Deadline silence
Me old mucker tehTrunk, in conversation, shared the following nugget;
“…can’t shake the feeling that Spurs are dead. We’re just watching some psychopath walking around in our skin”
I laughed. Can’t do much else at the moment. I also can’t completely disagree with the graphically honesty insight either. Tottenham are Buffalo Bill, dick and balls tucked in.
That would make Levy Hannibal Lecter. Eating our heart rather than liver with fava beans.
There was more nuggets to digest. It’s a transfer window so I can’t not have a dig at the ITK community.
They post their cryptic poems on the usual message boards and forums, aiming to level up their tier score. Then after the fact, they reveal their ambiguous muse was a reference to whatever the outcome was to any particular failed transfer rumour, translating it to prove they knew what was going on with the alleged target. It’s like the Bible Code written with crayons.
How about sharing the info in plain f*cking English to start with? Or do they believe that doing so will somehow place the transfer in jeopardy or perhaps disconnect their insider knowledge when Daniel Levy realises he has a snitch that is giving out the info to grown men. Grown men that are awarded badges of honour for their deep throat action. Thankfully we spit rather than swallow. The only worthwhile ITK is the type you're told privately and you don't share it because you're not an attention seeking ball bag feeding your sycophantic followers with diseased man milk.
It’s summed up with a single word: Bale. All the content that gets written, the tweeting, the blogs, the discourse…all of it is just part of the business model for generating those clicks. You can, as a writer or journalist (LOL) create any transfer rumour and simply tag it with ‘club insider revealed’. The freedom to write trash to make some cash.
Anyways, awkward introduction over, let’s move on with the news…
This transfer window has been productive, I guess. In fact, it’s been quite decent if you consider it’s simply one step in the right direction rather than the huge leap everyone desires. We stagnated. Let’s just get over this now and move forward with intent rather than constant regret.
We finally said goodbye to Christian Eriksen, a pivotal and immense footballer at the heart of the peak Poch side that really should have had an open bus parade or two. Alas, the Great Dane was the very personification of our beautifully flawed club. Close but no cigar.
Eriksen didn’t quite fit in during the early days of Pochettino’s tenure as the Argentine attempted to reshape the team starting with the defence first. But once the refined culture of the club started to take form, so did our creative conductor. You might, in the bitterness that’s been generated in the past year, prefer to embrace revisionist history or focus solely on the ‘he can’t beat the first man from a corner’ meme. But the stats don’t lie. Neither do the limbs. He was in many ways, irreplaceable. Perhaps one of several reasons why this side fell apart. Spurs were too reliant on him to own that spark from the midfield to ignite fire in the final third. We had no Plan B. We had no alternative.
Add to it the fact that Eriksen always wanted to move on. In his masterplan he looked towards La Liga. Much like Spurs, he didn’t quite make it to the promised land and has shifted sideways to Inter. Although his bank account has reached the upper echelons of finance, his football skills aren’t finesse enough to be considered world class. Our former number 23 sadly lacks that ruthless killer top tier arrogance to bully himself and boss games consistently. Enough for Barca or Real to come knocking.
Still, he has been tremendous for us. We could have sold him to Chelsea in 2017. You might wonder how much money we’ve lost by retaining him and selling before his contract expires. But then you’d have bemoaned his departure to a rival had we let him go a couple of years back. We signed him for £11M and there was no way of replacing him back in 2017. Some of the bitterness is perhaps warranted, what with his disinterest and loss of influence. It is what it is. An anti-climax.
For now, we move on. We reshape. We might even beat the first man from a corner now. But I’m not sure we’ll have a player that covers more ground like CE23. Not for a while.
Danny Rose is also gone. What a journey this lad has had. From his ‘Premier League debut’ and the sweetest volley you’ll ever see to flying down the wing with Kyle Walker on the opposite side; the very epitome of our best side for generations. He was everything you’d want from a Spurs player. Pride, passion and ability with a touch of spite chucked in. Remember how he reacted to a teammate being hacked down? The brotherhood, the togetherness, the spirit. The poster boy for the transformation of Tottenham Hotspur.
Of course, it wasn’t all blood and thunder on the pitch. The club was ridiculed when we gave him a five year contract. Social media is the very worst of echo chambers and possesses the type of self-deprecation that eats away at decency and respect. Rose quit Twitter because of it. But he kept grafting and kudos too for Poch. He told Danny he’d make him an England international and he did. A player that was written off, shamed the tribal idiocy of the online collective by becoming integral to our system; pace from wide spaces.
Injury and the downward spiral of time fractured everything. Interviews with The Sun, alleged leaks. The infamous transfer target Google search quip. He was home sick. He was sick of Spurs. Yet he kept on giving it 100% even if his legs could only muster 60. More tabloid leaks and suggestions of a fallout within Hotspur Way and Rose was dropped and now finds himself out on loan at Newcastle. It’s a massive shame how this has ended but there you go. Footballing relationships are complicated. Sometimes more so than the ones you have with your partner.
Good luck to Danny. I’ll always remember ‘that’ goal. His ascendancy. All the good stuff. Because when it was good, it was very good. So why only focus on the bad when none of it will make you smile?
Steven Bergwijn
In comes a winger. It’s like asking for an iPad for Christmas but getting socks instead.
Tricky, confident, good touch, nice skills. Scores goals. PSV have lost and Tottenham have gained. Opportunistic? Sure, but I’ll take it. Young, got some pace and has the edge we need in terms of competition for places. I’m not going to say much more because pretending to know how he’ll fit in based on You Tube compilations is a bit unnecessary.
