The Spurs Thread

[Shimmyhill]

Gutted VDV has gone but he went to be with his wife do fair enough, family first.

Bloody transfer deadline day - i know its all bollocks and yet here i am sat with SSN on whilst viewing a few websites with rumour updates

[Shimmyhill]

Clint is about to sign for us, good bit of business that!

[Charliemouse]

Yeah but we need Moutinho.

[One Eye]

Clint is about to sign for us, good bit of business that!

Not a spurs fan but I wouldn't be pleased if that's instead of Lloris or Moutinho. Guess he'll be striker cover but he's not really suited to that role imo and Damiao would be a better bet in jan.

Think your squad needs a goalkeeper, winger (what is there behind Lennon and Bale?) and a deep passing midfielder. Moutinho would've meant you barely felt the loss of Modric (bar the bedding in period) fabulous player and knows the manager.

[redbloodcell]

SSN says Lloris is completed. Looking bleak on the Moutinho front though.

[Shimmyhill]

Lloris is completed, Levy is back trying to sort out Moutinho deal - i hope it will get done but its certainly in the balance - fee agreed just personal terms they say!

[a big boy]

Dempsey is such a Spurs signing.

[redbloodcell]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pmpUevJ_AA

Looks like it was actually completed ages ago!

[One Eye]

Got a feeling Dempsey is going to be the next Pienaar, Krancjar, Pavlychenko in terms of playing time. Maybe AVB will rotate more than 'Arry and have less clear favourites.

[redbloodcell]

I think he could replace Lennon, way more of a goal threat and can get on the end of Bale's crosses.

[Shimmyhill]

Yup, i think he will score goals and thats what we need, he was on fire last season and looked a threat all the time - pleased we got him.

[redbloodcell]

Hudd ended up staying too it appears, although I'm not sure if he's going to get game time at all.

[One Eye]

His lack of mobility will count against him from AVB's perspective. Might get some game time with no Moutinho coming in. Still got Jenas and Bentley?

[Charliemouse]

So not a great start to the season but It seems a lot of Spurs fans seem to have very short memories. They have forgotten how shit we were between February and May and even managed to lose to Norwich at home in that period, so stop the the booing and whining and support your fucking team.

[redbloodcell]

Quite. Bad day at the office and another late goal conceded but it's hardly like that's a new feature, they've always been something of a blight. What fans need to understand is that to stop them means changing the mentality of the entire club, and that isn't going to happen overnight.

[Frosty]

I've been busy over the weekend so I haven't actually seen the Norwich game or any highlights. But it sounds like another bad performance.

As for the transfer window - gutted over Moutinho and mixed feelings over Dempsey, especially in light of van der Vaart going.

Just looking at it plainly we've traded the two best players from a team that finished 4th last season (Modric, van der Vaart) and replaced them with the best players from a team that finished 9th (Dembele, Dempsey). They aren't bad players and both were certainly ready to move up to a better team, but I would never describe them as upgrades.

We needed Moutinho, the team looks disappointingly ordinary now. Just what went wrong with the Moutinho deal? Seeing now it was to do with third party claims, but we've been after him for months. Surely we had all this worked out unless Levy/Porto/his agent/this 'investor' decided to change the deal to get some more cash at the last second. We would have talked to the player yonks ago. Fingers crossed for January - if AVB is still in a job by then. Think this season might be a bit of a write off already I just hope this isn't a return to mid table.

Was watching In Bruge earlier "Not really shit, but not good either. Like Tottenham".

[redbloodcell]

I don't think it's nearly that bad. We're changing for sure, but there has been a need for change for a very long time. This is the third attempt to really ram home a change of attitude at the club, hope that it sticks this time and we can shake off the whole "soft Tottenham" image.

I'm not as worried about losing out on Moutinho now as I initially was either, it means we have to be more of a directly attacking side but we have the players to do that all over our attacking unit. Sandro, Dembele, Siggi, Bale, Dempsey and Ade all pushing forward and pressing the opposition is going to be brutal.

[Frosty]

I'm hopeful for AVB and believe his system is a winning one but he's clearly struggling to implement it and getting Moutinho, who was the player that made it work at Porto, would have made thing's so much easier and smoother. He understands and enjoys AVB's approach and could have led by example on the pitch, maybe could have humanised AVB a bit for the other players and given them confidence in his ways.

I just hope Andre is being backed by Levy and will be given the time to get things working.

[meatbin]

FC Porto have sold Hulk for £32 million which could have repercussions on a sale of Moutinho... Porto now don't desperately need the cash, and have lost a major attacking force.

[Frosty]

Yea it was one or the other for Porto. Doubt we'll get him now. Oh well, gg Levy.

