What had started out as quite a promising campaign has definitely turned into a topsy turvy year for Tottenham Hotspur, and this week has been no different as we backed up a poor performance against Arsenal in the North London Derby defeat with a quite incredible performance that saw Dinamo Zagreb fight back from a two goal deficit to unceremoniously dump us out of this season’s Europa League competition.
Opinions amongst Spurs fans have always been torn when it comes to manager Jose Mourinho and this last week has done nothing to temper those thoughts, and it probably feels even more frustrating as ahead of Arsenal it looked like we were again playing ourselves into some good, attacking form and leaving the more defensive and pragmatic approach behind us.
We will be missing Erik Lamela after his sending off, and Son Heung-Min continues to be out. In other potentially good news, there’s mixed talk about Jack Grealish returning so he might miss out for them, but in any event, we know we have the firepower to take all three points, it just again comes down to how we play and, well, how we play.
The question that no one can bet on ahead of a match this season.
TK Agree spurs wasted millions of the Bale funds. This should not happen with HK10 money, as lesson learned by Levy.. hopefully
Bale cost Spurs just £7m. And, it wasn’t until in his 4th season at Spurs that we saw him really take off as a star player. He then had 2 more seasons at the club in which he improved some more. And then he went off to Real for a world record fee of approx; £85m!
So, we can easily say that that was seen as extremely good business in the long run from THFC/Levy, despite some of the players we bought with his transfer fee to Real not living up to their hype…
And then, when we look at just 1 player from the 7 that we bought with the Bale money, Christian Eriksen. We could arguably say that he proved to be a more influential player to the team, over a longer period of time than Bale was. And after having only spent £11m on him….. And what ever we may now think of Lamela. He is still at Spurs and still getting played by the man in charge.
And however we look at it in retrospect, all seven players we bought were actually considered to have very good potential at the time.
I will make a small shout out to Chadli. Because, although his short time with us was a bit up and down. He still won over a lot of Spurs fans along the way. Also, there were many supporters at the time that rated Paulinho quite highly, as they did Capoue. And, Chiriches (MOTM on his debut), although he wasn’t a regular starter, I can remember many Spurs supporters saying he should’ve been given more time to prove himself… Then there was Soldado. Say no more, squire!
But anyway, these guys were not around for too long and didn’t really outstay their welcome. Levy cut his loses and they were gone. We then brought in some very good players during MP’s time and it wasn’t that long, after Bale leaving, (Modric before him), that we saw Spurs have their three best performing PL seasons and then reach A CL final. And barring quite a few duds along the way, (par for the course), we now have a very strong and solid squad, imo….. But, we just don’t have the right man in charge to watch these players truly shine right now.
Swings and roundabouts!
And now all these years later, Bale, during his current loan spell, may still prove to be a star for Spurs, all over again. We’ll see. But I wouldn’t underestimate him in coming to the rescue and scoring or creating the odd winner here and there, that could well see us having a much better season than we might be imagining just now… (Top 4 and a cup, anyone?)!
Lose to Newcastle next though, and my optimism for today, may then look foolish, delusional and completely misplaced…. Oh well…
Up the Spurs!
HT, a so true post there mate, I must admit I liked Paulinho and Capoue, I believed they should have been given more time, but hey that’s history now and we march on. COYS
I was thinking the same about Chadli HT, he is still getting into the Belgium squad, which is considered to be the best in world football currently, so he can’t be all that bad. Maybe he was badly coached/managed at Spurs?
Ha……so they are changing the CL format from 2024 with a different preliminary format to replace the group stage and an increase in the number of participating teams to 36 including ‘2 wild cards’. What a joke, they want the ability to give places to high profile clubs that don’t qualify through their leagues, I guess it will just be a case of who offers the biggest bung!
TQ, its about dosh! and the start of a Euro Super league, slipping it in under the door, mark my words. COYS
All about the money TQ.
I was thinking for the CL after the groups instead of a straight knock out have groups of 3, each team would get to play 2 games and might make it more interesting
I despair when I see yet more greed throughout the game at top level while the grass roots struggles to survive, not to mention kids going hungry, even in wealthy countries. I watch the news daily and see society failing in so many ways, I fear for my children’s and grandchildren’s future.
