Franco Baldini

[Cochise]

Apparently AVB wanted a DOF and Baldini was on his list, might have even been at the top of it. Was there not a discussion on board Joe Lewis' yacht as to what was to be done with the Bale money?
I also recall AVB stating that he needed two players for every position, something that he effectively got. Chiriches, Lamela and Eriksen from what we know were nothing to do with him, but likely backup options prepared in case the other deals such as Willian fell through.


I think the question becomes; What was Baldini's mission statement??

 

[Chachaboom]

You'd be wise not to hold your breath. Have you ever heard any club give an explanation as to why certain transfers have not worked out?

Obviously not but when a club spends a big huge wad and six out of seven turn out to be duds you can't just bury your head and sweep it under the carpet. People should be accountable for that

 

[Jordinho]

Apparently AVB wanted a DOF and Baldini was on his list, might have even been at the top of it. Was there not a discussion on board Joe Lewis' yacht as to what was to be done with the Bale money?
I also recall AVB stating that he needed two players for every position, something that he effectively got. Chiriches, Lamela and Eriksen from what we know were nothing to do with him, but likely backup options prepared in case the other deals such as Willian fell through.


I think the question becomes; What was Baldini's mission statement??

There was also some ITK I think that Baldini was utterly unimpressed with AVB after watching training sessions.

 

[milo]

Obviously not but when a club spends a big huge wad and six out of seven turn out to be duds you can't just bury your head and sweep it under the carpet. People should be accountable for that

I don't understand fans desire to see blood on the carpet. Not all of the signings worked out. We all know this. The club knows this. I am sure that we will see some move on in the next two windows.

Transfers fail all of the time. Compared to many, we have done well.

 

[Jordinho]

I don't understand fans desire to see blood on the carpet. Not all of the signings worked out. We all know this. The club knows this. I am sure that we will see some move on in the next two windows.

Transfers fail all of the time. Compared to many, we have done well.

Compared to most really.

 

[milo]

Compared to most really.

Absolutely. Figures I saw earlier in the season showed that we had made more from player sales than any other club in Europe over the previous five seasons.

 

[indianspur]

Big yawn to all the shenanigans at Spurs

 

[Chachaboom]

Apart from Modric whenever ENIC have spent big they've farted it up.

I can't think of too many other signings of £15million or over that have worked. Bentley and Bent anyone? Postiga? Remember him.

Off course I've been known to be wrong on occasion...

 

[Baleforce]

berbs

 

[DubaiSpur]

Absolutely. Figures I saw earlier in the season showed that we had made more from player sales than any other club in Europe over the previous five seasons.

And have steadily degraded in overall squad quality over the same period. Not exactly great transfer business. Better than some, yes. Not many. Not all.

 

[milo]

And have steadily degraded in overall squad quality over the same period. Not exactly great transfer business. Better than some, yes. Not many. Not all.

We had a squad that we had developed to its peak within our budget but did not have the next lot coming through. When the best players moved on we did not have the players in house to replace them. Whilst we did not quite have to start again it was not a millions miles away from this either. I think that there are several players in our squad that could be of interest of the very big clubs in the next year or two.

 

[DubaiSpur]

We had a squad that we had developed to its peak within our budget but did not have the next lot coming through. When the best players moved on we did not have the players in house to replace them. Whilst we did not quite have to start again it was not a millions miles away from this either. I think that there are several players in our squad that could be of interest of the very big clubs in the next year or two.

Look, judging the squad we have now to the squad we had then will involve enormous amounts of hindsight, but suffice to say that I disagree: the squad that competed in the 2009/2010 season contained more talent and potential than this one does. We have a long line of players who may interest bigger clubs two to three years down the line if they keep improving (Bentaleb, Dier, Kane, Lamela, Yedlin, Davies, Veljkovic) and a line of players who may interest bigger clubs in time emerging from our youth academy (Walker-Peters, Carter-Vickers, Yahaya, Azzaoui) but in the here and now the only players we can can reliably expect to interest bigger clubs are Eriksen and Lloris: maybe Verts.

That is not good transfer policy, especially given the windfalls we received from selling our best players in both 2012 and 2013.

 

[DaveT316]

Interesting the club have deigned to respond. From The Telegraph article:

A Tottenham spokesperson said: “It is unfortunate Andre has felt the need to pass comments like these. Not only has he attempted to rewrite history, he has clearly forgotten the facts.”

