braineclipse
Willie Hall
If (if, and it's a pretty big if) Stambouli gets sold to Watford or whomever, I'd be very interested in hearing what you make of that: after all, there's a player that was apparently within our absurdly, pathetically-low 'pain threshold' for cost, and who was signed as a replacement for a player Poch most definitely did want. And yet, lo and behold, he gets packed off to Watford or whomever with nary a look-in after just a year at the club. Surely that doesn't fit your idea of how Poch should ideally behave (evil man, shipping out what he possibly sees as a stupidly cheap attempt at 'backing' him), so, again, I'd be very interested to see how you'd fit that into your expectations of the man.
Needless to say, I heartily disagree with the rest of your post.It seems almost sadistic to force a manager who already plays and develops youth-teamers more than his contemporaries at other PL clubs to also accept the cheapest, most low-cost signings possible in lieu of the few high-class players he desperately does want (so we can make a healthy profit in the window, as per usual these days), and then expect him to be gleeful about that arrangement just because we picked up a scout he liked and employed him.
IIRC I said something similar last summer, I'm almost certain I said to early last season at least.
I think it made a lot of sense to look for a top class target like Schneiderlin for central midfield last season. He looked perfect, PL experience, played under Poch, right age, right type of player, seemingly not heavily targeted by the biggest clubs. There might have been other on the list after him that would have been perfect or close to perfect, but I doubt there were many.
For whatever reason we didn't get Schneiderlin, or any "top class" CM target. You will paint that as Levy not going for Pochettino's target, or vetoing a move, not being willing to spend the cash etc. I think it's at least somewhat likely that there was some agreement within the transfer committee that a ceiling of X would be the most we would want to pay for Schneiderlin and it turned out he wasn't gettable for that. No way to know what happened behind closed doors.
Either way, we didn't get him, or any "top class target". At this point I think it made a lot of sense to look to Bentaleb as an outstanding talent and put a lot of trust and playing time in his hands. Bring in a capable backup/squad option that might surprise and make the step up, but will at least be able to do a job (as Stambouli did when Bentaleb was away for the ACN). The "much of a muchness" quote from Sherwood did ring true to me. The absolute last thing we needed was another £10-15m central midfielder not much better than what we had again needing time to adjust and adapt whilst keeping Bentaleb (a real talent) on the bench.
Plan A: Get Schneiderlin
Plan B: Trust in Bentaleb to continue his development. Bring in affordable cover that might (small chance) really step it up in a bigger league at a bigger team under Pochettino.
Solid plan all around.
