I am of the opinion we signed him for much more than his ability to form some kind of decent squad player (plenty of similar experienced semi-cloggers for much less in the PL) - i.e. the American market and our slow (but promising) conquering of this massive, massive potential
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Dempsey
- Thread starter Howard Webb
- Start date
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
No reasons to believe that AVB actually rates him then?
He has been getting quite a few games. For quite a while he was consistently selected ahead of Sig, up until the injury put him out iirc. Would AVB really do that just to appease Levy and make sure we weren't hurting our American market share? Or perhaps Sig was equally just signed to tap into the Icelandic market...
milo
Jack L. Jones
I think that we were just looking for a hard working replacement for VdV and Fulham were willing to do a deal.
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
Well, if AVB thought Sig wasn't ready to start regularly, but he felt that Dempsey was a better option surely that means he rates him at least somewhat highly?
How can what AVB thinks of the player be irrelevant? If he rates him then that's a decent indication that he might have been happy about signing that player is it not?
What other signings we have made fit this transfer policy of signing players for non-sporting reasons in your opinion?
I think you might have misunderstood me here - I see it as irrelevant to this particular topic of discussion - i.e. one about Levy's transfer policy in general and signings such as Dempsey. What AVB rates of the squad is an entire new subject.
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It is not purely for non-sporting reasons but imv - this is one of the many aspects which go into a potential transfer - and with some players it bears larger weight than others - not just our club - many others too (you just have to look around the PL and see). And now that we are aiming to expand our market and increase income via alternative revenue streams - this becomes one of the inevitabilites. I strongly expect us to sign an Asian player withing the next 12-18 months - and hopefully one which adds something to the squad
I would argue - like-for-like Sigurdsson is VdV's 'direct' replacement - the latter even admitted as much in his latest interview about AVB informing him regarding team positions, squad players, etc.
Dempsey on the other hand seems like someone who 'became' available for a resonable fee on dead-line day and we swooped - much like we've done many times in the past.
greatwhitenorf
Edgar Davids
Or maybe they asked Dembele who he liked on the Fulham roster and he urged us to sign Dempsey. Liverpool were certainly keen to have him and their lingering reaction to not getting him has been bitterness.
Dempsey's done a lot more than live off the avails of that fabulous goal for Fulham against Juventus. Somewhere, somehow, a collective opinion has formed about him amongst his fellow pros. Players aren't sought after because they look good or can add marketing value(D. Beckham, nothwithstanding).
Spurs marketability in the States is blunted by the fact that the influential FOX Soccer channel - run by a gooner - has marketing arrangements with Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. Add in the fact that FOX have to frequently give the Manchester clubs their due and Spurs are lucky to get a couple of minutes of half-hearted derision in any given week.
Dempsey's presence - or Friedel's - has very little to do with their ability to market Spurs Stateside. They're in the team because they can play. And when they're not playing, they're model pros who train hard and mesh well with their teammates.
Fulham gave Dempsey a more frequent starting role and all he did was enhance his reputation. This ain't figure skating and no matter how fans want to play the role of the East German judge and begrudge a competitor's efforts on style points or technical merit, the name of the game is scoring and winning. Dempsey may not be your idea of Katerina Witt in kleats, but he has that poacher's ability to sift and drift and find a place where the ball will find him. He did it for Fulham, he's doing it for the States, and he's doing it for us. Right now, I trust Dempsey a lot more than I trust Ade or Defoe.
Dempsey's done a lot more than live off the avails of that fabulous goal for Fulham against Juventus. Somewhere, somehow, a collective opinion has formed about him amongst his fellow pros. Players aren't sought after because they look good or can add marketing value(D. Beckham, nothwithstanding).
Spurs marketability in the States is blunted by the fact that the influential FOX Soccer channel - run by a gooner - has marketing arrangements with Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. Add in the fact that FOX have to frequently give the Manchester clubs their due and Spurs are lucky to get a couple of minutes of half-hearted derision in any given week.
Dempsey's presence - or Friedel's - has very little to do with their ability to market Spurs Stateside. They're in the team because they can play. And when they're not playing, they're model pros who train hard and mesh well with their teammates.
Fulham gave Dempsey a more frequent starting role and all he did was enhance his reputation. This ain't figure skating and no matter how fans want to play the role of the East German judge and begrudge a competitor's efforts on style points or technical merit, the name of the game is scoring and winning. Dempsey may not be your idea of Katerina Witt in kleats, but he has that poacher's ability to sift and drift and find a place where the ball will find him. He did it for Fulham, he's doing it for the States, and he's doing it for us. Right now, I trust Dempsey a lot more than I trust Ade or Defoe.
If this is how our transfer selection works, mate - I give up
This is not true, I'm afraid
Ask any US supporter on here - how many of our games are showing this year compared to last and you'd be quite surprised
Take it a step further and check how many new supporters we've established in the US over the last 2 years
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
Of course non-sporting factors will play their part. But in my opinion it will do so on choosing one player over another when they are otherwise of similar quality or being willing to pay an extra million or two for a player that they might not otherwise be worth. I don't think it will be the primary reason for signing a player, unless we're talking about Toda type very cheap "t-shirt" signings perhaps.
If you're trying to evaluate what was most important, sporting or non-sporting reasons I can't see how the manager's apparent rating doesn't influence that.
I
indianspur
Guest
i havent taken to Dempsey. Something about him.
Being one of the experienced players he needs to be more verbal, encourage those around him on the pitch. Very introverted
Also he simply disappears in games in a way like ive never seen a player do before.
odd signing
Being one of the experienced players he needs to be more verbal, encourage those around him on the pitch. Very introverted
Also he simply disappears in games in a way like ive never seen a player do before.
odd signing
Looking at this from a footballing point of view - why would AVB refuse Dempsey's signing on deadline day seeing that it was the only one he was going to get and we were heading into 4 competitions with only 2 semi-decent forwards?
