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Georges-Kévin NKoudou

What are people expecting from him in the first half of this season?

metalgear said:
I think he needs to hit the weights room a bit.
But always welcome another dribbler, the game would be boring without them. Our history is made up of the some great ones too.
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About every young player the same seems to be said...

Was an interesting bit in the Guardian football weekly podcast about how Dortmund felt Gotze had been worked too much on his upper body strength at the cost of his agility while at Bayern. They were apparently giving him a lot of time during the summer and now to get back to where he was when with them.

Leicester won the league last season with some of the skinniest footballers in England... Mahrez, Kante and Vardy would all have been told "think he needs to hit the weights room a bit" by plenty of fans and probably quite a few coaches.
 
braineclipse said:
What are people expecting from him in the first half of this season?



About every young player the same seems to be said...

Was an interesting bit in the Guardian football weekly podcast about how Dortmund felt Gotze had been worked too much on his upper body strength at the cost of his agility while at Bayern. They were apparently giving him a lot of time during the summer and now to get back to where he was when with them.

Leicester won the league last season with some of the skinniest footballers in England... Mahrez, Kante and Vardy would all have been told "think he needs to hit the weights room a bit" by plenty of fans and probably quite a few coaches.
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well put it this way - if nkoudou is going to leicester i think he'd literally have a flying start as he is.

its more about how we are set up - and how we don't use space and speed despite poch's early musings about the quick turnover and counter attack.
 
The interview video on the official spurs site. Not kicked a ball for us yet BUT..

I love George........he is adorable. Appears to have a lovely nature to him.

And whoever is running his twitter account.......has nailed it.
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
The interview video on the official spurs site. Not kicked a ball for us yet BUT..

I love George........he is adorable. Appears to have a lovely nature to him.

And whoever is running his twitter account.......has nailed it.
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Is it not possible he's doing it himself, and is just a pretty funny guy? Everyone's convinced he has someone running it, as if he's Messi or Bale or something. He was playing for Nantes a year ago!
 
braineclipse said:
What are people expecting from him in the first half of this season?



About every young player the same seems to be said...

Was an interesting bit in the Guardian football weekly podcast about how Dortmund felt Gotze had been worked too much on his upper body strength at the cost of his agility while at Bayern. They were apparently giving him a lot of time during the summer and now to get back to where he was when with them.

Leicester won the league last season with some of the skinniest footballers in England... Mahrez, Kante and Vardy would all have been told "think he needs to hit the weights room a bit" by plenty of fans and probably quite a few coaches.
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I'm hoping that he will at the very least get enough game time for me to form an opinion on him.
 
JerusalemMan said:
Look at what you said earlier. You claimed Levy was being called difficult. In isolation. Which is something of an insult.
That tweet directly talks about him being difficult IN NEGOTIATING. That's not an insult but a professional assessment. Context is key.
The speaker has also said Levy was very straight with them
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Well, I wouldn't call him 'difficult' in any other context than in negotiations, now, would I? It's not like I know the man well enough to consider him 'difficult' - indeed, I'd probably quite like the guy if I met him over a beer or two. :) I comment on his professional activity because, as far as I'm concerned, it's all that I'm entitled to speak about - what he gets up to beyond that isn't a concern of mine, although obviously it would be nice if he's a good egg off the field (and I've seen no indication that he's anything but a good sort so far).

When it comes to negotiations, Levy is difficult. In the context of Franck Passi's statement, it refers to negotiating over the N'Koudou fee. The Guardian have alleged that Levy spent seven weeks shaving 1.6m off the agreed-upon total - Passi might be referring to that, since the alternative scenario (him calling Levy 'difficult' because he refused to renegotiate the deal despite *Marseille's* insistence) seems more unlikely (although still possible), given that making such statements leaves one open to a public rebuttal if Levy's got the facts on his side. However, one thing that can be said with reasonable certainty is that the 'power shift' stuff isn't

Gazzasrightboot said:
Difficult could mean a whole lot of things though. It doesn't just mean ass-hole. If a negotiation is not difficult, then I don't think it is being done properly. Ultimately if we are buying a player that they don't really want to sell, then a negotiation will always be difficult.
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It isn't like N'Koudou was some key player who was only going to go for an outrageous fee, though. He would be fairly peripheral for us (at least at first), and Marseille only wanted 13m euros for him (versus the 35m+ euros they charged for Batshuayi, for example) - these things were clear heading into the deal. The importance of the deal didn't merit an approach that leads to Passi publicly labelling Levy 'difficult' and the deal only going through in the dying hours of deadline day, two months after it first cropped up.


