Not sure if this has already been posted, but here is good old Lyall's tuppence worth:
Tottenham's transfer window was far from a disaster - Daniel Levy appears to have changed
Tottenham's transfer window was far from a disaster - Daniel Levy has changed for the better
Reported by Lyall Thomas
Published Saturday 5 September 2015 /
News
Daniel Levy has made a number of bad decisions during his time as Tottenham chairman.
Sacking good managers and selling the club’s best players have cost Spurs Champions League football season after season.
But refusing to bow to Jeremy Peace and hand over £30m for Saido Berahino is not one of them. Why? Because it would have worsened an already difficult market, set a bad precedent, cost money the club don't have and broken their new transfer policy.
Levy deserves much of the criticism he's got over the years but this time it's just not justified. Understandably, the abuse has its roots in his history of errors and the supporters’ strong desire to remain competitive for the best players and a Champions League place. But this premise is outdated and the criticism, therefore, ill-judged – irrelevant even.
If competing with the top-four, both in the market and in the league table, was Tottenham's primary aim this season then fine; the window could be branded a disaster. But this isn’t their policy. Things have changed. You’d be smashing furniture in the wrong house.
The club have recently implemented a long-term recruitment strategy that doesn’t involve competing with the top clubs in the transfer market, doesn’t even entertain the idea of panic-buying, and doesn’t put the manager under pressure to make the top-four this year. If these were never the club’s intentions, how can they be scolded for not doing them?
If there is anything Levy should be criticised for it’s not communicating this change in philosophy properly to the fans. Mauricio Pochettino, for all his cleverness in front of a microphone, has tried to, but only recently has he articulated it cleanly.
"We have five teams above us when it comes to spending (Manchester United, City, Woolwich, Chelsea and Liverpool) but our project is different to their project," he said in August. "We have young boys, mainly English, and we are trying to create a team for the future, to set the base for the following years. People maybe cannot see what our philosophy is. Sometimes you need to make a decision, sometimes you need to wait, and sometimes it is difficult for people to understand why we do not sign a player."
It’s quite simple then. Any suggestion that Pochettino is quietly furious with Levy for not landing Berahino or another centre-forward is utter nonsense. He is quite prepared to wait.
A good club and a good chairman learn from their mistakes and all the signs point to this being the case at Spurs. The recruitment drive of 2013 was grossly wasteful, with deeply disruptive consequences that Pochettino has worked hard to dissipate. Ask Brendan Rodgers how Liverpool got on with the same policy last season and how uneasy he feels about them repeating that policy this term. Tottenham would have been very foolish to make the same mistakes again and thank goodness they haven’t. The short-termism is dead and supporters should be dancing on the grave.
Is that to say the club’s new long-termism will guarantee Champions League football now or in the next four years? Not remotely. Nothing can. But for the first time in a long time, the chairman, the head coach and the club’s recruiters are united. They’re implementing a clear strategy. Villas-Boas and even Harry Redknapp will be the first to say that this hasn’t previously been the case.
Above all, to judge whether or not this strategy has been a success just days after a transfer window, or after four matches, is impossible. To brand the window a failure, Berahino or not, is nonsensical.
To decide Heung-Min Son or Clinton N'Jie, both of whom have played through the middle for either their country or their club, can't play as a centre-forward is short-sighted. This is not like training a DJ to be a doctor: more like teaching a rhythm guitarist how to play lead.
Furthermore, to burden a centre-forward as the difference between a side that scores and one that doesn’t would be to treat the team as totally one-dimensional, and the antithesis of what Pochettino is training them to be. This view is an unfortunate ill of the virtuoso-like appearance of Harry Kane and his goals last season, and is again understandable, but Pochettino wants goals from everywhere, not just his spearhead.
There has also been criticism of Levy for apparently leaving the Berahino pursuit too late, and an insinuation that he was the only target. This just isn’t accurate. The first player Spurs tried to sign this summer, the day after the season ended in fact, was Danny Ings. They then tried for Anthony Martial, then Timo Werner. Not enough targets? To blame Levy, again, would be launching torpedoes at the wrong boat. You want HMS Paul Mitchell.
Yet to criticise Mitchell and his new staff, who only began work in earnest in January, would be even more unjust than besieging the chairman. To do so would be to completely misinterpret the market, Tottenham’s place within it, and the considerable challenge Mitchell, Rob Mackenzie and David Webb have undertaken in trying to change not only the club’s recruitment methods, but also its reputation within the market, which is not good.
Ings is an excellent example of this. Spurs are not seen as the attractive destination, or even the tactical stepping stone, that they once were. Players have seen their contemporaries dwindle and fade at White Hart Lane in recent seasons. They've seen Paulinho struggle then bolt for China, Etienne Capoue outcast and offloaded to Watford, Erik Lamela trapped in purgatory, and Roberto Soldado - one of Spain's best ever goal-scorers - in complete crisis. Whatever the real reasons for this, players are suspicious towards the club. If Levy is to be criticised here, it's for helping cause this bad reputation. Nevertheless, it is going to take Mitchell and Co. more than just one transfer window to change it.
As Miguel Delaney excellently outlined in a recent
Independent column,
the transfer market has changed. The squeezed middle clubs can afford to simply say 'no'. And as Arsene Wenger recently pointed out, the top bracket of top talent has shrunk.
Therefore, as Pochettino recently stressed, Tottenham have got to be “clever”.
