So the dust has settled on the summer transfer of August 2011 and while it was a busy day at Spurs Lodge, was it a satisfactory one?
Five of our fringe players have left the club, albeit two are on loan with seemingly no future at the Lane and while Harry Redknapp said at the weekend that fresh faces were needed, we only ended up with one – Scott Parker who arrived from West Ham.
Those transfers in full are:
IN
Scott Parker
OUT
Wilson Palacios – Stoke, £8m
Peter Crouch – Stoke, £10m
Alan Hutton – Aston Villa, undisclosed – probably £3m to £3.5m
David Bentley – West Ham, loan
Jermaine Jenas, Aston Villa, loan
Don’t forget that earlier in the transfer window the club brought in Emmanuel Adebayor, Brad Friedel, Souleymayne Coulibaly, Cristian Ceballos and Yago Falque. So overall, was it a good summer or another let down?
great we got rid of all the shit but we needed a defender and another striker,i can only assume theres a reason behind levy not willing to give redknapp the money,maybe his saving it for mouriniho,because redknapp is either going down or gonna be england boss
I’m reasonably happy. Adabyor and parker are both upgrades on crouch and jenas. Levy is clearing out the dead wood and saving the money for the new manager when Harry goes for the England job (or jail). No point letting him blow it all on Joe triffic Cole and Gary bloody Neville.
We needed Gary Cahill and we let the chance of signing him slip, he is a terrific centre half, the perfect foil for Michael Dawson.
i agree with above however quality is quality and it is possible to buy for the club rather than the manager. Would liked to have seen Samba if Cahill was too dear. We will be very depedant on Adebeyor. Just hope Togo dont qualify for the ACN.
He has retired from international football. So no worries. We will lose Benny and Bassong though.
Yeah, he won’t play internationals after what happened at the World Cup.
BAE will be missed though….
On the whole good business and cleared out some fringe. Cahill would’ve been nice but not at 17 mil for a player who’ll be available for about 5 mil in january.
I forgot to say how happy I am that we cleared out a load of the old rubbish!
But its evident that Harold will not be at the helm much longer. Has Levy lost faith? Or is he just expecting ‘Arry to get the England job?
West Ham are still our feeder club… That is my verdict.
It is hard to find justification for not spending, other than a lack of faith in the manager. There was a suggestion we were going to show Luka, how much ambition Spurs had, but this window we have totally failed to do this.
I am a little worried that despite having a squad of over 25 players, we are short at the back and up front. Further injuries to defenders, or the loss of our new loan star or Defoe and we will be struggling all season.
It is hard looking at things to see us achieving anything more than a mid table finish, which just does not seem right given the relative success of the last few years. We supposedly had millions to spend last year, and we made a lot of departures this year, so where are the reinforcements.
Also, why do we insist on doing so much business on deadline day, had we shifted out players a few weeks ago, we would have had more time to spend the money they brought in. Unless, that was also deliberate.
I just hope that when Redknapp does go, Levy hands the new boss a large warchest full of the cash he kept away from Redknapp, otherwise last year is the best memory we can hope for, for a long time to come.
Definitely a good transfer window – we stiffened up the spine of the team with Friedel, Parker and Adebayor and cleared out a heap of dead wood.
It might have been nice to bring in Cahill, but TBH I think the issue is less about the CB’s and more about the lack of midfield cover in the first two games. Sandro & Parker will change that and you will see the knock-on benefit for Daws, Kaboul & co.
Some of the articles saying “One in, five out” really wind me up. Do the sums, boys – we have cleared out not just Jenas, Hutton, Bentley, Crouch & Palacios but also PSB and O’Hara. That equates to fees in of c.£25-30m and an annual wage saving of around £15million.
Most importantly it gets our first team squad down from over 30 to the magic 25:
Friedel/Gomes/Cudicini
Walker/Kaboul/Corluka/King/Dawson/Gallas/Ekotto/Rose/Bassong
Lennon/Krancjar/Modric/Sandro/Parker/Livermore/Bale/Pienaar/Huddlestone (plus Townsend as U21)
Defoe/VDV/Pavlova/Adebayor
Not sure where that leaves Dos Santos? Otr maybe Ledley will be left out of the 25? We’ll see tomorrow.
The point is that none of the others would have been in the 25 so why keep them?
Once Sandro is fit we have an excellent oportunity to play he and Parker in the Barry/Yaya or Alonso/Mascherano roles which will provide a solid and mobile shield for the back four, plus a great launchpad for our front four.