Gazzasrightboot said:
A previous member of the Marseille hierachy had agreed a deal in principle. There's no reason for the new owners/stakeholders to stick to it and "do a Levy". I think that there probably was a low reluctance to deal with us, because we were not as willing to just accept whatever price was handed to us.
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They were probably reluctant to deal with us, but they didn't name a price that was beyond our reach, or even higher than what Monaco paid for Benjamin Mendy - this was stated by news outlets back in July, and we ended up paying close to the fee quoted. There's the possibility they started much higher, of course, but in that case I fail to see why Batshuayi went for much the same price that he was being labelled with by the papers, since they would have tried to inflate the deal there too - especially with Chelsea, who'd pay whatever they wanted.

Gazzasrightboot said:
Also if N'Koudou had arrived earlier, I don't believe it would have made any difference whatsoever. Much in the same way that Clinton made an impact last season. It's a youngster coming in from a foreign league and Poch is restrained with how he puts them into the team. I agree with you, £1.6m could be a false saving, but it is a real guaranteed saving versus a potential further saving later. Put it this way, would you like £1.6m now or the possibility of getting between £0 and £3m in 12 months time. That variable is dependent on a footballer staying healthy, not getting into any trouble, acclimatising to the EPL and not by any means guaranteed to being a starter. If it were your own money, I'm not sure you'd take the bet!.
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Ah, if it were my own money...;) But, being serious, I'm not sure it's between 1.6m and 3m as much as it's between 1.6m and (possibly) two points (in any of our draws so far) or more. The latter makes all the difference, since that margin might mean getting into the CL again versus trying to get excited about trips to Rostov-on-Don on Thursday nights. The sums involved are greater, and the rewards for success are greater.

Gazzasrightboot said:
But this is just what I don't get from your standpoint. If he has shown that he will get deals done early, why do you think he picks and chooses when to be an *******? Is it some sort of personality curse? It's not in his interests to drag out a deal if he doesn't have to. By gettins some deals done early, he has shown that he doesn't look to renegotiate everything to a point of unreasonableness. So why choose to do so with certain deals? I just don't see why anyone, especially someone like you, would think that Levy has this desire to be detrimental to the football team that he owns. Plainly he will have a better idea of the cost-benefit than most, and it's his money and therefore his return. If he's a money man, he will recognise the pitfalls of dragging a deal out and feel it more than most. So why assume that it's always him that is the reason for things being dragged out?
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That's probably the best explanation I can give, to be honest. :p I think (and I freely admit that this is all speculation) he's just risk averse, to a large degree - there are times when he overcomes that (Sissoko), and times when acting swiftly is a low-risk proposition (like buying Toby, Son or VDV, or sacking Juande and hiring Harry, for example), but in marginal cases, he tends to swing towards saving money so that (I suspect) it can be put away for unspecified future deals or crises, while overlooking the fact that future deals will also be measured by his wary eye, and a nebulous 'future crisis we will spend in' may actually become 'ah, this is marginal' when it arrives, which leads to more saving for a 'future crisis' and so on. This is usually contrary to the interest of the manager, which I take to be the interest of the club as a whole if we're serious about trusting the man in charge - Levy, I suspect, disagrees with that last point. Well, *disagreed* - after Sissoko, I'm delighted to say that this may not actually be the case anymore, although I'll need more cases to go on before I comprehensively change my viewpoint.

Either way, I assure you, I'll be first in the goddamn line when his autobiography comes out. :)

Gazzasrightboot said:
I'm not going to rise to the AVB comment! :p:p:p
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AVB.jpg



You make me sad. :)
 
DubaiSpur said:
Which is why I phrased it as a question, although Marseille's subsequent tweet calling Levy 'difficult' sort of adds weight to the Guardian's interpretation, I'd imagine.



That is true, sometimes other parties just aren't willing to negotiate. Like Steve Parish re; Zaha, and Jeremy Peace re; Berahino. But Marseille had the deal agreed in May, and proved perfectly willing to sell Batshuayi and Mendy (as well as Lemina before last season ended), so I guess my point is structured around the low likelihood of them being reluctant to deal with us but perfectly happy to deal with everyone else, *just* on account of them not liking Levy's cologne or dress sense or something.

