Hakimi would be a fantastic signing, but cant see us splashing the required cash for him. Hakimi, Neves and Jimenez job done but no way will we buy any of them unfortunately
Chelsea, Man City & Tottenham Make Enquiries for Real Madrid Star Achraf Hakimi
Exclusive - Premier League clubs interested in Achraf Hakimi who wants guarantees over Real Madrid futurewww.90min.com
Exclusive - Premier League trio Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur have all asked Real Madrid about the availability of Achraf Hakimi, who has been on loan at Borussia Dortmund since 2018.
The Madrid-born Morocco international has impressed hugely during his time in Germany, scoring 13 times in 70 appearances for BVB, while he has picked up 10 assists in the Bundesliga during 2019/20.
Now established as one of one of Europe's most exciting attacking full backs, with the versatility to play on either flank, Hakimi is expected to return to Madrid upon the conclusion of the Bundesliga campaign.
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He's a cracking player but at the time he went to Barca, Eriksen was the better of the two. Eriksen did more for his team off the ball then Courtniho did. On the ball, I thought the two of them were very similar but even then if you isolate the stats Eriksen still was far more creative than him.
The bottom line is Barca massively overpaid (or if that was the market value, Erkisen was worth the same if not more at the time). Liverpool played a blinder in his sale, the best way to achieve maximum value is to make out he's your best player, the player you can't be without, this only flushes out the clubs that are serious about buying him and Barca ended up effectively bidding against themselves to land him.
Liverpool not only didn't miss him one bit, but they also improved without him. At Barca, he never played consistently well, despite all the talent around him.
He's been punted around Europe like a used Ford Fiesta for well over a year now, with no takers. I wouldn't go near him with a barge pole given his age and the fact he's a long way off from what he used to be. I would, however, look at a loan but even then where does he fit in? With long ball Spurs he'll be bypassed, if Jose actually manages to get us to play with the ball does he offer more than Dele? No. Does he get in ahead of Lo Celso? No.
Back to the loan option; He's currently on 70%(???) wage cut, does this also continue if he goes out on loan? If so makes the loan even more attractive.
Not arguing here but, not sure I subscribe to the notion that trophies have a depleted sense of glory attached.
After all winning trophies brings in more revenue and raises the clubs profile providing a larger fan base of youngsters who often pick a successful side growing up.
Look at city and Chelsea, they now have supporters with their shirts on in far flung remote places around the globe, primarily on the back of these teams winning something every year, doing that keeps them relevant, and increases their turnover I'm sure Mr levy wouldn't be against it.
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I definitely don't think Levy/the board would have said no to a League or FA Cup, or a Europa League, even if there was a definite focus on league position and CL. I think that at the end of the day particularly the lack of enthusiasm for the domestic cups came from Poch more so than the boardroom. He always seemed rather dismissive of them, particularly whenever we got knocked out. Claiming that that they were only to build egos.
Mauricio Pochettino says Spurs’ focus should be on top four not cups
Tottenham’s manager, Mauricio Pochettino, said trophies only ‘build egos’ and the top four is more important after their second cup defeat in four days, this time by Crystal Palace
www.theguardian.com
And as I said, whilst I do believe that the board/backroom wanted Poch do put focus on the league and CL. I don't think they would have complained if he put in that extra effort in one of the cups to get a trophy. As you said, trophies do come with some revenue and raises the club profile.
I've a sneaking suspicion we will bring in more players than people think.
Not really sure what poch was on when he made those statements, in fact there was a discernable shift in his attitude as each season passed.
I think those utd rumours got to him a bit, but from a man that had never won anything nor still, perhaps he should of kept his counsel a bit better.
As much as I liked him that run to the CL final hinged on mountains of luck, and when the final came we entered it like frightened puppies, and subsequently went out with a lame duck performance.
I personally would welcome winning a league cup, for a team that flatters to deceive and has won fuck all, the club would be arrogant to turn their noses up at it.
