Transfer Window Wrap Up

[sloth]

And how do you know what Jol wanted to do last summer? No-one knows, which is why, far from demonising Comolli, I've always defended him; we have no idea of the constraints they were working under.

And yet you have no qualms about demonising Levy, lol? You're inconsistent SS, don't know why, because in most things you're ultra rational, just this little bug-bear turns you into a Mr Hyde.

Simple fact. Over the last twelve games of last season, with almost our strongest possible line-up, we put together our best set of results in a run-in since 1951. Contrast that with the rest of the season. It was obvious to just about everyone on SC that we needed to strengthen in certain areas; if it was obvious to us lot it must have been obvious to Jol, and Comolli, for that matter. So why did we buy a bunch of promising kids instead?

And the second observation doesn't follow from the first. We started poorly came good in the couple of months up to Christmas (we looked particularly impressive in Europe) had a mini collapse in January, causing me, amongst the many, to plea for patience, came good as we thought we would and as you say came up with a stupendous finish to the season. We once again won every game pre-season and hit the ground running at Sunderland where inexplicably Martin Jol played an ultra cautious side which ended up ruining my day with the lacklustre performance. From that point on we went into free-fall, Jol seemed unable to cotton onto the changed way teams were playing against us, whilst a succession of managers identified the same weaknesses and exploited them, by the middle of October the entire team were a gibbering wreck, the mere hint of a cross into the box, a corner or set-piece had the fans, our coach and even the players hiding their heads behind their hands as the inevitable occurred. Leads were thrown away, we drew where we should have won lost where we should have drawn and quite often lost abysmally when we deserved too.

Meanwhile the Faithful (and the capital 'F' is deliberate) refused to accept that it could be the coaches fault that the same basic team of the previous season, plus some improvements, the same team which had performed so well in the run in was suffering as the result of the Head Coaches inability to get them to defend, oh no, they couldn't defend because a thousand miles away some club officials had been caught in a press sting sounding out an alternative coach.

FFS, can you imagine Fergie ever being so weak? "Och, I canna do it nae more, ma jobs o' tha line..."

Why can't you teach a team to defend when you're under pressure? And surely coaching under pressure is what being the Premier League is all about?

It should be crashingly obvious that Juande has decided that we simply don't have the necessary strength in depth to compete; FFS, we've spent £20m-odd on what's effectively a whole new back line. If Tiago and his agent hadn't twatted us about you could have added the thick end of another £10m to that. And if Jarque hadn't been injured, it seems pretty likely that Espanyol would have a much healthier bank balance now.

It should also be crushingly obvious that Ramos has bought about our revival using the exact same players Jol was failing with, in fact in some cases it is using players Jol never even gave a look-in to. The really incredible difference however is that Ramos had to work his magic on a team reduced to a quivering wreck, while Jol f8cked up with a team high on confidence off the back of phenomenal end to the previous year and following a great pre-season.

 

[SpurSince57]

Well, any good manager of an organisation constantly assesses things and makes the decisions on the basis of the current situation. Things change so decisions follow. Form dropped, King's return couldn't be relied upon, confidence was shot to pieces and overall he saw a squad that wasn't delivering.

BOF - would it make you feel better if he said "You know that thing I said in August about 4th? Well that was all wrong. Sorry my bad. I'll be flashing the cash in the window if anyone fancies fleecing me."

He hit the nail on the head when he made that statement after the firing of Jol about relegation being a real risk and he couldn't entertain that so he had to act (or words to that effect). Things changed, he reassessed and he made the huge decision to change manager. In doing so he was always going to support Juande in the window. I suspect Juande would have requested assurances that he could make some changes if he felt it necessary, i.e. I'm saying that manager change and further squad investment was effectively one decision not two.

I'm sure he's gutted that we've had to invest again and replace managers but it's paying off now and I think he's shown the ability to make big decisions.

