when the levy breaks: summer transfer window 2019

£70m seems about the going rate.

For the English market, yes. For anyone outside it seems bonkers. Hell, Juve and Ajax are still bickering about De Ligt (for somewhere between 55-70m, in euros iirc). Maguire going for £70m is insane all over the world, except in England. I get why, up to a degree (file under: homegrown etc). Just wondering how many Tyrone Mings and Maguires it takes till England corrects, or is forced to correct, this hyperinflation. Not anytime soon, not with this tv dough, I reckon.

a 19-year-old with one season under his belt just went for €126m

it's mental all over

poch improved walker and vertonghen defensively

You know the market is as it should be when you see Feyenoord signing one Liam Kelly from Reading on a free and hailing him like the second coming of the lord jesus christ tbf

On topic: I don't understand why ManC or Liverpool or ManU hesitate to fork out 100m for De Ligt, when they seem all to keen to waste their money on filler like Stones and Maguire etc.

xp Poch arguably improved Vertongen, but not defensively imo

well he'd have to want to go there in the first place

De Ligt is proving he's the anti Frenkie 'Barca has always been my dream club so I'm going there' de Jong. He's about the money, coupled with a club w/ some prospects, true. So that rules out ManU. ManC and Liverpool still very much asleep imo.

seems like an unnecessary extravagance for Liverpool

City, I guess, but they can't spend 50m+ on a centre back every season

Liverpool's defence could be immense with a Van Dijk/De Ligt center, and relegate trash like Lovre/Gomez/Matip to the bench. I don't think that's too extravagant. For City, perhaps.

Gomez was great first half of the season and matip was excellent in the second half of the season so this 'trash' talk is hysterical nonsense.

yeh thought gomez looked promising

Calling Gomez trash is just rude and ignorant. And Matip was superb when he stepped in, really upped his game. He was the equal of Virgil in several games

lol howay the fucking Magpies on suicide watch when Brucey is announced!

yeah wtf Gomez and Matip are not trash. ridiculous statment.

FWIW I think Pep has improved even Stones although not anywhere near to the level he should be. FWIW Maguire is already better than Stones ever was but is likely to be brutally exposed with a United midfield that's starting to look like it'll be very short of anyone that can tackle.

our midfield as it stands (and minus, presumably, Pogba) is laughably poor in every respect

Really quite excited at the idea of Newcastle replacing Rafa with Steve Bruce. Has any other club managed to collect all four of McClaren, Allardyce, Bruce and Pards?

Maguire is much better than his detractors claim. Newcastle is lol.

Bit o' hyperbole, be cool lads.

all good

is trippier even gonna start this season? i've somehow ended up with him in our draft we've got going

There have been rumours for months he's going to Napoli. The lure of playing alongside Vlad Chiriches must be strong.

thats a rumour that time and repetition have made no less bizarre

hes our best rb, if we need two new rbs (we do) then ive not seen solid links to them yet

because historically this is how your owner thinks

ive not seen that lately tbh.

getting rid of trippier for 30m is good half-business

maybe poch thinks its kwps turn to become ok, maybe trippier was just that wrecked from wc

surely aurier is first out the door after fuckery on-off pitch and wages

Toby to Roma with Zaniolo coming the other way?

been touted for a week now, but:

- swap deals never happen

- why would he go there

yeah Rome is awful compared to North London

we can only presume his last chance at a big contract decision will rest upon the quality of piazza available yes

I'm just saying it's imaginable that someone might choose to do a thing for reasons other than the bottom line, dude.

villa after trezeguet too

never heard of the team he plays for

xp not to be testy tim but yr response practically sighed and blew its hair out of its eyes tbh- the question wasnt thrown out there as a parochial slur on anywhere

'there' is roma the club, we can obv build in the quality of life factors (weather aside, are they so different for an athlete multimillionaire celebrity between london and rome? who knows?).

is roma the club a step up? id have said not, history and all that say its level at present.

is the salary on offer (after tax and all whatnot) at roma now (inc years offered) going to beat any spurs offer (likely, likely) as well as any other offer coming in (id really have thought not)

and then the old "am i in the right place now, is the risk of a move a factor"

theres a ton of places id have thought were obvious better options on a range of relevant items....idk do spurs fans overrate him or what but id have him walking into pretty much any first xi in the world, and 30 isnt any age for a centre back without any real history of injuries.

its a curious one, is all. maybe hes decided already to run down the last year?

