The Daily ITK Discussion Thread SEE FIRST POST! - 4 July 2011

[Archibald&Crooks]

So who is to blame for having such an inflated squad in the first place?

The Butler, with the Dildo, in the conservatory.

But that isn't a conversation for this thread.

 

[ryantegan]

So who is to blame for having such an inflated squad in the first place?

Damien Commolli and juande Ramos

We were put into a position where we needed to bring players in to avoid relegation 3 years ago. We brought these in irrespective of the wage structure we had in place. We are correcting this now

Just my opinion obviously

 

[Gilzeanking]

Also some of those players are likely to want to stay or be happy to just pick up the wages. It's easy to sell players like O'Hara who are hungry to play football, but we have players who I am convinced will just see out their contracts without having to make a lot of effort.

How was it done in the days before agents?

This is something I wonder about . Take our Robbie . I would speculate he has other interests outside footie these days . He's got his 60 Gs or so per week coming in . He knows whatever club he goes to its likely to be for less money..less glamour than he's used to...its clearly downhill from here...mebbe his appetite for footie is not what it was .

In come a smaller club....whats his motivation to move ?? . Can he just turn down the offer and stay for the length of his contract ?...worst we can do is not give him a squad number...he would just have to turn up a coupla times a week go thru the motions of training .
His agent doesn't mind...10% of 60 Gs/week...not so bad .

Do we have any sure way of moving on multimillionaire player :shrug:

 

[nailsy]

I can understand the thinking in holding off buying Parker, or a new centre back until we've shifted some of the current squad, but I would hope that we would still go ahead and sign a new star striker even if we haven't sold Keane yet. I know this might be a risky strategy financially as we may lose money on a sale, but surely it's riskier to go into the season with our current strikers?

 

[Spurger King]

I can understand the thinking in holding off buying Parker, or a new centre back until we've shifted some of the current squad, but I would hope that we would still go ahead and sign a new star striker even if we haven't sold Keane yet. I know this might be a risky strategy financially as we may lose money on a sale, but surely it's riskier to go into the season with our current strikers?

Agree with this. It would also be that 'statement of intent' we really need to show players like Modric that we are serious about competing next season.

 

[ryantegan]

I can understand the thinking in holding off buying Parker, or a new centre back until we've shifted some of the current squad, but I would hope that we would still go ahead and sign a new star striker even if we haven't sold Keane yet. I know this might be a risky strategy financially as we may lose money on a sale, but surely it's riskier to go into the season with our current strikers?

Fair point mate. Im sure leandro is done bar the shouting. And I'm also sure we are showing our cards a little more. I was told that we are going to or have already gone official with Rossi. I'd imagine for that to be the case, a squad position is opening up. I just can't see us doing one without the other.

Our players are not in high demand as such. Money is tight all round. If we announce a big signing incoming it would more than likely reduce the strength of our hands for outgoings

It's a fine balancing act

 

[AngerManagement]

Just a follow up to the information I was told regarding Carlton Cole the other day (while not spurs related it does serve to further confirm harry is not trying to sign him)

Apparently he has had his wage cut in half due to the relegation (contract clause) so I wonder how many other players there have similar deals.

Also as I said the other day he claims Villa are in for him (which seemed strange to me as they spent big on Bent and already have Gabbi Ab) but now apparently Stoke have come in for him and he wants to go there but Stoke are only prepared to pay £3m and west ham are not prepared to sell him for that (plus i guess they can afford to keep him seeing as his contract has adjusted itself to in accordance with the relegation)

He also said that Grant never said anything in the dressing room and apparently pretty much all team talks and motivational moments were provided by Scott Parker who was quote "like the manager"

I should again qualify that all this was told to me by my friend who is friends with Carlton so its not straight from the horses mouth but I have known my friend since we were in infant school and I don't doubt him at all (plus its not Spurs related so he has no reason to wind me up about it)

One thing he did say though was "I dunno though, Carlton chats shit sometimes"

He also added, and this is just his opinion, that Carlton doesn't seem to care about football anymore and he is already starting to look at his money and investments for when he no longer has his footballer wage. (I think players that lose focus on their football at the top level can really lose their form because the lines between success and failure at elite level are so fine)

 

[AngerManagement]

I can understand the thinking in holding off buying Parker, or a new centre back until we've shifted some of the current squad, but I would hope that we would still go ahead and sign a new star striker even if we haven't sold Keane yet. I know this might be a risky strategy financially as we may lose money on a sale, but surely it's riskier to go into the season with our current strikers?