 

[DubaiSpur]

Interesting the club have deigned to respond. From The Telegraph article:

A Tottenham spokesperson said: “It is unfortunate Andre has felt the need to pass comments like these. Not only has he attempted to rewrite history, he has clearly forgotten the facts.”

Hits close to home, I would imagine: no one likes being exposed in public, and instinctive denials are often the spur of the moment reaction to unwelcome revelations.

For what it's worth, I believe Andre on this. Not completely: some exaggeration is obvious given his need to justify his abrupt exit here. But I believe most of what he says, because the club have given me absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. I'm only glad he came out in public with all this: I hope posters who disputed the very existence of a transfer rift between Andre and the board (not that there were many, but still) are now sated. And I hope this spurs some thought about how we're treating Poch as well, and whether this summer's shenanigans were accepted by him as readily as some claim they were.

 

[NWND]

Hits close to home, I would imagine: no one likes being exposed in public, and instinctive denials are often the spur of the moment reaction to unwelcome revelations.

For what it's worth, I believe Andre on this. Not completely: some exaggeration is obvious given his need to justify his abrupt exit here. But I believe most of what he says, because the club have given me absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. I'm only glad he came out in public with all this: I hope posters who disputed the very existence of a transfer rift between Andre and the board (not that there were many, but still) are now sated. And I hope this spurs some thought about how we're treating Poch as well, and whether this summer's shenanigans were accepted by him as readily as some claim they were.

Hang on a minute, before we bang this bull-sh#t drum again, while I can't speak for everyone, I don't think many doubted the existence of a transfer rift between AVB and the board. It was pretty fking obvious.

What some like myself doubted was AVB's entitlement to throw his toys out the pram like he did do due to our failure to land his targets.

To be honest, these latest quotes prove just what a delusional fuc#wit he is.

He talks about broken promises. I very much doubt there was any promise to sign his targets at all costs. His quotes actually prove the rumours that his wishlist consisted of frankly delusional targets we were never going to get in a million years and a Brazilian striker who is quite frankly average and also had so many third party owners he is impossible to buy.

Moutinho, Damiao, Willian and Oscar were not realistic targets for THFC. They were very much stretch targets in that they stretched our resources to the max and when Chelsea came calling - no chance. Instead of having plan B targets or working with the club to set out a back up strategy it appears AVB has instead decided to have a massive paddy act like a dingdong and make his position untenable.

It appears more and more that the club were left high and dry by AVB when Bale gave us his ultimatum and it was a case of reinvest in my targets that you can't afford (Hulks wages) or just can't compete for (Chelsea buying Willian) or I'm not interested and I'll leave you to pick players while I strop around and then I will not play half of them and play Lamela away to Emirates Marketing Project after not playing him just to make a point.

This interview just proves what a two& the guy is IMO

 

[DubaiSpur]

Hang on a minute, before we bang this bull-sh#t drum again, while I can't speak for everyone, I don't think many doubted the existence of a transfer rift between AVB and the board. It was pretty fking obvious.

What some like myself doubted was AVB's entitlement to throw his toys out the pram like he did do due to our failure to land his targets.

To be honest, these latest quotes prove just what a delusional fuc#wit he is.

He talks about broken promises. I very much doubt there was any promise to sign his targets at all costs. His quotes actually prove the rumours that his wishlist consisted of frankly delusional targets we were never going to get in a million years and a Brazilian striker who is quite frankly average and also had so many third party owners he is impossible to buy.

Moutinho, Damiao, Willian and Oscar were not realistic targets for THFC. They were very much stretch targets in that they stretched our resources to the max and when Chelsea came calling - no chance. Instead of having plan B targets or working with the club to set out a back up strategy it appears AVB has instead decided to have a massive paddy act like a dingdong and make his position untenable.

It appears more and more that the club were left high and dry by AVB when Bale gave us his ultimatum and it was a case of reinvest in my targets that you can't afford (Hulks wages) or just can't compete for (Chelsea buying Willian) or I'm not interested and I'll leave you to pick players while I strop around and then I will not play half of them and play Lamela away to Emirates Marketing Project after not playing him just to make a point.

This interview just proves what a two& the guy is IMO

Look, he says we promised him that we had ambitions, and that he would be provided with the tools necessary to meet the high expectations we placed on him. He clearly feels that we lied to him about our ambitions, and that even after achieving a record points total and finishing one point off fourth with players he absolutely did not ask for, the club made insufficient commitments to him, and worse, sold out his best player from under him and replaced them again, with players he didn't want, while citing poverty as a reason for not tying up the players he did dearly want.