Kyle Walker-Peters
Out on loan to Southampton. This is something that should have happened seasons back. There’s a discussion to be had over how we’ve gone about our development squad business post-Poch. It’s been quite active with starlets making the first team set-up (Tanganga, Cirkin) as opposed to the slower pace of activity Mauricio danced to. KWP always seemed capable and it’s a shame he wasn’t offered more consistent appearances to build up that essential momentum, to be tested and to grow into his role and the team. He’ll be able to do just that at Soton, hopefully.
Gio
Made permanent. Thank the universe. This kid is a baller. Composed, controlled and centric to that reshape the midfield desperately needs. It’s not just his ability on the ball, that acute pass and movement. His physicality and effort is robust enough for him not to get bullied by the rough and tumble of the Premier League. Build the team around him. Why not?
Deadline Day Review
Much ado about Levy. Did we expect more? We always expect more. We always need more. We really needed a striker. All we got was a story that Olivier Giroud was an option. The other strikers we got linked with? Not a clue. I couldn’t even name them to you right now. But then I don’t really pay attention to click-bait. There is so much nonsense digitally published to drive internet traffic that you’d be naive to really believe most of it. We might have inquired about a player or two. We’ve been starved of acquisitions when we most need them, at critical points in our teams progression. But it’s not critical right now. Not really. Sure, we’ve still got a chance of making top four but we’re in the midst of a rebuild so let’s step not leap.
However klaxon…
No striker in still seems a bit daft. It’s daft in many ways that we couldn’t find someone, anyway…to come and do a job whilst Kane works on his rehabilitation. Yet nothing happened. Jose supposedly frustrated. Join the club gaffer. It’s still jarring that we have one centre-forward (Troy aside). But Spurs are hardly doing a tumbleweed when it comes to transfers in. We have spent somewhere in the region of £100M in the past six months. It doesn’t quite make up for the painful stubbornness of two windows with no new players but there you go. Live, learn and hopefully not die.
No tier three striker for us this January (this would have been like getting socks as a late Xmas present) but I’m sure we’ll find a way to stick all the opportunities away and then in the summer, we can focus on the missing parts; a DM and someone to play and protect and rotate with Kane.
Talking of DM’s, it saddens me what has happened to Vic Wanyama. Utterly phenomenal in that season alongside Dembele. But much like Sandro and Palacios before him, the curse has kicked in and once more left us with a massive hole to fill. Winks is the future. I’m okay with that as long as Harry gets some protection with a suitable partner in the middle.
Tinfoil Poch Conspiracy
So Bruno Fernandes joins United. Guessing in the summer they will bid for Grealish and Dybala. Pochettino getting house warming presents before he moves in?
I jest. Or do I?
I heard a lot about Poch and his reluctance to sign off on a fair few players in the past two seasons or so. Hardly ITK by the way, but an alternate perspective to the tired excuse that Daniel Levy is always at fault for not moving quick enough to sign players. Here’s a crazy theory. In the time after the Champions League final, Jose knew that Poch knew that the dream was over. But Poch wouldn’t go because of the money he’d get from the sack, so it all plays out with Spurs signing big in the summer but not much else.
Dybala, a deal that was alleged to have failed because of image rights. But perhaps not. Perhaps he was not fancied. Perhaps because the gaffer wouldn’t be able to nurture him if he’s managing a different club up north.
Sorry. I’ve been drinking kool aid. I should sack it off.
I just think ,what with Levy blatantly making contact with Jose from time ago, that all parties knew it was coming to an end so why buy players for a departing manager and equally so, why would a manager want certain players to join a club he’s departing?
If I was ITK the above would cryptically translate to:
The unicorn floats high above but the wilderbeast continues to eat the crystal meth that has fallen from the cloud Jacuzzi where the sulking clowns whistle for pie.
Don’t shoot the messenger yeah.
Squad Rebuild
Aside from the aforementioned DM and striker (not a third rate forward but someone that can grow to challenge Kane), Spurs have done pretty good in the past two windows. Don’t take my word for it, take the numbers below (copy and pasted from The Spurs Web twitter account):
Clarke (19) Lo Celso (23) Ndombele (23) Sessegnon (19) Bergwijn (22) Gedson (21) Tanganga (20) Sanchez (23) Foyth (22) Skipp (19) Winks (23) Dele (23) Parrott (17) Cirkin (17)
Young at the core.
Of course, there’s question marks over the future of Foyth and whether some of the other youth products will make the grade, but this is the refresh in motion. We might need to look at our centre-backs long term and still work out the full backs too. Not much then. Bits here, bits there.
We do have a fair few wingers in the squad too. Which is funny cause Spurs are pretty much winging it at the moment.
AMIRITE?
I am.
Social Protest
Supporters moaning with the usual petulant foot stamp of seethe? Levy out. ENIC out. I guess a new home, a billion pound stadium along with true contention during the emotional move from White Hart Lane to The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium isn’t good enough. I mean, we’ve always challenged and believed we might win the league in the years before Poch or Redknapp. Yeah?
No.
Look I get it, we need to do more but we are hardly ever going to be out of competing for a top four place. The resources will not allow it to happen. We have the infrastructure and the revenue will only increase over the coming seasons. So chin up, we could be mid-table. I mean, we might well be soon. But it’s a single season. A transition. A mess. We just have to suck it up, roll with the punches and pray that the special one still has something to give aside from banter in press conferences.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t show ambition, not too dissimilar to what Liverpool have done, to get the cups that will please the masses. But there’s no guarantees in football. We failed to consolidate during the peak of Poch’s tenure and that has ultimately pushed us back. For now. But let’s not pretend we’ve gone all the way back to the 90s.
Up the Spurs.