In other news sexy mandroid AVB has already alienated our number 1 for the next decade.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/sep/04/hugo-lloris-villas-boas-deschamps

Didier Deschamps has indicated that Hugo Lloris is unhappy with comments made by his new club manager André Villas-Boas, just four days after the France goalkeeper's move to White Hart Lane.

Lloris left Lyon for Tottenham Hotspur in an £12m move on Friday, with the clear intention of taking the No1 shirt from Brad Friedel. With Friedel now 41, it appeared Lloris, 16 years his junior, had been brought in with the idea of replacing the American.

But Friedel responded to his arrival by producing one of the performances of his career against Norwich City on Saturday, prompting Villas-Boas to say that Lloris would have to fight to win a starting spot.

That does not appear to have gone down well with Lloris, who linked up with the France squad on Monday. His national manager, Deschamps, said: "Hugo has not appreciated the statements of his coach.

"I am not going to create a problem that I do not need today. But if it were to happen then it would need some consideration. I do not want Hugo to find himself in this situation."

I don't want to get back to sticking the boot in on Fridel as I didn't see the Norwich game and I heard he performed some heroics. Could someone who saw the game though tell me if in their opinion we would have benefitted more from having a more mobile keeper that perhaps would have prevented us from ever getting exposed to the point of needing heroics? Because saves aren't the be all and end all of good goalkeeping despite how it may appear (this is why Shay Given has a million caps for Ireland and has played for a string of premiership clubs).

[Charliemouse]

Lloris is I think the only player AVB wanted that we managed to get and due to his mobility I will be surprised if he is not in the team ASAP.

[Frosty]

Yea, this is all just a load of media rumblings anyway because of AVB's supposedly suspect man management.

Think we might finally see a proper first XI against Reading? (except Kaboul obviously).

Thinking:

Lloris

Walker

Vertonghen

Gallas (I'd actually prefer Caulker I think - knows how to play a high line from Swansea)

BAE

Sandro

Dembele

Dempsey

Sigurdsson

Bale

Adebayor

I posted before when we were linked with M'Vila how tall our team would be with him. We've missed him but Dempsey is 6'1" and a real aerial threat himself - I use this to cheer myself up about missing out on the 5'7" Moutinho. Hoping to see him play on the right and drifting inside to shoot while also getting to the far post to head in anything that Bale swings in that passes Adebayor. Reading have a seriously ropey keeper in Federici so I think that front line should have plenty of opportunities to pressure him into a mistake. Clint and Gylfi's long range threat should be especially lethal against him.

I'm still concerned that we lack a proper playmaker, I see from the man city data that Gylfi made a lot of key passes as well as his screamers so he could well develop into the forward creative fulcrum with Dembele linking defence into attack with those runs from deep and his accurate passing. Adebayor holding things up and good direct wideplayers - there is definitely a good team system there but it's a shift from the 'give it to Modric' tactic that 'Arry used so well.

[redbloodcell]

Dembele is 6'1" too, we'd be able to field an entire XI over 6' after Kabs got back!

[Frosty]

We're the new Stoke.

Some more details on how we missed out on Moutinho:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/sep/04/tottenham-hotspur-joao-moutinho

André Villas-Boas's frustration at Tottenham Hotspur's failure to sign João Moutinho from Porto on transfer deadline day was compounded by the knowledge that the clubs had submitted an agreed deal sheet to the Premier League before the 11pm cut-off.

Villas-Boas had made the Portugal midfielder his priority target, considering him to be the player not only to replace Luka Modric, who was sold to Real Madrid for £30m, but to knit together the 4-3-3 formation that he has introduced at White Hart Lane. Moutinho is well schooled in the system and he played in it under Villas-Boas at Porto.

The Tottenham manager's hopes that the transfer would be completed were raised last Friday when his club and Porto signed the deal sheet and submitted it to the Premier League. The sheet, which is an emergency mechanism for late transfers, cannot be used before 9pm and must be with the League by 11pm.

It allows a club to confirm that an agreement is in place with regard to the fee and the structure of the payments in order to allow for additional time to submit the remaining documents, including the player contract. Once the sheet arrives, the clubs can have until 1am to submit the full paperwork but, in the case of an international transfer, such as this one, the final deadline for everything to be fed into Fifa's transfer matching system is midnight.

Tottenham's offer was €25m (£20m), which would have been a club record, eclipsing the £16.6m that they paid to Dynamo Zagreb for Modric in 2008, and they and Porto continued to work on the deal between 11pm and 12 midnight. It is understood that Moutinho wanted the move but his third party ownership presented one issue that could not be resolved before midnight.