Who knows maybe Adeipf was right all along and we signed a pre contract with Lukaku and are just waiting to shift our dead wood strikers before announcing it so as not to get raped off the price we have to sell for.

Ok unlikely, but it would make Levy quite the criminal master mind if true lol

 

[brasil_spur]

It's in their best interest for a player to move for sure, but they would be in no rush to do it as thye would be looking to squeeze every last penny out of a deal and into their own pockets. It's a bit of a conflict of interests if we are looking to move players out quickly.

This is where we need to take some initiative in my opinion and also where i think Levy falls down a bit in his approach to players coming and going.

We should tell the agents that they and the players will receive a percentage of any sale (or a higher percentage if that's already the case) if they can secure a move before the end of July. That way they are motivated to move and ok we lose perhaps 10% (or whatever percentage we offer) of the players value going this route, but as we're selling fringe players the actual final number isn't going to be too big and we can then push on and get our new players signed in a sensible time scale and importantly before the new season starts.

For me it's more important for us to get our business done early rather than worry about the possible £5m we'd lose doing it this way.

 

[McArchibald]

Every one knows we want to be rid of Keane, Hutton, Jenas, Gio, Pav, Bentley and Bassong. Nobody is going to pay big money for these guys.
We have to take our losses and get a firesale happening. These players are becoming a real millstone round our neck, dragging the club down.

 

[nailsy]

Fair point mate. Im sure leandro is done bar the shouting. And I'm also sure we are showing our cards a little more. I was told that we are going to or have already gone official with Rossi. I'd imagine for that to be the case, a squad position is opening up. I just can't see us doing one without the other.

Our players are not in high demand as such. Money is tight all round. If we announce a big signing incoming it would more than likely reduce the strength of our hands for outgoings

It's a fine balancing act

I imagine that the Leandro situation is one we are quite comfortable with. His club probably don't want to lose him just yet, and we have a great relationship with them so they are probably happy to accept our bid and wait for us. I can't see the same thing happening with Two Scoops. If we told Rossi to just hang-on for a few weeks until we shift some players out then it would be just our luck to see someone like Real or Barca swoop for him at the last second. Hopefully you're right about someone leaving soon - from the sounds of it theres a bit of interest in Keane at the moment so he could be first out the door if we aren't too firm on the price.

 

[talkshowhost86]

I can understand the thinking in holding off buying Parker, or a new centre back until we've shifted some of the current squad, but I would hope that we would still go ahead and sign a new star striker even if we haven't sold Keane yet. I know this might be a risky strategy financially as we may lose money on a sale, but surely it's riskier to go into the season with our current strikers?

Remember that it's still almost a month and a half until our first game so we don't need to panic yet. I agree with you that if we get to August and we still haven't signed players because we haven't shifted the deadwood then it'll be looking bad but we still have time on our side at the moment. yes it would be nice to have the players in for as much of pre-season as possible but that is rarely practical and whichever players we sign will be having pre-seasons elsewhere so it's not as if they won't be fit.

On the TSH transfer timetable (the Triple-Tizzle as I'm sure Stoof would call it) I will start getting jittery if we haven't got rid of a few players two weeks from today.

 

[michaelden]

I think there are a lot of clubs in a similar situation to us, trying to get down to the 25 man quota

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

This is where we need to take some initiative in my opinion and also where i think Levy falls down a bit in his approach to players coming and going.

We should tell the agents that they and the players will receive a percentage of any sale (or a higher percentage if that's already the case) if they can secure a move before the end of July. That way they are motivated to move and ok we lose perhaps 10% (or whatever percentage we offer) of the players value going this route, but as we're selling fringe players the actual final number isn't going to be too big and we can then push on and get our new players signed in a sensible time scale and importantly before the new season starts.

For me it's more important for us to get our business done early rather than worry about the possible £5m we'd lose doing it this way.

How do you know what way Levy deals with these outgoings? This is all speculation. Us not shifting deadwood could be down to a combination of factors. Unless you actually work for the club on transfers I don't think any of us are in a position to question whatever policies are in place because we simply just don't know what is going on.

 

[THOWIG]

Have any of the Itks heard anything about Tomkins and Collison? Maybe not now!

 

[AngerManagement]

Every one knows we want to be rid of Keane, Hutton, Jenas, Gio, Pav, Bentley and Bassong. Nobody is going to pay big money for these guys.
We have to take our losses and get a firesale happening. These players are becoming a real millstone round our neck, dragging the club down.

This.