Not meaning to be confrontational but I feel he's done the right thing overall and it's sometimes too easy to shoot Levy down without really putting yourself in his situation.

Whilst that's true, it's also true that, historically, Levy has a bad habit of making the right decision at the wrong time. Was two weeks before a cup semi-final against Arsenal really the right time to give Gooner George the boot? Shouldn't we have put Hoddle out of his misery at the end of 2002-2003? Do we really believe that the decision to fire Jol was taken in October?

Given what Ramos has said about King today, confirming what we've been suspecting/trying not to believe for some months, it's pretty obvious that Woodgate or another experienced CB was a must-buy this window. It also gives a possible explanation as to why Comolli and Jol decided against Distin in the summer and signed a promising kid instead—we, or they, didn't realise the prognosis for King would be so bad. Although that begs another question in itself.

Nevertheless, we have spent £20m on almost a complete new back line, and might easily have spent the best part of another £10m on a new midfielder. No amount of verbal handstands will get you around that, or the obvious explanation; that, having had two months to assess the squad, Juande concluded that it wasn't strong enough and persuaded Levy he had no option other than to splash the cash big-time. Did anyone really think, when Gus said there would be 'big changes', that he was referring to a switch to zonal marking or something?

 

[DogsOfWar]

Sorry, DOW, I often agree with you, but where exactly do you get 'the fans had turned on him and the team' from? And we did not have our first-choice line up against Arsenal last season—which is why I pointed out the players who were missing. Had they been available—even had Berbatov not had to come off in the first leg—the result might well have been very different.

And how do you know what Jol wanted to do last summer? No-one knows, which is why, far from demonising Comolli, I've always defended him; we have no idea of the constraints they were working under.

Simple fact. Over the last twelve games of last season, with almost our strongest possible line-up, we put together our best set of results in a run-in since 1951. Contrast that with the rest of the season. It was obvious to just about everyone on SC that we needed to strengthen in certain areas; if it was obvious to us lot it must have been obvious to Jol, and Comolli, for that matter. So why did we buy a bunch of promising kids instead?

It should be crashingly obvious that Juande has decided that we simply don't have the necessary strength in depth to compete; FFS, we've spent £20m-odd on what's effectively a whole new back line. If Tiago and his agent hadn't twatted us about you could have added the thick end of another £10m to that. And if Jarque hadn't been injured, it seems pretty likely that Espanyol would have a much healthier bank balance now.

I agree with practically everything you say except for the justification for buying kids in the summer.

We had 3 right backs in Chimbonda, Stalteri and Ifil. We had 4 centre backs in King, Dawson, Gardner and Rocha. We had two left backs in Lee and Ekotto. We had 4 central midfielders in Jenas, Zokora, Hudd and Tainio. We had 3 strikers in Berbs, Keane and Defoe. Two right wingers in Lennon and Routledge. Our only issue was left midfield where we only had Malbranque and as far as I was concerned this was addressed with the purchase of Bale.

I may be in a minority but I rate all those players so I agreed with our transfer policy of strengthening the squad with third choice players who would improve such as Kaboul, Taraabt, Bent and Boateng.
As far as I'm concerned the major cause of our problems have been due to injuries. King, Rocha, Gardner, Ekotto, Bale, Lee, Lennon etc were all missing at some point during the first eleven games and no team can cope with that.
Jol, Commolli and Levy could never have predicted this so should not be held responsible (even though Jol was).

The January window has been just as much about replacing long term injured players as it has about replacing first team starters and had Jol still been here I doubt it would have been much different. Woodgate for King, Gilberto and Gunter for Ekotto and Bale. Even Hutton cannot be seen as replacing Chimbonda as we didn't sell him (Stalteri and Ifil have gone) and Ramos played him on the left instead.

I have always believed we have a squad with experience (our average age against Arsenal was 25-26) and I have always believed we have strength in depth. ie, two players for every position and I think to blame Jol/Levy/Commolli for not improving on that in the summer is wrong.

