Mr Pink
SC Supporter
- Aug 25, 2010
- 55,146
- 100,297
Think we've been good since then, defensively we could of been stronger but our attacking has been excellent.
The Mauricio Pochettino thread
- Thread starter TaoistMonkey
- Start date
- Status
Think we've been good since then, defensively we could of been stronger but our attacking has been excellent.
Lighty64
I believe
- Aug 24, 2010
- 10,400
- 12,476
Man C tried to sign Mahrez last January but wouldn't pay what Leicester wanted, and then got him in the summer for the fee they offered in the January
not many top 6 teams buy in January, apart from when City where taken over, and Liverpool last season caved in to Southampton. most business is done in the summer
edit: we also are not getting the money in that we expected too by now. we should of had 7 home games bringing in a lot more than what Wembley has brought in
Lighty64
I believe
- Aug 24, 2010
- 10,400
- 12,476
Mate don't do it to yourself the club will not spend in January as it couldn't spend during the summer, and as for levy spending 100m on a CM like when would that happen shave 70-75m of that figure and you might be closer to the mark but seriously if you set the expectation level low that way it at least can be matched rather than be left dissapointed.
the reason we never spent was due to the size of our squad
many ITK said there was money to spend, but Levy is not going to want to pay 4 or 5 players for sitting on their arses at home, especially when we are losing money every week playing at Wembley.
none of us know what will happen once the deadwood does finally get moved on and we are back at the Lane
spursfan77
Well-Known Member
- Aug 13, 2005
- 46,684
- 104,964
Exactly. I feel that if we manage to get a couple out early in the window then we will bring someone in.
We’ve been linked with youngsters in the championship and I don’t see how s bloated squad effects this as we will, I assume, loan them back for the rest of the season anyway.
sidford
Well-Known Member
- Oct 20, 2003
- 11,380
- 29,903
Long Poch article but think it's well worth a few minutes
https://www.tifofootball.com/featur...heir-own-culture-to-keep-mauricio-pochettino/
Tottenham must deepen their own culture to keep Mauricio Pochettino
WORDS BY SEB STAFFORD-BLOORILLUSTRATION BY PHILIPPE FENNER
December 31, 2018
The real shame of Tottenham’s defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers was not the lost points, inconvenient as they were, but the ugly bookend it created on what has otherwise been an excellent festive period. Despite their limited squad, Spurs authored an exhilarating run of form up to and beyond Christmas, and now its memory has been tarnished by familiar accusations of mental fragility.
Fatigue is the obvious diagnosis. Pochettino’s midfield is clearly wilting under the winter schedule and Wolves was a game too far. The effects of the fixture list were seen in the literal lack of intensity, but also in the many bad decisions made. When players get tired, their errors rise and their ideas fade away; too many games deaden the legs and the mind. In effect, this was the moment when the summer transfer inertia came back to bite the club: while Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool were all rotating through their many alternatives, Spurs were relying on the same small group of players.
The season so far has been framed by the players’ unlikely evasion of that physical debt. That Tottenham sit third in the league isn’t surprising on account of a lack quality, but because they were expected to run headlong into the wall at some point in November. At times, Pochettino has been marvellously creative in alleviating the burdens, but there are only so many times the same fabric can be repurposed before it begins to fray.
Perhaps there’s another reinvention planned for the visit to Cardiff City and, as we speak, another unlikely component is being readied to get the wheels turning. Regardless, this recent loss and the circumstances surrounding it come at an inconvenient time, precisely at the moment when Tottenham don’t need Pochettino to be dwelling on the reasons he may have for leaving. Daniel Levy should be nervous.
Unfortunately for Levy, this is the period which will likely instruct what happens next. Come the summer, Manchester United will appear on the horizon, fists full of gold, and whether Pochettino resists their offer will depend on what he thinks he can achieve at White Hart Lane. Levy is in a precarious position: were his manager to leave now, he would be held solely responsible. Whether justified or not, many supporters would reason that the failure to secure transfer targets, the stadium’s gravitational suck on the club’s resources, and the repeated delays suffered during construction have provided Pochettino with a justifiably exit point. He could leave in the summer and, albeit through their anger and bitter tears, most fans would understand why.