It's what was 'chosen' for him in many ways and what became 'available' on the last day
He probably thought - 'oh well, not too shabby - will hopefully do a job for us'. Better to have an average player and no player with 6 hours to midnight.
EDIT: - But to suggest that AVB actively scouted and indicated Dempsey as his summer target many weeks ago - sorry, nope cannot buy that for a second. It was simply one of those deadline day take-it-or-leave-deals. We love those - even Arry alluded as much in one of his recent blabberings
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braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
But he hasn't been used in a way that suggests that this is the case. Once again, he was preferred to Sig for quite a while (he certainly wasn't a last minute punt) and Dempsey has been getting regular games.
You state outright that Dempsey was chosen for him. I don't quite see how you can back that up?
He might not have been our first choice player, but I see it as quite likely that he was one of the options the transfer team had identified as a good signing and that going into the final days we went for him when perhaps someone even better didn't come off.
braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
Brendan Rodgers had actively chosen Dempsey as someone he wanted to bring in, I don't see why it's unreasonable to think that Dempsey was someone that AVB also had identified as a good player for the right price.
Once again, him getting plenty of game time, even fairly early in his Spurs career certainly doesn't indicate that he was just some last minute punt.
Liverpool is another club looking to enter the American market and is possibly well ahead of us in that regard due to its owners, etc. (even that cringeworthy movie they made lol)
What Rodgers had done is of little relevance here, tbh
He could have still been a last minute punt and also receive plenty of game time (i.e. pleasantly surprised by what you bought, etc.) not sure why you regard the two as mutually exclusive
What Rodgers had done is of little relevance here, tbh
He could have still been a last minute punt and also receive plenty of game time (i.e. pleasantly surprised by what you bought, etc.) not sure why you regard the two as mutually exclusive
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braineclipse
Steve Sedgley
They're not mutually exclusive, but since there's no way of knowing the thoughts that went into the transfer that seems like a more unlikely assumption.
It's a simple question of "what then would you expect to happen"? If a player is signed primarily for non-sporting reasons then I would expect that player to get less game time than a player that was signed for sporting reasons. That's won't always be true, but that seems more likely. Occam's razor and all that.
If Dempsey was a target for Liverpool for non-sporting reasons it makes little to no sense that they would refuse to pay the extra million in transfer fee that Fulham were asking.
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Slightly different approach:
We sign quite a few players each season. 6 last summer and Holtby in January, that's 7 under AVB in his first season. To me it seems perfectly natural that some of those signings will perform better than other just by random chance. Much like, perhaps partly by random chance (given that performance will be influenced by this), any given fan is likely to rate some of those 7 players highly and others not so highly.
There will always be some explanation available to describe why the player that doesn't perform or that isn't rated by an individual fan was signed. If it was Lloris that you didn't like could you claim that we were just trying to improve our standing in the French market by signing their international captain cheaply?
If it didn't work out with Vertonghen we could find some explanation that he was just signed because he was Belgian and on his last year of his contract. Ade was just signed because of the African market (we have after all had summer tours in South Africa)? I could go on for most the players we've signed I believe.
It seems to me that these kinds of explanations will always be available, again, just as a result of random chance. So I'm rather skeptical of those explanations. I thin in general both Levy and AVB are rational people, trying their very best to make well reasoned decisions to help the club forward. To sign a £6m 29 year old primarily for non-sporting reasons without the manager rating that player seems to me irrational.
Like I said, I could see the kind of t-shirt value in a player like Toda, also a younger player on low wages I think who was never going to cost the club much. Dempsey doesn't to me fit that description.
Friedel would actually fit that description much better, free agent, short term contract and all that. Would have been a perfect candidate, if not for the fact that he did so well for us last season.
It's a simple question of "what then would you expect to happen"? If a player is signed primarily for non-sporting reasons then I would expect that player to get less game time than a player that was signed for sporting reasons. That's won't always be true, but that seems more likely. Occam's razor and all that.
If Dempsey was a target for Liverpool for non-sporting reasons it makes little to no sense that they would refuse to pay the extra million in transfer fee that Fulham were asking.
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Slightly different approach:
We sign quite a few players each season. 6 last summer and Holtby in January, that's 7 under AVB in his first season. To me it seems perfectly natural that some of those signings will perform better than other just by random chance. Much like, perhaps partly by random chance (given that performance will be influenced by this), any given fan is likely to rate some of those 7 players highly and others not so highly.
There will always be some explanation available to describe why the player that doesn't perform or that isn't rated by an individual fan was signed. If it was Lloris that you didn't like could you claim that we were just trying to improve our standing in the French market by signing their international captain cheaply?
If it didn't work out with Vertonghen we could find some explanation that he was just signed because he was Belgian and on his last year of his contract. Ade was just signed because of the African market (we have after all had summer tours in South Africa)? I could go on for most the players we've signed I believe.
It seems to me that these kinds of explanations will always be available, again, just as a result of random chance. So I'm rather skeptical of those explanations. I thin in general both Levy and AVB are rational people, trying their very best to make well reasoned decisions to help the club forward. To sign a £6m 29 year old primarily for non-sporting reasons without the manager rating that player seems to me irrational.
Like I said, I could see the kind of t-shirt value in a player like Toda, also a younger player on low wages I think who was never going to cost the club much. Dempsey doesn't to me fit that description.
Friedel would actually fit that description much better, free agent, short term contract and all that. Would have been a perfect candidate, if not for the fact that he did so well for us last season.