Manager Harry Redknapp has pledged to show Luka Modric that he can achieve all his ambitions with Tottenham but these comments raise a question that has been gone over time and time again.
Quite simply, should we have done this 12 months ago?
Go back a year and Spurs had qualified for the Champions League for the first time in our history. Without wanting to go over old ground, there was very little investment in the squad and no movement at all in the January transfer window, save for the arrival of Steven Pienaar, when the need for a striker was clear.
Instead, the manager seemed to want to withdraw from the battle for fourth place and cite the money that Chelsea and Manchester City had behind them as reasons why we shouldn’t expect Champions League football year in year out.
Now Modric wants to leave for a ‘bigger’ club in Chelsea.
“I think we have to show him our ambition, which we will do,” Redknapp said.
“If we can add one or two good players to our squad there’s no reason we can’t have another great season. So Tottenham couldbe a great club for him to stay with for the next few years. That’s what we’re hoping for.”
Stirring words maybe, but should we have been saying them last year?
The title of this post says it all. You didn’t even need the body text to prove the point any further.
Modric is a world-class player and he has every right to be ambitious. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be the talent which we all are completely in awe of.
Get to work Levy and Harry!
Didn’t we put three £30m bids in for strikers, in January?
I definitely agree with you, yes we should have invested at that time. What we did was pathetic. We did nothing basically and we got what we deserved because of the lack of ambition we showed in the transfer market. It was pathetic, especially as we proclaim to be a big club and then act like a small club. I am not sure who is to blame but it is either Levy or Redknapp. I don’t really understand the set up at spurs in as much as who sorts out the transfer targets, who does the deals and who talks to the proposed transfer target? Is it Levy that does all this? If it is then I don’t understand how we expect to pick up good players when all we have is a business man talking to them with no real football understanding.
Come on Spurs sort it out or we will end up as a small club having to settle for mediocrity and all the hard work will be wasted.
Has it ever occurred to you that maybe,just maybe,the type of player that we needed just wasn’t available to purchase over the past 12 months ?.
No doubt you will point out that Liverpool have bought Suarez and Carroll in that time but that is without acknowledging that a) Liverpool overpaid outrageously for Carroll b) Liverpool overpaid for Suarez and c) Suarez isn’t an out and out striker ,he wouldn’t have fitted in with VdV (a much better player) and isn’t quite as good as people think (take a look at just how great he looked against Spurs last season for an example).
We were monitoring Dzeko but quite obviously he chose the contract at City over us.We monitored Adebayor but City wouldn’t sell to us.We tried to buy Rossi but clearly he’d been earmarked for Barcelona – are you going to argue that we should have got him in front of Barca ?.
While i am as disappointed as any Spurs fan (and probably more so being a long standing season ticket holder) the truth is,which superstar striker could we actually have signed in an age where Darren Bent goes for £24m !! ?.
Recently Villa has been linked with a move away from Barca to raise some funds for them – no doubt you’ll expect us to attract him to WHL ?.
Give the board some credit,sometimes there just isn’t the right player available to you and it’s much better to wait than to buy inferior players who turn out cr@p and who you then can’t shift.
You’re right, but no point looking back now. We are where we are and in the words of the Chairman of the Supporters Trust everyone needs to pull together and be positive. The Chairman’s done his bit now needs to crack on in the transfer market, the Manager has said his bit now needs to stop trying to cover your own back by saying “we can’t compete?”, the players, and us too have to do our bit as fans. That means no booing off the team when we’re drawing to crap teams at home, or sitting with our arms folded in silence waiting for the team to lift us. The lane was electric against the top teams last season, but like a library against the bottom lot. That’s what Arsenal fans do and we’re better than that! COYS
Spot on.
Levy OUT
No wonder Harry is calling some of our fans idiots iam not calling you an idiot just misinformed through not looking at the true facts and states. We won 16 drew 14 lost eight two of those games where against West Ham Wigan Blackpool Everton all where shock they all played outstanding in defence and not one of there players where purchased for millions. We can spend Millions on players and get beat by clubs with poor squads but full of everlasting energy to stop expensive players from scoring, Shocks also happened in Spain. This is my waning buying moe players will mean the new rule swill stop us from entering the champions league because 36 thousand cown wont fund our spending all these clubs are operating outside of the new remit Chelsea Man UTD City and face expulsion in 2113 when Wembley will be the venue. The Champions League will be dominaed by Barcelona unless energey abuse is stopped and the penalty’s are 2 year ban and points deduction how many games did Kolo Toure use stimulants to lose weight his version before he got caught how many tackles did he make to stop strikes from scoring with his extra energy this is why we struggled to break down on paper weak defences. This is all the reasons we failed just to keep City Oilers form joining the American banks Utd and Russians Chelsea Arab oil stealer’s City. King played three won three Huddlestone killer passes and the odd thunder shot winner long term injuries bad referee assistants Gomes gaffs and the biggest one we suffered from was the Kolo affect he was a little fish in a big pond of energy abuse stopping all strikers from scoring this is the true facts
Give it a break geezer. You sound like my missus, going on about irrelevant drivel all the time.
