Attacking purchases under Poch

[TEESSIDE1]

We’ve already got very good attacking players the problem is they’re one dimensional and easy to shutdown when we don’t have two flying wingbacks and a man mountain in central midfield.

Last season Kane, Eriksen and Alli were lethal and feared. This season they’re easy to nullify because Davies, Rose, Trippier and Aurier to an extent, lack the pace required to trouble the opposition and/or any end product. Without a committed and fit Rose and Walker’s pace we no longer strike fear into the opposition.

Son gives us something different but to get the best out of him we need to have a balanced line up. Stick with 352 but play Rose? (Sessegnon if and when signed) and Aurier, and stop reverting to 2 sloths or 1 quick and 1 slow.

I agree that we need another player in Son’s ilk but we’ve brought a lot of our troubles on ourselves this season by fannying about with our full backs, line up and formation every bloody week. If it ain’t broken why try and fix it?

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

This is a matter of grave concern, as far as I am concerned. If you go back a couple of summers, to when we needed a ball-playing central midfielder, and came home with Wanyama (as good as he is at what he does) instead, it was somewhat perplexing. It suggested Poch was a safety first coach.

His failure to sign technically proficient players over 6 or 7 transfer windows reflects badly on someone. I mean, the way we have compensated for our lack of creativity is with a ferocious high press, but that is not sustainable over a season. We are a possession-based side, jammed to the rafters with players who are, by and large, incapable of one- and two-touch football. What the hell type of philosophy is that?

Poch's been saying we need to get our business done earlier in the window, and I am glad to hear him turning up the heat on Levy. To think we could have had Zaha a long time ago, if only we didn't take the piss with our offers. Poch had the horn for him, he still has the horn for him, we need someone like him, but how much has all the dicking around cost us? And how many scouts have we hired and fired over the last couple of seasons, only to be faced with the same old rubbish of not addressing our most pressing needs?

The transfer window just gone by was a crock of shit. One attacking player added to the mix, the rest, defenders and a keeper. Our first eleven has been picking itself for too long now. Everyone knows how we are going to line up. Our attacking players have nobody to challenge them for their place, and they're complacent. It's shockingly negligent.

We couldn't have had Zaha. The Palace chairman was intent on not selling to us because it was us. He said he wouldn’t even take £50m.

 

[doctor stefan Freud]

I take it you have forgotten he had large periods out with injury during his first season and was still adjusting to the league?

He had some really unpleasant injury with his foot that took months to get over

 

[mill]

We couldn't have had Zaha. The Palace chairman was intent on not selling to us because it was us. He said he wouldn’t even take £50m.

Iirc when parish said that it was the same summer they sold bolasie, not the summer just gone, we left it until late in the window, maybe if we’d have gone in earlier we’d have got him before Everton got bolasie, they were never going to sell both in the same summer.

@Breezer also said we offered him £40k pw before he signed his New £100k pw this summer

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

Iirc when parish said that it was the same summer they sold bolasie, not the summer just gone, we left it until late in the window, maybe if we’d have gone in earlier we’d have got him before Everton got bolasie, they were never going to sell both in the same summer.

@Breezer also said we offered him £40k pw before he signed his New £100k pw this summer

Yes it was the same season they sold Bolasie. But I definitely remember Parish being pig-headed and saying they were definitely not selling that window, especially to us. I think the fact he is ‘one of their own’ coupled with them thinking we have some sort of rivalry with them meant it was always gonna be a difficult deal to do.

And as for paying him 100k pw. That’s just silly.

 

[mill]

Yes it was the same season they sold Bolasie. But I definitely remember Parish being pig-headed and saying they were definitely not selling that window, especially to us. I think the fact he is ‘one of their own’ coupled with them thinking we have some sort of rivalry with them meant it was always gonna be a difficult deal to do.

And as for paying him 100k pw. That’s just silly.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/talksport.com/football/listen-steve-parish-blasts-ridiculous-ps12m-tottenham-bid-wilfried-zaha-and-says-crystal?amp

They’d already sold bolasie for around £30m so £12m, if that’s what it was, was never gonna get him, understandably.

