Club watch

We’re now playing Man C on Thursday 19 January with kick-off at 8pm.

Looking forward to this international crap ending soon.

 

It's at home.

 

Looking forward to singing “who’s the ****er with the bell” once more.

 

Dane Scarlett to miss another FA Cup match, guaranteed...

 

Some Spurs players return to training:

Kulusevski, Austin, Skipp, Forster, White, Lenglet, Emerson, Spence and Bissouma.
There's also a bunch of academy players, including Alfie Whiteman.

 

Return !!??

 

Ticket information for the Milan games:
https://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/2022/november/spurs-v-ac-milan-ticket-news/

Home tie on March 8th at 8pm and it's at Category B pricing.
They go on sale to season-ticket holders on January 5th and members on the 10th and 11th.

 

****.

**** **** **** ****.

 

I thought he'd previously been cleared?

 

That was for previous accusations iirc. This latest wave of issues refers specifically to their transfer dealings since 2021 and I have a horrible feeling the Bentancur and Kulu transfers were not nearly as simple as met the eye.

The fact neither of them were on the table at the beginning of the window then suddenly with days to go, both became available and at drastically marked down prices seemed suspicious at the time and seems even more suspicious now, especially when you consider that Kulu's main competition for that spot, Chiesa, was out with a bad cruciate injury but they sold him anyway.

I hope this is a proverbial in a tea cup but those deals looked too good to be true from day 1 and the whispers at the moment suggest that they were part of an elaborate fiddling scheme to help Juve balance their books.

Worrying.

 

That's not necessarily true: we were negotiating with Deki since before the January window opened, not least because Allegri wasn't playing him

Bentancur, on the other hand, he did come out of nowhere after weeks of being linked to Weston McKennie - and given Boca Juniors had a 50% sell-on fee it begs the question why Juve were happy to break even

 

The only reason he wasn't playing was the fact that Chiesa is so good. But then in mid Jan 2022 it was revealed that the Italian would require anterior cruciate surgery and miss the rest of the season. At that point common wisdom was that Kulu would understandably be taken off the table in light of the fact that he was Chiesa's (rather good) understudy. Only he wasn't.

I mentioned this at the time we signed him, it struck me as odd then and it seems odder now.

 

It's less surprising when you take a gander at their matches and see that Bernardschi was preferred as Chiesa's understudy pre-January, while after signing Vlahovic they tended to play Dybala on the right

That's why Juve fans were saying Deki is ****e when we signed him, because they assumed that's why Allegri preferred Bernardschi and not, say, Allegri messed up

That's why Bentancur looks more iffy, given Juve had every reason to ask a bigger fee but didn't even though half the fee went to Boca, so it didn't really offset the €70m they paid for Vlahovic

 

Yes you're right.

At this stage though it is pure speculation. The one reassurance is that I doubt Levy would've gone near Fabio if any of this mud would eventually stick. Said the same to ppl shouting 'rapist!' when we approached Bissouma. Not a chance Levy sanctions that deal if the rumours were in any way true.

He has kept things remarkably kosher for over two decades and it is highly unlikely he'd be clumsy enough at this stage of ENIC's tenure to let a scandal slip through the cracks. In fact our biggest scandals since Levy took over are probably the way we sacked BMJ (which I maintain to this day is the reason we can't have nice things), the non starter with Harry Redknapp which Levy quite visibly remained neutral on, and a number of performances on the pitch. They've been truly scandalous.

 

The end of the Archway Sheet Metals saga sits uneasy with me.

 

And three words. European. Super. League.

 

I'm not saying that there wasn't any dodgy **** going on, but they were both available.
Villa were trying to sign Bentancur and had a £20m bid turned down.
Juve wanted to complete the signing of Zakaria before selling him, which happened late.
It went through on January 31st and we signed Bentancur later the same day.

If I remember correctly the Kulusevski deal was similar.
They'd been chasing Vlahovic for a while, supposedly competing with the filth for his signature.
Signed him, felt they had too many attacking players and then sold us Kulusevski.

 

It does beg the question if Paratici was in contact with Juve

We were strongly linked with Vlahovic in the summer of 2021 and his name bubbled up again prior to January
At the same time, Deki was strongly linked throughout January - and reports after the fact said we'd been in discussions since December

It does look like we came to an arrangement, where, if we stepped out of the Vlahovic race, Deki would be happening - which begs the question how Bentancur came into it

 

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Saturday lunchtime kickoffs?

 

We play Motherwell on Friday in a behind closed doors friendly

We're also playing Nice at the stadium on December 21, this time with fans and, hopefully, two-time World Cup-winning captain Hugo Lloris leading out the team