 

[SpurSince57]

And yet you have no qualms about demonising Levy, lol? You're inconsistent SS, don't know why, because in most things you're ultra rational, just this little bug-bear turns you into a Mr Hyde.


And the second observation doesn't follow from the first. We started poorly came good in the couple of months up to Christmas (we looked particularly impressive in Europe) had a mini collapse in January, causing me, amongst the many, to plea for patience, came good as we thought we would and as you say came up with a stupendous finish to the season. We once again won every game pre-season and hit the ground running at Sunderland where inexplicably Martin Jol played an ultra cautious side which ended up ruining my day with the lacklustre performance. From that point on we went into free-fall, Jol seemed unable to cotton onto the changed way teams were playing against us, whilst a succession of managers identified the same weaknesses and exploited them, by the middle of October the entire team were a gibbering wreck, the mere hint of a cross into the box, a corner or set-piece had the fans, our coach and even the players hiding their heads behind their hands as the inevitable occurred. Leads were thrown away, we drew where we should have won lost where we should have drawn and quite often lost abysmally when we deserved too.

Meanwhile the Faithful (and the capital 'F' is deliberate) refused to accept that it could be the coaches fault that the same basic team of the previous season, plus some improvements, the same team which had performed so well in the run in was suffering as the result of the Head Coaches inability to get them to defend, oh no, they couldn't defend because a thousand miles away some club officials had been caught in a press sting sounding out an alternative coach.

FFS, can you imagine Fergie ever being so weak? "Och, I canna do it nae more, ma jobs o' tha line..."

Why can't you teach a team to defend when you're under pressure? And surely coaching under pressure is what being the Premier League is all about?

It should also be crushingly obvious that Ramos has bought about our revival using the exact same players Jol was failing with, in fact in some cases it is using players Jol never even gave a look-in to. The really incredible difference however is that Ramos had to work his magic on a team reduced to a quivering wreck, while Jol f8cked up with a team high on confidence off the back of phenomenal end to the previous year and following a great pre-season.

It wasn't at all inexplicable. Lennon and Bale were unavailable and so was Lee. I also have a feeling (although I'm open to correction on this) that even Routledge was out. As a result we had no width and were reduced to trying to play the ball through the middle. United had exactly the same problem at OT when they were without Ronaldo and Giggs and scraped a very unconvincing win.

Do you not think that the whole Ramosgate business played big-time on Jol's and the players' minds? Every week there was press speculation as to which game would be Jol's last. There is no way that couldn't have been playing on his mind and affecting his judgement. You're right: I too wish that Levy had got Ramos in in the summer, and done it properly. He simply can't escape a major portion of the blame for our poor start; as I said in the post above, he's got a history of making the right decisions at the wrong time. As far as the business side of Spurs is concerned you can't fault the guy. and when you look at some of the idiots running (or ruining) clubs up and down the country you have to breathe a sigh of relief. But on the football side there are legitimate questions to be asked, which is why I have such a seriously ambivalent—Jekyll-and-Hyde if you like—attitude towards him.

What was especially frustrating about the start to the season was that we were playing some quality attacking football and that in several games we improved considerably on the previous seasons' performances, then contrived to ruin this with some idiotic defending. And as I said at the time, these were individual errors for the most part, and you can drill set-pieces all you like but you can't legislate for Chimbonda or Dawson going AWOL or Robinson dropping a simple cross. And up until the last three or four games it's still been happening.

I've got nothing but praise for Juande and you're perfectly right; Jol's tactics were predictable at times and could be exploited. Juande's are anything but. When I first saw the line-up and bench for Saturday my first reaction was, WTF? And then I thought about it and it made perfect sense. And, right also, it's been achieved with the same players, the exceptions being the dropping of Robinson and the promotion of O'Hara and Boateng. But it still seems apparent to me that, having stopped the rot, he's decided that the current squad can take us only so far, which isn't quite the picture we had painted in August.

