January 2015 Transfer Window DISCUSSION Thread

[scott]

There is something I do believe though, if the answers were easy then we would have answered them by now. Getting in the right player did not happen, you can believe that's down to ENIC being tight, you can believe there was no one available, it may have been a combo of the two but in honestly it goes down to what you want to think and I am not here to tell you that!

good post. we can agree to disagree and not call each other names.

I do believe they are being tight & short sighted. say 1 decent striker in means we get 4th. u easily make back what u spent on signing that striker.

in general I feel levy has done a poor job for many years now. hiring & firing managers all the time included.
he stuck his neck out and sacked harry and took on AVB which went against most fans opinion.
it didn't work out. he sacks avb. which cost millions which could be spent on this striker we need anyway.
again, the levy supporters our fine with wasting millions on sacking managers etc. but not on strengthening weak areas.
it was him who picked avb. It went wrong. he has no accountability which is wrong to me.

 

[ILSpur]

please don't make me be levy! ok well first of all I have hired scouts and people to do this job for me.
but lets ignore that part to suit your biased opinion.

& if I was levy , I wouldn't have left it so late to sign now. I am a big bony fan. sounds weird saying that,
I was last season too. I would have gone in at 20m with him in the summer. it was pretty clear they wanted 20m. so then it was just a matter of getting bony to agree to join us. he may have said no of course.
but we are a step up from the swans so we would have had a decent chance.

I also wanted suarez when he was leaving ajax. I have heard 2 different reasons we didn't get him. 1 is they wanted a few million more than we were willing to pay. the other is that we weren't sure if he would suit the premiership. anyway, I would have paid what ajax wanted.

I also thought kane was nowhere near good enough for us. he looked average on loan. & looks clumsy to me. glad he has made me look very wrong indeed.

anyway, so I would have gone all out for bony this summer. also, they like naughton & carroll. so we could have thrown them in to the deal. if it was workable. knock 10m off for both of them.

if I made the mistake of leaving it till the last few days of jan. then off the top of my head u could have gone for someone like demba ba. knows the premiership and London. wouldn't need much time to bed in.
could help kane. works hard, chips in with some goals. I am not saying it would be easy to get him or that he would be a superstar for us. but he would improve our attacking options.
that is the sort of player that is realistic for us now. if we couldn't agree terms or they say no, then someone else like him.
anyway, I think there are plenty of strikers we could have got that could have helped kane out and would be handy for us. I am realistically. I am not saying top world class strikers.

Suarez was at Ajax five years ago, Ba is 29, and just because we offered 20 MM for Bony, it doesn't mean that we would have gotten him. He went for 25 apparently and had his choice of multiple clubs to go to. If Swansea were to agree to 20 MM deals, we could never compete with the pay structure that other clubs could.

Look, I get all of the comments and laments about how we didn't get a striker, I do, but I think that when pushed, most people can't supply a really good answer of who we should or could have gotten this window. Not being a dick, but you brought up Luis Suarez from five years ago! That just shows that there is an inherent lack of good, affordable striker options, and the complexity added to everything because of both Soldado and Ade just makes it all worse.

 

[Éperons]

I'm not going to say that I don't wish we picked up another solid striker, but the reality is that there just isn't a whole lot of good options, and frankly, nobody was looking to sell.

Well, one chairman was looking to shift a striker. Problem is, he's the type of guy that you simply can't do business with.

 

[ILSpur]

that's if you think we didn't need a striker in the summer? we needed one then. and that's when most of us thought kane was average.

Sure, but everyone was tentatively hoping that Soldado would find his form, Ade wasn't affected by the juju, and Poch was just starting to get the team to play his system which could shake out some of the problems we had before.

 

[The Yinzer]

Mirallas has hardly featured this season, especially after the penalty incident

Those were just some of many examples - there were options out there - deals were possible

Pretty sure Everton only has had one game since the penalty incident (Crystal Palace) and Mirallas started it.

Edited: I see that YidoBuckler already made the same point. Only better.

 

[ILSpur]

Well, one chairman was looking to shift a striker. Problem is, he's the type of guy that you simply can't do business with.

Sure, according to this guy

 

[scott]

Suarez was at Ajax five years ago, Ba is 29, and just because we offered 20 MM for Bony, it doesn't mean that we would have gotten him. He went for 25 apparently and had his choice of multiple clubs to go to. If Swansea were to agree to 20 MM deals, we could never compete with the pay structure that other clubs could.