I had followed Paulinho at Corinthians before he came to us and I expected him to be a star with us. I think I said so on VS. He was a box to box midfielder with Corinthians and the MOTM on the day they won the World Team Cup or whatever it’s called in Yokohama. I still remain puzzled why he didn’t become a star with us. Just never seemed to jell.
Anyway, I guess my point was that just getting a huge fee when selling someone like Bale or Kane doesn’t mean that the money will help the club all that much. No matter how you look at it, we didn’t replace Elvis with the Beatles as was being said at the time. We got a number of players with much promise none of whom (including Eriksen) replaced what we had in Bale. Money doesn’t guarantee anything on the pitch. Look at Torres at Chelsea for another example.
No matter what we might get monetarily for Kane, it won’t add up to what Kane provides. Of course, like any human body, he could break down at any moment. Life hasn’t guarantees. But right now, I’d rather keep Kane than get 150 million in anyone’s currency. And Kane scoring the winning CL goal at RM won’t provide the same happiness that he could experience staying with Spurs.
That being said, Bale does himself no favors in Madrid nor in London with his attitudes.
Re the CL, that’ll always be ManU and Liverpool sorted for life then.
I did say there is a wee bias toward those sorts of clubs to keep em up there keep em the latter stages in Europe, its no good these guys going out too early, probably hence the “step down” to the europa league just in case some of these teams go out in the early stages, they get a 2nd bite at the cherry.
Re the players brought in with the Bale money, was there not a French player also brought in to play along side Capoue, I can’t remember his name.
But mus admit whilst I liked Chadli I couldn’t take to Paulinho.
However if we do (unfortunately) sell HK.
I would like to see players actually brought in before that deal is done.
Here’s my reasoning.
I only slightly disagree with HT, I think we do have an excellent 6 at our club a very good 2 or 3 another 2 good the rest are very average.
For me we need a better but currently more compact squad. For a year or two
As I said I would ship out 6 or so and bring in 3 to 4 marquis players for much needed positions.
If we were to sell Kane then spend the money we would get would be added on to the cost of some of our acquisitions, ie, a 40 mil player becomes 50 mil and so on.
If we bought before selling Kane it would be at around the right price.
Use the “Kane money” then to invest and improve the squad over the next few years say one or two players as needed.
Rather than buying 5 or 6 who happens to be in the Transfer window for inflated prices.
Hope I got this across right.
Posted similar earlier but iit got lost somewhere
But I really hope Kane doesn’t go.
Newcastle haven’t won in 6 games, spurs will gift them 3 points.
Apparently, three years ago Levy missed the chance to sign Grealish at £6 million. He was prepared to offer between and £1 and £2 million. By the time he had made up his mind new Villa owners slapped a £40 million price tag on Grealish. Levy always looking for the bargain, Blue Cross Deal
WW that is a big part of our problem. Mr Levy negotiating tactics, he seems to want to pay bottom dollar at each and every occasion, but then like a Magpie gets lured to paying top dollar for someone who, for example, has had 3 good games at a world Cup, (see Sissoko).
Then sells on at a cut price one of our few decent players (see Tripps).
Then there’s the, Verts, Rose, Ericsson, and (to a degree) Tobs debacle.
Where we didn’t know who our back 4 were going to be.
We need to have a recruitment with actual footballing nouse, who go for players who can do a job in the premiership, with some longevity, a team mentality, a bit of maturity, and pay a decent price for them.
Another solid performance by Joe Rodon last night with one ‘body on the line’ block in front of goal in the dying minutes of the game. Hope to see him get more starts for us in the run in.
Niall.. Good post there… Levy has always tried to get top players (champagne quality) for pepsi can price. With selling pepsi quality for champagne money…. This has worked in some instances, and not in others.
Now he has to try and get spurs back in contention PL / CL which is a difficult challenge based on last 2 years of our history.