 

[KeaneIsKeane]

You guys are arguing with incomplete information and thus its impossible to come to a real conclusion or be very persuasive. So just stop?

 

[sloth]

You guys are arguing with incomplete information and thus its impossible to come to a real conclusion or be very persuasive. So just stop?

LOL, might as well close the forum eh KIK?

 

[SpurSince57]

True, but if we waited for complete information before starting arguments we'd not have many arguments on here, would we?

 

[yanno]

Both SS57 & Sloth make many good points. I do think the timing and handling of four major sackings - Graham, Hoddle, Santini and Jol - was poor, to say the least. Ramosgate was especially farcical.

However, rather than raking over the coals, I'd rather comment on the improvements I attribute to Ramos.

i) Martin Jol (& Arnensen) rightly identified the need for a "top mentality" amongst the players. Unfortunately, Jol didn't seem able to develop it. Ramos has come in and genuinely seems to have changed the mentality. There is obviously the notorious "new coach bounce" phenomenon which accounts for some of it, but my impression from player performances and player interviews is that he's achieved more than this.

During the Barca match on Sky yesterday, Poyet said that a coach can hugely affect the confidence and attitude of his players through his choice and timing of substitutions. He was talking about Rijkaard, but I think his comments equally apply to Ramos.

Juande has been incredibly pro-active and bold as a game coach, really making a statement to his players: step up and win this match. A great example was away to Man Utd in the Cup when Dawson was sent off. He had Kaboul on the bench, and every other coach away at Old Trafford with ten men would have taken off a striker and put on his substitute CB. Not Juande. He put Boateng and Defoe on for Lennon and Tainio, leaving Kaboul on the bench, and saying to the players "go and get a result!" And we nearly did.

ii) it's clear from the recent Jenas interview that Ramos put the players through a second pre-season in November, and Alvarez gave them all strict dietary, body mass and fitness regimes. We're clearly seeing the benefits of this, and the July pre-season will improve the situation still further. And it sounds like Chimbo's "shagged out" attitude in training is one of the reasons why he was very nearly forced out of the door in January. Ramos is saying to the squad: "this is how we do it now, and if you're not fully committed you can go".

iii) I alluded to it above, but Ramos really is tactically very savvy, both in preparing for the particular opposition and switching things as the game develops. The SC poster known as "Juande_Ramos" described Ramos as "Benitez Mark II". Well, Ramos has shown more tactical flexibility in three months than Benitez has shown in three years at Liverpool. Ramos has also shown a very astute understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of players - for instance, in using Zokora at CB and RB, using O'Hara as a LB (against Ronaldo of all players), and experimenting very successfully with Huddlestone as a CB (something which initially had many SC members questioning his sanity).

It's still early days, and we haven't won anything yet. But Ramos has achieved a bigger improvement in performance than any coach I've seen at Spurs. And, tactically, he's impressed me more than any coach I've observed close up. His Sevilla team played with great pace, movement and attacking verve, but were very organized defensively. At Spurs, some of his players are better than those at Sevilla (eg Berba is better than Kanoute, Woodgate & King are better than Navarro & Escude, Bale and Gilberto are better than Drago), and Levy will back him with money for new, even better quality, players.

To sum up, I think the board handled the sacking of Jol very poorly. But the early signs are that they identified and secured a genuinely top coach in Ramos. For which I thank them. Now, we need to win either the UEFA or Carling Cup so that we can recruit the couple of world class players that can make us a genuine Top Four team.

 

[SpurSince57]

I'd agree 100%. I think the self-belief had drained out of the team and out of Jol himself; whatever we did, something was going to go wrong. The Liverpool game looked to me to be the final killer; having almost pulled off a famous victory at Anfield and outplayed the Scousers for long stretches of the game we went to Newcastle and simply capitulated. Hideous.

