January Transfer Thread 2024

[Pól]

We have Maddison

And when we don’t have Maddison we have Oliver fucking Skipp

 

[Richard Arlison]

And when we don’t have Maddison we have Oliver fucking Skipp

I’d fucking love to have Griezmann at the club don’t get me wrong.

I’m also not one that thinks you can’t sign good players because you already have good players. BUT Griezmann looks to be the undisputed main dog where he is and I don’t see him giving up Madrid life to compete with Maddison and get kicked up in the air every week at this stage of his career.

Think we need a younger more ambitious model if we move GLC on. But also GLC is a pretty handy Maddison back up for now

 

[Murphy]

Jeez Louise SC have their begging bowl out again. Because the club have signed a player the members are being marched to the bank to donate. Apparently it costs 5k a year to run SC and a lot of the affiliations are not earning them money anymore

How does it cost that much

 

[Muttley]

Lets just pray Porro and Udogie stay fit all season.

That's the only real weakness in depth I see at the moment.

Don't you feel GK may need bolstering in the back up?

 

[Mostly wrong]

Don't you feel GK may need bolstering in the back up?

Forster is about as good a keeper you can get thats happy to sit on the bench all season. Having roughly equal talented keepers just causes issues whenever there's a howler, people wouldn't shut the fuck up about Kepa when Chavs bought Mendy, Henderson at Utd when De Gea went to shit for a while, Raya and Ramsdale at Arse..
Keepers rarely pick up a bad injury, it's a free spot on the team for a backup to have HG or club trained status, as all our backup keepers do.

 

[WPHIII]

Forster is about as good a keeper you can get thats happy to sit on the bench all season. Having roughly equal talented keepers just causes issues whenever there's a howler, people wouldn't shut the fuck up about Kepa when Chavs bought Mendy, Henderson at Utd when De Gea went to shit for a while, Raya and Ramsdale at Arse..
Keepers rarely pick up a bad injury, it's a free spot on the team for a backup to have HG or club trained status, as all our backup keepers do.

I would think there are lower-level keepers floating around who are at least better profile fits for what Ange needs out of his keeper than Forster. Look at Jason Steele's career before he wound up on Brighton, for instance. He's not a great keeper overall and that shows in who he's played for for the entirety of his 20s, but he can at least kind of do the ball-playing that Brighton demand and now he's actually gotten games for them and it's not been completely disastrous. Probably not a thing for this window but I think Forster has to be swapped out this summer for someone more like that.

 

[Maureen]

Levy should send a carriage to fetch him.

Lol

 

[BrightonSpurs]

40m*
27m*
35m rising to 40m*
40m*
17m*

Around 170m spent.

- the Kane money
- winks £10m

 

[Sir Archibald Crooks]

I dare say that Spurs were not run that well in the 70s. Yes, they recruited attacking talents like Villa & Ardiles (but they, like a hots of other English clubs, turned down the chance to sign Maradona for around £60,000) in the last 70s - but basically all thru the 70sæ Spurs "forgot" to sign quality defenders and quality goalie (after Pat Jennings was sold to...Woolwich).
(Brian Clough at Not. Forest had a vision - at a relatively small club).
Here are Spurs league positions in the 70's, and apart for ending 3rd in 70-71, it's far from impressive:

79/80		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	15	10	17	52:62	-10	40:44	14	Keith Burkinshaw
78/79		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	13	15	14	48:61	-13	41:43	11	Keith Burkinshaw
76/77		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	12	9	21	48:72	-24	33:51	22
75/76		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	14	15	13	63:63	0	43:41	9	Terry Neill
74/75		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	13	8	21	52:63	-11	34:50	19
73/74		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	14	14	14	45:50	-5	42:42	11
72/73		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	16	13	13	58:48	10	45:39	8	Bill Nicholson
71/72		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	19	13	10	63:42	21	51:33	6
70/71		First Division (- 91/92)	First Tier	19	14	9	54:33	21	52:32	3

Yes of course, we went down because Bill Nics great side of the early 70s all got old around the same time and we bought badly and appointed a dud of a manager in Neill. I was responding to a post that said how our success of the early to mid 80s could have just been luck and my point was it wasnt.

From around 77/78 onwards we made some great decisions on the football side that led to the success from 80/81 to around 86/7. The league was much more changeable then, no one bar Liverpool were entrenched in the top 3 or 4 season after season so league placings varied more. 81/82 is still the best Spurs side i've seen. That didnt happen because of luck.

Anyway this is the transfer thread so i'll leave it there.