Also, my suggestion is that N'Koudou, if he'd arrived earlier, could have trained enough to hit the ground running earlier than will now be the case, given that he spent the best part of a month presumably eating overpriced chocolate bars from the minifridge in whatever hotel room he was bunkered up in. The lost opportunities will come in that time period between when he *would* have been fit enough to start and when he now *will* be fit and ready to start, when a late N'Koudou goal, tap-in or tackle could either create, score or prevent a goal.

Or he could have scored nine rabona goals by now and we'd be top of the league with nine points and a +10 goal difference - monstrously unlikely, but whatever. The point is hopefully clearer - when I say 1.6m could be a false saving, I've factored in the likelihood that he won't now start for a while anyway.



Levy has done deals early. He's stretched deals longer than he has too as well. The thing about Janssen is that we spent a couple of weeks between apparently settling things with AZ and actually signing the guy, because apparently we weren't willing to pay what AZ were demanding - I sounded off about that as well, especially given that we passed up on Batshuayi to sign the guy. And Wanyama in particular confirmed that we were after him last summer as well, but Soton refused to sell.

I've never held a black and white position on Levy that clearly states that he's irretrievably cheap or lost to any sense in terms of pursuing pennies over backing his manager. I have, however, held the position that Levy unnecessarily stretches deals out more than he moves quickly to settle deals his manager evidently wants settled, and I've held that such a practice is sometimes quite detrimental to us. You mention Abramovich's last-minute deals for Luiz and that full-back (Alonso?) as evident counterweights to the idea that Levy's unique in this - my answer to that would be that Abramovich has outbid Levy and swooped in to seal deals to our detriment before, in short spans of time (Batshuayi and Willian, for example), and that his transfer dealings over the years haven't really shown any indication of a desire to scrimp and save over backing his managers (even if he does sack them later).

Levy is generally the opposite - there are certainly times where he backs his manager, but there are more instances where he's tried to save and left the manager short (or ultimately in the position of having to make do with an inferior signing or none at all). One constant in my position has been that this sequence of events is counterproductive, and that we should be doing the opposite.



I absolutely don't mind recognising it, because I'm quite happy about it - and I applaud the move :) . For me, instances like these (like I mentioned in either this thread or another one, can't quite remember) will help tip the scale back to the point where I defend Levy from accusations of not backing his man. For now, in this window, Sissoko proved that last summer's relatively quick deals for quality players (beating off competition for them, like with Toby) and (save for perhaps Berahino) lack of long-drawn out sagas wasn't a complete fluke, and that at least some prioritization of actual backing for the manager is definitely present in how Levy approaches the market now. With N'Koudou and others, I felt he delayed too long and fell back towards his flawed previous approach. With Sissoko, he swallowed his distaste and went in, all guns blazing, on a frankly unconvincing player but one that Poch evidently wanted, and that redeems him in my eyes to a considerable extent - and it will remain that way however Sissoko ends up performing, because it's the intent that matters in this instance, not the player.

More of the latter, less of the former, Daniel. Like I mentioned elsewhere, balancing's no doubt necessary, and it can be done later (as we'll likely end up doing if the options on Bentaleb and N'Jie are exercised). But it shouldn't be our priority if we're serious about giving Poch the tools he asks for, so that we can properly judge his time at the club without needing to put an asterisk next to his name that reads 'wasn't given the players he wanted', as happened with AVB.

Also, thanks for crediting me with speaking my mind, mate - I don't usually need encouragement to determinedly holler at random posters here, but it's appreciated nonetheless. :p
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Concise as usual
 
Daisuk said:
So... When will he play? Today perhaps?

Sent from my D6603 using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
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I think he has an outside chance of being involved. These are Poch's comments last week pre-Sunderland:

"It is going well. He is very young, he speaks only French, it's a big problem for him," Pochettino told his pre-match new conference.

"He is learning quickly, but he is still settling into the team. He needs to work more.

"I think maybe he will be ready to be selected next week, maybe but not sure," he added.
 
Gorgeous showed a little glimpse of his acceleration last night when trying to reach the ball before their keeper inside box. Looked like he turned on the nitro and that his legs grew or something - wild acceleration! Looked psyched to play last night, but didn't really do a lot of useful things with the ball. I reckon he just needs some time though.

marsmelons.com
 
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