The prevailing hope remains that he looks beyond United’s shimmering veneer and towards Tottenham’s more abstract appeal. There, Pochettino has the opportunity to perform an historic restoration, painting himself onto the space next to the true immortals. Enticing as that may be, if for whatever reason he loses faith in the theory of what could be achieved, then he’s likely – and entitled – to approach this decision from a different perspective. He’s underpaid and under-backed and Levy cannot afford to let him encounter too many situations in which he’s left wondering what might have been achieved had it not been for the obstructions.
None of which is to say that he’s always a bystander to these downturns. He retains a maddening tendency to delay substitutions and is sometimes slow to respond to shifts in a game’s pattern. As Football.London’s Alasdair Gold noticed on Saturday, prior to Wolves’ equaliser Oliver Skipp was set to be introduced just before Willy Boly scored. It’s hindsight talking, of course, but a quicker response to the obvious loss of midfield control might have produced a different outcome.
But that is a small detail within a larger picture. Pochettino is a relatively young manager, still filling out his potential and therefore afforded the latitude to make mistakes. The error which can’t be made, however, is to allow him to believe that life at Tottenham will always involve these contortions, that he must perform minor miracles each season to sustain the club’s growth. If that persists, leaving will seem less of a wrench and more of a logical next step. The issue of whether it would be the right move for Pochettino is a different matter, but the attraction is clear enough and the need to keep the Argentinian’s focus firmly on North London is pressing. Traditionally, that means the sanctioning of heavy spending.
But the club can’t pay through the nose to appease him. Since the stadium project has encountered delays, Spurs have only given vague answers to what the impact on the transfer budget has actually been. By consensus, any incoming activity would have to be funded by sales and, given just how devalued the players Spurs would willingly sell are, major activity is beyond them. Fernando Llorente is reportedly close to joining Galatasaray and Mousa Dembele may yet depart for China, but there is little redeemable value in Michel Vorm, Georges-Kevin Nkoudou or Vincent Janssen.
In this instance, perhaps the gesture would be worth more than the goods delivered. Pochettino’s coaching style makes him distrustful of stars and oversized egos, meaning that the club’s optimal transfer targets are young and pliable. His greatest successes have always been with those undervalued by the market and overlooked by his managerial peers. In fact, the joy he takes from his work seems nearly always to be derived from the formation of an embryonic career and he is invariably closest to those players who have been encouraged beyond the assumed limits of their potential.
So therein lies a retention strategy of sorts. Pochettino doesn’t need to be bribed with an opulent jewel, but does need to be engaged by a project player. And, in the future, a continuous stream of them. While selling that clutch of squad irrelevances won’t cover the cost of buying Adrien Rabiot or Jack Grealish, it could conceivably support moves for the kind of players who typically enliven him. Norwich’s Max Aarons, for instance, or Moenchengladbach’s Mickael Cuisance. Those are names plucked at random, but the profiles are deliberately specific: if Tottenham don’t have the money to keep Manchester United away, then they must fight this battle on different terms. Foyths y Pavones, not Zidanes y Pogbas.
Several years ago, there was a German cartoon drawn in response to Mario Gotze’s move from Borussia Dortmund to Bayern Munich. It showed Jurgen Klopp with a modelling knife, perfecting a figurine Gotze and, in the background, sinister Bavarian types trying to snatch it away. It was a smart bit of satire and, given that Robert Lewandowski was also seized a year later, it characterised the relationship well. What really stood out, though, was the depiction of Klopp, the look of enchantment on his face and the (implied) suggestion that there are different sorts of top-flight manager. Those whose aim it is to spend and win, and those who seek to nurture. It’s admittedly a little too neat, because there are plenty now who do both (including Klopp himself), but there remains the semblance of a passable Venn diagram.
Pochettino, clearly, is the creative sort. The greatest pleasure he seems to take from his coaching is in the type of success built through incremental coaching tweaks and small bricks of experience. I remember being in the old White Hart Lane pressbox, just behind the technical area, when Harry Winks scored his first goal for the club on debut against West Ham. I had a perfect view of their celebration together and, to this day, it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him. It’s also one of my favourite moments. It was rare and genuine. Sadly, football doesn’t offer that as much as it thinks it does.
In the press-conference afterwards, Pochettino glowed with a paternal pride and, had Simon Felstein let him, he probably would have been happy to answer questions about Winks for the rest of the evening. It’s a trait of his with plenty of supporting annotations: he adores Harry Kane, he has defended Dele Alli’s on-pitch antics countless times and, most recently, he has circled his wagons around Juan Foyth after mistakes at Molineux and the Emirates. Winks he trusts implicitly, he has played him twice against Real Madrid, and Oliver Skipp has also been given a Premier League debut over the past month.
