Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester City -League Cup Final

Can you imagine getting that call?

It's like me walking into a rolex store and asking to trade one for a budget stopwatch.

 

Agree on this, for years now under Pep City's 1st line of defence in a breakaway is to foul the opposition in their half , Jose was keen to point this out and it worked in last years home win against them by gaining the red card prooving that you have to be clever c**ts to compete with them

 

We are doing about as well as anyone but Man City actually. The claim that the squad needs wholesale surgery is ridiculous. All that will happen is that we will get another few players who are about as good as the ones we already have.

 

Yeah that's true. He asked to leave the week we played you in the FA Cup Semi Final IIRC.

To be fair, the way he, Berba, Modric and Bale all left was sour. And for the immediate aftermath I was fuming with them. But as time goes by I let it go, ultimately I'd rather remember those players for what they gave us. Modric is the best I've ever seen play for Spurs, whilst Berba and Bale are well up there with the likes of Kane, Eriksen, van der Vaart, Lennon and King.

 

The sad thing is...I can imagine it

 

To say that we are doing as well as united (14 points ahead of us and in the semi finals of the EL), Leicester (6 ahead with a game in hand and in the final of the FA Cup) and Chelsea (5 pts ahead of us, in the FA Cup final after beating City and in the semi finals of the CL) simply does not ring true for me.

As for our players...
Dier, Aurier, Sissoko, Toby, Lo Celso, Ndombele, Davies and Sanchez can and should be improved on.

They are either on the downside of their careers or have not delivered.

Lamela, Hoejberg, Bergwijn and winks could be added but it could be argued that they are good squad players.

I genuinely can not see City, United, Leicester or Chelsea touching ANY of those players and those are the team we need to catch up with.

Tbh I don't see Everton or West Ham or Liverpool touching them and we need to improve not to drop way behind them next season.

That's 12 players I've listed...even if only 6 went...sissoko, aurier, (both not good enough) Davies, Lamela (both injury prone and coming to the end of their contracts) Bergwijn and Sanchez (devoid of belief and have offered nothing on the pitch this season) that is a lot of changes.

 

We don`t need a major rebuild, we have plenty of players that have proven themselves to be good enough under the right manager. However, Sissoko, Aurier, Doherty, Dier and Sanchez are beyond help and have proven themselves time and again to be shiete, and absolutely need improving upon.

Then we have a few players with not long left on their contracts who may be moved on, and other fringe players that maybe could be improved upon. As an absolute priority though, any new coach will need a top class RB, CB and CDM. Ideally we could do with bringing in 6 or 7 new players and losing 6 or 7 of our deadwood. I have zero faith Levy will deliver it to the required standard though.

 

What do you think your second group of six would have cost if they bought just pre covid.Football inflation has been nearly as high as the Zimbabwe dollar, so I think nearer to £320m. Squad players have been selling for over £25 m. so that sort of comparison is not valid.

 

I agree but can you imagine how much of a loss we'll take on them?
We'd be lucky to get £10m on sanchez, £15m on Aurier, £25m Lo Celso, £30m Ndombele, £5m on Doherty...only we won't accept those kind of bids so will be stuck with them next season too imho

 

It doesn’t hurt like it should for some reason or at least like it used to.

 

That isn't a valid excuse for the shambolic recruitment strategy of the past 4-5 years. Since Victor Wanyama was signed, we haven't signed a single player who has come in and actually improved the first team. They've all either been stocking fillers or downgrades.

In the same period, City, United, Leicester, Chelsea, West Ham and Liverpool have all succeeded in this regard, sometimes on multiple occasions. That is why they are above us.

 

It can somewhat be valid if you try and workout what their inflation value would be now and whether they’d still be worth it. I’d say since their fees, inflation has roughly doubled fees and a maybe added bit on top from that era.

Walker was involved in the £9m double deal with Naughton and would’ve been the cheaper part of that deal, so let’s say £3m for him and £6m Naughton. £3m then would be about £10m in today’s market (what we paid for Jack Clarke). You’d 100% be happy paying that.

Tripps was £3.5m. So probably about £12m in today’s market. Another you’d be 100% happy with.

Eriksen £12m, probably about £25m in today’s market (roughly what we paid for Bergwijn). You’d be over the moon with that.

Dembele was £15m, so around £30m-£35m in today’s market. Again, extremely happy to pay that.

Finally Wanyama was £11m, so £20m-£22m. Happy to pay that despite the fact he declined due to injuries in second season.

 

Good deals are still available though in this era, you just have to look in the right places. Leicester have shown this especially.

Maguire £16m, we paid £40m for Sanchez the same summer.

