Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Leon Goretzka also has a year left on his contract, and given the choice between Meyer and Goretzka I;d take Goretzka every single time, not least because he actually plays in an area where our team needs strengthening, while Meyer does not.

 

He looks great. I've watched their games in the Confederations Thingy. He's been their standout player for me. Unfortunately, I can see Bayern being very interested. If it can happen, then great, he'd be a top signing.

With regard to Meyer, we won't have Sonny or Lamela to start next season. Onomah's not a wide player, Sissoko's **** and GKN is on borrowed time. A few attacking players wouldn't go amiss right now. Especially if they come at a bargain price.

 

Lemar over Meyer any day for me. Carries much more of a goal threat and his attitude doesn't stink. That said, Meyer does play in a more competitive league.

What fragments of hints and rumours we have are all coming from very, very dubious sources. If the ES runs a story about our targets I consider it a good day, such is the dearth of credible info. Literally zilch from the traditional ITK's on Twitter and Sky. Levy is keeping his cards close to his chest - a strategy I fully support. The 'dilemma' we now face is that many if not most of our transfer targets are in the bracket of quality that clubs with far more clout than us would also be interested in signing. If for example we got drawn into a bidding war over Lemar, it would be a repeat of the Willian farce all over again. We simply cannot compete with the likes of City, United and Chelsea. Even Pool and Arsenal have far bigger war chests than us. The key is to keep everything under the radar and not let a single media outlet know anything until the ink has dried and a shirt is being readied for the official photoshoot.

 

There's one obvious suggestion to why we haven't announced any new signings yet that we've all managed to overlook: our contract with Nike begins on July 1st, or to put it another way Nike wouldn't want us to announce any new signings and have them pictured in an Under Armor shirt - while Under Armor wouldn't like us announcing any new signings and have them pictured in a Nike shirt.

Of course, this theory could fall to pieces if there still hasn't been any new signings announced by July 14th...

 

....or none of our intended purchases have been able to reduce their value to their current clubs sufficiently yet. Last season it was waiting until Marseille had to sell Batshuayi on the cheap to avoid going bust.

This season's bargains are Barkley and Meyer and Goretzka. As the window comes to an end we step in and make a killing......just like with Berahino......or Batshuayi.....or Isco. It's gonna be a long drawn out process.

 

It can be argued that Lopez and Sessegnon have to various degrees, although those would both be squad signings rather than first teamers.

 

The Lopez deal is textbook Levy. We get Espanol to loan us the guy by agreeing a purchase price like a nice football club would. We're so nice they forget that at the end of the loan he only has 12 months left on his current deal. That nice Mr Levy wouldn't stiff us would he........?

As a kid, I remember reading a book of Aesop's fables, Levy is the scorpion, Espanyol the dying frog. Why does he do it? Because he's a scorpion..... it's what scorpions do.

 

You do realise that in that tale the scorpion actually commits suicide.

 

You need to read more than the last post...... It's a thing some people do.

 

I considered post 1345 but thought just using the last was more fun.

 

The International Business Times are reporting we've made a bid for Mattias Ginter.

They're also kvetching at me for using AdBlocker...

 

Don't know if anyone listens to it but the e-Spurs podcast they do a few times a year with Lyall Thomas (Sky Sports) on it can be an interesting one.

He reckons we're prioritising a no. 10 (as we're committing to 3 at the back, so out and out wide players don't really have a place) and a RB in case Kyle goes. On Walker, LT thinks that while yes, Walker was a bit miffed at being rotated by Poch towards the end of the season, Poch still rates him as the best RB on the books, and that while Walker wouldn't not move to City, he feels a great affinity for Spurs and hasn't fallen out with the manager, so staying wouldn't be an issue either. He also made an interesting point that if Rose hadn't got injured, then we might be seeing a similar reaction from him, but as he couldn't play, Davies getting so much game time was a moot point. By the way personally, I think that if we sign Sessegnon then he'll be loaned back for a year.

While he is a journo at the end of the day, so his word is far from gospel, I can see the sense in what he is saying. And that is reflected in a lot of the rumours we're seeing. We don't need a RB if Walker stays, and City are now looking at Alves I presume, so its no surprise that we haven't signed anyone there yet. We're being linked with a whole host of AMs and 10s because at 10, presuming we play 2 of them, we have:

Alli (banned for first 3 European matches next season) & Eriksen
Son & Lamela (both unlikely to be available at the start of next season as we currently understand it)
Edwards & Sissoko

So reinforcement wouldn't go amiss there.

Goretzka could be an excellent addition. From what I've seen of him (what little I've seen, admittedly), he looks more like a '6' or an '8' than a 10 to me, but then again for the deeper midfield positions we have (assuming Dier is now a CB in a back 3):

Dembele - excellent player but has his injury problems, can he play 2 or 3 games a week consistently at this standard now?
Wanyama - excellent
Winks - great prospect but only really has half a season of PL football under his belt, and coming back from a long term injury
Onomah - looked good in that position for England U20s but no experience in that role at PL level

So well worth adding someone with a good amount of serious league experience under his belt.

If we offload Sissoko, Fazio, Clint and GKN (and maybe Vorm if/when we finalise the Lopez deal) and having already offloaded Bentaleb, keep everyone else, and bring in a no. 10, Goretzka, and maybe a young CB - unless we decide to trust CCV straight away - and optionally a young striker, then we've had an excellent window IMO, and will probably have stayed within our financial means too with New Stadium on the way.

