Moneyball won't win the Premiership 2012-13

oh and Berbatov to Fulham seems to be a thing now, which would make the Dembele transfer all the more galling

No way will he go for Fulham over Juventus or Fiorentina.

"family reasons" says the rumour mill

James Horncastle ‏@JamesHorncastle
Fiorentina slam the “arrogance of other clubs” in hijacking Berba deal.

6m James Horncastle ‏@JamesHorncastle
Fiorentina furious. Claim they got green light from United and a verbal agreement from Berba. Paid for tickets to Florence. Never turned up

8m James Horncastle ‏@JamesHorncastle
Fiorentina issue strong statement on Berbatov. “He doesn’t deserve our city and our shirt” http://it.violachannel.tv/dettaglio-societa/items/la-fiorentina-berbatov-e-i-confini-della-lealta.html …

berbatov to fulham then? my faith in football is renewed.

Stoke City make a £5m bid for Liverpool midfielder Charlie Adam!

so i've not seen a kick but for a very depressing spurs/newcastle and the excellent lfc/city matches

AVB is trying to change too much too quickly and is focusing on the wrong things anyway. Doomed to fail and disastrously imo. The only bright spark in it is that he seems to be very sure of the players his system requires and is willing to act on this certainty, which is broadly positive were he right. Which he isn't.

Shipping or attempting to ship out dawson and vdv is fuckin madness, basically. One striker with lil jermaine as backup while packing in a few more central midfielders is chronically incompetent, the same brand of squad planning that left redknapp bereft of vital cover after a dreadful jan tran win this season gone.

A willingness to jettison our only right winger is similarly 'confusing'.

Going ahead with the cutprice sale of pienaar seems a weird one. He could feasibly have 80% replaced modric without any outlay at all, leaving us 30m odd to balance a centrally-bloated squad.

Far from convinced that a 15m dembele has improved our first xi one iota.

Other than that, we'd only need lloris, lb cover and to clear out gallas, rose, dos santo, jenas, bentley and i'd be happy enough.

Thudd stays, ideally.

jettison our only right winger

clear out dos santo [sic]

This is the part I find 'confusing', wb though.

ty ty all i'm sure

Gds has never really impressed in any role at whl and realistically it's not gonna happen now, i've embraced that

that wasnt sic that was me btw

Vertonghen should be excellent for you though, £9m seems way too low to me.

p cool that the CL draw could see the champions from England, Italy, Spain and Germany all in the same group!

i'm not invested in spurs like that obv but every spurs fan has struck me as really pretty overly pessimistic imo, all this "too much too soon" but very little of it is worth the agonizing clinging onto. of course it's accelerated and risky but if you wanted solid successive 6th spots under moyes you should have just said so at the time

the other thing is the "avb is doing..." canard. this is the levy era kids, he is vince mcmahon-ing it and avb is his very loose delegate. avb wants a moutinho. levy didnt fancy it, gives him a dembele and a pat on the arse. off you go love, and don't forget there's plenty more you in the sea. now piss off i've got another mug on the phone here

all the signings are appetising, dynamic and are gonna cost someone a fortune in 3 or 4 years. ~£20m for the slow broken zero distribution parker-ish dawson, the vdv fallacy, the huddlestone never-was is dope business

deserves reply and breakdown, to follow...

will attribute "pienaar feasibly 80% replacing modric" to severe near-delirious rustiness after a long lay off

AVB is trying to change too much too quickly and is focusing on the wrong things anyway. Doomed to fail and disastrously imo. The only bright spark in it is that he seems to be very sure of the players his system requires and is willing to act on this certainty, which is broadly positive were he right. Which he isn't.

Dunno, we'll see. Spurs have on the whole played pretty well so far, the problems so far have been a) lack of threat upfront and b) panicking at being bullied by a physical striker (plus ca change there).

Shipping or attempting to ship out dawson and vdv is fuckin madness, basically.

Yes, although I'm assuming its Levy driving the VDV transfer as he can get actual money back for him now while the going is good.

A willingness to jettison our only right winger is similarly 'confusing'.

I've not heard anything about Lennon leaving outside the Daily Mail. Can't see it happening unless we have serious cover there.

Going ahead with the cutprice sale of pienaar seems a weird one. He could feasibly have 80% replaced modric without any outlay at all, leaving us 30m odd to balance a centrally-bloated squad.