All these guys, with the exception of Pav have been almost totally irrelevant to us in the past season or two and are clearly surplus to our requirements.

The new rules for squad restrictions will mean every potential buying club knows we have a need to sell and we will almost certainly have to take losses on them all just to get them off the books so we can move forward with our own business.

I just think we should do what we can to get the deals made now, within reason of course, but we don't want to end up having to stick with what we have because staying still in our league right now is going backwards.

Plus we benefited least year from Madrid's need to sell and got VdV on the cheap so we have to take the rough with the smooth and just accept we will not be able to get top dollar for these guys but better to make the deals, cut losses and move on than let it drag on trying to get more money and end up with no time to replace them with our targets or indeed seeing our targets snapped up by clubs already in the position to buy.

 

[AngerManagement]

Redknapp for: Defoe, Crouch, Keane, Bassong and Naughton

Ramos/Comolli for: Pav, Bentley, Gio and Hutton

Jol for: Jenas

I think you missed his point, you have literally pointed out who was in charge at the time of each player was signed.

The point made was that the Ramos/Commolli reign had left our squad decimated and fighting relegation to the extent that when Harry came in he had to make several signings simply to stay up without a long term plan. Signings we would not have to have made had Ramos' time in charge not left us in such an awful predicament.

 

[Insomnia]

can't believe there's 3 pages and not 1 poster has said what a quality line A & C came up with re David Haye, pure genius

 

[talkshowhost86]

While there is obviously some truth in that, the fact remains that the vast majority of players Redknapp has signed we are now looking to sell, more than likely for a loss, ie Keane, Crouch, Defoe, Bassong, Palacios etc.

HR is more than adept enough at deflecting all blame away from him - surely we don't need to do it as well?

I think AM's point is that all of those players did their part in keeping us in the league, which was the only thing that Redknapp could consider when he inherited Juande's mess.

If he'd inherited a club in a stronger position then he could have thought a bit more long term but all of the players listed above did their bit (apart from Naughton) in keeping us in the league.

Of course whether Harry has it in him to think more long term is a different issue, but when you look at how successful we've been under him so far it's hard to criticise him for having 'an overinflated squad'.

 

[AngerManagement]

The squad Ramos left was only short of a DM and a forward or two (and almost no deadwood).

The squad we have now is only short of 3 forwards (and has 7-8 deadwood players).

Redknapp has always collected large quantities of average players that he knows. Others of his ilk, like Neil Warnock, are the same. His transfer strategy (or lack of) wouldn't have been any different, no matter what position he'd taken over in. He'd've still bought Crouch and Defoe.

The squad had no strikers and couldn't score goals, its because of this Redknapp had to buy Defoe and then Keane when Defoe got injuired (these are two of the players you list)

The Crouch signing was the type of signing we needed to make, it was just a poor choice in my opinion and smacked of Gerry Francis trying to recreate past successes and turn our forward line into what had worked for him at portsmouth (when clearly we are a different club with different needs and pressures)

Had Ramos not done such an awful job however I doubt we would have had to make the large number of quick fire signings we did that window and we may well have had more money to spend and more squad places if the signings could be staggered out of the next few windows.

The patch up job required to right the wrongs of the Ramos era have had a lasting effect and we are dealing with some of the consequIences of his spell even now (trying to trim the wage bill)

I am not so sure Redknapp would have bough Defoe and Crouch anyway had he not been in the position of need Ramos left the club in. That Jan deals needed to be made quick and we were hardly an attractive club seeing as we were facing relegation. Keane and Defoe were easy deals to make and needs must (needs created by Ramos)

I think Crouch was probably the best (in Harry's eyes) striker availble to us for the type of money we could spend as a result of our heavy spending and increased wage bill of the previous window spent cleaning up Ramos' mess.

I personally believe that had circumstances been different Harry or indeed Levy may not have made these "safe" signings and we could well have pushed the boat out more looking for the Berbatov/Modric type deal who have more potential to reach higher heights but also may take longer to hit their form and of course may not be able to cut it in our league

harry knew what he would get from Crouch/Keane/Defoe and each of them served a purpose in the short term...i.e we staved off relegation and went on to reach the CL.

Had it not been for Ramos' time we may not have needed to make safe signings to ensure quick and short term gains so while I can not say with certainity the signings would have been different.... neither can you say for certain Harry still would have signed those players based purely on what you think you know about him and looking at his history at other clubs (which is some what irrelevant because the other clubs were all on different levels to where we are now and where we should have been had Ramos not been in charge)