Holmesy

God, that team is absolutely mingin' but what can you do?! Our squad is dogshit! With Wood up front I think you've got to swap Fraser for Murphy. It's like swapping a ford Ka for Fiat Punto but at least Murphy can deliver a good ball 1 time out of 4. Fraser doesn't seem to offer a lot of anything.

Looking forward to seeing a photo of him pointing at a random sponsor on the shirt

He’s a notoriously terrible trainer. Howe would never accept it. Total non-starter

Out of interest, how much do we think it would’ve cost to buy Mitrovic back? More or less?

Pragmatic signing. Not sexy at all but functional and proven at PL level. We have one of the best crossers of a ball in the league and now we’ll have a unit up front to get on the end of them. And if we go down, he’ll boss the championship. It’s a lot of money but it’s not mine so I don’t give a shit.

Have a read back through this thread. I think you might be in for a shock

It's weird though because according to some, doing business in January is a piece of piss and as simple as just hoying money at people. What the fuck are these amateurs doing?!

Yeah, that's him. Spurs are terrible in the transfer market. Getting rid of Lamela was a good move but has Gil ever even played for them?

They've had 2 new managers since he was signed though and maybe their systems just don't suit him. I really don't think there's anyone else in the Spurs squad worth pursuing - Ndombele? Lo Celso? Who's the inconsistent Rabona guy? Is he even still there?

When someone mentioned Tottenham players earlier, he's the one player that sprung to mind.

No, but they have the ability to score goals whereas we don't, and we can't keep them out at the other end either. 2+2=4

We're getting nothing from this game i'm afraid. Watford's squad is comfortably better than ours - they have pace, movement, unpredictability and goal threat and we have none of those things. The reason we (narrowly) beat Burnley is because like us, they are one-paced and predictable but they rely on being effective in that predictable, battering-ram way. This lot are a different kettle if fish entirely. We might as well play some lads from the academy just to add something Watford might not have factored into their analysis

This is the thing that no one seems to be talking about. We know the squad is shit, but cracks have been papered over by three stand out players being in decent form. Two of those players are now out of form and the other is injured and now we get a proper warts-and-all view of how shit and thin our squad is. We are championship from front to back - Gayle, Murphy, Ritchie, Hendrick, Clark, Krafth, Lascelles, Darlow, Longstaff, Almiron, Manquillo, Fraser. 12 players who are Championship standard. Shelvey, Hayden, Schar, Dubravka, Fernandez, Willock are arguably PL standard but bottom half PL. ASM, Tripper and Wilson are arguably the only players that could play in a top half PL team. That is relegation fodder, Ashley and Bruce's legacy. Howe has come in with a new system that seemingly isn't working, but the players he is working with are probably incapable of executing his instructions because they're not good enough, intelligent enough, quick enough or have enough end product. In short, we are fucking desperate.

You're oversimplifying something that is far more complicated than that. We've likely been negotiating with these players since before the transfer window opened and maybe even got agreements in principle but then when the window opens you have to start negotiating with the club, and they don't want to lose their best players. You'll also have situations where we've talked to agents and they'll say 'my client likes the project but isn't keen on a relegation battle so we'll wait to see what other offers come in and get back to you'. That takes you into week 2/3 of the window. Teams will want replacements agreed before they sign off on transfers etc. There are so many factors you're not considering when you say 'just hoy money at it'. It just doesn't work like that.

So we should just sign players because they're easy to sign, not because they're the players we actually need/want?

You know how literally everyone in the football industry says how difficult it is to do transfer business in January? Maybe it is actually really difficult to do transfer business in January and it's not just people saying it for their own amusement. Just a thought.

Doumbia, Shefki Kuqi

Watching West Ham v Leeds and Issa Diop is class. Fingers crossed the rumours are us being in for him are true, he’d improve our back line immeasurably

He’s been every bit as bad as people have been saying this year. Total fucking non-entity

FYP

Give him the benefit of the doubt - he inherited a piss weak squad with one striker and no creativity. We’ve seen some improvements in general but until we change the personnel we’ll still be shit. I’ll judge him from the end of January and if we’re still shite he deserves the pelters.

When was the last time a club bought a whole new first team?

We are so shit!

Seems like a top lad. More signings like this please. Makes me doubt the Digne transfer even more. I reckon Eddie is looking for really good characters as well as good players and Digne sounds like a bit of a diva

I love the attitude of “the defence is shit, let’s just buy a whole new one”. This is class!