Pienaar is not a central midfielder and doesn't do Modric's job in any way. He'd either be there as cover or somehow to oust Gareth Bale from the first team.

Far from convinced that a 15m dembele has improved our first xi one iota.

He can actually run with the ball from central midfield though. When did we last have a midfielder who could really do that? I mean aside from people like Zokora and Jenas who only ended up passing to nobody at the end.

Thudd stays, ideally

Most of what I've been hearing involves Tom going on loan and maybe coming back when he's regained match fitness. We'll see.

The most important thing by a mile is signing another physical striker. If we get Remy then that's two positions covered (upfront and potentially as a wide forward). Lloris, Vertonghen, Siggurdsson, Adebayor, Dembele, Remy and a new contract for Bale would represent excellent transfer business.

yah Lloris, Vertonghen, Siggurdsson, Adebayor, Dembele, is p sweet imo. Not seen enough of Remy to say. Gylfi is at least the equal of VdV.

eh matt i swear you were grousing as well the other day?

pienaar's a p good amlc option, not luke for luke replacement but if he can star at an in-form everton he can play for us.

Dembele hasn't convinced me that his end product brings anything. I'll be happy to be convinced, not tied in to that opinion.

Wouldnt be signin bale to a new deal at this stage tbh, not goin to change his fee next year

vdv is written off, huh? Coulda swore he was incredible for us in terms of sheer effectiveness when played in position last two seasons, must be misremembering

eh matt i swear you were grousing as well the other day?

I was being emo about a load of favourite players leaving, but a couple of signings and a couple of genuinely credible ones in the pipeline in Lloris and Remy have cheered me up a bit.

the tension between shitty folk pragmatism and the best laid plans of idealism is obv the key thing

you know that secretly the only thing levy hated more than being made to buy parker is how well parker did after

now he's not having any of it

Pienaar obviously needs to feel the love to perform

let's not do the vdv hobbyhorse again, take it to the therapist and project it there

levy/avb relationship as described is prob otm

But why can't levy buy a rw then.. Remy covers there iirc tbf

or that mooted willian lad iirc

eh idr vdv hobbyhorsin but as u say i may be in the first inebriate flush of the returnin addict

lol matt when did thudd become "tom" btw, idk why but that is just slaying me

stay strong brother

He's always been Tom to me.

tomtom navigational passing

does stoke have the most conservative medical staff in the league, or is it a really bad sign that they didn't like the look of Tom's ankle?

it's a worry, tbf. i can't imagine his ankles are under optimum stress levels at the best of times.

ankles are twats tbf, my right one has turned me into a proper tedious sicknote recently

Stoke signed Jonathan Woodgate so they can't be that conservative. You do need to be a robust type to play Pulisball though.

always had the most problems with them myself, top med advice is 'don't carry timber' so draw yr own conc

but wasn't it stoke that wouldn't sign demba ba due to his knee?
xp

He's an easily-catchable, ball-playing midfielder; you'd hope the docs at Stoke have a special test for such types or the first training session would likely prove fatal.

yah but i think newcastle docs had the same opinion as stoke docs, just wrote some caveats into his contract and took a calculated gamble

xp

vdv is a support striker and villas boas like most of portugal likes to have mobile interchangeable types

right now he is at a level above sigurdsson but at 29 this is the time to sell for levy if he isn't going to be a core player for the next few years

remy is not a physical striker unless you mean 'bigger than jermain defoe', not sure how it will be for him cuz adebayor isn't going to be easily displaced, bale is a fixture......probably a lot of games shoved out right with lennon benched

true and fair

i'd worry about avb if he starts boying lennon

now lil aaron is nobody's ideal for yr modern european wing forward but he has been a good player, the right player for this team

he creates the right space on the chart imo

someone think of a euro cups thread title quick

It's because there are a load of dumbshit sub-Martin Samuel types working in football journalism who assume that because AVB didn't get on with EBJT and FFLB he's automatically on a mission to turf out all established English players. I can't think of an example of a player with actual pace who wasn't in his plans, either at Spurs or Chelsea.

http://i.imgur.com/LzKUT.png

macca you look bloody awful

yeah i think discriminating against slow players is effectively discriminating against english players who aren't wingers or fullbacks

haha uefa secretary warning clubs over ffp before the draw

cut to platini rubbing his eyes wearily

PSG Thangs and BATE Boys: Champions & Europa League 2012/13