If bolasie was doable at around £30m earlier in the window I’m sure Zaha would’ve been too if we’d gone in before Everton got bolasie

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/talksport.com/football/listen-steve-parish-blasts-ridiculous-ps12m-tottenham-bid-wilfried-zaha-and-says-crystal?amp

They’d already sold bolasie for around £30m so £12m, if that’s what it was, was never gonna get him, understandably

Yeah ‘nowhere for ANY price’. Never gonna happen. We took the piss with a 12m bid but tbf he wasn’t the same level he is now. And the majority of fans thought Poch had lost the plot targeting him.

 

[shelfboy68]

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/talksport.com/football/listen-steve-parish-blasts-ridiculous-ps12m-tottenham-bid-wilfried-zaha-and-says-crystal?amp

They’d already sold bolasie for around £30m so £12m, if that’s what it was, was never gonna get him, understandably.

If bolasie was doable at around £30m earlier in the window I’m sure Zaha would’ve been too if we’d gone in before Everton got bolasie

That's embarrassing from our club to had offered such a derisory offer especially when we want top dollar for everyone including Doris the tea lady.

 

[mill]

Yeah ‘nowhere for ANY price’. Never gonna happen. We took the piss with a 12m bid but tbf he wasn’t the same level he is now. And the majority of fans for Poch has lost the plot targeting him.

When he made that statement they’d already sold bolasie, no way they could’ve sold their best 2 attacking players in 1 summer but I’d bet if we’d gone in before bolasie was sold with a bigger fee we’d have got him

Similar to how Southampton shut up shop the summer we wanted schniederlin

 

[jonathanhotspur]

We couldn't have had Zaha. The Palace chairman was intent on not selling to us because it was us. He said he wouldn’t even take £50m.

The guy is a mouthy wanker. I call that hot air for the purpose of scoring a few points with Palace fans.

Bottom line for me is we got his back up with a piss-take of an offer. £25m would possibly have got us over the line. For a player Poch reckoned he could turn into Ronaldo-lite. Pay the fuckin' money, Levy.

 

[am_yisrael_chai]

I love SC!

SC Collective: "We hate that teams like City and Chelsea can go out and buy titles!!!"

Same SC Collective: "We want to be more like City and Chelsea!!! Poch Out, Levy Out!!!"

I think people have read into my original post what they wanted, which was to ascribe to me some anti-Levy fantasist agenda. Not specifically directed at you but the thrust of my post was that performances are generally dictated by quality in the final third. We haven’t done a very good job on our recruitment of forward players. This is likely due to a combination of lack of finances and poor scouting. People seem to have focussed only on the finances. Several years ago I started the Scouting Thread because I despaired of the scouting at Spurs and sadly I don’t think much has changed. We seem to hear lots about our number 1 target only to find they are out of reach financially as soon as a wealthier club is interested. That isn’t the problem, what is the problem is our choice of our second or third choice. We revert either to poor quality Prem tested - Sissoko, Llorente - or foreign punts that our coach never seemed to fancy - Njie, GKN. I think the only player where you could say we got unlucky was Janssen, he is the type of player we need to take a punt on but sadly it didn’t work, although even there I’d say we contributed to our downfall by buying someone who clearly couldn’t play with Kane so was always going to struggle in the comparison. There are many players that the uber clubs aren’t considering who would improve us and crucially challenge our existing first 11, who currently almost pick themselves. I don’t want to extrapolate our success with Son too far but I think we should be looking to the Bundesliga for players that aren’t bound for Bayern from the likes of Leverkusen, Schallke and even lesser teams like Hoffenheim (Firminho isn’t too bad). Similarly having signed Modric we seem to have lost touch with the best Croatian players and there have been some cracking players from there who have mainly gone to Serie A. Call me a dreamer if you like but it does my head when the only answer to our forward issues for many on here is throwing £50m at Palace to get someone who in my opinion is bang average. Time to be bolder and show some nous.

 

[mill]

The guy is a mouthy wanker. I call that hot air for the purpose of scoring a few points with Palace fans.