We may look a bit thin up front, but I reckon Pav will go in January and we can then get a better quality 4th striker.
On balance, a good window and I am cautiously optimistic that we can start to focus on the future and begin to climb the table.
COYS
Both Walker and Rose were under 21 in 1st January 2011. So they can be excluded from the 25 this season. Then you add in Dos Santos and Falque.
Spot on. Most sensible comment I have read today
Absolutely devastated about our performance in the transfer window!
If we’d been more proactive earlier in the window we could have got Cahill, Ruiz and Suarez by the time we played Brighton at the Amex Community Stadium.
What a cheek by Crouch asking for a loyalty bonus! I’ve been a season ticket holder for 25 years, can I have one too?
Lets hope Parker, the undoubted talent that he is, is the second vd Vaart! And finally, that Livermore is given the time in the first team to develop into the box to box midfield general that Jermaine Jenas was expected to be but never became.
Delighted by the performance of the youngsters in the NexGen series thrashing Inter Milan 7-1.
COYS
suarez was already at liverpool last season and ruiz ??? seriously ?? who had even heard of him up to last week?
overall im very pleased. Cant understand why some people are giving it the big downer. We got rid of each and every player we all wanted to and we didnt panic and buy a rasiak or murphy at the end. £15m is too much for cahill considering he’ll be worth half that in january and nothing next summer. Our squad is now leaner and meaner. Can only be a good thing.
All we needed was a new striker, yeah its a shame to miss out on a decent cb but it sounds like they tried to rip us off with Cahill.
I think a lot of fans want us to ‘keep us appearances’ by spending loads of money. We got rid of a few fringe players and tied our best players down with long term contracts. Ade could do wonders for us and Parker is a decent player. Looking forward to seeing spurs bounce back, when players return from injury and modders has calmed down. We have a pretty damb good squad I reckon. It’s all down to the coach now….
Disappointed.
We needed another striker (in addition to Adebayor) and we failed to get one in. Again.
I agree wholeheartedly with Fliptop – its clear to see that Cahill and Samba are quality, and most managers would be happy to have them, so they wouldn’t have been signings for Harry, but for the future of our club.
Also, we’ve got 3 strikers for (at least) the first half of the season. One of them is rubbish, and the other one could barely score last season. The third doesn’t even belong to us.
As for Couillaby and Ceballos, ‘Arry will never play them, so they’re neither here nor there. As for Falque, he’s injury prone and has never made the first team at Juventus – he hasn’t even made the first team at the two clubs he’s been out on loan at for the last couple of years, so don’t expect to see anything of him.
YOU ARE A COCK SUCKER. please stop supporting spurs and go to the red side because you make our fans look like a bunch of pesimistic, whingin’, ball-less bastards. Get those balls off your chin. We’ve got a great squad to work with and what doesn’t work out can be dropped or added with the money we’ve collected come Jan.
i hope to god we dont suffer any more injuries in defence as it stands dawson and kaboul are a carling/europa cup partnership only and as we are unable to rely on king or gallas we may rue the fact we had not a plan b regarding cahill e.g arsenal signed a german intl after they were knocked back for him by bolton.
I cheered up when I heard that out youth team had beaten InterMilan 7-1 in the NextGen Series. Coulibally scored twice and Gomelt (?) a hat-trick.
One good news to me which I thought most of you may have missed. We did not sell Krancjar.
Quality players can be bought and be used by any
good manager. Look at the facts in net terms, Spurs
haven’t hardly spent anything, in 3 years.
Once again we have failed to show purpose, but under
Fagin Levy and Fat Cat Joe (Billionaire Tax exile) what
do we expect with their recent track record? It would
be silly to hope for any major investment with any new
manager. Levy may bring in a yes man.
I wonder who’s eating all the cream?
I’m sorry but a lot of you seem to be in Fantasy Football dreamland.. It was stated at the beginning of the window that Harry would have to sell before he bought.. A lot of the ‘deadwood’ has been shifted or wage burden removed whilst they tryout at new clubs..
We will have to spend 1/2billion quid on a new stadium in the next couple of years so I don’t think anyone is ‘eating all the cream’ as one person put it.
Adebayor is a potent striker as we all know to our previous cost and we now have a young lad to call on in Europa..
More players will be acquired as necessary at Xmas, and at which time we can look again at Cahill or Samba. 5CBs until then should be OK!?
