parklane1
Tony Galvin
Eriksen would have been a much better fit for Barca than Dembele or Coutinho. He can certainly play tiki taka.
Can not agree more, top class player who could have shone at any club.
Eriksen would have been a much better fit for Barca than Dembele or Coutinho. He can certainly play tiki taka.
No one's saying those players were successful, Eriksen wouldn't have been either for what they were trying to continue.Eriksen would have been a much better fit for Barca than Dembele or Coutinho. He can certainly play tiki taka.
Grand total of £30m net in his first 10 transfer Windows (figures taken from transfermrkt)
Can not agree more, top class player who could have shone at any club.
Conveniently forgot the last one I see. NDombele 70 m, LoCelso ( effectively 30 million) Sessegnon ( 30 m ) and Clarke (10m ). That's circa 140 m of backing. Remember also when Poch first came ( unlike Mourinho) we already had the core of a great side who had just finished 5th iirc.
Lloris
Walker
Verts
Rose,
Eriksen,
Dembele,
Lamela
Kane
Plus Dier and Dele who I don't think he had much input into buying.
Plus Levy never sold any stars out from under him ( only latterly Walker). That is as much " properly backing" him as not bringing in players. Even though you always reject the fact that Levy DID buy 26 players for Poch , who almost universally failed to improve them - to say nothing of all the potential youth " talent" he failed to bring on to first team standard.
Let's see what he does at PSG where he has a one horse race ( currently second) some fantastic world class attackers and virtualy unlimited funds. He flucked a result against Bayern ( without Lewandowski and Gnabry) and I suspect he will lose the home leg if they play the same way.
Sorry to puncture your rise tinted view of Poch. But he is no longer our manager so can we please move on.
Those were the days...He WAS a top class player in his pomp and virtually every time he took a free kick you almost expected him to score. I never comprehended how one of Europe's best dead ball kickers in his first few seasons suddenly forgot how to kick a dead ball - and his corners not clearing the first man became the hallmark of the man. Mystifying to me.
Pirate you were saying in defense of Mourinho within the last couple of days that you can't blame a manager who isn't given the tools he wants and yet here you are once again piling on Pochettino for transfers?
Seems you're contradicting yourself more than little here as it's pretty clear that Pochettino had been calling for a rebuild for a couple of seasons and instead got 2 windows where we couldn't manage to buy anyone at all - how do square defending Mourinho because he didn't get a CB or a 'hunk of burning love if a backup CF' whilst also saying Poch should have just got on made do with the sorts of players we were giving him instead of his targets and in the aforementioned instances no one one at all?
By the time we were in a position to finally invest in the team he got 4 players, one we know he didn't want (Clarke) another that he said would take 2 years to acclimatise to the league (Ndombele, and so it has proven) an injured Lo Celso that arrived at the end of the window and an injured Sessegnon - and before he got a chance to intergrate them he was let go.
Not ‘conveniently’ forgetting it, I discounted it because the manager didn’t get a chance to use the players he finally got to spend real money on due to the players arriving injured and Pochettino being sacked 12 games into the season.Conveniently forgot the last one I see. NDombele 70 m, LoCelso ( effectively 30 million) Sessegnon ( 30 m ) and Clarke (10m ). That's circa 140 m of backing. Remember also when Poch first came ( unlike Mourinho) we already had the core of a great side who had just finished 5th iirc.
Lloris
Walker
Verts
Rose,
Eriksen,
Dembele,
Lamela
Kane
Plus Dier and Dele who I don't think he had much input into buying.
Plus Levy never sold any stars out from under him ( only latterly Walker). That is as much " properly backing" him as not bringing in players. Even though you always reject the fact that Levy DID buy 26 players for Poch , who almost universally failed to improve them - to say nothing of all the potential youth " talent" he failed to bring on to first team standard.
Let's see what he does at PSG where he has a one horse race ( currently second) some fantastic world class attackers and virtualy unlimited funds. He flucked a result against Bayern ( without Lewandowski and Gnabry) and I suspect he will lose the home leg if they play the same way.
Sorry to puncture your rise tinted view of Poch. But he is no longer our manager so can we please move on.
The financial spend doesn’t take into account the strength of the squad though.
By hook or by crook we had a genuine set of superstars, as good as any other player in the world at their position.
Lloris/Verts/Toby/Dembele/Eriksen/Son/Kane
That’s hundreds of millions of pounds worth of talent, Levy should be lauded for assembling it, not beaten over the head because he got a good deal.
Again, how long has Mourinho been here compared to Poch? How long has he had to really buy the players he wants?
He hasn't even had a full season yet ffs!! Last year and this have both been clusterfudges for any manager. Specifically, he didn't get two players in the the two key positions he requested.
I am not defending Mourinho' s tactics, team selections or management style, (all of which I have issues with) but I do believe in giving someone a fair crack of the whip before rushing to judgement. The quite phenomenal amount of pelanties and free kicks we have needlessly conceded this season, combined with players continuing to make individual mistakes , can hardly be laid at his door.
We had a strong XI, not much beyond that up until 16/17 then we got progressively weaker on paper window by window
The point was that numbers alone are irrelevant, it’s the actual player quality that matters.
Had we signed Kane for 150m from somewhere the narrative would have been different, the squad would have been the same and we’d have been financially worse off.
I struggle to see how that impacts the argument to be honest - we're not talking hypothetical scenarios we're comparing things that actually happened.
Pochettino took over a 6th place squad and spent X amount to improve it, Mourinho took over a 4th place squad and has spent Y - both squads had existing quality in it that meant we didn't need to strengthen certain areas.
My point is that we were very good for a time at getting high value players dirt cheap and that skews the argument.
We can’t say, “Poch wasn’t backed because he only spent X.”
Nice reframing of the points made. Money was/is part of it but he also wasn't getting the rebuild he wanted when he wanted it or the input on transfers that he felt a manager should get and if the club were good at getting high value players dirt cheap then that is something they stopped doing successfully at some stage too.