info went south similar time Tim left.
Pretty sure he read JJ and published that

Yeah it's a big write around, with no real insight that we hadn't already heard and still vast swathes of info that make no sense

All this talk of ambition is great but on the other hand Levy says we need to be careful on money, with good reason. The two don't really go hand in hand. I'm not sure ambition is the right word, sounds like PR.

What's going to change? Sounds like they wish young players were cheaper to me. What in our approach is going to actually alter other than new names? Still no idea.

Dembele seems like an open goal now, but saying "why didn't we sign him?" reeks a bit of Liverpool/Utd and Alli. Any youngster there is going to be a punt and could easily have failed, in which we'd be having a different post-mortem. He still could fail in England.

See too Martial, Mane and Michi (and only one of them has been an unmitigated success). I'd presumed all were out of our wage bracket - hence the second or third tier likes of N'jie, N'koudou and N'ackered (Sissoko).

So is the brief now to spot those players BEFORE they become out of our price range? Well obviously, but surely every club is trying to do that? Hardly rocket science or guaranteed. "Do what you did, but earlier."

Also doesn't really tie in with what we think of Mitchell, so is the suggestion he was flagging players too far along their development? Seems fairly fundamental if so.

As for Hitchen - good to see what he can do but the transfer world has changed a lot in 7 years, and not sure a one-off circumstantial situation with Suarez gives much of an indicator of broader success. Everyone gets a doozy drop in their lap occasionally, but here's to improvement.

And finally, if Poch has final say on all transfers, is he not to blame when they don't work out? Or did he not before? And had he really never seen Sissoko play and needed to trust someone else's opinion?
 
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guiltyparty

Well-Known Member
Sep 21, 2005
9,023
13,524
Why did we let hitchen go in the first place? The scouting world seems to be a bit of a merry go round

The blame game. You'll eventually carry the can for someone - manager, chairman, DOF, players

In this case he left with Commoli to go to Liverpool. Seeing as Commoli left under a cloud, maybe his team were coloured by that? Dunno
 
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spurs9

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
11,840
34,012
To be fair, the suggestion was that it was a year prior to him moving to Dortmund (which was in May 2016) so would he not have played a number of games for Rennes by this point? He made his debut in September of 2014 so he would have played a fair bit by summer of 2015 so I would argue that if it was my job to be a scout or in player recruitment then I'd like to think I'd have been able to identify whether he was worth a fair punt at 1.5m, thats all.

EDIT - In fact, Wikipedia suggests he'd made 22 apps and scored 13 goals by the summer 2015, 1st season in starting lineup for Rennes. Followed that up with 26 apps and 12 goals by Summer of 2016 when he was snapped up by BVB.

As I say, I dont know the full details around it so I may have been a bit hasty with my criticism but the reality is that this Webb chap did get sacked so he's clearly dropped the ball here and in other areas in seems.
The 13 goals in 22 was for Rennes reserves not first team. He made his first team debut in Nov 2015.
 

sunnydelight786

Chief Rocka
Jan 7, 2007
6,075
4,241
Ffs it was Harry not Les & Tim that passed on Suarez !
Indeed he did, but on the advice of who? Ruud Gullit is on record saying Tim & Les scouted him many times, once even as his guests at a Ajax game, Their response was "Well we're not sure" about his abilities as a striker to Ruud. I'm sure that message was relayed back to HR as well....

It's all water under the bridge now but them 2 fuckwits had a major role to play in that decision made.....
 

thekneaf

Well-Known Member
Jan 18, 2011
1,933
3,878
Indeed he did, but on the advice of who? Ruud Gullit is on record saying Tim & Les scouted him many times, once even as his guests at a Ajax game, Their response was "Well we're not sure" about his abilities as a striker to Ruud. I'm sure that message was relayed back to HR as well....

It's all water under the bridge now but them 2 fuckwits had a major role to play in that decision made.....

Pretty sure we passed on Saurez because Harry thought VDV had that role covered
 

danielneeds

Kick-Ass
May 5, 2004
24,179
48,764
Pretty sure we passed on Saurez because Harry thought VDV had that role covered
He thought Suarez couldn't play up top by himself, yeah.