So it matters to him. Money and medals will too, but there’s something about the flowering of a career which seems to chime with his romantic notions of legacy. He’s someone for whom, perhaps, the journey is more appealing than the destination. Tottenham must imdulge that side of his personality and, because of the obvious outside factors at work, they must stress their willigness to do so now.
Mainly because Manchester United don’t offer the same proposition. Much to their supporters’ chagrin, they are now less a football club and more a content provider. While their status within the game and the revenue streams associated with it provide a tremendous advantage, the less desirable consequences are felt in the culture – in those film trailers in which Ander Herrera swings a lightsaber, or in the reported infatuation with social media currency. Wealth has given United the financial muscle to snatch almost anything they want from anybody, but only at the cost of their authenticity and the distortion of their purpose. There is no Harry Winks at Old Trafford, only the occasional, accidental Marcus Rashford and a strange fixation with the British transfer record.
Tottenham must present themselves as the alternative. Not as a club rigidly defined by their history and a new wave of commercial imperatives, but one willing to be shaped by the force of a single personality. Managers don’t change Manchester United, they’re just employed by them. Once they leave Carrington, their desks and offices are cleared and their eras are erased. Spurs’ great selling point, with Pochettino already in situ, is to be of a softer clay. They must place themselves entirely in his hands. Their pitch is the opportunity not just to be their coach for a few seasons, but to be the custodian of a particular approach that he himself would be allowed to define.
Be Guy Roux, not Jose Mourinho. Be the kind of coach who, twenty or thirty years from now, is more than a generic character from football’s ever-changing cast. In a sporting world which is becoming crushingly insincere, there is tremendous value in eschewing the popular trends and representing something substantial.
The symbolic offering of a developing player in January, someone who piques Pochettino’s interest, is a mandatory gesture. Incidental though it might seem, it would cater to his own vision of what progress should be. The key to Pochettino’s loyalty has always be in supplying him with unrealised potential; for as long as he’s able to see future excellence, his expectations needn’t have boundaries. Conversely, the recent failure to supply anything at all, combined with the first-team’s slowing growth cycle, likely encourages the perception that his job is coming to a natural end. Levy’s task, now and for the foreseable future, is to ensure that the “how far can Pochettino take them” question remains without an answer.
Spurs have reached this current peak by recognising that they cannot trade punches with the traditional powerhouses. They cannot outspend any of the teams directly above or below them, they cannot offer nearly the same wages. By conforming to the same spending patterns and chasing the same profile of player, they can only ever be second best. It stands to reason then, that they should commit properly to a different direction: be the club who canperiodically restock from the higher shelves, but who – ultimately – are wedded to getting the absolute most from a younger, more affordable line of supply. Like now, but properly and without the N’jie jitters. When Pochettino turns to his bench, he shouldn’t see Nkoudou, Janssen or Llorente, but the next Alli, the next Kane, and the next Winks.
Why did Leonardo Jardim’s Monaco capture the imagination in 2016-17 and why, years after their prime, do people still watch Ajax games on Sunday mornings in the UK? Because theory is intoxicating and developing teams will always enrapture anyone who truly loves the game. It’s as true for coaches as it is for supporters. So use that and be it: Tottenham must place themselves in a state of perpetual evolution and become a club that Pochettino dare not walk away from.
Perhaps money overrides everything and, by this time next year, Pochettino, his assistants, and John McDermott will be gone. Maybe the entire Borough of Haringey will have been dug up and air-lifted north. But why should football management be so different from civilian employment? A bigger salary would always be nice, who doesn’t want to be paid more, but your attitude towards your job is determined by your engagement with the tasks it comprises. What gets you up at 6am and keeps you in the office until 10pm is not the numbers on a PAYE slip, but the nature of the work itself. Tottenham must keep being that reason to get up early and go home late.
