The Daily ITK Discussion Thread - POST MORTEM - 1st February 2022

I think 7/10 is fair. If Gio or Tanguy end up getting perm deals due to these loans, then that will go up for me. Im excited about Kulu, but admittedly don't know a lot about Rodrigo, so I am in wait and see mode there.

Even though the squad is technically thinner sometimes cutting out the rot (in this case, the bad attitudes) can do wonders in a locker room and in bringing a team together.

If Conte is satisfied, who am I to disagree?

(Sorry for the inadvertent Annie Lennox shout, there).

WiganSpur said:

No excuses can be made now for summer business. With Dele gone and hopefully at least one of Tanguy and GLC making permanent moves out, there is a lot of room to bring players in. Combine that with the sheer number of quality players who will either be free transfers or have 12 months left. The club can't claim to be skint either, because most of what we'll pay will be wages and we don't have players who are not contributing taking up all that financial wriggle room any more.

2022 contract expiry:

Contracts expiring

This overview shows all players whose contracts expire in the upcoming summer, sorted by their current market value.

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

2023 contract expiry:

Contracts expiring

This overview shows all players whose contracts expire in the upcoming summer, sorted by their current market value.

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

If we get top 4, we can go big on some of these players, and there are simply not enough top clubs to accommodate them all, so there will definitely be opportunities if we can pay the wages.

Click to expand...

Hadn't realised that Salah, Mane and Firmino have all got less than 18 months of their contracts

sausage said:

"Mum, Dad - I passed all my A Level exams!"

"Hmm, but if you don't get a good degree out of this then we'll be retrospectively ashamed of your A Levels, and we'll disown you"

Click to expand...

Or:
"Hmm, but if you don't use up all of our savings on an expensive degree then we'll be retrospectively ashamed of your A Levels, even if you go on to have a great career."

absolute bobbins said:

IF Dele and GLC on 100 each and TN on 200 we're saving around 10.5 million in basic, then tack on bonuses and NIC we're probably looking at something closer to 14. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things but it's certainly helpful

Click to expand...

I'm not counting Dele, & GLC as they've been replaced. The loans on Bryan and Ndoms are saving maybe £280k/week for 5 months, maybe £6.5M?

wrd said:

I agree with everything you're saying except reserving retrospective judgement is meaningless. There's lead and lag measures to things and you can judge actions based on the result you're aiming to obtain. If our aim is to make the top4 and use the January window as a chance to produce an action that helps us fulfil our goal then surely it's more meaningless to judge the window based on fan opinion on the signings over actually achieving that goal?

If we make top4 then the business has done what it was meant to, if we don't then it hasn't although another goal of the window might also include setting the foundations up for more prominent action in the summer.

Click to expand...

It's still meaningless. "Reserving judgement" is basically, in this context, "Reserving criticism".
e.g.
"Did you have a nice night out?"
"I'll ask me in the morning to see if I have a hangover - if I do, it was crap"

If we sold Kane and replaced him with Defoe then we'd have every right to consider that a shite window - going on to win the league would not vindicate that decision retrospectively. Paratici doesn't have a crystal ball, so people shouldn't judge the efforts looking backwards imo.
(happens too much on here)

WiganSpur said:

No excuses can be made now for summer business. With Dele gone and hopefully at least one of Tanguy and GLC making permanent moves out, there is a lot of room to bring players in. Combine that with the sheer number of quality players who will either be free transfers or have 12 months left. The club can't claim to be skint either, because most of what we'll pay will be wages and we don't have players who are not contributing taking up all that financial wriggle room any more.

2022 contract expiry:

Contracts expiring

This overview shows all players whose contracts expire in the upcoming summer, sorted by their current market value.

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

2023 contract expiry:

Contracts expiring

This overview shows all players whose contracts expire in the upcoming summer, sorted by their current market value.

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

If we get top 4, we can go big on some of these players, and there are simply not enough top clubs to accommodate them all, so there will definitely be opportunities if we can pay the wages.

Click to expand...

If, as we've been told, the summer will see multiple ins and outs with Paratici keen on those with expiring contracts, we could do a lot worse than Onana as competition for Lloris and Belotti as ST competition.