It's a great credit that he's turned that around, and the tactical changes, the substitutions in particular, are a marked contrast to Jol's. Jol always did tend to err on the side of caution.

I really do think he may be able to pass the acid test—getting Spurs to play attractive attacking football and defend at the same time, a feat very rarely achieved.

 

[leffe186]

You guys are arguing with incomplete information and thus its impossible to come to a real conclusion or be very persuasive. So just stop?

That would kinda defeat the object of this site - or indeed any other fan site.

It's a good argument, I'm enjoying it, I think we might even learn something from it.

 

[brasil_spur]

In August Daniel Levy spent £40m said that we had a squad capable of challenging for the top four. Five months and one new manager later, and he's asked to spend another £20m.

I wonder how he feels about that?

He can spend £200m if he sells on playes and re-coups most of that. How much we spend isn't the problem, how much we spend compared with how much we get for players we sell will be the problem. By my accounts we have spent no more than £10-20m in the last 2 years when subtracting sales from our spend.

 

[SpursManChris]

Funny how it doesn't mention Woodgates injuries...
I mean, deep down, that is the biggest fear of Ramos, Levy and Comolli. And they will be shitting themselves if he turns into a complete flop.

 

[sloth]

Edit: sorry this is a bit strident, I wrote it this morning in the heat of the argument and only just got round to posting it :wink:

It wasn't at all inexplicable. Lennon and Bale were unavailable and so was Lee. I also have a feeling (although I'm open to correction on this) that even Routledge was out. As a result we had no width and were reduced to trying to play the ball through the middle. United had exactly the same problem at OT when they were without Ronaldo and Giggs and scraped a very unconvincing win.

Without width we required creativity in the centre. Huddlestone didn't come on until the 87th minute. Defoe came on with 15 minutes left to replace Berbatov our other 'creative'. In short we gave Sunderland too much respect. They begun the game nervously, but as it became clear we had no attacking ideas they grew in confidence until there was only one team which deserved to win it. Jol had shown this propensity for caution against sides which revel in the combative unspectacular approach before and went on to repeat the dose later in the season at places like Bolton.

Do you not think that the whole Ramosgate business played big-time on Jol's and the players' minds? Every week there was press speculation as to which game would be Jol's last. There is no way that couldn't have been playing on his mind and affecting his judgement.

How does it affect your judgement on the training pitch? It's pressure yes, but SAF is under pressure every year and keeps making more good judgements than poor ones. Jol got away with the deserved level of opprobrium because people liked him, because he was a good bloke.

You're right: I too wish that Levy had got Ramos in in the summer, and done it properly.

And how do you know he didn't try? And anyway Levy receives most of the castigation for trying when we still had Martin Jol. You can't have it both ways, either he was right to try even with the risk that it leaks out and worst of all he doesn't get his man, or he should have stuck with Jol.

He simply can't escape a major portion of the blame for our poor start; as I said in the post above, he's got a history of making the right decisions at the wrong time.

Yes he can, the Levy affair was aside-show to the main event which was a manager who'd run out of ideas and most damningly of all, answers. Indeed if it had been left up to the WHL Faithful, if it had been left up to you SS we would still have Jol and the opportunity to get Ramos in would have passed us by. Indeed, Levy deserves praise imo, for going out on a limb when the easy thing to have done would have been to have said, "There we go, two fifth place finishes and a popular manager, a win over Chelsea, job done, the glory days have returned!!", He didn't he took the tough choice that long-term Mr Popular was not the same as Mr Successful, fifth wasn't the pinnacle but a staging post and that to start competing with the big boys we needed a man with the ambition and know-how to do it with us.

As far as the business side of Spurs is concerned you can't fault the guy. and when you look at some of the idiots running (or ruining) clubs up and down the country you have to breathe a sigh of relief. But on the football side there are legitimate questions to be asked, which is why I have such a seriously ambivalent—Jekyll-and-Hyde if you like—attitude towards him.