This interview proves more that we were tools for grandstanding and claiming 'ambition' when we actually meant 'ambition on a continuous net profit'. I doubt AVB would have agreed to come if we'd been up-front about the enormous self-imposed limitations we had on us, so it was deception that got him here, and eventually deception that f*cked him off and made him leave.

He's not blameless for the way he left. But neither is our club. By a long, long, long stretch. We should have gone for a manager willing to make do with what scraps he was given and use youth players: we instead went for the top tier in terms in reputation, and suffered when he expected top tier backing.

Anyway, today was a good day, and I don't want to get myself worked up over this too much. Just....this was expected, is all. And I'm glad AVB got the chance to put out his side of the story in public for all to see and ponder over.

 

[braineclipse]

Hits close to home, I would imagine: no one likes being exposed in public, and instinctive denials are often the spur of the moment reaction to unwelcome revelations.

For what it's worth, I believe Andre on this. Not completely: some exaggeration is obvious given his need to justify his abrupt exit here. But I believe most of what he says, because the club have given me absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. I'm only glad he came out in public with all this: I hope posters who disputed the very existence of a transfer rift between Andre and the board (not that there were many, but still) are now sated. And I hope this spurs some thought about how we're treating Poch as well, and whether this summer's shenanigans were accepted by him as readily as some claim they were.

I believe him too when he says those were his targets and he didn't get any of his targets.

Absolutely unacceptable to identify only very expensive top level targets that would always be difficult to get without also identifying backup backup targets in case those top level targets weren't gettable.

It's like Redknapp wanting Tevez, but getting Saha instead. Surely there must be someone in between Moutinho and Paulinho that would fit your system. It can't just be "this one player" or no one in the world.

 

[Baleforce]

I agree (again) DS, both sides were at fault, it must be asked though, if these targets were impossible to get why did Levy go to all that work trying, we had deals in place for 3 of them at some point, surely that means they were gettable and very much the level of player we should have been looking at

even more so when we had that Bale money in the bank, I still feel we would have been better off signing 1 or 2 plug ins rather than the PL rookies to try and replace his influence

we are still feeing the effects of that summer now

 

[NWND]

I agree (again) DS, both sides were at fault, it must be asked though, if these targets were impossible to get why did Levy go to all that work trying, we had deals in place for 3 of them at some point, surely that means they were gettable and very much the level of player we should have been looking at

even more so when we had that Bale money in the bank, I still feel we would have been better off signing 1 or 2 plug ins rather than the PL rookies to try and replace his influence

we are still feeing the effects of that summer now

Because the biggest limiting factor for us is not transfer fees it is wages. We couldn't take the £86m and reinvest in 1 or 2 plug ins as we couldn't afford the wages of a £40m player, instead our only realistic choice was to go for unproven or inexperienced players in the hope they coukd be developed into the new Bale or Modric.


Oh and AVB was hired by deception was he? Jesus Christ I don't care what Levy said in that interview (but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been don't worry Andre we will spend tens of millions signing whatever top tier target you want) it seems AVB is the only fu&#ing person in world football that doesn't know about Spurs, our relative size and budget and Levy and our tradition of signing unproven and developing players and selling them on.

Deception? AVB deceived himself. He was so desperate for what was a relatively big job to prove everyone wrong he f#!ked it up for himself. He sold himself a massive dummy if he expected Spurs to suddenly start signing top tier targets just be cause he rocks up.

As to deception,..well Redknapp, who lets face it has the biggest self-serving gob in football has not said once he was deceived by Levy or made similar claims to AVB. In fact he claimed his relationship with Levy was good on.numerous occasions. I fail to see why AVB would suddenly be the victim.of some kind of deception "oh yes, yes Andre if you take the job you will get to work with players such as *cough* Clintiano *cough* Dempaldo and *cough* Muka *cough* Dembel I mean Odric"

 

[Baleforce]

I don't know what was said either, but I'm sure it wasn't "ok Andre, we expect a superior performance to your predecessor with an inferior squad"

I think we got close to all of them but Levy blinked at the last, which is fair enough, it's a business decision for him, it's effectively his money, so it's his call, but to say Andre was foolish for chasing them when the board chased them too is a little unfair and nonsensical to me

and yes Arry does speak well of Levy, even in his post sacking autobiography, but he does moan about only getting Nelsen and Saha when we were, in his own words "challenging for the league"

it's been like that for a long time, and i'm sure it's the same for Poch