7/10 window for me. 'Deadwood' gone, although I'm actually a bit gutted about Dele and a couple of interesting new signings - Kulusevski looks exciting (Bale-esque to me) and I've always liked Bentancur. Onwards we go

Freddie said:

I think he means we've made space in the squad and that was only worth doing if you're going to fill it with better players later. A different analogy is selling all your clothes to pay for better ones. If you don't buy better ones you're just walking around naked. But this implies that you would still have worn your old Lo Celsos and you Ndombeles and I think Conte thought they smelled of moths.

Click to expand...

I saw a tweet from Gards that suggested something along that kind of conclusion (bold bit), but it doesn't particularly make sense as an issue.
We've made space by getting rid of players we haven't been using. Dele, Gil, GLC, Ndombele, Clarke - I think we've seen enough recently to know that the only one with the slightest hope of getting on the bus was GLC, and even then he'd probably be out for 6 weeks with a broken concentration.

I guess a bit like in your second part, we've got rid of a load of junk in the attic we didn't use and bought some new stuff to replace it that we will use.

So, we have heard repeatedly contract numbers out there are likely guesswork, but I did some digging and when possible used the same source to try and get at least a ballpark on savings.

Giovanni Lo Celso: rumor was we wanted OL to cover 100% of his wages when that report came out. I haven’t heard anything about a loan fee being attached, so that’s not being included in any way here (correct me if I’m wrong). Let’s assume 100% wage coverage is the case for Villarreal and the Spotrac numbers are correct, that’s £70,000/week over the course of a 6 month loan (1/31 to 6/30 = 22 weeks) = £1,540,000 in wages saved (no loan fee on top).

Bryan Gil: I’m assuming we got them completely covered here since it’s not much, and I again heard nothing about a loan fee. Dubious sources kept in mind, I saw £41,500/week as his rumored salary. Let’s make it clean and say £40,000/week. Once again, 6 month loan (22 weeks) = £880,000 in wages saved.

Dele Alli: gone permanently, Spotrac has him at £100k/week which seems reasonable, even if it’s a guess. Just taking into mind the rest of season = £2,200,000 in wages saved this season (and £7,400,000 over the entirety of the contract: 2.5 years). and we know there are some major fee windfalls tied into this one that could bring it potentially to another £30-40m, but that’s likely more down the road.

Tanguy Ndombele: Loan fee of £1,180,000 and all I could find on coverage his wages was “over half.” His wages are really hard to figure out (ranging from £120k to 200k) so I’m going to split the difference (£150k/week). Keeping “over half” in mind and the range in his salary figures, I feel confident in putting an £80,000/week coverage on this deal. Total wages saved = £1,760,000 + £1,180,000 (loan fee) = £2,940,000.

In total, loan moves only considered (and really not taking into account Kulusevski and Bentancur adding their salaries back in), savings/fees from deadwood/surplus over the course of the next 6 months = £7,560,000

That, to me, is substantial and why I view these moves as so important. Even if 3/4 of that goes back into the transfer funds for next season, that’s important. Add in the other benefit that if Lo Celso and Ndombele do well, it rehabs their value a bit and may even line up their next clubs pretty easily.

6/10 for me. OK enough because the ITK's have ushered us into the "summer is the one" pen. None of them fabricated either, it was always 2, hopefully 3. Not really convincing enough for me to believe Conte is delighted. He may however be delighted he doesn't have assets he has to put in the shop window or on the bench anymore.

sausage said:

It's still meaningless. "Reserving judgement" is basically, in this context, "Reserving criticism".
e.g.
"Did you have a nice night out?"
"I'll ask me in the morning to see if I have a hangover - if I do, it was crap"

If we sold Kane and replaced him with Defoe then we'd have every right to consider that a shite window - going on to win the league would not vindicate that decision retrospectively. Paratici doesn't have a crystal ball, so people shouldn't judge the efforts looking backwards imo.
(happens too much on here)

Click to expand...

But your example doesn't work, if the goal of the night out is to be able to have a night out and avoid a hangover then the objective was achieved. If the goal was to simply have a good time and they do and end up with a hangover then the goal was achieved. What matters is your goals.

You can't judge transfer windows when the players haven't played, when people say whether it's a good or bad window what they're really doing is a prediction on whether that business over the long term will be good for us or not. It's no good saying well if we sell Kane and replace him with Defoe without knowing what the intention/goal behind it was because people would be saying it's shit business based on their prediction that we will end up not achieving our goals.

