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Dele Alli

teletext rumours from Spain tonight that Barcelona have offered 45m Euros for Dele Alli...

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Surely that must be a typo? They forgot to add a 0 at the end. That would be tempting. But no.

There was a tweet yesterday that the Manchester Evening News had reported that City enquired about Dele but decided not to pursue it after Levy told them they could not afford him.
Which begs the question - what fee does Levy in mind for Dele to say it would be too much for oil-rich City?
 
Oh dear, NEVER say NEVER.

Footballers and Chairmen like money and have considerably less loyalty than fans, you shouldn't make blanket statements like that.

I like money!
You offer me £100k a week - I'd even play for Liverpool! Yes even Liverpool (I wouldn't enjoy it of course)
 
I fudging hate every transfer window. It's always the same. Wondering if the club will buckle and weaken the squad
 
I fudging hate every transfer window. It's always the same. Wondering if the club will buckle and weaken the squad

Last summer was mostly comfortable in that regard. I had full confidence that no one important was going to leave. Same with the summer before that. And, for two summers running, Levy broke the mold (in different ways) by bringing in Son and then Sissoko (the latter taking us into positive net spend territory for the first time in a decade, more or less).

This summer so far feels like a regression, if anything. So far.
 
Look on the bright side, we have not signed any s.h.i.t.e this window. We are building a £800m stadium so we were never gonna spend silly money this window so we have to be careful. There are certain teams we cannot compete with financially so why bother.

Personally I am very calm about things.

Very fair. But we have lost a first team player to a rival - at the very least, we need to add one before the end of the window to compensate.
 
Very fair. But we have lost a first team player to a rival - at the very least, we need to add one before the end of the window to compensate.
Or we need to trust in Poch that if the right player isn't available we make do with what we have and not add the Sissoko version of a right back to our squad.
 
Or we need to trust in Poch that if the right player isn't available we make do with what we have and not add the Sissoko version of a right back to our squad.

Eh. I'm not overly bothered yet, but I'm also not a fan of this whole 'trust in Poch' angle *because* of the way it's starting to be used - i.e, as a rejoinder to concerns about a weakened squad. 'Trust in Poch' presumes that this is what he wants - a weakened squad where a first-team right back in his prime with six years of first-team experience under his belt (and a YPOTY award) is sold and no replacement found. Which leaves us with one right-back and a raw youngster who hasn't played a single minute of first-team football anywhere.

I can see where you're coming from, of course - but somehow, I doubt that is the case. Yes, Poch eschewed buying a DM in 2015 in favour of repurposing Dier, a squad move which worked well and saved us the cost of a DM for that season (although we did end up buying Wanyama the next year anyway). But I also don't think he's a masochist who prefers the challenge of working with a weaker squad while banking the money ostensibly meant to be reinvested in it, and that shows in terms of him being quite willing to go into a positive net spend last year on Sissoko, among others.

Anyway, early days yet - so far, it feels like a regression, but that can (and probably will) change by about this time next month, unless I'm very much mistaken.

At the moment the squad is weaker than at the end of last season with the sale of Walker.

Agreed, which is why at the very least a redressal is necessary before the end of August. I think it will happen, though.

we've got one coming back from a year out injured, one who was arguably the best player at the club in the previous season

We had him at this time last year, too - fit, firing and ready to go. Objectively, whichever way you slice it, we have a weaker squad now than we did last week, never mind at this point last year.
 
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