In the true sense rather than the Allardycian, Pochettino is a football man to his core. He is cones and practice pitches, inter-personal relationships and club-wide behavioural codes. He does not do immediate jolts and he does not indulge players on account of what their marketing reach might be. He and Tottenham, at this stage in their respective histories, are almost perfectly aligned. Were he to leave, the buildings, the badge and the colour of the shirt wouldn’t change, but something in the air certainly would. When that’s the case, when a manager dictates the culture and all the corridors smell of his cologne, the club should shut the windows and inhale. They must become exactly the sort of club he wants to manage.
https://www.tifofootball.com/featur...heir-own-culture-to-keep-mauricio-pochettino/
Tottenham must deepen their own culture to keep Mauricio Pochettino
WORDS BY SEB STAFFORD-BLOORILLUSTRATION BY PHILIPPE FENNER
December 31, 2018
The real shame of Tottenham’s defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers was not the lost points, inconvenient as they were, but the ugly bookend it created on what has otherwise been an excellent festive period. Despite their limited squad, Spurs authored an exhilarating run of form up to and beyond Christmas, and now its memory has been tarnished by familiar accusations of mental fragility.
Fatigue is the obvious diagnosis. Pochettino’s midfield is clearly wilting under the winter schedule and Wolves was a game too far. The effects of the fixture list were seen in the literal lack of intensity, but also in the many bad decisions made. When players get tired, their errors rise and their ideas fade away; too many games deaden the legs and the mind. In effect, this was the moment when the summer transfer inertia came back to bite the club: while Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool were all rotating through their many alternatives, Spurs were relying on the same small group of players.
The season so far has been framed by the players’ unlikely evasion of that physical debt. That Tottenham sit third in the league isn’t surprising on account of a lack quality, but because they were expected to run headlong into the wall at some point in November. At times, Pochettino has been marvellously creative in alleviating the burdens, but there are only so many times the same fabric can be repurposed before it begins to fray.
Perhaps there’s another reinvention planned for the visit to Cardiff City and, as we speak, another unlikely component is being readied to get the wheels turning. Regardless, this recent loss and the circumstances surrounding it come at an inconvenient time, precisely at the moment when Tottenham don’t need Pochettino to be dwelling on the reasons he may have for leaving. Daniel Levy should be nervous.
Unfortunately for Levy, this is the period which will likely instruct what happens next. Come the summer, Manchester United will appear on the horizon, fists full of gold, and whether Pochettino resists their offer will depend on what he thinks he can achieve at White Hart Lane. Levy is in a precarious position: were his manager to leave now, he would be held solely responsible. Whether justified or not, many supporters would reason that the failure to secure transfer targets, the stadium’s gravitational suck on the club’s resources, and the repeated delays suffered during construction have provided Pochettino with a justifiably exit point. He could leave in the summer and, albeit through their anger and bitter tears, most fans would understand why.
The prevailing hope remains that he looks beyond United’s shimmering veneer and towards Tottenham’s more abstract appeal. There, Pochettino has the opportunity to perform an historic restoration, painting himself onto the space next to the true immortals. Enticing as that may be, if for whatever reason he loses faith in the theory of what could be achieved, then he’s likely – and entitled – to approach this decision from a different perspective. He’s underpaid and under-backed and Levy cannot afford to let him encounter too many situations in which he’s left wondering what might have been achieved had it not been for the obstructions.
None of which is to say that he’s always a bystander to these downturns. He retains a maddening tendency to delay substitutions and is sometimes slow to respond to shifts in a game’s pattern. As Football.London’s Alasdair Gold noticed on Saturday, prior to Wolves’ equaliser Oliver Skipp was set to be introduced just before Willy Boly scored. It’s hindsight talking, of course, but a quicker response to the obvious loss of midfield control might have produced a different outcome.
But that is a small detail within a larger picture. Pochettino is a relatively young manager, still filling out his potential and therefore afforded the latitude to make mistakes. The error which can’t be made, however, is to allow him to believe that life at Tottenham will always involve these contortions, that he must perform minor miracles each season to sustain the club’s growth. If that persists, leaving will seem less of a wrench and more of a logical next step. The issue of whether it would be the right move for Pochettino is a different matter, but the attraction is clear enough and the need to keep the Argentinian’s focus firmly on North London is pressing. Traditionally, that means the sanctioning of heavy spending.
But the club can’t pay through the nose to appease him. Since the stadium project has encountered delays, Spurs have only given vague answers to what the impact on the transfer budget has actually been. By consensus, any incoming activity would have to be funded by sales and, given just how devalued the players Spurs would willingly sell are, major activity is beyond them. Fernando Llorente is reportedly close to joining Galatasaray and Mousa Dembele may yet depart for China, but there is little redeemable value in Michel Vorm, Georges-Kevin Nkoudou or Vincent Janssen.