In this instance, You would be surprised if our goal wasn't to make the difference in the team that Conte needs to obtain top4. If we don't make top4 then the business we did wasn't enough to be the difference between top4 or not and we needed to do something else to make more difference. If the goal of signing these players wasn't to make an immediate impact then we'd have waited until the summer where business is significantly easier to do but Conte wanted difference makers in the short term.

lots of great discussion here - again, nice to see the balanced REALISTIC views of real fans! Well done guys! ITK has been solid (even when they took abuse from the doom sayers) and at this stage there's a lot of hope in summer - for me that's looking too far ahead. There's a lot games to go and if we can replicate our form from the leicester game and improve on it, bed in 2 new players + reap rewards of a rest period + have a more focused, highly motivated change room then we will smash top 4! Then we take momentum into the summer window and then it should get very interesting who we can attract and how we will invest to build the team - it's damn exciting and a lot more excited I've been after our last 2-3 year slumber!

wrd said:

But your example doesn't work, if the goal of the night out is to be able to have a night out and avoid a hangover then the objective was achieved. If the goal was to simply have a good time and they do and end up with a hangover then the goal was achieved. What matters is your goals.

You can't judge transfer windows when the players haven't played, when people say whether it's a good or bad window what they're really doing is a prediction on whether that business over the long term will be good for us or not. It's no good saying well if we sell Kane and replace him with Defoe without knowing what the intention/goal behind it was because people would be saying it's shit business based on their prediction that we will end up not achieving our goals.

In this instance, You would be surprised if our goal wasn't to make the difference in the team that Conte needs to obtain top4. If we don't make top4 then the business we did wasn't enough to be the difference between top4 or not and we needed to do something else to make more difference. If the goal of signing these players wasn't to make an immediate impact then we'd have waited until the summer where business is significantly easier to do but Conte wanted difference makers in the short term.

Click to expand...

It was just a simple metaphor - you're over cooking it. Basically, you can only judge the window based on the decisions, not the outcomes.

For example, you could say the Bale (sale) window was bad because we bought the wrong players in the wrong positions. It would be wrong to say it was a bad window because Lamela got injury prone, Chadli's head went, Paulinho turned into a turd etc. as those outcomes were unrelated to the activity.

There are a number of ways to assess this window.

We can compare it to our past January windows. I can't think of another January window where we did so much business. We added two players from one of the giants of the game who should improve our first XI. We offloaded three players who our manager wanted out, and found another home for a fourth who needs playing time and wouldn't find it here. We also extended, by two years, the contract for our captain, who is still one of the best keepers in the world.

We can compare it to the January window of the other teams vying for a top 4 spot. Has any of them done any better? Neither Arsenal, Man U, nor West Ham brought in anyone of note.

We can compare it to the idealized version of our squad. This gets tricky though, because there are numerous factors outside of our control and/or knowledge. For example, ideally we would have a landed Vlahovic as a strike partner/backup for Kane. Is there anything we could have done to make him chose Spurs over Juventus? Maybe, but I doubt it. Similarly, is there anything we could have done to make Traore chose Spurs over Barcelona, or to make Diaz chose Spurs over Liverpool? Maybe, but I doubt it. Could we have convinced Bissouma to leave Brighton now, or Kessie to leave AC Milan? Maybe, but I doubt it. Is it as simple as just offering more money, or were the players determined to land at a bigger club, or wait and see what happens in the summer? If was just a matter of money, how much more would we have needed to pony up? And what if that prevents us from landing other targets over the summer? None of us are privy to these numbers, and are in a position to have strong opinions either way.

Overall, I am happy with the window because it has demonstrated a much better system than in years past. We have a bona fides DOF, who seems to be working well with our manager, considering lots of options, and coming up with creative solutions to get deals over the line. Maybe we could have done better and filled some other gaps. But I would something more than conjecture and speculation -- like, player names -- before I get too upset that we didn't plug those gaps this window.

1882andallthat said:

I disagree, you can mark most things out of 10 and it was a defined window so an assessment based on it is possible and reasonable for us to do. To do otherwise would be like saying you can't rate a performance in a game out of 10 and then go on to say you can only do so after 5 or 10 games or a season.

I do however agree with your main sentiment that the more important judgement will be the summer transfer window. That doesn't mean we can't award marks on what we've done so far in transfer business.