Look, I get all of the comments and laments about how we didn't get a striker, I do, but I think that when pushed, most people can't supply a really good answer of who we should or could have gotten this window. Not being a dick, but you brought up Luis Suarez from five years ago! That just shows that there is an inherent lack of good, affordable striker options, and the complexity added to everything because of both Soldado and Ade just makes it all worse.

it doesn't mean we wouldn't have gotten him or we would. so both our arguments aren't conclusive!

yeh ba is experienced too. 29. I don't see any problem in that. he can do a decent job for the next 3 years say. we could do with him & kane. then in the summer go out and get someone younger and higher quality if we can. I think ba would have been a good signing in this limited window.

me bringing up suarez from 5 years ago isn't because theres a lack of options. I brought it up because its another striker we could have got before he was unattainable. but read in to it what u want. and then jump to conclusions.

 

[scott]

Sure, but everyone was tentatively hoping that Soldado would find his form, Ade wasn't affected by the juju, and Poch was just starting to get the team to play his system which could shake out some of the problems we had before.

but we still need a striker! talk about trying to muddy the waters to avoid the obvious.

 

[Tomo]

tomo the other thing that annoys me about these people who say we don't have the money etc.
they are fine with buys like vlad, capoue, benji etc. whats that, 20m off the top of my head?
sometimes we buy a few fairly unheard of 5-8m players and they are all fine with that.
we ask to spend that same money on an area we are short and they go on meltdown.
ironically they call us melters!

I have no intention of getting into a cunt off with anyone over this, we had a poor transfer window in the middle of a good season. I have always said Levy is a great tactican but poor stratagist our very own Gordon Brown, he looks at bargains and at extracting the best possible price but without looking at the big picture in terms of short term success (i.e this season) and long term issues such as players like Eriksen and Lloris wanting to leave through lack of ambition.

We have been in this situation time and time again, we need a left back, doesn't happen, need a striker, doesn't happen season after season and when we finally fix a position another position becomes a problem so we don't really move forward. I hate saying this because I hate Woolwich but we are kind of in Wenger's Woolwich boat in that we don't strengthen properly our weak areas and they fester. That being said Poch has worked magic with the fitness, our injuries are miminal and we need it to stay that way.

Best chance for the future for me is getting Poch and Mitchell to build everything from the ground up over a long period so we can live with Levy being a tight fisted barstard.

 

[The Swellhead Spur]

Sure, according to this guy

Wow the most paedophile looking Chairman there is!

 

[ILSpur]

it doesn't mean we wouldn't have gotten him or we would. so both our arguments aren't conclusive!

Sure, but I'm not the one who is upset that we didn't sign someone. I'm just trying to offer a practical viewpoint.

yeh ba is experienced too. 29. I don't see any problem in that. he can do a decent job for the next 3 years say. we could do with him & kane. then in the summer go out and get someone younger and higher quality if we can. I think ba would have been a good signing in this limited window.

Last season at Chelsea, Ba had 8 goals in 29 games in all competitions. Soldado, who had (let's be realistic) a pretty shitty season for a striker, with 11 goals in 36 games. So, actually, Soldado had a slightly better goalscoring season than Ba. I guess this is where we differ, but I'm not typically a big fan of us bringing in a 29 year old striker who's goalscoring was worse than our massively under-performing, big money one.

me bringing up suarez from 5 years ago isn't because theres a lack of options. I brought it up because its another striker we could have got before he was unattainable. but read in to it what u want. and then jump to conclusions.

Well, since we're not concerning ourselves with who is actually available during the January 2015 transfer window as we are talking about the January 2015 transfer window, I'll now throw Ibrahimovich into the ring. We should have signed Ibrahimovich from Ajax in 2004, then all of our striker difficulties would be resolved.

 

[scott]

i disagree. its a practical viewpoint to say we could have got a decent striker in the summer or maybe even jan. sorry if this has to be limited to jan window chat but i believe we should have done this in the summer. u have a very weak argument against this. as for ba at chelsea, thats just one of those situations where they dont fit in & it doesnt work. u can the same about salah or schurrle. but dont mean they wont fit in elsewhere. i personally think ba would have done a decent job. he has done well this season & looked good against us. also, how many of those apperances for chelsea are 90mins? i bet a lot are sub apperances

 

[VirginiaSpur]

Say 1 decent striker in means we get 4th. u easily make back what u spent on signing that striker.

in general I feel levy has done a poor job for many years now. hiring & firing managers all the time included.
he stuck his neck out and sacked harry and took on AVB which went against most fans opinion.
it didn't work out. he sacks avb. which cost millions which could be spent on this striker we need anyway.
again, the levy supporters our fine with wasting millions on sacking managers etc. but not on strengthening weak areas.
it was him who picked avb. It went wrong. he has no accountability which is wrong to me.