Bottom line for me is we got his back up with a piss-take of an offer. £25m would possibly have got us over the line. For a player Poch reckoned he could turn into Ronaldo-lite. Pay the fuckin' money, Levy.

I believe we’d have got him if we went in early and paid that kind of fee, instead we waited, waited, waited then paid £30m for sissoko on deadline day

 

[Breezer]

We couldn't have had Zaha. The Palace chairman was intent on not selling to us because it was us. He said he wouldn’t even take £50m.

Trust me Palace thought Zaha was off to us...did not expect negotiations between Spurs and player to be an issue.

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

The guy is a mouthy wanker. I call that hot air for the purpose of scoring a few points with Palace fans.

Bottom line for me is we got his back up with a piss-take of an offer. £25m would possibly have got us over the line. For a player Poch reckoned he could turn into Ronaldo-lite. Pay the fuckin' money, Levy.

This is all guess work though. As I said, Zaha is there youth product and we are their supposed rival. No way the deal would have been made easy for us. No one thought he was worth anymore than we offered at the time anyway. He was only just recovering from a torrid spell at Man U. If Levy had actually forked out 25m+ there would have been virtual riots on SC!

 

[mill]

This is all guess work though. As I said, Zaha is there youth product and we are their supposed rival. No way the deal would have been made easy for us. No one thought he was worth anymore than we offered at the time anyway. He was only just recovering from a torrid spell at Man U. If Levy had actually forked out 25m+ there would have been virtual riots on SC!

Yet the same summer we forked out £30m on sissoko

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

Yet the same summer we forked out £30m on sissoko

Easy deal to do. Sissoko wanted to leave, Newcastle wanted to sell. He had also just come back from being one of the standout performers in the Euro2016 final so his stock was high.

I think he is shit but I can see some kind of logic there.

 

[mill]

Easy deal to do. Sissoko wanted to leave, Newcastle wanted to sell. He had also just come back from being one of the standout performers in the Euro2016 final so his stock was high.

I think he is shit but I can see some kind of logic there.

Zaha would’ve been doable if we’d gone in before they sold bolasie imo, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree

Zaha kicked up a bit of a fuss when they refused to sell him, if we’d have gone in before they sold bolasie him kicking up a fuss could well of been the tipping point

 

[beats1]

Yet the same summer we forked out £30m on sissoko

Easy deal to do. Sissoko wanted to leave, Newcastle wanted to sell. He had also just come back from being one of the standout performers in the Euro2016 final so his stock was high.

I think he is shit but I can see some kind of logic there.

It wasnt an easy deal to do

It was only done because Everton forced our hand and we had no choice to match it or let him go and unfortunately we went the wrong way

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

It wasnt an easy deal to do

It was only done because Everton forced our hand and we had no choice to match it or let him go and unfortunately we went the wrong way

It was easy to do for the fact Newcastle wanted to sell. We paid more than we wanted but Newcastle were willing sellers.

Crystal Palace didn't want to sell Zaha so it would have been difficult to get them to accept any offer unless we paid ridiculously over the odds. And no matter what anyone says in hindsight now no one wanted Levy to pay big bucks for a man u reject.

 

[punkisback]

The real irony is that in past seasons we have targeted Martial, Depay and Sane only for them or their clubs to reject us in favour of a bigger pay day.

It's not that we don't go after quality attacking players, it's more that our direct rivals also do too. And we just can't compete with them so we have to change tack and take punts, which, by their very nature, will sometimes work out and sometimes not.

As with most of these threads the real frustration fans have is that we just don't have enough money.

We can sign good players for decent money, however if you're spending 30 on Sissoko, 17 on Jansen, 10 each on Njie and Nkoudou, and 15 on Llorente thats £77 mil worth of players who haven't improved the team. 5 attacking failures on signings is too much. Morever when we went for Sissoko after not being able to sign Mane it showed me that we don't really seem to scout players much as these two have completely different attributes. We just don't seem to be able to identify technical players at all and it's frustrating as I want to see us have some flair and a proper bums off seat player, but we just get poor target men and moderately quick wingers with poor technique alongside a person with the worst first touch in football.