You should bear in mind that much of Levy’s reputation is based on gossip and heresay when it comes to what he might have offered for players. There is nothing wrong with being a tough negotiator otherwise you could easily be conned into paying champagne prices for pepsi can players, even DL has the odd blooper, but that can also be down to poor scouting and recruitment!
TQ2S….Thumbs up mate. COYS
TQ2… Having said that… Over the last 20 years Levy has brought our club forward from a mid table position to where we are, a well run top european club wth a stadium and training facilities the best in europe. Now we need the top players and manager to get constancy at this level. COYS
I wonder, was it only Spurs that made a bid for Grealish at that time?
And, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, JG is still at Villa. 🙂
Levy saw a young Championship player at a club that was in serious financial difficulty. He took a punt at a very low starting point in order to hopefully take advantage of Villas troubles. As far as I recall, we had at one point offered as much as £25m but eventually put a bid in for £30m at the end of the TW, after their new owners had just come to the rescue and upped JG’s asking price to a whopping £40m.
Villas initial asking price before the new owners took over was apparently around £6m. Levy was said to have offered £4m. And I am pretty certain that he would’ve eventually paid the £6m. But the circumstances quickly changed for Villa and they could then keep him, whilst asking (what was then) a ridiculous fee of £40m for a 22 year-old Championship player.
Was this a major balls up from THFC or just bad luck?
What I do believe is that if JG had come to Spurs for as little as £6m or even as high as £40m and then not lived up to his hype, he would now be seen as a waste of money whatever we had paid. Or possibly (if he had done well) the bargain of the century. 🙂 No one knows!
What I do know is that some of these so called bargain bin buys from Levy up until now, have brought to Spurs the likes of Bale, Eriksen, VDV, Dele, Toby, Hugo, Son (more expensive than most but still about half of the JG asking price), Jan, Rose, Walker, Lennon, Bale, Defoe, Parker, Trippier, Hojbjerg…… Any more?
Even so, at the end of that TW 2 years ago, and up until now, no one else got Grealish either. But at least we tried!
HT…. did we get two bales for the price of one? 🙂
You are indeed right B108, we do tend to remember the failures rather than successes.
However when I do look at the wasted money on many of the 5 players from the Bale sale.
However I not sure if we made or lost money when re selling, so was that a bad move?
The hasty purchase of an over priced Sissoko.
And indeed Jansen.
Aurier, Froyth, Doh, Bergs, Clarke, Sess. All pretty expensive buys for what we got in return.
Hopefully the future of some of these my recoup our losses.
It was also the failure around player contracts at the end of Pohs time, I suppose we do at times home in on the failures.
We don’t see the profits made on the Bale’s, Carricks, Berbatovs.
We focus on the Rebrovs, Soldado, and Jensons.
But I do agree that we are or were (until this season) in a better position than before Levy took over.
Niall, Whatever you, me or anyone else thinks of Sissoko. He is in his 5th season at Spurs and has played on a regular basis throughout his time at the club. Making 198 appearances.
So under (he’s won nothing) Poch and now under (he’s won everything) Jose, he is sill a Spur and has played a lot of football for us in this time. He is also been regularly picked for the World Champions France squad over the past 12 years or so.
Poch liked him. Jose seems to like him. Deschamps likes him. Unfortunately it seems not too many Spurs supporters like him…… I like him. ;-0
There is no doubt Sissoko is a good squad player. We know we can’t have 25 guaranteed starters but need good reliable backups who are happy to sit on the bench and get occasional starts.
Agreed HT yep he was in the Poch and JM teams agreed.
What I was saying that at the time (I thought) it was a knee jerk buy, based (for me) soley on a good performance for his country over 3 or so games I a world Cup, and I think we paid a bit over the odds for him.
What he reminds me of is, in our local town, the rugby and football clubs do get on quite, we’ll
and our preseason some of the rugby guys would come down for extra training.
In the after training games these “big guys” played fit as fek you bounced off them could run all day,
You never got past them, but see the ball at their feet OMG, well for me that’s Sissoko.
He does put a real shift in but it’s as if it takes time for the thought to get to his feet when going forward.