A third party investor owns 15% of Moutinho's economic rights, after deals were struck following the player's €10m transfer from Sporting Lisbon to Porto in 2010. Although Porto paid for 100% of Moutinho's rights, they sold 37.5% of them in October of that year to the investor for €4.2m before, in August 2011, buying back 22.5% of them.

The investor's 15% entitled him to a cut of the fee and, under Premier League rules, which forbid third party ownership, he had to be bought out at the Porto end before the deal could be ratified. In the frantic moments before midnight, the clubs could not reach agreement, with sources close to Tottenham saying that Porto went back on the previously signed deal sheet to demand a higher fee.

Another of the complications regarded Moutinho's personal terms and, when his demand for a bigger salary was met, Porto used the notion that Tottenham valued him more highly to drive up the fee. Porto already stood to pay Sporting Lisbon a 25% cut of sale profits above €10m, the figure that Sporting had parted with two years ago.

The third party ownership issue resonated further on Tuesday, when Porto confirmed the €40m sale of the striker Hulk to Zenit St Petersburg; the Russian champions have also signed the midfielder Axel Witsel from Benfica for the same price. The Russian transfer window has a later closing date than that in England.

Fifteen per cent of Hulk's economic rights are owned by a third party investor and Porto said, in a filing to the Portuguese stock exchange, that they would receive the fee from Zenit in exchange for the 85% that they held in the player; in other words, Hulk remains under the influence of his third party owner, which is not against the rules in Russia.

Chelsea, though, would appear rueful onlookers, having held an interest in Hulk and agreed a fee of £38m for him in principle with Porto earlier in the summer. The deal, though, foundered over complications related to the buy-out of his third party owner.

As I thought someone tried to get more money at the last moment - seems Porto wanted Levy to pay extra so they could buy out this investor. Real shame really, our own (good) rules on third party ownership in the Premier League scuppered us. Knew it couldn't have been an issue over personal terms - we'd have known exactly what Moutinho wanted before an offer was even made.

[One Eye]

While the dodgy ownership was the problem the cause was Levy waiting to the last possible moment to move for him. The hiccups could've been overcome of he'd negotiated earlier and your team would be less disrupted during the start of the season. You might get good prices for selling and buying with the brinksmanship but at what cost.

No way you get Moutinho in January now either after the Hulk sale Porto are much less desperate to flog another star player.

Really think Moutinho would've made Spurs season - symbolically and tactically crucial for AVB.

[Frosty]

Anyone see the Wales v Belgium game? I picked that over England because of the three Spurs players starting. Worth a watch, the ref had a shocker (though the red card was probably fair), and Wales really need a decent striker.

Quite encouraging displays really, Vertonghen showed why Spurs needn't worry about leftback cover any more as he gave a really solid display, especially when it came to getting forward and scored a great goal - a freekick from Mertens to tee him up for a long range drive. Dembele was solid and showed flashes of his power and precision but nothing too amazing and came off around the 65th minute.

Bale was far and away Wales' best player even though he started as an inside forward on the right. Good all round display, showed some of his pace from deep, some good trickery to carve out chances, aerial presence and unlucky not to score from a great long range freekick as well - if he can carry that form into the Reading game then he should net a couple and create another.

[Frosty]

Woo proper football is back on and Spurs are today's only game.

What are we hoping to see today?

I want Dembele and Adebayor to start and hopefully Dempsey to come on and play wide right at some point. I also want Bale to take that freekick form for Wales into a Spurs game for once.

[Frosty]

Brad Friedel continues in goal for Tottenham. Moussa Dembele starts as does Kyle Naughton, in place of Benoit Assou-Ekotto. Clint Dempsey and Emmanuel Adebayor are on the bench. Keeper Adam Federici is not in the Reading squad because of injury so Alex McCarthy makes his Premier League debut.

[Troublegum]

Defoe up front on his own again, why does that not surprise me?

LINE-UPS- Reading v Tottenham (16:00 BST)

Reading: McCarthy, Gunter, Pearce, Gorkss, Harte, McCleary, Leigertwood, Karacan, Guthrie, McAnuff, Pogrebnyak. Subs: Taylor, Shorey, Mariappa, Le Fondre, Hunt, Robson-Kanu, Cummings.

Tottenham: Friedel, Walker, Vertonghen, Gallas, Naughton, Lennon, Sigurdsson, Sandro, Dembele, Bale, Defoe. Subs: Lloris, Dempsey, Huddlestone, Adebayor, Dawson, Townsend, Caulker.

I predict a 1-1 draw.

[Troublegum]

Sometimes it's great being wrong.