- Oct 19, 2004
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The gamble was that by buying a 'good prospect' from an inferior league (and the Italien league is now very poor and less physical v Pl) he might be able to transfer his decent record in the Italian League to the PL.
Problem was that Baldini made the same gamble on Soldado (transfer a goal machine from a physically and defensively weak Spanish league ) to the PL.
Ditto Chirches.
As any one with any ounce of common sense can tell you, buying lots of players with the same gamble does not mitigate your risk - it magnifies it.
I'm hoping that Lamela makes it - but after the games the season, its clear it will take some time to coach him out of things like losimg the ball so much (a stat from a week or so ago was that he held the PL's worst stat on that), and physically he seems to need bulkng up - a ptrocess taking many months and far from guranteed to succeed, There are quite a few other issues he needs coaching in to be able to compete in PL - flaws which were covered up in the technically/slower inferior italkian league - and his total one footedness (which he tried to overcome with a Rabona) is something which is now unacceptable in Spurs Academy.
I understand the gamble - problem is the gamble at the price was one sided. If instantly successful a decent bet (but he's still only worth a £30m PL player), however as less than a great success. the gamble has failed. So for the gamble to succeed we need him to do MUCH better and live up to a £30m star - long way to go to do that.
The Spanish league isn't generally physically or defensively weaker than the EPL. Marginally more protection form refs maybe but it makes up for that in others by having better coached footballers.
Like there are great defenders knocking about the EPL.
The italian league is weaker than it was but it is not like it's some third world league all of a sudden. As we see when Roma go away to ManC for example.
Lamela has a better pass completion than Mason (according to whoscored he's 118th out of 275 players).He also has more assists than anyone in our team so far this season. Second highest key passes and sees twice as much ball as Lennon. For a 22yo effectively having his first season he's doing fine.
Of course the gamble was one sided, how many sides does a gamble normally have ? Di Maria has just gone for 60m+. I think you're estimation of what even moderate success might pay is out of date.
And he didn't cost £30m. I know it suited Tim's agenda to keep repeating this, knowing it not to be the case. He cost £25m GBP. Still a lot of money, but if you understand it at what you thought was £30m, you must be really happy with it at the real £25, no ?