i am convinced that more damage was done to the chance of modric staying by harry saying he wated to keep crouch than anything else. if you were modric wd you want that to be the striker that you manager prefers over all others. that demonstrates the lack of ambition more the failure to spend big; he hears “crouch is good enough” and off he wants
harry saying this is as good as it gets when we dropped all those points against crap teams prob also caused modric to conclude it was time to go. why the hell cant harry be honest and say, “we blew it, if we had beaten w ham twice and b’pool twice we wd have been second and above chelsea and i am sorry fans that i and the team did not manage that”?
Cyril – if you read what Harry said re Crouch,it was more of a ‘i’m not in a desperate rush to sell him’ sort of quote rather than a ‘he’s vital to my plans and he’s not going anywhere’ quote.
If he were to say that he was looking to shift Crouch then that immediately knocks a couple of million off the transfer fee and potentially leaves you with a disgruntled player should the transfer not come off.
I would bet my house that if Harry found a better ‘big man’ striker and a bid came in for Crouch he wouldn’t hesitate in swapping him – but he can’t say that can he ?.
Lets face it,even Harry must have noticed that last season Crouch couldn’t actually kick a football towards the goal from more than 3 foot away (which is surely a basic requirement of a striker/footballer ?).
you are right of course; it is just that the thought of watching that loping baby giraffe for another season fills me with dread
i would note he already has another big man who scored several crakers this last season that crouch will never score, including the rocket at young boys. the beanpole would have broken his leg if he had hit a ball that hard
We all know Chelsea are a rich club, not a big club.
Spurs and Arse are the biggest clubs in London, there are empty seats at Stamford Bridge most weeks.
Could I buy a Chelsea season ticket tomorrow? Yes, absolutely I could, then I would burn it…
How long would I have to wait for a Spurs season ticket? A long, long, time.
Get this stadium built Levy, it will be full every game, and Abramovich’s money will be no threat to us. They’ll be small fry again, and we’ll laugh in their faces.
Now bring on their well-deserved transfer ban, that should stunt their ambitions somewhat!
I couldn’t agree more. Last Year, with Champions League football to offer as a bargaining tool, we should have signed a Striker, a Centre-Half etc then, so if we didn’t qualify again, we already have the players to do it and retain our best. With a Wage Structure in place, who in their right mind will join us, with no CL football and minimal wages when they can get top whack wages AND CL footie somewhere else (like Chelsea, Man U & C & Arscum)?
Levy really has put himself between a rock and a hard place with his bold statement – how silly will he look, with absolutely no credibility, if Modders now leaves, which I reckon will happen. You will never be able to take him seriously again (if anyone does).
Thank god this Luka story broke over the weekend. The kick in the arse Levy and Redknapp needed. Should it of happened a year ago? Of course and every year before that. As some one already said the summer before our CL season should have been the sweet spot for attracting the top players. For a club with so much ambition our journeys into the transfer market in recent years have been light to say the least and I think we were on the same path this summer until this story came out. Man Utd spend money, Chelsea spend money, City spend money. Creativity will only take you so far. Like the Arse*al.
It’s time to put your money where your mouth is and buy some top quality.
Just on a side note I find it strange beyond belief that Chelsea are entertaining the idea of buying anyone when they don’t even have a manager. Am I just old school or does anyone else have a hard time understanding that? Rumor has it that they are not going to have a manager and will instead start a raffle where fans can (for a fee) enter for the chance to pick the team each week. Is that cool or what!?
“Tottenham should have shown their ambition to Luka last year”… that is spot on.
Players of the quality of Modric look to win titles and Champions League medals.
Spurs are close to being able to at least compete at that level.
But last summer and last January in the transfer windows we failed and Modric probably fears more of the same as we all do.
We are rich, well run, just got some CL money, and on the brink of a great team. If we do not invest now the CL talk is just that, all talk.