In this instance, perhaps the gesture would be worth more than the goods delivered. Pochettino’s coaching style makes him distrustful of stars and oversized egos, meaning that the club’s optimal transfer targets are young and pliable. His greatest successes have always been with those undervalued by the market and overlooked by his managerial peers. In fact, the joy he takes from his work seems nearly always to be derived from the formation of an embryonic career and he is invariably closest to those players who have been encouraged beyond the assumed limits of their potential.
So therein lies a retention strategy of sorts. Pochettino doesn’t need to be bribed with an opulent jewel, but does need to be engaged by a project player. And, in the future, a continuous stream of them. While selling that clutch of squad irrelevances won’t cover the cost of buying Adrien Rabiot or Jack Grealish, it could conceivably support moves for the kind of players who typically enliven him. Norwich’s Max Aarons, for instance, or Moenchengladbach’s Mickael Cuisance. Those are names plucked at random, but the profiles are deliberately specific: if Tottenham don’t have the money to keep Manchester United away, then they must fight this battle on different terms. Foyths y Pavones, not Zidanes y Pogbas.
Several years ago, there was a German cartoon drawn in response to Mario Gotze’s move from Borussia Dortmund to Bayern Munich. It showed Jurgen Klopp with a modelling knife, perfecting a figurine Gotze and, in the background, sinister Bavarian types trying to snatch it away. It was a smart bit of satire and, given that Robert Lewandowski was also seized a year later, it characterised the relationship well. What really stood out, though, was the depiction of Klopp, the look of enchantment on his face and the (implied) suggestion that there are different sorts of top-flight manager. Those whose aim it is to spend and win, and those who seek to nurture. It’s admittedly a little too neat, because there are plenty now who do both (including Klopp himself), but there remains the semblance of a passable Venn diagram.
Pochettino, clearly, is the creative sort. The greatest pleasure he seems to take from his coaching is in the type of success built through incremental coaching tweaks and small bricks of experience. I remember being in the old White Hart Lane pressbox, just behind the technical area, when Harry Winks scored his first goal for the club on debut against West Ham. I had a perfect view of their celebration together and, to this day, it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him. It’s also one of my favourite moments. It was rare and genuine. Sadly, football doesn’t offer that as much as it thinks it does.
In the press-conference afterwards, Pochettino glowed with a paternal pride and, had Simon Felstein let him, he probably would have been happy to answer questions about Winks for the rest of the evening. It’s a trait of his with plenty of supporting annotations: he adores Harry Kane, he has defended Dele Alli’s on-pitch antics countless times and, most recently, he has circled his wagons around Juan Foyth after mistakes at Molineux and the Emirates. Winks he trusts implicitly, he has played him twice against Real Madrid, and Oliver Skipp has also been given a Premier League debut over the past month.
So it matters to him. Money and medals will too, but there’s something about the flowering of a career which seems to chime with his romantic notions of legacy. He’s someone for whom, perhaps, the journey is more appealing than the destination. Tottenham must imdulge that side of his personality and, because of the obvious outside factors at work, they must stress their willigness to do so now.
Mainly because Manchester United don’t offer the same proposition. Much to their supporters’ chagrin, they are now less a football club and more a content provider. While their status within the game and the revenue streams associated with it provide a tremendous advantage, the less desirable consequences are felt in the culture – in those film trailers in which Ander Herrera swings a lightsaber, or in the reported infatuation with social media currency. Wealth has given United the financial muscle to snatch almost anything they want from anybody, but only at the cost of their authenticity and the distortion of their purpose. There is no Harry Winks at Old Trafford, only the occasional, accidental Marcus Rashford and a strange fixation with the British transfer record.
Tottenham must present themselves as the alternative. Not as a club rigidly defined by their history and a new wave of commercial imperatives, but one willing to be shaped by the force of a single personality. Managers don’t change Manchester United, they’re just employed by them. Once they leave Carrington, their desks and offices are cleared and their eras are erased. Spurs’ great selling point, with Pochettino already in situ, is to be of a softer clay. They must place themselves entirely in his hands. Their pitch is the opportunity not just to be their coach for a few seasons, but to be the custodian of a particular approach that he himself would be allowed to define.
Be Guy Roux, not Jose Mourinho. Be the kind of coach who, twenty or thirty years from now, is more than a generic character from football’s ever-changing cast. In a sporting world which is becoming crushingly insincere, there is tremendous value in eschewing the popular trends and representing something substantial.