To some degree I think that he started believing his own hype towards the end/final years. Which also led to him losing a bit of his mojo that made him special in the first place. He started moving more towards demanding ready made big name players instead of being willing to work with players that came from smaller leagues/teams or were in other ways in need to fine tuning. Which was his big strength. That he could take a team of youngsters and cast off's and make them competitive.
Not saying that we should have stayed away from big transfers like Ndombele or Lo Celso. But Poch towards the end seemed like he didn't want to do the developing that he built his name on. We tend to compare him a lot with Klopp who I think hasn't lost that. Klopp took Shaqiri from a relegated Stoke because he saw a role player in him, he took Minamino from Salzburg despite him being young and relatively unproven. Zidane has the Galacticos but is still willing to work with relatively unproven talents from South America like Rodrygo and Vinicius, or a kid from the academy like Valverde.
This of course does not devalue what Poch achieved with us. It's just my take on some of the factors in why it stopped working towards the end for him.
To be clear I was referring to the domestic cups: not ALL trophies.
Not as much money, prestige and profile as EPL/CL progress tho.... Which is all that aspect of my prev. post was meant to illustrate.
To summarise, I'm not saying they were deemed worthless, just that other things were prioritised.
You just seemed shift away from Poch's own responsibility in that scenario. If not then, we remain on the same page (albeit I'm not so vociferously skeptical about the club's motives behind it - It made short-term sense IMO. The one caveat to that being 'breeding a winning mentality'.).
The flip-side of things would otherwise be that, if Poch has zero accountability(*) attached to talk of youth, mentality being key and "big things" (tm), then his much vaunted philosopy (and the bulk of his book) is utter bullshit.
Personally though, I think he is an idealist/romantacist rather than a charlatan.
(*Accountability is probably the wrong word, but I hope my point remains suitably clear...)
I began watching an old Salzburg game last night to have a gander at him. Explosive pace and workrate.
But what I really want to tell you is that I noticed a 20-year-old DM called Camara playing for them. He is a far superior athlete and footballer to some of these utter clodhoppers we are currently being linked with. Transfermarkt value him at £1.17m. That would tick a lot of boxes for Baldy. I think I am falling in love.
You know, I was just thinking how we needed an AM, and definitely not a RB...
If it’s true, it’s the figure that Southampton hope someone might pay. If he does leave I’d be surprised if it was for £35M.
The new Dybala - cunt media looking for clicks on our account
More chance of re-signing Berbatov
Likewise... (In some respects I'm a football romantic too; you may have noticed! LOL).
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I'm no Poch apologist, but he got it spot on where his priorities lay. Prioritising the league over a cup isn't just about money, it's about prioritising what's more valuable, meaningful and difficult.
All the top clubs play rotated teams in early rounds of domestic cups. All of them, bar none, prioritise League, League position, CL.
He was right about domestic cups being more about egos. It's just nonsense to think winning a league cup by playing 4/5 games, some against lower league clubs is remotely as meritorious as finishing 4th by playing 38 games against your division rivals, all treating everyone of those games as vital - which then means you get to play the very clubs in Europe next season in the world's best cup competition.
They should scrap the league cup altogether, or make it a tournament where clubs have to play 8 U23's or something that would make it useful. Because it means fuck all as it is.
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I don't think Poch didn't care about cups. I think it came down to team selections, tactics, in-game management, and not always getting the players in the right frame of mind. All of those things proved to be issues in the league, too.
100%. As I stated earlier, we were in a league cup final, 2 FA Cup semi finals and a League Cup semi final during Pochs reign. Can anyone who’s on the “Poch didn’t respect the Cups” train explain that?
The reasons we were beaten in those finals and semi finals were down to a number of things, above all else we were beaten by teams who simply had better players than us who were used to winning.
But to try and argue that Poch or the players weren’t giving absolutely everything is pure and utter horse. The semi against United particularly springs to mind. Both Poch and Dele were nearly in tears after that game.
Camara. #19. DM for Salzburg. First half at home to Eintracht Frankfurt. Subtitles available on request. Have included some of his looser moments, too. Really excited about watching the rest of this game later.