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Benjamin Stambouli - Sold to PSG

A) Previous managers have said so. And one manager having a bias I can understand, maybe two. But Ramos, Redknapp and Villas-Boas have all come out with much the same thing: promises were made that weren't kept, ambitious talk was replaced with the cheap option, etcetera. Now all of them might conceivably also be biased, but I'll take the testimony of three men over the testimony of one, especially when that one person has also shown much the same behaviour with our newest manager as well. So yes, that is the relationship Levy has had with our managers, who have achieved in spite of him rather than because of him, a situation that has been in evidence from about the summer of 2010 onwards.

B) Not a dead link anymore, I checked. (The problem with linking anything with 'Arsenal' in the web address is that it gets the 's' and 'l' replaced by 5 and 1 automatically, but I think milo's fixed that :p ). However, for convenience's sake:



Like I said before: did we even try before scarpering away in glee because we as a club wouldn't have to put our money where our mouth was? We made another profit in the window, as per usual, which has rapidly overtaken everything else in terms of paramount importance to this club. And then you're surprised when our managers blast the chairman for lying to them about ambition? (As an aside, I agree Lewis is as much to blame as Levy: again, you know this given how I often I harp on about it. But Levy is the point-man that our managers seem to dislike, so he's the obvious target.)

We have none: our ambition is to tread water until ENIC can gain their massive profit from selling up. What drive we had to climb up the table evaporated about five years ago, and now we're the proverbial 'flash' lads - wowing managers and players alike with promises of backing and ambition, and then revealing the ugly truth once they've signed on. And yes, Redknapp did get himself reined in by Levy - to the extent where he asked for Cahill, Samba, Tevez or someone and was given (repeat after me :) ) Saha and Nelsen on free transfers, a move which utterly derailed a promising season where we could have been title contenders and turned it into a horror show.

Please don't conflate our basement buy approach with strategy, ambition or backing the manager in charge, braine: it is none of those things. I'm glad we've found a seemingly brilliant manager who seems to be able to surmount all the obstacles Levy (advertently or otherwise) tosses casually into his path, but that doesn't excuse our glorious leader, not at all.

A) Managers getting the sack then going on to blame others to keep their own reputation and profile high is bog standard though. This happening doesn't tell us anything. "Not getting the players I wanted" is about as standard a response to getting sacked as Wenger's "I did not zee that inzident" or Mourinho blaming the ref after a loss. You're ignoring the base rate of these occurrences.

B) Meh... Journalist speculation. And even within this you're cherry picking what you want to believe. "club directors decided that they would refuse all offers". Wasn't that fairly widely speculated and reported? That Southampton reached a breaking point after which they wouldn't sell any more players as they'd already brought in more money than they would realistically spend and keeping some sort of continuity was key for the upcoming season. That's your source by the way, not mine. Saying that they essentially entered a Levy Modric to Chelsea like stance of "nope".

The "Redknapp refined by Levy" comment is just bizarre... Seriously. Palacios, Defoe, Keane, Kaboul, Crouch, Bassong. All PL proven players, most past 25 and on solid wages. Then, after it seems likely that Redknapp is on his way he only gets two loan deals and that's all you can focus on...

We're not threading water though... We've been outperforming our financial constraints fairly regularly. Despite investing money in long term projects like the training ground and stadium project. This for you is threading water? We're a point off 4th and we're threading water? If there was a face-palm smiley this is where I would put it.

Can I at least, if nothing else, ask you to stop equating Lewis and Levy then?
 
Any news on why he wasn't even on the bench yesterday? We could have done with him coming on at the time instead of the ill-suited Paulinho..
 
Very good comparison JGL.

Hopefully he'll be less injury plagued than Tainio. Perhaps people will even learn how to spell his name then ;)

Hahaha, get the comparison, but Stambouli is a much better player than Tainio (pretty much all our players are better than the equivalents from that squad)
 
A) Managers getting the sack then going on to blame others to keep their own reputation and profile high is bog standard though. This happening doesn't tell us anything. "Not getting the players I wanted" is about as standard a response to getting sacked as Wenger's "I did not zee that inzident" or Mourinho blaming the ref after a loss. You're ignoring the base rate of these occurrences.

B) Meh... Journalist speculation. And even within this you're cherry picking what you want to believe. "club directors decided that they would refuse all offers". Wasn't that fairly widely speculated and reported? That Southampton reached a breaking point after which they wouldn't sell any more players as they'd already brought in more money than they would realistically spend and keeping some sort of continuity was key for the upcoming season. That's your source by the way, not mine. Saying that they essentially entered a Levy Modric to Chelsea like stance of "nope".

The "Redknapp refined by Levy" comment is just bizarre... Seriously. Palacios, Defoe, Keane, Kaboul, Crouch, Bassong. All PL proven players, most past 25 and on solid wages. Then, after it seems likely that Redknapp is on his way he only gets two loan deals and that's all you can focus on...