He's made individual errors, but the big picture is of a club punching far above it's weight. I know we all like to think of ourselves as a big club, but there's no financial reason on earth that we should be able to spend what we do, turn the profits that we do and keep on reinvesting like we do beyond the nigh on genius management of Levy. Compare us with Villa, or Chelsea, or Newcastle, or even Leeds Utd. Truth is on the back of his and Sugar's before him, adept management, we've attracted the kinds of players and coaches which have taken us to our best results in the Premiership era and which see us as the best placed club to challenge for fifth place. they should have our gratitude not scorn.

What was especially frustrating about the start to the season was that we were playing some quality attacking football and that in several games we improved considerably on the previous seasons' performances, then contrived to ruin this with some idiotic defending. And as I said at the time, these were individual errors for the most part, and you can drill set-pieces all you like but you can't legislate for Chimbonda or Dawson going AWOL or Robinson dropping a simple cross. And up until the last three or four games it's still been happening.

You see individual errors in isolation I see players shorn of confidence making school-boy howlers. i wonder how they lost their confidence and how they seem to have regained it since.

I've got nothing but praise for Juande and you're perfectly right; Jol's tactics were predictable at times and could be exploited. Juande's are anything but. When I first saw the line-up and bench for Saturday my first reaction was, WTF? And then I thought about it and it made perfect sense. And, right also, it's been achieved with the same players, the exceptions being the dropping of Robinson and the promotion of O'Hara and Boateng.

On that we're in complete agreement

But it still seems apparent to me that, having stopped the rot, he's decided that the current squad can take us only so far, which isn't quite the picture we had painted in August.

And i utterly refute the claim that it was fourth or bust, rather the target was to challenge for fourth and had Ramos been at the helm from the start of the season I believe we would have been, with the exact same squad. I also think that no one claimed the squad was the finished article (no squad ever is) and we would have improved regardless of who was at the helm.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

I've been a bit busy this weekend and have not got round to reading this thread until tonight.

Superb posts by Sloth, which I can't improve on, but would like to just add my supporting comments.

1. The whole "we are a top 4 side" stuff. Firstly what was said (by levy & Jol - and most pundits) was "we are ready to challenge the top 4". I believe that this was not only correct and proven by performances this season but that it was not controversial at all. What would you expect our management to be saying. We all know the importance of a winning mentality. Levy was just trying to lead from the front and install belief in his squad. What effect would it of had on the team if Levy had come out and said "we think our squad isn't good enough to compete for a CL place ? FFS let this one go. So far this season we have outplayed Arsenal's men and boys, Liverpool & ManU. We have also beat the teams challenging Liverpool. So clearly were were easily equiped to challenge for a CL spot.

2. To keep saying it was just individual errors that did for Jol is an over simplification. Jol refused to drop the players that were most responsible for these individual errors. (Ferguson in the cup final replay eg) Jol had many opportunities to drop Robinson for example. Not just the long shot thing, but genuine errors. he didn't have the balls or didn't see them. Either way it was terribly weak management. What example did it set. Poor performance is tolerable if your a diamond geezer ? piss poor.

3. When Jol was given quality or experienced players he mismanaged them. Kanoute, Mendes, Lee, Davids were all treated badly or the victims of Jols peculiar decision making.


5. When we were caught talking to Ramos I said the only thing to be angry about was the fact that we didn't persuade him there and then. I also volunteered a theory back then that maybe Jol was kept in a job actually due to the loyalty of levy, who probably thought that despite his better judgement (and that of those advising him) he owed Jol a chance to prove he was actually learning. It very quickly became obvious he wasn't. Same fitness, motivation and tactics saw us predictable and vulnerable. What matters most is that Levy unbelievably managed to persuade Ramos to come to our club. A club that hasn't played CL football and was a couple of points off the relegation zone.