 

[Tomo]

View: https://x.com/spurs_connect/status/1745228965462102380?s=46&t=Gc6HrWVZT0mtSXU7r8ZBIQ

 

[Starks]

View: https://x.com/spurs_connect/status/1745228965462102380?s=46&t=Gc6HrWVZT0mtSXU7r8ZBIQ

Yeah I'm happy with that approach.

Vermeeren, Bardghji, Wharton, Hackney.

Any of them. Loan back until end of the season.

 

[Brian Fantana]

Agreed but all turned sour in late 80's early 90's when rebuilding East stand cost double its original budget, debt reached circa £20m (when Spurs total revenue was a fraction of that, top players like Linkeker cost under £1.5m) a vast sum at the time. Things so dire Scholar (then Chairman) tried to sell Spurs to Robert Maxwell (later stole zillions from pension funds before dying) and only rescued from Maxwell by Sugar buying us.

Scholar turned a relatively wealthy club into a club with high debts through poor management, failed diversification into sports clothing etc.

Problem was the debts didn't change, no sugar daddies around, so Sugar sold off any assets he could and cut costs where possible so as to pay down debt.

Footballwise we had an excellent manager in David Pleat until 1987 followed by Terry Venables, another excellent manager both of whom put together very good teams with top players and came close to silverware (close to title in 1987, won FA Cup 1991), but Venables tenure ran in parallel with Sugar's cost cutting.

From the time Venables left Spurs (circa 1993) and rest of 90's we had squads with a few 'stars' (eg Sherringham) but much of the team were of lower quality - there just wasn't the money to buy quality players throughout the team - but for example in 1994 we brought in Klinsman, Dumitrescu and Popescu when we already had Sherringham and Anderton.

But the teams were not finishing high up the table and this coincided with the start of PL where finishing high up the table and playing in europe brought in large sums of money.

So Spurs were in the position where we had 'so so squads' needing more quality but not having the money to buy them in during the more money orientated PL. And the squad simply deteriorated over the 90's as the best players moved on or retired and there wasn't the money to bring in the good players.

The hard times really came into focus under manager Christian Gross in about 1997 with Spurs toying with relegation - and a few years when getting over 40 points was the season objective. .

The league positions reflect where we were :

1996/97 - 10th
1997/98 - 14th
1998/99 - 11th (but League Cup winner)
1999/00 - 10th
2000/01 - 12th
2001/02 - 9th (Sugar sells 27% of Spurs to ENIC, Levy becomes Chairman)
2002/03 - 10th
2003/04 - 14th
2004/05 - 9th
2005/06 - 5th (start of Spurs turnround under Martin Jol, and 'Lasagne gate')
2006/07 - 5th (Sugar sells rest of his shares to ENIC who them have majority control of Spurs)

So for a decade in the 90's through into about 2004 Spurs league position was much closer to what we now would associate with the likes of Crystal Palace or Fulham and reflects the quality of squad we had at that time. And to be clear, league position and europe determined most of the money received by clubs and cups generated very little - very different to pre PL times when winning cups generated decent money.

The start of the PL also started an era when match crowds increased and match day revenues increased - but Spurs missed out having a relatively small stadium of 36k capacity.

So by the time enic took majority ownership of Spurs
- the squad was in a poor way, but improving from 2004 onwards when our first Sporting Director, Frank Arnesen shredded the squad and brought in over 20 players for first team and u21's, lots of duds but also a handful of gems. Sadly Abramovich poached Arnesen a year later.
- A stadium not generating money and requiring replacement
- Very little assets left inside Spurs
- Low profitability and cash generation = very limited ability to buy good players.
- Spurs were firmly embedded in bottom half of the table, past glories many years in the past

So that's where Levy/enic started - with Spurs in a very bad place..

Taken 20 years to get to where we are partly poor choices (eg of managers), certainly Haringey council politics screwed the stadium development by a decade, Oil money and state money (including Russia financed Abramovich) buying PL clubs vastly increased the cost of doing business, covid intervening for 3 years just as the stadium opened and other outside changes being some of the reasons.

Could Levy have done things better or more quickly - quite possibly. But Hicks and Gilette screwed up Liverpool for years, and Glazers have been doing the same to ManU - both saddling their clubs with huge debts without improving the clubs fortunes - and Ashley trashed Newcastle etc, so we'd have been a lot worse with many other owners.

Great summary.

 

[Brian Fantana]

That's an excellent summary of the period, can't disagree with a word of it.

I was curious about this bit - "certainly Haringey council politics screwed the stadium development by a decade". Although living 1,000 km away, I sort of knew that they weren't helpful at times but didn't know it was so prolonged and harmful. Could you summarise briefly what you know?

