Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

The same naive sentiment that was churning out crap like

‘the trophies will come’ about 4 years ago whilst some(rare) were reminding the cloud cuckoo landers that the players will be older and they will get itchy feet...the success needed to be when the team were at their peak

fast forward 4 years and most of them have changed the goalposts to suit the current climate at our club

 

You don't get it, do you?

You actually think people want to stick around at a team that's banned from the Champions League for two years?

De Bruyne/Sterling won't be playing in the Champions League next season, which ever so slightly ****s up their CL-related bonuses, and their agents won't be happy to hear this as it ****ed up their CL-related 10%

Oh, and if you could provide a link to any story linking various Sheikh Mansour team players with ban-related departures that would help your argument just a tad - and, no, Leroy Sane to Bayern doesn't count as that was rumbling as that story existed long before the ban was mooted, let alone issued

 

3 of Kanes last 4 lay off have been down to treatment given out by opposing teams ie Utds defence at Wembley and Delph v city in the champions league, to sell him because of his "fitness " would go down as one of Levy's biggest cock ups In my opinion
If we did sell who would we get to replace him ?

 

Twist of the Knife Watch
CalcioMercato are reporting that we're considering a £40m bid for Marcel Sabitzer in the summer

I can't be alone in imagining him reporting for training, meeting up with Dier, Alderweireld and Tanganga, and asking "...who are you?" given how little interaction he had with them the other night...

Yet Another Bloody Goalkeeper Watch
Due to our bid to be the first team to play an entire starting xi of goalkeepers, the Daily Wail have taken a break from pretending that yesterday's budget sounds uncannily like the Labour manifesto pledges they ridiculed as "unworkable" or "COMMUNIZM" to report that we're looking to sign Bournemouth goalkeeper (duh...) Aaron Ramsdale, who has been performing well on loan at Wimbledon this season

Well enough to challenge for our first-choice keeper spot in the near future? No? Moving on...

Nobody Tell D.G.C...
ESPN report that we're looking to sign Raul Jimenez from Wolves this summer, presumably because we've realised he's about the only member of their first team who isn't a Jorge Mendes client so we're considerably less likely to experience a financial prison romance during negotiations

...well, apart from the fact he's contracted until 2023, which puts Wolves firmly in charge of any negotiations

Milik Watch
Well here's something interesting...

ArenaNapoli and CalcioNapoli24 both report that Napoli have hit a wall in contract negotiations with Arkadiusz Milik, as Milik is demanding £70k a week to extend his contract beyond the end of next season yet Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis is refusing to pay him more than £50k - and the Woolwich Nomads are reportedly willing to offer £35m

As I said a few days ago, as options for backup go Milik is actually a damn good one: he's been consistent at sticking the ball in the net at Ajax and Napoli for several seasons now, he's an aerial threat which adds a new dimension to our attack, he's also got a good first touch coupled with the strength to hold up the ball - so while he's not as dynamic going forward as Piatek nor is he a goalscoring Terminator like Lewandowski, he is certainly a player who can change a game when coming on or lead the line when we realise that resting Harry Kane is an option available to us

 

Overpaying Ozil's taught them nothing, has it?

 

To be honest, Milik looks like the exact player we need in reserve as he looks like Janssen with talent

 

The Fail might want to keep up.
He was on loan at Wimbledon last season and has played virtually every game for Bournemouth in this one.
He missed their game against Watford in the league and was left out for the cups.

 

Somebody must have left that story on a USB stick in a drawer

 

So, Paul Mitchell leaves Tottenham Hotspur after feeling restricted and frustrated by Levy, goes and becomes responsible for building the team that just made Tottenham look absolutely stupid in the Champions League.

He's their Head of Recruitment.

At what point does Levy accept he may have made some errors, eat some humble pie, and not just blame the managers and even the players.

If I were him I'd be seriously plotting and planning to get both Pochettino and Mitchell back and together ASAP. No disrespect to Mourinho, but unless coronavirus suspends the season until Kane, Son and Bergwijn get back form injury, I don't see us having any joy, now or next season.