Click to expand...

It's not even half-time yet and I wouldn't mark a performance in a game twenty or thirty minutes in. To give it a 6/10 would be taking it out of context. Having said that fill your boots, have fun.

JOLLHURN said:

Nice strawman. If we dont spend in the sumer, where do you think that money is going?

Click to expand...

Another Picasso?

sausage said:

It was just a simple metaphor - you're over cooking it. Basically, you can only judge the window based on the decisions, not the outcomes.

For example, you could say the Bale (sale) window was bad because we bought the wrong players in the wrong positions. It would be wrong to say it was a bad window because Lamela got injury prone, Chadli's head went, Paulinho turned into a turd etc. as those outcomes were unrelated to the activity.

Click to expand...

I certainly agree that the manner in which people judge our transfers after the fact is often looking at it the wrong way. That summer after Poch for example we signed players because of the goals he had in mind and then he's sacked and now people criticise that window but it's always without the context of what changed.

I just think it is possible to look at overall business (not individual players) and say okay we did that with this in mind and then you reflect at the moment on whether you did or didn't achieve. So you're not going to say Bentacur or Kuluveski was bad business if we fail to meet the target but I'd reflect on the overall business and see what could be done differently. If the goal was simply keep Conte happy until the summer then I imagine that's been achieved but I really do believe the goal of this window will have been to get us to top4 to greatly improve what's possible in the summer.

It's a tricky one for me to score at this point.

I don't know enough about our two new signings to pass judgement, so it would depend on how well they perform and whether they need time to settle in. With such a small squad we don't really have that luxury.

Our players out on loan, the success of these loans depends on how well they do, how much they are played and whether or not it leads to them being sold or ending up back here.

On the plus, it's great to have shifted some unwanted players from the squad who were no good having hanging around the dressing room.

I'd say on balance a 6/10 but based on our circumstances and the ITK informing us it's all about the summer, then it's probably an 8/10 window.

The real benchmark will be whether we've done enough to secure the top 4 as that had to be the aim.

JOLLHURN said:

Nice strawman. If we dont spend in the sumer, where do you think that money is going?

Click to expand...

To be honest, your initial post did sound that rather than appreciating the business we've just done, your already preparing yourself for the summer complaining.

I think there have been several windows worse than the one just passed, especially winter windows.

Most of us were delighted when we signed GLC and NDombele. Look at us now.

Only time will tell if Conte has actually got his targets or not, and if the Tottenham injury curse strikes them.

The major positive is they are young but I'm not convinced us signing ready made players works. Our best signings have been those that were hungry to play on the biggest stage.

WiganSpur said:

No excuses can be made now for summer business. With Dele gone and hopefully at least one of Tanguy and GLC making permanent moves out, there is a lot of room to bring players in. Combine that with the sheer number of quality players who will either be free transfers or have 12 months left. The club can't claim to be skint either, because most of what we'll pay will be wages and we don't have players who are not contributing taking up all that financial wriggle room any more.

2022 contract expiry:

Contracts expiring

This overview shows all players whose contracts expire in the upcoming summer, sorted by their current market value.

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

2023 contract expiry:

Contracts expiring

This overview shows all players whose contracts expire in the upcoming summer, sorted by their current market value.

www.transfermarkt.co.uk

If we get top 4, we can go big on some of these players, and there are simply not enough top clubs to accommodate them all, so there will definitely be opportunities if we can pay the wages.

Click to expand...

Of those with contracts expiring this summer, there are loads there we could theoretically sign for no fee who would instantly improve either our starting XI, or our overall squad.

Those which stand out to me:

GK: Onana (depending how he looks after his 9 month ban), Johnstone (as I've mentioned before, my friend's cousin, so if I hear anything I'll post it...)

DF: Ginter, Tarkowski, Zagadou, Romagnoli, Schar would all get into our squad above Rodon & Tanganga right now

MF: Brozovic, Lingard, Perisic, Isco, Eriksen, Modric all stand out

FW: Dybala, Origi the ones who stand out, Brereton Diaz probably worth a punt too. Bale also available. And I don't care that he's 74, I'd take Zlatan too.

If we spend some of the money saved on Ndombele, Dele, Bryan and Lo Celso by making solid moves for 2-3 of the above, that would be incredibly shrewd business IMO.