Impossible to briefly summarise, books could be written. Basically they gave no help or inclination to provide guidance to build it. I’d say if the riots hadn’t happened it’s highly possibly we wouldn’t have had the momentum to start with building it. You only have to look now at the high road west scheme and how at odds they are with the club over that. It’s not for this thread really but they were and seem still to be hugely against regeneration in the Borough.

I know we take the piss out of SC but their stadium thread is really good going back well over a decade. If somebody could be bothered to go through it all there’s a book to be written.

Edit: I see Spursidol has done one, but my goodness, it was a tumultuous time for the club. Levy would have taken us to Stratford and it seemed the council would have let it happen. From memory Lammy stepped in, fan groups protested and Johnson got involved (after conning us into bidding for the stadium in the first place, where we were never going to win but that’s another story).

 

[Brian Fantana]

View: https://x.com/spurs_connect/status/1745228965462102380?s=46&t=Gc6HrWVZT0mtSXU7r8ZBIQ

Yeah he said this in an article earlier in the week. Interesting he is repeating it again. Personally it’s the route I think we should go down now each window if we can. After the success we had with Dele it’s amazing we didn’t keep doing it properly. Guess it was such a mess transfer wise under Hitchen we just never got round to it.

 

[Murphy]

Yeah he said this in an article earlier in the week. Interesting he is repeating it again. Personally it’s the route I think we should go down now each window if we can. After the success we had with Dele it’s amazing we didn’t keep doing it properly. Guess it was such a mess transfer wise under Hitchen we just never got round to it.

How much has Udogie adapting well been because he was loaned out beforehand to get some quality first-team experience?

 

[zin]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-gaQfJupR4

If anyone is struggling to sleep, Alasdair Gold has just uploaded.

I stuck this in an AI summariser so some bits are quite funny to read.

In the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a surprise decision to join Tottenham Hotspur despite a last-minute offer from Bayern Munich," Alist Gold discusses the unexpected turn of events in Radu Dragusin's transfer. Dragusin had agreed to join Spurs but Bayern Munich made a late attempt to hijack the deal, offering him a significantly higher salary. Gold applauds Dragusin's decision, which may indicate a sense of integrity, and sheds light on rumors of the transfer fees and player swaps. Manager Ange Postecoglou and the team's executives, including owner Daniel Levy, had reportedly been planning for this transfer for some time. Dragusin's former agent, Floren Mana, has been vocal about the transfer process. Despite past experiences and Mana's talkative reputation, Gold expresses hope that Dragusin will succeed in his loan move to Tottenham. Additionally, the video touches on Tottenham's signing of Timo Werner from RB Leipzig and the potential impact both players could have on the team