Adebayor must have wondered what sort of a shambles he has walked into. Moving on Crouch & Hutton for 13mill and not buying Cahill because 13 mill is too much ! Shipping out Jenas & Bentley only for them to return in 9 months. We end up with a coffin-dodger in goal, Scott Parker as our amazing summer signing and Ade to lead the line (on loan)…………..I always believed DL had a plan but in essence he`s no more clued up than Harry and we will struggle to end up top half never mind top 4.
RAZPUR you are a boner.
MANY POSSITIVES – 300K OFF WAGES WITH WOODY AND O’HARA ALSO. GETTING 10M FOR CROUCH WAS AMAZING CONSIDERING. WE HAVE IMPROVED THE BANK BY 25-30M SO WHEN HARRY GOES THE NEW MAN CAN RE SHAPE THE SQUAD. PAV AND JD HAVE UNTIL JAN TO PROVE WORTH B4 WE SHOULD SIGN DAMIAO. THIS ALSO GIVES GR8 CHANCE TO GIO AND KRANCS AND ALL OUR YOUTH PLAYERS WHO WILL BE USED OFTEN. LIVERMORE, ROSE, ETC R THE FUTURE. BLEND THEM WITH BALE, SANDRO TO BUILD A NEW LEGACY, COYS
I’m pretty pleased. Its obvious that the squad needed trimming and thats what we did. I think selling like we did makes us winners not losers as so many articles appear to indicate. Harry has 26 players to choose from the squad and given the potential of some of our youngsters Walker, Rose, Livermore, Townsend, Coulibaly… Probably a good idea to just upgrade and try and give the kids chances to prove they are up to it. (Given the performances against Hearts then I’d say test them against stronger opposition because they are clearly players with ability, CC or EL)
Also I reckon in January well be signing Damiao, with the money we just recouped from all those players, who has started the Brazilian league in blistering form but I reckon he’ll be along in January after their season ends in December.
Also less strikers could mean a new formation with a solid base??? Pure conjecture but not completely outside the realms of possibility.
In All seriousness We didn’t spend for a reason and that could be… A, we want the money for the Stadium
B, Harry may become England manager and we are keeping funds for his successor.#
C, Harry may go to jail and then B is relevent.
D, The right players were not available at the right price.
Or ……….. E, Levy has a master plan we know nothing about.
COYS
Have to say overall very good. No one would be moaning if we had got Cahill as well, but it was just too expensive for someone in the last year of their contract.
We have cleared space in our squad and a chunck off our wage bill, without impacting on our first team. Then we have improved our squad with Friedel, Parker and Adebayor.
I would have liked another striker & Cahill, but with space and wages freed up, we can actually plan for our next couple of windows without having to worry whether we have shifted enough players out.
Also, Leandro Damiao, International have said they are willing to listen to offers, but not let him leave until the end of the Brazilian season like Sandro. Didn’t we sign him up outside of a window with the deal officially going through on 1st Jan? Maybe we are doing the same with Damieo, for when Adebayor finishishes him loan. If we had signed him now it would have meant eith him or Adebayor on the bench, which neither would have been happy with, not to mention Pav / Defoe. So here’s hoping on that one….
I am pleased as any more signings (cahill in bassong out) is not worth spending more than £3m.
Cahill is no better than dawson so is not worth the desperate bids,
I agree with earlier comments with regard Reddnaps last season, you don’t spend money on old players the new manager does not want.
I expect our new manager to be foreign so players like cahill where never on the bill only if a bargain.
As for other clubs like liverpool spending loads then it will be sorted out in two years time if they are selling again
Levy “Iv’e got to pick a pocket or two”
We have not invested in real terms for a few years.
Nobody (except Spurs die hards) thinks we are
moving in a forward direction. The Sugar/Levy
reigns have been a disaster . The facts are we
have not won a major trophy in 20 years. ( I do
not count the League Cup) This is the worst
record in 60 years.
Sugar was no good for us.. We have been developing as a club for years under Levy.
As for 60years? 1952? Thought I few good things happened to us after that didn’t they? When were you watching?
“Sugar not good for us” –
Think again my friend Sugar took us out of the disastrous financial state that Scholar and his cronies put us in and put the Club on a firm financial footing that Levy has been able to build on.
Scholar, he went on to Nottingham Forest and created the same financial havoc there!