Sorry for the essay...

 

We certainly need to look at central midfield this summer, the two main reasons being Dembele's injury problems (and the fact he turns thirty in a few weeks) give us cause to think of a long-term replacement in his role - and the rumours are certainly addressing the latter, with both Seri and Vecino being like-for-like players - while playing a back three next season means Wanyama lacks cover due to Dier playing in defence, which essentially leaves us with four central midfielders: Wanyama, Dembele, Winks and Onomah. From a squad standpoint that is not a good position to be in.

In terms of attacking midfield, the obvious issue is overcrowding that area - which is exactly what happened in 2013-14, as we had to try and fit in (deep breath) Eriksen, Lamela, Lennon, Townsend, Sigurdsson and Chadli, as that was six players who all expected to be starting regularly. While we can easily balance Alli, Eriksen, Son and Lamela in both 4231 and 3421 systems, we need to be careful when adding other players in that area.

This is why Lemar makes the most sense to me, as if we played with an attacking three he'd play on the left while Eriksen/Alli would play through the middle while Eriksen/Son/Lamela would be on the right, while if it was a pair of attacking midfielders he'd start alongside Eriksen in the CL games Alli was suspended for - on the other hand, as Meyer mainly plays through the middle, we'd end up doing things like plonking Alli on the wing to accomodate him.

 

Good read. I'd read somewhere else that Kyle Walker's not pressing for a move. Could it be that Mauricio Pochettino and Daniel Levy have decided that he is the player that we can best do without whilst raising the cash we need to upgrade elsewhere?

We seem very able to dismiss United's interest in Eric Dier,. Dele Alli and others. Why not just tell Citeh to poke it? Maybe if we get a replacement for £20m and spend £30m on Lemar, we're better off and Kyle's probably at his maximum value right now. Personally, I'd like to keep him for one more year to give KWP time to replace him, also as his pace and experience at Wembley would be very useful.

 

hbic, thats why I think we'll be very careful about who we sign if we get a 10. It'll either have to be a youngster or a player who fully understands and accepts that he has some serious competition to displace in order to get good playing time. I'm not sure some of the players we've been linked with so far are down for that.

Brian, I think the reason we haven't told Citeh to sling their hook re. Walker is because we know we have them over a barrel - we don't financially need to sell and the player isn't agitating for a move. But if City came in with the kind of bid that would pay off a serious chunk of new WHL, then I think Levy would consider. But we're talking £60m or probably more here and I don't think even City will pay that. So unless Kyle throws his toys out of the pram then we can keep our cool. If he leaves then we get a big wad of cash towards our long term future and a replacement, as well as having excellent backup in Trippier and a promising youngster in the academy with KWP. If he leaves then I think we'd all be sad to lose a player who is probably the best in his position in the league and who clearly enjoys playing for the club, but we'd manage. He's an excellent RB but I'd be more worried if we lost other players in the squad, not that I think we will.

 

So here's a few revelations all in one.

First of all, Sissoko's advisor appears to be Badr Slassi, whose Twitter states he is the General Secretary of the PRG (or Parti radical de gauche/Radical Party of the Left) - yet we still have no idea who his agent is.

Secondly, this is what Slassi had to say (in the medium of a series of tweets, rather than an easier to post block quote)









Oh, and there's more...

There's also an article in today's edition of L'Equipe that includes a former teammate of Sissoko's outright claim that Sissoko's agent engineered transfer speculation about his client - and it has to be said that, last summer, Newcastle were willing to let both Wijnaldum and Sissoko go for fees of around £15m+ until there was talk of interest from Los Ladrones do Madrid and suddenly the fees were jacked up by at least £10m each...yet does anyone remember a bid being made, let alone a tapping-up article in Marca for either of them?

 

I read somewhere that Renato Sanchez is being linked with a move to United with Bayern slashing the price from 30 to 23.5 Mill.

Every time I've seen him play for Portugal I've thought he looks electric. A bit of Poch Magic and it could work.

Standard wages issue obviously applies as the sticking point in all matters

 

Yeah he looks mustard, if Bayern are seriously getting rid he'd be a great signing for us, a definite long term successor to Dembele. Don't even think the wages would be an issue as I doubt he's on a mega salary at Bayern right now, only stumbling block I'd say is that there's other clubs who'll be a more glamorous proposition but if he has half a brain, there's not many "big" clubs that'll throw a 19/20 year old into their XI on a regular basis - as he's find out with Bayern (along with Coman, who's another wonderkid).

 

Citeh are said to be inserting the dreaded 'buy back' clause into any deal for Itchy Nacho's. I think these deals are a scourge on football, even f banning them acts to say e the Spammers from themselves.

However, when Citeh think their Walker deal is done and a price is agreed, we should definitely produce a version of the contract whereby we get to buy Kyle back for £1 when we move into our new ground.

The price for dropping such a clause.......Hmmmm, it's gonna have to be £10m, at least.

 

Saga Watch

Nice chairman Jean-Pierre Rivere has started that, contrary to reports from earlier this month that said he would accept a £22m bid for Jean-Michael Seri, he's now decided that actually he's not taking a penny less than his €40m release clause, aka £35m...although thanks to Andrea Leadsom's comments on Newsnight we can expect that to increase to £52m by the end of the week due to the exchange rate tanking yet again.