The symbolic offering of a developing player in January, someone who piques Pochettino’s interest, is a mandatory gesture. Incidental though it might seem, it would cater to his own vision of what progress should be. The key to Pochettino’s loyalty has always be in supplying him with unrealised potential; for as long as he’s able to see future excellence, his expectations needn’t have boundaries. Conversely, the recent failure to supply anything at all, combined with the first-team’s slowing growth cycle, likely encourages the perception that his job is coming to a natural end. Levy’s task, now and for the foreseable future, is to ensure that the “how far can Pochettino take them” question remains without an answer.
Spurs have reached this current peak by recognising that they cannot trade punches with the traditional powerhouses. They cannot outspend any of the teams directly above or below them, they cannot offer nearly the same wages. By conforming to the same spending patterns and chasing the same profile of player, they can only ever be second best. It stands to reason then, that they should commit properly to a different direction: be the club who canperiodically restock from the higher shelves, but who – ultimately – are wedded to getting the absolute most from a younger, more affordable line of supply. Like now, but properly and without the N’jie jitters. When Pochettino turns to his bench, he shouldn’t see Nkoudou, Janssen or Llorente, but the next Alli, the next Kane, and the next Winks.
Why did Leonardo Jardim’s Monaco capture the imagination in 2016-17 and why, years after their prime, do people still watch Ajax games on Sunday mornings in the UK? Because theory is intoxicating and developing teams will always enrapture anyone who truly loves the game. It’s as true for coaches as it is for supporters. So use that and be it: Tottenham must place themselves in a state of perpetual evolution and become a club that Pochettino dare not walk away from.
Perhaps money overrides everything and, by this time next year, Pochettino, his assistants, and John McDermott will be gone. Maybe the entire Borough of Haringey will have been dug up and air-lifted north. But why should football management be so different from civilian employment? A bigger salary would always be nice, who doesn’t want to be paid more, but your attitude towards your job is determined by your engagement with the tasks it comprises. What gets you up at 6am and keeps you in the office until 10pm is not the numbers on a PAYE slip, but the nature of the work itself. Tottenham must keep being that reason to get up early and go home late.
In the true sense rather than the Allardycian, Pochettino is a football man to his core. He is cones and practice pitches, inter-personal relationships and club-wide behavioural codes. He does not do immediate jolts and he does not indulge players on account of what their marketing reach might be. He and Tottenham, at this stage in their respective histories, are almost perfectly aligned. Were he to leave, the buildings, the badge and the colour of the shirt wouldn’t change, but something in the air certainly would. When that’s the case, when a manager dictates the culture and all the corridors smell of his cologne, the club should shut the windows and inhale. They must become exactly the sort of club he wants to manage.
shelfboy68
Well-Known Member
- Jun 14, 2008
- 14,566
- 19,651
The club may try to shift some of the dead wood this month to save on wages etc for a few months but I wouldn't expect anyone in until the summer.
And the point I was making was not to expect players of 100m to join but rather set your sights a lot lower probably 25-30m max is probably the target area.
shelfboy68
Well-Known Member
- Jun 14, 2008
- 14,566
- 19,651
The question is are youngsters from the championship what we need right now I get the taking a gamble on talent thing, but for the team to push on we need proven quality in not someone who needs 2/3 years to develop into potentially that player but I guess it comes down to finance again.
- May 8, 2005
- 41,857
- 25,920
- Admin
- #11,568
All depends on who we shift.
If it's players like GK, Janssen, Llorente, Vorm, then I can't imagine we'll do much.
If Dembele and Wanyama are added to that list then we need to bring in a CM or two.
shelfboy68
Well-Known Member
- Jun 14, 2008
- 14,566
- 19,651
Definitely agree the CM area is the one that needs addressing as a priority.
spursfan77
Well-Known Member
- Aug 13, 2005
- 46,684
- 104,964
I definitely agree but it seems we can’t convince those top level players to join us for whatever reason. We also now don’t seem willing to go for the next down the list for reasons mentioned numerous times.
The club need a proper thought out transfer strategy and at the moment it feels a bit of a mess to say the least, with players not wanting to join, players nearly out of contract or running theirs down and a few players we can’t give away. If we don’t sort some of those problems out this month it’s not going to be great going into the summer window.
shelfboy68
Well-Known Member
- Jun 14, 2008
- 14,566
- 19,651
Agree and for the top level players in the main they won't join us because of the wage structure when we pay 100k a week but elsewhere they can get 200 or 300k it's a no brainer.
