January sales

[taimedowne]

Deals for the January window are being negotiated as I type this. The window is when players are allowed to join and leave clubs. Sure some deals are done entirely in January, others are protracted deals taking many months. Agents are always sounding out clubs and players and to suggest we wouldn't have time during the window to sell any players deemed surplus to requirement is nonsense.
 As far as selling Bale goes, I look at it like this. If you are trying to build a racing car you dont sell your  gearbox so you can buy a better engine. Same with Spurs why buy a top class striker and then cut of his best line of supply? We are making plenty of money from the CL the last thing we need to be doing is selling our best players if we want this adventure to continue we need all the quality footballers we can get. 

[Gareth Keown]

if you think selling 4 from Bentley, Pav, Keane, O'Hara, Dos Santos can be done in 1 month inclusive AND Spurs spend the money on a world-class striker, you are being naive....clubs, players, agents will guess what youre up to and realise that time is on their side in any negotiations... we will get peanuts for them...

dont agree that selling 1 star-player that can be replaced by a slighhtly lesser player already in-house, and using the 30m+ to instantly get a star-striker that will greatly enhance the quality and balance of the team, wouldnt work..... Sevilla back in 2003 sold Sergio Ramos, Baptista and Reyes for over 40m+... they then spent a lesser sum on the likes of Fabiano, Kanoute and a few others and actually IMPROVED ... they ended up near La Liga winners and won won numerous trophies incl. 2 UEFA Cups, Spanish Cups and the European Super Cup beating regularly the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona for the next 3-4yrs...

[ugs]

Deals for the January window are being negotiated as I type this. The window is when players are allowed to join and leave clubs. Sure some deals are done entirely in January, others are protracted deals taking many months. Agents are always sounding out clubs and players and to suggest we wouldn't have time during the window to sell any players deemed surplus to requirement is nonsense.
 As far as selling Bale goes, I look at it like this. If you are trying to build a racing car you dont sell your  gearbox so you can buy a better engine. Same with Spurs why buy a top class striker and then cut of his best line of supply? We are making plenty of money from the CL the last thing we need to be doing is selling our best players if we want this adventure to continue we need all the quality footballers we can get.

If I had typed this I would have typed exactly the same thing mate, absolutely and totally agree. We should be building not dismantling and trying to piece together something else. If anything now is the time to take a punt and use some of the money that we could be earning later this or next season so that we can jump across the now small gap between us and the so called big 4 clubs !!! When I say use some of the money I mean some not all so we don't  put ourselves in a difficult financial position like other clubs but I'm pretty sure we could scrape together £20 million if we had too!!
 
 

[aspursfan]

I would like us to get someone like Suarez, but I'm sure in January that would cost a fortune and is extremely unlikely. I think the longer Keane sits on our bench the amount anyone will offer for him will decrease. Hopefully Defoe starts finding the net when he returns from injury.

[taimedowne]

I'm not suggesting that all those deals could be done in a month. Far from it. I'm suggesting that deals for January are in motion right now. Clubs sounded, out players being approached, contracts negotiated etc. All ready to be rubber stamped during the window.
 I agree that it is certainly possible to remove a star player or 2 and bring in seemingly inferior players and improve a team it's as much about the way the players blend as it is about individual talents after all. I just don't think the coming window is the best time to sell Bale. Maybe if we get a ridiculous offer in the summer it would be worth considering, but not in Jan when available top quality strikers are usually thin on the ground.   

[Gareth Keown]

trouble is tho, if we wait til the summer to sell Bale / get a super-striker with the money, it may already be too late...

if we finish 5th, and I suspect we will without a new striker that can play with eith Defoe, vdV or Crouch, we will be in the Europa League.... the EL is only good for knackering a squad and messing with the weekly playing time-table....

it wasnt coincidence that the 1st time we nearly got 4th in the year of Lasagnegate and then last season when we finally did get Top4.... both those seasons we were had no European (Uefa Cup) football and we could keep the team fresh for the league..

if we wait til summer as you suggest, then we finish outside Top4, with Citeh most likely 4th.... and we are well and trully fecked for the next 5 seasons cos we will mostly likely be in the Europa League...

the time to act decisively is January.... cos if we then get Top4, Citeh will have to spend within their natural revenues thereafter.... this is a golden opportunity to stay ahead of them and get Top4 (consigning THEM to the double-edged sword of the Europa League) for many seasons to come..

we get 5th..... say bye bye to Champions League for maybe the next decade..

PS - Benzema is surplus at RM who have Higuain and even Ron who can play central-striker.... they also want Bale.... the synergies for both clubs are already well and truly there.... maybe even consider a loan-swap for half a season to see how it pans out..

[taimedowne]

I take all your points on board. And I agree we have most domestic success when we don't have European distraction. I'd rather finish 8Th than 5Th for that very reason.To hell with the Europa league we can well do without being in that. The Benzema link is interesting ( although I read that Madrid have said he's not leaving) the one point I'd make about bringing him, or any other player, in January at the expense of Bale is that with Bale we have a proven performer in the PL you bring in someone from abroad and you never know what you are going to get. They may well be great, score a bag full of goals and get us up to 4Th. Or they may struggle to adjust to the pace and physicality of the Prem and spend half a season on the bench. In other words it's a gamble and one I'm not entirely sure we need to take at the present time. We could certainly do with a prolific goal scorer but ideally not at the expense of the best left midfield player we have had in many years.

[Gareth Keown]

theres also the risk of not having a strikeforce thats gonna produce the goals regularly.... for the vast majority of last season we played with 1 winger and 3 v.good 'central middies' with BAE doing a great job protecting the left flank.... we seemed a more solid and complete team with either Modric or Kranjcar at LM......this left Lennon at RM providing the attacking outlet and it worked really well..

Lennon has been ineffective this season mainly cos with Bale at LM, the attacks are coming from that side the vast majority of times.... Lennon is not good at 'coming inside' to be another striker, as he has a poor, weak shot and is too small to be good in the box when its packed with CBs...

Benzema is a tall, athletic, pacy prolific striker with vast intl and CL experience... in a team like Spurs, as opposed to Stoke say, he should fit in very well and fit like a glove.... imagine his runs being serviced by vdV, Modric and Lennon.... theres very small risk of him being a failure here with a regular run of games as the main striker supported by Defoe or Crouch...

I even believe that if you compare game-stats with Bale at LM over the last 10-15 games to games played last year with Modric/Kranjcar at LM, you may well find that the win-rate is far better without Bale at LM..... even more so with Bale AND Lennon as 2 wingers together..

[rjswan23]

Sell - Keane and Dos Santos/Bentley
Buy - Dzeko

[Gareth Keown]

Sell - Keane and Dos Santos/Bentley
Buy - Dzeko

yeah that'll do it.... better still why not offer Dawson for Dzeko in a straight-swap...