After last week-ends game and modric looking more like a sulky berba.One has too ask where he will fit in to the team,with his present attitude.The club keep making excuses for him,but as a fan, I hope it does not come back to bite us in the bum.AS it did with Berba,I sincerely hope I am proved wrong, But we all know what happened then,and had to play catch up football.Perhaps on reflection it may have been wiser to have accepted the 40m.Because if he plays like he did against City. WeWill be lucky to get 20m for him in January.After all would you play $40m for player who is playing crap.Lets hope he gets over sulking and starts earning his wages.
This has set Tottenham back 5 years. Our defence is not good enough for top 4. We wont qualify for CL with a defence like this. Next summer Adebayor, Modric and maybe more will be out the door and we will be back to where we were when Jol took over. Tottenham Hotspur is a well run business but not a very forward thinking football club.
Tottenham’s business is football. If you think that Levy is not forward thinking then you think that the business is not well-run. You can’t think one without the other.
I happen to think that the Club is well run, and Levy’s forte is his forward thinking. This goes against Redknapp’s short term requirements so there has to be an element of compromise, which is represented by the purchase of the soon to be 31 England International midfielder Parker for £5 million, the acquisition of a 40 year old goalkeeper on a free transfer in Friedel and an International Class striker on loan in Adebayor. The future is represented by the acquisitions of Ceballos, Coulibaly and Falque.
Another striker and a quality centre back would have been nice to have, but at the exorbitant prices quoted (£17 million for Cahill, in the last year of his contract, and £35 million for Rossi come to mind) we can progress without them. The possible purchase of Leandro Damiao in January is something to look forward to.
In the meantime it is up to Defoe, Pavlyuchenko , Van der Vaart, and possibly Dos Santos to contribute more than previously. Also we will continue to develop the likes of Kane, Carroll, Coulibaly, Townsend, Mason, Parrett , Bostock and the like. Hopefully one or more of those will be pushing to get into the squad as Livermore has done.
arry was a bit doom and gloom last night but that’s coz he knows Levy wants to offer a new manager 50 or 60m to spend next summer.
we have adebeyor, parker and friedal to go straight in to the 1st team and we’ve offloaded a whole heap of deadwood which was essental for the club as they were draining us of a fortune each month. overall we gotta be pretty pleased with all that.
and as a bonus we can enjoy bentley not doing for west ham what keaneo didn’t do last year.
Hear hear.
the reason we did not go all out for cahill is because harry has to name 25 players, and harry has to keep a place free for englands own greatest defender since bobby moore, sicknote ledley king. he is already on the books and will cost us nothing in transfer fees. why oh why do we keep waiting and waiting for a miracle to fix his knees. we did the same for years with darren anderton, get a grip spurs and let him go.
Perfect time to get rid of Rednapp and find someone else! For this season will be a guage of the players’ performance before the next manager decide on the future of our club. Be it developing present youngsters or plan ahead for quality players elsewhere.
In LEVY I trust !!!!
I am curious to know who the new manager could be. I have admired the way that Everton have more often than not made more with less and been a tough team to break down. We could do worse than David Moyes who might enjoy a change from the present where he has even less to spend than Harry…
Disappointed that we didn’t get Cahill, but really pi**ed off that we didn’t go for Bryan Ruiz a proven goal scorer. Must be because he was too young for Harry he’s only 26. Harry tends to like the older player!
We’ve only got Adebayor on loan for a year, and next year although we may have money we are very unlikely to attract a top striker unless we are in the Champions League which I think will be very unlikely!
I’m sorry but a lot of you seem to be in Fantasy Football dreamland.. It was stated at the beginning of the window that Harry would have to sell before he bought.. A lot of the ‘deadwood’ has been shifted or wage burden removed whilst they tryout at new clubs..
We will have to spend 1/2billion quid on a new stadium in the next couple of years so I don’t think anyone is ‘eating all the cream’ as one person put it.
Adebayor is a potent striker as we all know to our previous cost and we now have a young lad to call on in Europa..
More players will be acquired as necessary at Xmas, and at which time we can look again at Cahill or Samba. 5CBs until then should be OK!?
you make a few good points Jamesalot, but remember this, the january transfer window is shorter than the summer one and much harder to get players, remember last year????? also players tend to be much higher is price as teams look to squeeze as much out of desperate clubs. we are going to fall short again i fear and with no back up in the required positions we cannot depend on king and gallas to play every week until then.
We can assume we brought in a lot of cash from last season’s CL. We also brought in 25-30 million in transfer fees and saved 10-15 million in wages.
