He's not worth £9million or anything like that, and ther have to be better solutions to our problems on the left, especially for that kind of price. I don't think Malbranque has been given a fair chance yet, and our priority has to be to strengthen our defence. Having seen what happened to Liverpool, a club with a relatively good defence, to have the kind of players who can keep a clean sheet, or close to it, would be a big advantage.

I would think that all this talk of Davenport must be quite unsettling him. He has waited a long time to get his chance at Spurs, and has stepped into the breach and done well in King's absence. Whether it is true or not that we might be willing to sell him, it must affect him. And if we do sell him, he might well wonder what exactly he did to deserve that.

Calum was quoted only a day or two ago saying "all this talk might unsettle some players, but not me" ... which proves nothing, I suppose, except that he bothered to answer some journalist's intrusive quesion.

Some actualy quotes from Davenport on that piece are.

"spurs are a big club and get linked with a lot of players. It can unsettle people - but not me"
"i believe in myself and what i can do. Hopefully i can show that to the boss martin Jol"
"once Ledley is back i will probably be out of the team but that's football and i shall have to take it on the chin".
"It'd be easy to jump ship but i'm going to stick in there. I feel i have started to get the rewards for working hard on the training pitch in the last couple of seasons".

At a time when players have a tendancy to be highlighted as selfish money grabbing playboys etc its brilliant to see an attitude like Davenports, which imo says a great deal about the lad and is an example to all, truth be told same could be say for Gardner who has unselfishly seen players come in the club and go straight infront of him without complaining.

he appears, on the clips i've viewed, to be right footed, if so, is he that much better than Routledge (when Routledge was at Palace in Prem) to me he's just a version of Routledge that has played on the left. For the money being touted, i think we could get better value abroad.

One more time: Routledge and Davenport are both good prospects and should NOT be let go just to bring in someone like Young. I have only seen Young play a couple of times, and he seems a good player, but not necessarily a better prospect than Routledge who deserves a chance.
A first class left midfielder/winger would be a great signing, and basically all we need apart from King, Lennon, JJ and Keane back on form.

Must be why Keane gave him a bollocking about not staying out wide when Keane came on against Cardiff.

I say get him for the 9mil if we cant get the price down a notch or two. He is the best English LW there is out there. You'll see in a year or two when he's playing for Man Utd or Newcastle or any other club who will be willing to pay. Of course Watford want to get rich off him. we did the same thing with Carrick. No way was he worth 18.6mil. But he will be worth a lot more in the future.

GET HIM NOW - Ive been saying it for a while now

It says Davies of West Brom is 9 million not Young.

If anyone on here has actually seen Ashley Young play you will be fully aware that once again we are linked with a painfully right footed player to fill our left side AGAIN. Yes he has done a job on the left, but has to cut onto his right to cross and will not beat the opposing right back on the outside. He has that frustrating tendency to wander in-field too. He does shoot with his left when needed - when he cuts in from the right wing.
If anyone saw the recent U21 match against Germany when he was played on the left and Routledge was on the right you will be fully aware that Routledge looked twice the player Young did.
And, Routledge did play many times on the left at Palace in the Prem and against us too. I still believe we should recall him and keep him, I can’t believe he has become a poor player over night.
But in Jol I trust for I’m in for the long haul. After the utter dross I have witnessed since Burkenshaw walked away, this last couple of years has been a breath of fresh air.

COYS

YUP

Interesting quotes from Davenport, StokeSpur. I hadn't read those before. I agree with you, and hope that Jol and Comolli will indeed show a little faith in him and not sell him on. He has done very well for us IMO.

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet. We already have a left footed left midfield player of the highest class - Taarabt. We have been apparently promising to ease him into first team football. Young would just stand in the way of his development, and we would be paying way more than he is worth.

I read a story on the BBC yesterday though saying that Watford were asking for 9.

I posted something similar on another thread a couple of days ago. However, are we sure that Taarabt is left-footed? I have read that he can play on either wing, as a striker or in the hole. That doesn't necessarily mean he has a left foot.

That does not sound encouraging at all.

Aint that what i said, just in more words?

Exactly, Jollyid. Young has been one of Watford's best players, but honestly, that's not saying a hell of a lot. He is not a left-footed player, although his left foot is better than for example Routledge's but not as good as Lennon's.

I don't think that we need another winger. We have one world class winger in Lennon, one very solid Premiership wide midfielder in Malbranque and Routledge, who can find his Palace form if given a chance on the right. Routledge's right-footed crosses are easily better than either of the other two and possibly better than anyone's at Spurs. He also has an excellent technique and can get past full-backs. You don't assist ten goals a season in the Premiership if you're a bad player.

Another thing is that teams that have successfully used two wingers at the same time in a 4-4-2 formation are very rare. Usually it's one proper winger and on the other side a bit more defensive- oriented wide midfielder. In a 4-4-2, using two proper wingers can make your midfield way too exposed defensively. Especially in our case, where one of our central midfield players has somewhat limited amount of pace (Huddlestone), we need a balancing player on the opposite side from the winger. Malbranque isn't really a winger, so he can play with Lennon, but I wouldn't play for example Routledge on the right with Lennon on the left, because both players are best equipped to try and get past opposition's defence line and if one of them would be given orders to play more defensively, one would be taking the best part of their game away from them.

Malbranque can do a job on the left, if he learns to actually stay on the left. If a more defensive approach is needed, anyone of Tainio, Murphy, Davids, Ghaly, Lee, Assou-Ekotto or Ziegler can do a job there. Taarabt is an unknown player to me, so I can't comment on what could his part be in this equation.

I agree with most of what you say but would add two things. It's not a question of Malbranque learning to stay left: if he moves about he's being told to do so. Taarabt is an unknown player, but we would not agree a fee of about £2.5million for a 17 year old unless he was pretty gifted.