Problem is, one decent striker in doesn't magically mean we get 4th. He sacked Harry which only went against a small but extremely adamant and vocal minority of supporters that have been unhappy with everything anyways. After the shit that he pulled toward the end of that season most supporters felt betrayed and were happy to see Redknapp go. Most people got on board with AVB and wanted the best from him, the boo boys were those same people that just wanted Harry back and were marching around on the opening game of the season wearing Redknapp masks hoisting signs saying "I want my job back" a season after Spurs were in third place ten points clear until it was Redknapp that decided he wanted Nelsen and Saha, and then fucked off for 2 months while courting the England job before missing out and popping back up with 4 games to go acting like nothing had happened, and feigning total fucking surprise when he got sacked as a result.

AVB didn't work out. We've all reconciled ourselves to that fact, even the folks that actually wanted AVB to succeed Tottenham to succeed. But the folks complaining right now are by and large the same sort who were calling for Pochettino's head before the end of September.

Levy owns a significant share of the club and has every incentive possible to see it succeed and Tottenham grow into a mega-club. And we've tried going down the route of huge acquisitions and mega spending, while making wholesale changes across every area of the squad and ambitious signings, and Eriksen aside only Chadli has shown that he might have been worth the price of admission. It didn't work out, so why would another round of 'ambitious spending' be any more successful? Typical reasons offered: "Because we spent 120m and not 200m." "Because our net-spend isn't ambitious enough."

Frankly, there wasn't a lot of movement this window, and it depresses me a bit that we didn't shift more dead-weight than we did, irrespective of incoming players. My dream would have probably been about 5-6 out and 2-3 in: one defender, one midfielder or winger, and one striker, but no club does that sort of business in January and I never suffered from the delusion that it was likely.

People are reacting so strongly against the spending advocates because we don't want this club to become the next City or Chelsea, no matter how many new or old supporters are signing up to this forum banging on about showing some ambition to sign Milner or Schurrle and Salah, or whoever. 90% of the players that some upset fans have offered as possible transfer targets since last night were not remotely realistic targets, and a lot of us don't think we should be shelling out exorbitant sums for players whose contracts expire in 6 months.

 

[scott]

nah. id have used the money we spent on players like vlad, capoue & benji. i cant think many thought yeh, lets go those players. so id have spent no extra than what we have.

 

[DeeGee]

You're telling me that if we really tried, we couldn't have gotten rid of Ade and Kaboul this window and gotten 2 players who are better options than them? Even if it is on a loss, it would have made sense just to improve the team. We are acting like a poverty stricken club.

Who could we have bought then? We haven't got £30m to lay out without selling like MCFC. Chavs had to sell Schurlle to buy. Burnley were not selling Ings ( who is leaving for free in the summer).
So, who could we have got for £5m?
I'm sure if anyone would have offered to buy Adebayor and someone would have been available for the price we let him go for we would have sold him. But to loan him out, pay his wages and get nobody in makes no sense. We may as well keep him. Give Spam a striker - one who will probably play his nuts off to get bought, and pay his wages whilst we can't get one in return. It only makes sense if we can loan a striker in who balances the wage deficit.
Capoue did not want to leave -on loan - and neither does anyone else have to if they don't want to.

Face it, we are not able to spend unless we sell. Players do not have to leave unless they want to.
Remember, when we spent £103.7 m on the last 7 players we sold £113.5m (making 9.8m)
So, why does anyone think (especially with the NDP) we will suddenly start throwing big money around?

I said from the off that there would be a lot of disappointed people. Loans were our only option.
MP, has been brought in because of his ability to get the most out of young players whilst playing decent football. Mitchell was brought for the same type of reason. It says to me that we know that money is going to be tight. We will have to be, to an extent, self sufficient until the new stadium is completed ( and probably a little while longer). The onus is on buying low and selling high and promoting from within.
Kind of like that south london lot did. They never spent anything from 2005/6-2011/12. They made about £40m. They had a 60k stadium.

 

[pleb]

They need to get one over me for finding them out time after time - and now appear to have labelled fans Gooner Melts for demanding ONE transfer in the window

Why do people try and get one over you?
You have been doing it to yourself for ages!
Get out of the Twilight Zone Arcy and talk sense not shit!

 

[BentalebWho]

Sooo ... 40 million on De Bruyne, anyone ?

Not 40 but we should be looking into this.

 

[Louisiana Hotspur]

 

[BentalebWho]

Except the Ade intervention this feels very much like a Poch, Baldini and Mitchell window. Ade was one step too far for Daniel.

 

[BentalebWho]

Also this notion that if we buy a striker we get 4th annoys the shit out of me. After all the "failures" we've had up front what makes you think buying another one instantly mean we achieve our goal. That's why we got Soldado and look how that turned out.