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• 00:00:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham", Alist Gold discusses the unexpected turn of events in the transfer of Radu Dragusin from Sheffield United to Tottenham Hotspur. Gold explains that Dragusin had agreed to join Spurs but Bayern Munich made a late attempt to hijack the deal, offering him a significantly higher salary. Dragusin ultimately chose to honor his agreement with Tottenham, despite the financial incentive from Bayern. Gold expresses admiration for Dragusin's decision and the potential integrity involved, as well as shedding light on the rumored transfer fees and player swaps
• 00:05:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham", the speaker discusses Radu Dragusin's potential move to Tottenham Hotspur and his former agent Floren Mana, who has been vocal about the transfer process. Dragusin had reportedly turned down an offer from Bayern Munich to join Tottenham, and Floren Mana defended the decision, stating that his client prioritized his career over money. The speaker expresses hope that Dragusin will learn from past experiences and succeed in his loan move to Tottenham. The agent, Mana, has been described as talkative and closely associated with Dragusin since his early career days
• 00:10:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham," the speaker discusses the transfer of Radu Dragusin to Tottenham Hotspur. The speaker mentions that the team's owner Daniel Levy and sports director Johan Lang have been working hard on this transfer, which is a five and a half year deal with an option for another year. The speaker notes that Levy and Lang have been planning for this transfer window with Postecoglou and other team executives. Dragusin's decision to join Tottenham came as a surprise, as there were reports suggesting he was leaning towards a move to Germany with Bayern Munich. However, the speaker explains that these reports did not make much sense given Dragusin's subsequent decision. The interest in Dragusin has been there for some time, with the team's executives reportedly watching him play for Genoa in Italy in December 2022. Dragusin was brought to Juventus from Mediaus RasenBallsport by Fabio Paratici in 2018, and although there was interest from other European clubs, Paratici took him in and made his debut for the team in the Champions League at the age of 19. Dragusin was then loaned out to Sassuolo for the second half of the season, but it was his loan spell at Genoa where his form improved, leading to a permanent signing after their promotion back to Serie A
• 00:15:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham," the speaker discusses the transfer of Radu Dragusin to Tottenham Hotspur. The speaker notes that Dragusin previously received advice from Georgio Chiellini while at Juventus and that they have a history together. It is also mentioned that Dragusin's data and statistics suggest he would fit well into Tottenham's system, and he has the physical attributes and aerial skills to handle the Premier League. The speaker highlights his high tackle success rate, low number of dribbles past, and versatility as reasons why Dragusin could be a valuable addition to Tottenham. Additionally, due to league rules, Dragusin could be registered as an under-21 player despite turning 21, providing Tottenham with more roster flexibility
• 00:20:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham", the speaker discusses the current homegrown player situation at Tottenham Hotspur. Due to the arrival of new players, they have exceeded the 17-man limit. Sergio Reguilon, who is also back at the club but has no future at Tottenham, won't be registered. Meanwhile, Brian Hill could potentially move due to lack of game time. Perisic is linked with going back to his former club, but they can wait until the recreation window to make a move. Radu Dragusin, the new arrival, is only eligible as a homegrown player for this season. Their current homegrown players include Emerson Royal, Porro, Romero, van den Berg, Benson, Kulusevski, Richison, Sonny, and now Vera. Spurs are pushing to get Dragusin's deal done before the 12:00 Premier League deadline on Friday to have two new signings available to play against Manchester United
• 00:25:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham," the speaker discusses Tottenham's unexpected early transfers in the January window forcenter backs Radu Dragusin and Timo Werner. According to the speaker, Tottenham typically waits until the last minute to make transfers, but this year, they Actively pursued and secured the signings of both players within the first two weeks of the window. The speaker praises the club's proactive approach and the belief of manager Ange Postecoglou in the players. Dragusin is seen as competition for regular center backs Romero and Vaneze, who have had injury issues and suspensions this season. The speaker also notes that Bayern Munich and Napoli have shown interest in Dias, and the door may now be open for him to leave Tottenham
• 00:30:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham," the speaker discusses the potential transfer of German forward Timo Werner from RB Leipzig to Tottenham. The speaker emphasizes the affordability of the transfer fee and the relief for Spurs in terms of Werner's wages. The speaker also expresses their belief that Werner will fit well into Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou's system, highlighting his impressive goalscoring record across all competitions and his versatility as a striker. Werner himself is quoted in the video, expressing his happiness to join the club and his excitement to play at the new stadium. He also emphasizes his desire to win titles and feels that his experience in the Premier League will benefit him at Tottenham
• 00:35:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham", the speaker discusses the signings of Radu Dragusin and Timo Werner by Tottenham and their potential impact on the team. Dragusin reportedly felt the pressure of his time at Chelsea and was unsure about returning to the Premier League, but Postecoglou assured him he would be turned into a star. Additionally, Ben Davies and Perisic are currently injured, and their return is uncertain. Tottenham is also still looking for a number eight signing, and may consider a loan deal for a young player like Arthur Verdi. The press conference for thenew signings is expected on Friday, and the team's first game after the transfer window will be against Manchester United
• 00:40:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "Radu Dragusin arrives after a decision Postecoglou will love with Timo Werner ready for Tottenham", the speaker discusses the potential lineup and squad news for Tottenham Hotspur's upcoming matches against Manchester City and Brentford. With Kalvin Phonina returning to a left-sided role in the midfield, Richarlison and Dejan Keskiški's pace could be utilised on the wings. James Madison is also expected to return from Manchester United, potentially for the Man City game. Spurs are set to receive a mini break before the game, and Keski-Dejan mentioned that they too will have extra time to rest. The anticipation builds around Radu Dragusin's arrival and the possibility of his debut in a Tottenham shirt. The speaker expresses excitement for these upcoming fixtures, acknowledging the challenges but also hinting at a potential boost in morale and squad depth for the team

 

[MVP]

I 'd like Soule, Vermeeren, Bardghji, new CB in. Then in the summer window it's mainly outs, get rid of Sess and a few others.

 

[PH1882]

Would love a creative player as we often seem to lack ideas when Maddison isn’t on the pitch.

 

[Brian Fantana]

How much has Udogie adapting well been because he was loaned out beforehand to get some quality first-team experience?

Yeah exactly, although he was in a top league so it was easier for him, but he did have to move country. Plus with the English lads it gives them the chance to stay at their current club, get their heads round the move and get sorted for the summer. It’s a better bedding in period.

 

[Richard Arlison]

I 'd like Soule, Vermeeren, Bardghji, new CB in. Then in the summer window it's mainly outs, get rid of Sess and a few others.

You want all that this January?