All of which does beg the question: why on earth are Spurs considering letting him go?

It's not long before the £25m release clause in Toby's contract expires. Given his age and the fact he has one more year on his contract it's unlikely that, great as he is, he'll be worth much more than that. So I guess Levy is desperate to offload him.

The alternative is he signs a new contract, which I personally would love, but that's the likely end of any major resale value.

Vertonghen has been the better CB over the last couple of seasons but Toby's playmaking abilities and long passing ability from CB are a really underappreciated aspect of the way the team plays. There aren't many CBs who can do that.

He's technically good enough, not to mention smart enough to have at least 4 more years in him (arbitrary figure, probably) - that's the value, innit? Strikes me there aren't many of Toby's quality around so unless he's agitating for a move, you do everything you can to keep him?

Or what Matt said.

yeah pref to resign him on decent money, imagine that the length of contract is the major prob.

pref after that is another year out of him at current salary. 25m isnt that much to forego for the calibre of player in it, and if nothing else it reinforces levys hardman ego

xxp I'm feeling untestily Fridayish, even in the face of unwarranted and hurtful hair jibes directed at one of ILx's baldest men.

'there' can be Roma the club if you like but 'there' is also unavoidably Roma the city, and Italy the country, right? Also Italy the footballing culture. I understand the requirement for close reading of your communiques but insisting on only one of these 'there's as a subject for your speculation is a bit bleedin' rich I'd say.

There are only a few reasons why a football club would want to retain the services of a player but there are loads of reasons why an individual might want to make a move, even a sideways move. I mean, we can play a game of imagining personal motivations if you like?

ill put my scantily clad pate up against any non-finn here tbh

Promises, promises.

I'll out-bald you pretenders all day, any day.

Wondering if the 'sideways' comment is acceptable to Tottenham ILXspurs fans.

anyway, if i ought to clarify that the *why there* carried the unspoken *instead of * of ~all of the supposed options~ and not just stayin at spurs then im happy to do so.

like imagining personal motivations is p much baked in to what we are discussing but its very hard to not imagine madrid, barca, juve and a host of others not offering a better overall package from cafes to dusky evening sunlight year-round but being an obviously more appealing destination career wise.

utd or city for cash while stayin in england if for family reasons or whatever thats a concern

ajax for sentiment

i stand by the confusion over roma being:

- especially appealing to him as an option

but more, i suppose

- being the best offer he has, that we know of

Wondering if the 'sideways' comment is acceptable to Tottenham ILXspurs fans.

― Orpheus Knutt (Tom D.), Friday, 12 July 2019 14:16 (twenty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

i for one am enjoying even the opportunity for such magnanimity tbh, its lovely up here

My "sideways" was a ref to deems's "history and all that say its level at present" fwiw. I try not to get into "which club's bigger" anymore because I can't make sense of the arguments involved; was happy to rely on the opinion of a hairy expert.

* trying desperately not to make a comment about Exeter City *

anyways spending even five mins imagining such a dilemma has put me in right good form tbh

now pondering a transfer-column style breathless reporting of rumours linking me with a move to the office of public works

"he likes their style of operating, but the location on the southside could be an issue for him, we hear"

"the salary package is fine, but the departments are wrangling over the final details and hes asked for a window desk which will upset a number of long-serving incumbents"

two bald men fighting over a rome at this stage

"there was a fall-out in the weekly team meeting in which two cups of coffee were spilled"

xp haha

griezemann to barca is done?