Although the new stadium will help bridge the gap it might a few year's to feel or see the effects of this and do we have the time to keep waiting.
teok
Well-Known Member
- Aug 11, 2011
- 10,873
- 33,730
garyhopkins
Well-Known Member
- Jun 22, 2008
- 1,535
- 908
It's not just well worth a few minutes, but an absolute must read.
There is so much click-bait headline grabbing rubbish out there about Poch and Tottenham/United but this really gets to the crux of the issues. Yes, Poch could leave in the summer (as the man himself says you don't know what will happen in the future to alter things) but, at this moment, Poch and Tottenham is the perfect fit.
We don't have all the money in the world, that would allow us the ability to get the ready made best players, but we do offer almost everything else Poch probably currently desires and needs. I expect him to stay and continue to learn and build.
Lighty64
I believe
- Aug 24, 2010
- 10,400
- 12,476
if you had asked me 5 years ago would Levy spend 40+m on a defender I would of had you sanctioned. I very much doubt we would ever sign a 100m midfielder, I very much doubt we will sign a 75m player, but because he hasn't thrown money around especially since the stadium, none of us really know what will happen once the stadium is up and running and not far off of doubling our annual income
shelfboy68
Well-Known Member
- Jun 14, 2008
- 14,566
- 19,651
Truth is that none of us know what the club's intentions are other than those at board level so we remain keen to see what the future brings and yes with the revenue stream increasing maybe the purse strings will loosen a little.
wootton mafia
New Member
- Aug 31, 2012
- 2
- 1
I think the priority is to confirm poch’s future. Until that happens I think it will be difficult to attract big players as poch is a massive draw. Any news of transfers so far?
agrdavidsfan said he guarantees we would have won against wolves with Mourino in charge and with this squad.
Well apart from the fact that there is no guarantees in football there is a the fact that Spurs with Mourino in charge even if winning every game would probably have been playing in front of half there normal attendance as I can testify that the AVB/ Graham/Mourino type of football is for me and those that sit near me at the lane a complete turn off and its not being a fair weather fan its being a SPURS fan .
Myself I watched every home game the year we got relegated but it was still our spurs and not some defence first second and third team.
Well apart from the fact that there is no guarantees in football there is a the fact that Spurs with Mourino in charge even if winning every game would probably have been playing in front of half there normal attendance as I can testify that the AVB/ Graham/Mourino type of football is for me and those that sit near me at the lane a complete turn off and its not being a fair weather fan its being a SPURS fan .
Myself I watched every home game the year we got relegated but it was still our spurs and not some defence first second and third team.
Just watched Merson on TV saying because we lost to wolves "Poch will be asking himself how far can he take this team"
He could have said that" maybe one or two new signings would help give us that final push".
Nobody will ever convince me that there is nothing other than an anti spurs agenda on sky and talk sport who are of course the same Co
Tossers one and all connected with this giant TV gambling channel.
He could have said that" maybe one or two new signings would help give us that final push".
Nobody will ever convince me that there is nothing other than an anti spurs agenda on sky and talk sport who are of course the same Co
Tossers one and all connected with this giant TV gambling channel.
BehindEnemyLines
Twisting a Melon with the Rev. Black Grape
- Apr 13, 2006
- 4,639
- 13,401
There's a fallacy that signing players brings in fresh legs, particularly from thick ****s like Merson. Whilst this may be true in the summer, in January any player worth buying will have already played 20+ matches and be every bit as tired as your existing squad. Integration becomes harder as they're falling into an existing formula and differing tactics, and whilst it may invigorate a little, it may also rock the boat if that new player doesn't think they're getting the opportunities they had previously.
Unless someone comes available at a decent price or we get desperate, then I can't see Poch bringing anyone in.
Unless someone comes available at a decent price or we get desperate, then I can't see Poch bringing anyone in.
Integration becomes harder for the current season granted but integration becomes easier for the following season - see Lucas who whilst hasnt been off the charts sensation he has fit in relatively well.
Ofcourse this comes at a premium but depends on what is the priority for Poch and what our targets and objectives are for next season. There is also another approach which is to buy extremely early so the players have enough time to have the full pre-season and acclimatise but that does take longer than expected (see Fabinho/Keita at Liverscum)
- Status
Similar threads