Our response to this influx of cash? We bring in Adebayor on loan and add Scott Parker for 5 million. I think those two improve our squad but I sincerely hope we have big plans for January and/or next summer. I can only assume the lack of buying is due to Levy not trusting Harry to buy the best players for the club. Doesn’t matter why, what matters is that it will take a tremendous effort from our squad to even sniff the top four. Let’s see if Luka dedicates himself to the club and provides consistently great performances for us. Have to be happy we ripped Stoke off and got 18 million for freaking Palacios and Crouch.
Well in terms of ‘incomings’ absolute rubbish! No ambition what so ever! Good to get rid of the deadwood but Harry and Levy really are walking a tight rope with the fans right now. I do believe we can now play 4-3-3 now though and hopefully forget about that nasty 4-4-1-1 that doesn’t work. So I’d opt for when fit: Frediel — Walker-Dawson-King-AssouEkotto — Parker-Sandro-Modric — VDV-Adebayor-Bale with Gomes, Gallas, Krancjer, Defoe, Lennon, Hudd, Pav on the bench.
Before the season we needed:
A world class striker – Adebayor is that IMO
A midfield leader – Parker is that
Back up to Gomes to challenge him – hopefully Friedel is only that
Get rid of Hutton, Jenas, Bently, Crouch – all gone making 20M+ and trimming our weekly wage bill by 200k
A centre back – our only real failing but we have Dawson, Kaboul, Bassong (who played 30+ games when we got 4th), Gallas and King
We have a solid squad. Ade will be great, Defoe can score and Pav is an impact sub. Supported by any of VDV, Modric (who we resisted 40m bid for), bale, sandro, Parker, Lennon, Townsend, dos santos or Kranjcar isn’t really that bad. We have great full backs in walker and BAE and back up in Corluka and Rose. Daws and Kab will improve with a solid midfield and when fit King is a sensation with Gallas and Bassong able to do a job when required.
Friedel is too slow for nimber one but hopefully Gomes, who wants to stay, wil improve under his experience and competition
Can not understand some of the negativity regarding our transfer dealings in the press.
Sure it would have been nice to see Cahill in, but 15m for a player who has a year left on his contract and still unproven at the top level is ridiculous money. People seem to forget that King is fit and will probably play 20 games this season and Gallas isn’t far off.
Scott Parker is a great signing, to have him and hudd/Sandro in the middle will make us much more defensively solid and allow Modric, VDV and Bale free roles ahead.
We desperately needed a new striker and if Adebayor can rediscover his form (something considering our creative players won’t be difficult) then we have a world class striker that we would have had to pay 25m plus to get.
Friedal is a more solid keeper than Gomes so for a season we have an improvement in that department.
We have sold the deadwood of crouch, palacios, ohara and Hutton for close to 30m – fantastic business.
Also people forget about Falque, a very talented 21yr old who will be challenging Lennon.
The signings and in keeping Modric mean we have a much better side than last season and, no matter how much gooners and the press want to paper over cracks Arsenal’s team is worse than last season.
Also, if we are in and around 4th come January, with teams being knocked out of CL by then with the money we have there is no reason why a big signing could come in then to push us over the finishing line.
I have supported Spurs for over 50 years.
To qualify to be a Spurs supporter we really have to be eternal optimists!
We have had in my opinion 2 very good seasons punching above our weight, but realistically money governs the football business, and at the moment until we have a larger money generating stadium we are papering over the cracks as best we can.
COYS
Ade was a good bit of business. I really like the future of Coulibaly and Ceballos; if they don’t work out we’re not out a huge amount. Plus, that’s when you want to get top players — a couple of years before they’re old enough to start regularly — to be able to train them to be the players you want not working with someone who’s not quite in tune with how the rest of the team plays (ie. VdV, although he is good). Not to mention not paying the huge fee to get them at that point.
The players I’m jealous of are Mertesacker, Coates, and Pjanic — each went for 9m (Coates was less, I think) and are worth it. Any of those would’ve been great for Spurs.
I’m pleased with the transfer overall, but I would’ve liked to see us take 35m (or the rumored 40m at the end) for Modric and have snapped up some of the above players weeks ago, if we could. Even if we had to pay a little more, I’d trade Modric for (for example) Mertesacker and Pjanic while still having 15 or 20m.
Now that wages are cleared up hopefully we’ll move for a more permanent (read: young) forward in January. Also, he hasn’t been mentioned ever that I can think of, but what about (fellow Croatian) Rakitic? I think he went to Sevilla last year for 1.5m or something ridiculous.