We're not threading water though... We've been outperforming our financial constraints fairly regularly. Despite investing money in long term projects like the training ground and stadium project. This for you is threading water? We're a point off 4th and we're threading water? If there was a face-palm smiley this is where I would put it.

Can I at least, if nothing else, ask you to stop equating Lewis and Levy then?


A) Again, we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I'm fairly certain AVB broke an NDA with our club when he blurted all that out to the interviewer: why would he risk that if all he wanted to do was repair his reputation (which was already pretty much flying at the time by dint of Zenit's continuing success)?

B) Journalist speculation - perhaps, but again, it's 1) all we've got to go on, and 2) from the Telegraph, far more reliable on these matters than most other newspapers. Jason Burt was AVB's buddy, I thought we all agreed on this? And one of their journos (Matt Law, I think?) was a buddy of Harry when he was at the club. So it's not like they haven't got any pedigree when it comes to accurate reporting about Tottenham Hotspur. And as for the 'Modric-stance' Southampton adopted, Chelsea offered 40 million quid straight up in multiple bids, by all accounts, and yet we held firm: if they had offered two million pounds plus Mikel and then run away, would any of us (hell, even Modric himself) view that as testing our resolve to keep him? No.

C) With regard to Redknapp: Half those players were brought in when ENIC's investment (whatever little it consists of, anyway) was finally threatened by relegation, and the resulting success when the manager was backed should have been a revelation to the men in charge: sadly, it wasn't, and we reverted to penny-pinching as soon as the club was safe. Ambitious, indeed. The summer of 2009 was perhaps the last time Levy was legitimately concerned about backing his manager, imo.

I agree, I shouldn't confuse Lewis and Levy, which is why I tried initially to refer to both of them whenever I spoke of ENIC (but I evidently dropped that without noticing along the way). In any case, we've reached another cyclical point in the discussion, and I really don't think you want to zoom around another 360 degrees only to end up at the same point again. :) Let's let the Benji thread be about Benji.
 
A) Again, we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I'm fairly certain AVB broke an NDA with our club when he blurted all that out to the interviewer: why would he risk that if all he wanted to do was repair his reputation (which was already pretty much flying at the time by dint of Zenit's continuing success)?

B) Journalist speculation - perhaps, but again, it's 1) all we've got to go on, and 2) from the Telegraph, far more reliable on these matters than most other newspapers. Jason Burt was AVB's buddy, I thought we all agreed on this? And one of their journos (Matt Law, I think?) was a buddy of Harry when he was at the club. So it's not like they haven't got any pedigree when it comes to accurate reporting about Tottenham Hotspur. And as for the 'Modric-stance' Southampton adopted, Chelsea offered 40 million quid straight up in multiple bids, by all accounts, and yet we held firm: if they had offered two million pounds plus Mikel and then run away, would any of us (hell, even Modric himself) view that as testing our resolve to keep him? No.

C) With regard to Redknapp: Half those players were brought in when ENIC's investment (whatever little it consists of, anyway) was finally threatened by relegation, and the resulting success when the manager was backed should have been a revelation to the men in charge: sadly, it wasn't, and we reverted to penny-pinching as soon as the club was safe. Ambitious, indeed. The summer of 2009 was perhaps the last time Levy was legitimately concerned about backing his manager, imo.

I agree, I shouldn't confuse Lewis and Levy, which is why I tried initially to refer to both of them whenever I spoke of ENIC (but I evidently dropped that without noticing along the way). In any case, we've reached another cyclical point in the discussion, and I really don't think you want to zoom around another 360 degrees only to end up at the same point again. :) Let's let the Benji thread be about Benji.

Agree entirely (with the final paragraph ;) )
 
I loved Tainio, he was a fan of the club and always put a lot of effort into every game. He was better on the ball tham people give him credit for, but his real problem was his injury record. He never got a real run of form going.
 
I think common sense says he must have been, would Poch have actively decided that his only reinforcement on the bench in terms of CM would be Paulinho, away at anfield? Whether it was precautionary or he'd had a bit of a knock and did have a spell out injured.

Hope he's back now but it is odd we haven't heard anything about it
 
Tonight's game thread someone mentioned he was doing warm-ups pre-k.o. in the corner with someone from coaching staff.

Assumption is he's just got a niggle, but keeping him involved is good all round. May be some minor disciplinary thing, but AFAIK he's no track record of acting up.
 
He's not injured.

From Tuesday:

tr_feb17_730e.jpg
 
Hahaha, get the comparison, but Stambouli is a much better player than Tainio (pretty much all our players are better than the equivalents from that squad)

Thought Taino was quality personally, just massively injury prone. Haven't seen anything from stambouli yet to say he's better.
 
Still precious little sign of Stambouli since Bentaleb's return from the ACoN. One solitary game in the Europa and a total of 3 mins coming off the bench in the PL says he's now way down the pecking order behind Paulinho and Dembele.

Maybe he's too much the bull-in-a-china-shop for Poch but he could never be faulted for commitment and overall I thought he did a decent job covering for the Algerian. Sadly it's now looking like he'll be one of the first out the door come Summer.
 
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