 

Complete and utter bollocks

The only player in Leipzig's team the other night who Mitchell had anything to do with signing was Nkunku. On the other hand, the likes of Werner and Sabitzer were signed at the time when Mitchell was recommending we sign the likes of N'jie and N'koudou

But don't let the concept of time get in the way of a good Narrative, Twitter...

 

I hope you are correct and Levy plans to bring someone in who can do a better job.

 

I'm certainly right in terms of the timeline: Mitchell was with the club until September 2016, and had a 16-month notice period after that

In terms of the Leipzig squad, however...
Timo Werner - signed June 2016
Marcel Sabitzer - signed May 2014, parked in Salzburg for a year afterwards
Emil Forsberg - signed January 2015
Lukas Klostermann - signed August 2014
Marcel Halstenberg - signed June 2015
Amadou Haidara - signed December 2018...after signing for RB Salzburg in July 2016
Dayot Upamecano - signed January 2017
Ibrahima Konate - signed June 2017

IIRC Spurcat wasn't complimentary about him, either, suggesting that his scouting methods mainly involved him playing Football Manager

 

However he came by them, they have happened and i'd imagine the ankle injuries in particular would have had a cumulative effect on the overall strength of that joint. Add to that the popular perception that we can't get any decent strikers in because they wouldn't want to play second fiddle to Kane and the way forward becomes clear, though I'd also add that I wouldn't trust Levy to use the money wisely in the way Liverpool did when they sold Coutinho.

 

I don't understand this thinking.

We signed a bloke that had won the World Cup, the Euros, three Scudettos, the Italian Cup, the Europa League and reached numerous finals.
Giroud was willing to sign for us and he's won the World Cup and six other trophies.
Other clubs sign backup and competition strikers all the time.

 

There is this difference that @Spurlock keeps mentioning. Our competitors have mostly won something over the past few seasons. Sitting on the bench and getting a winner's medal is clearly more lucrative than sitting on the bench and not winning anything. This season has been a disaster in that regard....we've gone from being finalists and close to being nowhere.

 

There's one aspect that people continue to be happy to ignore: Chelsea, Man Utd or The Sheikh Mansour Team don't have to give a second's thought to paying £30m+ on somebody before paying them £75k a week to sit on the bench. On the other hand, if we pay £30m+ to sign somebody we expect that £75k a week to be spent on the pitch

The reason Llorente was happy to sign for us and Giroud was open to it was because neither of them are players approaching or at their peak, they're players who at that point of their careers have two options: starter at a player in the lower half of the table, or bench option at one in the upper half

The fact that our options for a backup striker is either somebody who acknowledges that starts won't be a regular thing like Llorente, or take a punt on somebody like Janssen, is because we're not in a position to shrug if we see some red on our spreadsheet like those clubs can and people really need to be capable of understanding this now rather than droning "prOffiTs biFoUr gLooReE" on Twitter like they keep doing every time they fail to understand something like basic mathematics

 

And that's fine.
Starting the season with a Llorente/Giroud-type on the bench and a ready prospect in reserve would've been okay.
Having neither and no alternative was ludicrous.

 

****ing Hell, Here We Go Again
So the season may be up in the air due to the Premier League showing more common sense than our ****ing government, but something never change - namely that we're once again being linked with Geoffrey Kondogbia, with Sky Sports bravely reporting this...and the fact the next story down on the Google search list is from 2018, and the fact is we were being linked with him back when LAdPCeV-B was in charge

If I didn't know better, I'd think that certain sites were already struggling to fill their content quotas...

 

Man Utd, Chelsea, Munich and Dortmund all have bidded for Jude Bellingham, the fee Birmingham want is £12.5million.

Not saying he would choose Spurs over those clubs but why haven’t they gone in for him?

 

That's a third of the fee Dortmund were reportedly going to pay last week...