Maddison £20m. You’d take him over Lo Celso all day long.

Pereira was pretty much the same, if a little cheaper than Aurier!

Soyuncu £18m. Bargain.

There was a lot of hype when Arsenal signed Saliba from St Etienne for about £25m, Leicester went to the same club and paid £10m more for Fofana and he’s been a revelation in his debut season. Already been linked with Utd. If they sold him tomorrow they’d at least double their money.

Their scouting and signings have been top notch of late and it’s ironically a model we used for many years. It’s hard to see what our model is nowadays, we seem to be a bit gung ho with who we target.

 

This is the biggest issue for me with Levy and Spurs, they won’t sell players for a big loss and I think it has a massive detrimental effect on the others as everyone at the club knows these players aren’t happy or particularly wanted.

Sell who the new manager doesn’t want even if it means a loss.

 

This is an often made criticism which has no basis in fact as far as I can see.

Every businessman knows that sunk costs are irrelevant to any decision. It's ridiculous to accuse Levy of not knowing this.

The correct approach is to have a model for player values and only buy players who can be obtained for the modeled value and sell players who can be sold at or above the modeled value.

The problem might be that the model is wrong. That's a different issue.

 

First of all the premise that Spurs have been poor in their spending in the transfer market is clearly wrong when you look at the reality of Spurs finishing in the top 4 in the Redknapp and Pochetino era's We have spent less than the teams around us. You can easily make a case for Spurs having been the best performer in the transfer of players. Levy's reputation as a tough negotiator is an indicator of this.

The reality that we are overall the 6th of the 'big six' is due to income and spend. The 'greatness' of City is down to the money they have spent as is the case with Chelsea, they have simply bought their positions. Instead of all the criticism aimed at Spurs position we should be criticising City when they DON'T finish first or Chelsea second. That's the reality of PL football. The praise should be for Leicester, for West Ham right now and for Spurs during the last 10 years for getting where they did despite the imbalance built in by wealth.

The ESL should have alerted you to the need to get real in this football business, it's all about money. In the 60's when Spurs were winning we were around the richest club in the division, we used to prise players from Chelsea with MONEY now we have no chance of that, we just take their cast off managers hoping the success will rub off. Why do you think we built this super stadium? It's not so the fans can polish it on a Sunday morning like a new BMW it's to increase the income and raise the level of Spurs with more MONEY. We can always get new players but first and foremost it depends on how much MONEY you have.

Levy has dome a better job of raising the potential of his club than any other chairman in the PL without a false injection of funds. I doubt we will find another chairman who is firstly a fan and second a financial wizard, no other team has. Spurs can always buy players but to compete you just need huge wedges of cash and Levy is better at doing that than anyone else in the PL in my opinion.

Remember footballers are just commodities in this current climate, Spurs product is MONEY.

I wish all this wasn't the case because I am here for the football, in hindsight perhaps I should have stayed with Dulwich Hamlet but even they have now caved to the MONEY folowing the trend of the entire western world.

Now I will forget all of this and try to watch Spurs as if it was just a sporting contest head half in the sand.

 

16/17:
Wanyama, Janssen, Nkoudou, Sissoko.
17/18:
Sanchez, Gazzaniga, Foyth, Aurier, Llorente, Moura.
18/19:
Nobody.
19/20:
Ndombele, Lo Celso, Sessegnon, Clarke, Gedson (loan), Bergwijn
20/21:
Hojbjerg, Reguilon, Bale (loan), Vinicius (loan), Doherty, Rodon, Hart.

That’s why Spurs fans are unhappy. 90% of those are major flops and the few successes haven’t been great successes either.

 

So true. When did we go into a final expecting nothing more than a defeat and feeling that a 1.0 loss wasn't that bad?

 

The morning after ...

IMHO the mentality of manager + players all season was on full display.
This was a cup final in its truest sense : a one-off game with no
material detrimental consequences to the club win or lose.

That did not mean running around with the "red mist" in your
eyes for 90 mins, but going out to play with confidence in your
strengths and some healthy contempt for the opposition.

The team badly needs a Danny or Dave, a Perryman/Mabbutt/.Robbo
who lead by example and put everything on the line for 90 mins.
Until we have such players, you can forget ever winning a league title
or prevailing in cup ties against quality opposition.

 

Just playing devils advocate for a moment - does the way we played yesterday suggest that maybe when Jose said that the players were of a defensive mindset, and not always playing to his instructions he may have been right? Or (as I think is the case) is a week just long enough for a new man even if he was more experienced than Ryan, to get a fresh message across to the players.