02 Sep 2014 23:18:02
Pretty happy with that window, would of been nice to add another striker tho! Really don't understand why Lennon and Townsend are still at the club. Lennon has shown absolutely no improvement since his debut! And Townsend is possibly the most selfish player at the club! How can Lennon be classed as premier league quality when he's still not learnt to cross the bloody ball!

1.) 03 Sep 2014
A few weeks ago I said I would be reasonably content with a quiet transfer window. It was quiet and I am reasonably content.

First, a few unpalatable facts:

Joe Lewis is very rich, but he is a business man. He bought Tottenham as a business and he is running it as a business. Clearly, he is not going to give Tottenham a £200m gift just to please us. Why should he?

Levy is the Chief Executive, so he must run the club properly. Balancing the books is not a strange obsession; it is Levy’s legal duty.

We don’t make huge operating profits, so we can only buy players if we first sell. Since I didn’t want to see our best remaining players poached by Champions League clubs I wasn’t expecting any big purchases. Our best transfer action this summer was keeping Lloris, Vertonghen and Eriksen, without them being unsettled by rumours or disruptive offers.

Last year, our defence was the weak link and that has been addressed. We now have Vorm as younger cover for Lloris. We have two genuine left backs (Rose and Davies) with Vertonghen as cover, and two right backs (Walker and Naughton) with Dier as cover. In the central positions we have a good range of options with Vertonghen, Kaboul, Fazio, Chiriches and Dier. I think our defence now has a better balance to it.

In midfield we have just tinkered. Personally, I saw no point in selling Sandro (proven) and bringing in Stambouli (unproven). I also thought Sigurdsson was good value for money and well worth keeping, but we were stronger in midfield than in defence so swopping him for Davies was probably the right thing to do.

We had a couple of good offers for Townsend and should probably have accepted one of them, if only to keep Lennon in Pochettino’s sights. He is never going to be quite as good as we hoped, but he is a hell of a lot better than most people recognise. If it had been Lennon caught in possession, rather than Townsend, he would have had the pace and resolution to prevent Moreno’s unchallenged run into the area.

Of course we would like to strengthen the forward line, but that is always hard to do. Last year we broke our transfer record for Soldado. He had a tough first season, but if he can recover the form he had at Valencia, then we might have already solved that problem.

In the meantime, Adebayor is still playing with a lot of commitment. There aren’t many better in the Premiership. Of course, he wouldn’t get into the first team of our main rivals, but they are all much richer than us and they can offer Champions League football. We are not going to compete with them for proven quality so we must try to find quality before it is proven, like we did with Berbatov.

Last year, we spent over £100m and in the short run we got very little for it. This year, we have to hope that investment will start to pay off. If it does, then we won’t regret this low key transfer window.

2.) 03 Sep 2014
KM, great post. I agree with you. Quite a lot aren't happy with our window but our squad looks settled and players look happy under Poch which I think will be key to getting his methods across. I think the Liverpool game came to soon for us.

Top 4 will be tough this season, you can't look past city/chelsea 1st and 2nd, then it will be Spurs, United, Liverpool, Everton, Arsenal fighting for those next two spots. Newcastle might even surprise a few.

Here's hoping exciting football's back at the lane COYS

3.) 03 Sep 2014
KM. a very realistic concise post.

Unlike a few fans wanting DL & JL out. Complete nonsense.

I've been banging my gums about stability for some time. Let's hope we now get that with the team and manager. Maybe a striker in January.

4.) 03 Sep 2014
Fair point about Joe Lewis but he is mid eighties and has a net worth of about £3BIL. You can't take it with you, can you? what's the point of stability with sub standard players. It should of been a new start under Poch and wholesale changes were needed. Poch now has a squad that had any ability coached out of them by AVB, and getting over playing under Sherwood.

5.) 04 Sep 2014
Wholesale changes? 6 new signings this summer, 7 last summer that still haven't been used properly in a settled team. That's 13 in total, how many more changes do you want?

6.) 05 Sep 2014
04 Sep 2014 23:13:56
Joe Lewis couldn't just give us 200m anyway with the ffpr.

Stramboulli may be unproven in the epl but imo he is better than Sandro.

7.) 06 Sep 2014
06 Sep 2014 10:41:58
Interested to know what you base that opinion on spurski? Seen a lot of him at Montpellier? (Genuine question).

8.) 06 Sep 2014
06 Sep 2014 15:23:26
Simmo, I've seen a few games not many but he is more skillful, better at passing and runs a lot and tackles good. Sandro may be a tough tackler and have cult status but he is quite limited aswell as injury prone.

I think it was the right time to sell Sandro.

9.) 06 Sep 2014
Spurski, so you base on seeing a few games that he is better than Sandro . I know nothing about him so I am not here to argue but that is quite a statement considering How good Sandro was .

10.) 06 Sep 2014
06 Sep 2014 20:50:14
Fair enough Spurski, my thoughts are I just hope (not maliciously because the guy gave his all for us) that the club know there's every chance Sandro can't stay fit or play at his best anymore. At his best he was definitely a beast at what he did, one of the best that would need big money to replace so, getting rid seems a risk to me. Hoping obviously that BS is indeed a good acquisition.

11.) 09 Sep 2014
I don't think 2 bad injuries makes you injury prone. But we will see how he does for QPR this season, where I imagine he will have to work a lot harder as they don't play the same sort of possession game that Spurs have had the last couple of years (with teams sitting deep against us).

Lewis could give us £200m; he'd just need to buy a company, give it £200m, and then have that company sponsor us for £200m haha!