IMG_0358.JPG
 

EJWTartanSpur

SC Supporter
Jan 29, 2011
4,805
10,087
Not really sure where this fits in but its worth noting that as a club, we had been chasing Suarez for a long time, and had put an offer in for him well before the window where he actually moved. Bid went in during the January window of 2010, half way through Harry's first full season, before we had VDV, ie the season that we went on to finish 4th and get CL. Suarez wasn't ready to move then. The fact we never got him is due to an unlucky mixture of timing & acquisitions , and an unfortunate pure lack of knowledge by Harry & ( I'm sure there was one other scout who informed Harry he was too like VDV ) someone else. Suarez had clearly been on our lists for a long time and could easily have been our player if not for the aforementioned.

Straight from Jol's mouth as Ajax manager.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1267692/Ajax-ace-Luis-Suraez-turned-Tottenham.html
 

spursfan77

Well-Known Member
Aug 13, 2005
46,680
104,956
With the news another one of the signings under Mitchell has gone in N'jie I think we can safely say that his appointment was a bit of a disaster and he wasn't as good as we were hoping. Personally, I was never convinced. People will point to obvious signings like Wanyama and Alderweireld but they weren't exactly rough diamonds or unknown players. Even Dele was well know to be a good player and wasn't even identified by him.

Hopefully Hitchen proves to be a better appointment but so far this summer we don't appear to be acting on any of his targets so far or do we?
 

Cornpattbuck

Well-Known Member
Jul 23, 2013
6,873
15,942
With the news another one of the signings under Mitchell has gone in N'jie I think we can safely say that his appointment was a bit of a disaster and he wasn't as good as we were hoping. Personally, I was never convinced. People will point to obvious signings like Wanyama and Alderweireld but they weren't exactly rough diamonds or unknown players. Even Dele was well know to be a good player and wasn't even identified by him.

Hopefully Hitchen proves to be a better appointment but so far this summer we don't appear to be acting on any of his targets so far or do we?

Dele was David Pleat.
 

AdamYoung

Active Member
May 17, 2015
60
119
Did we ever get any either official or ITK confirmation of what the new structure looks like? Is Hitchen essentially replacing Mitchell or is there a layer above Hitchen still to be recruited/announced?
 

Mullers

Unknown member
Jan 4, 2006
25,914
16,413
With the news another one of the signings under Mitchell has gone in N'jie I think we can safely say that his appointment was a bit of a disaster and he wasn't as good as we were hoping. Personally, I was never convinced. People will point to obvious signings like Wanyama and Alderweireld but they weren't exactly rough diamonds or unknown players. Even Dele was well know to be a good player and wasn't even identified by him.

Hopefully Hitchen proves to be a better appointment but so far this summer we don't appear to be acting on any of his targets so far or do we?
Well no we can't. His job was player recruitment, this includes the obvious that you mentioned and Poch has the final say on signings, so he wanted Njie.
 

dontcallme

SC Supporter
Mar 18, 2005
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81,905
I thought a big part of the point of Mitchell was he was a numbers man.

He kind of setup the statistical analysis for a range of targets. Giving all their numbers to determine their true worth. Never came across like he really had a say in individual targets, just gave all the numbers so the decision makers could try to make a more informed decision.

I remember reading an article on how the various numbers of TA's performance were collected that convinced us to make a move.
 

jimmy-jojo

Well-Known Member
Jun 30, 2004
1,630
1,364
I thought a big part of the point of Mitchell was he was a numbers man.

He kind of setup the statistical analysis for a range of targets. Giving all their numbers to determine their true worth. Never came across like he really had a say in individual targets, just gave all the numbers so the decision makers could try to make a more informed decision.

I remember reading an article on how the various numbers of TA's performance were collected that convinced us to make a move.

Maybe the statistical analysis allowed the decision makers to be more decisive in pulling the trigger to push through transfers.

Have we signed a player since it was confirmed Mitchell was leaving?
 

yanno

Well-Known Member
Aug 1, 2003
5,857
2,877
Maybe the statistical analysis allowed the decision makers to be more decisive in pulling the trigger to push through transfers.

Have we signed a player since it was confirmed Mitchell was leaving?

IIRC, GKN was identified by MItchell's data analytics, and that signing took forever and a day.
 
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