Cheick Tioté (1986–2017)

[Kanj]

Non interest bearing personal loan from the owner is a lot  f***ing better then interest bearing loan to a bank.

 

Remember that over-draft saga we had? Was a fucking nightmare man.

[Guest malandro]

Non interest bearing personal loan from the owner is a lot  f***ing better then interest bearing loan to a bank.

 

Remember that over-draft saga we had? Was a f***ing nightmare man.

 

So that makes increasing the club's debts by something like £60m ok does it? That makes to it OK for him to treat the club's heritage with contempt? Defacing the ground with SD logos ( which it is generally believed the club get no money for) is fine because he restructured the inherited debt and then proceeded to vastly increase it?

 

Defending every bad thing MA has done by harping on about Shepherd five years after he was ousted from the club is plain desperate.

 

[Guest malandro]

MA chose to pay a reported £135m for a business that (allegedly) would have ceased to exist if he hadn't restructured the debt. In other words he could either use his vast wealth to address the financial situation or lose £135m pounds. Why we should turn a blind eye to everything else he has done because he chose to protect his investment is beyond me.

 

The next set of accounts will be out in a few months and should make interesting reading. And that is all I have to say on a subject that has been done to death and really didnt need to be dragged up again.

 

Tiote has been poor this season and I'd be very surprised if anybody wanted to buy him.

 

[Guest tollemache]

I think it IS quite appropriate to step back and look at a longer period when you're talking about chairmen. Their job is to steer the club in the right direction, and as far as NUFC goes, going from Shepherd's approach to aspiring to make profit and be like Arsenal is a really important shift and something we'll benefit from for years and years. If that's where we're headed, that is great news, especially if Financial Fair Play actually works, because then we'll be right up there with a chance of doing something thanks to the fanbase and stadium... I really do look at it in terms of 5 years or more, not season-to-season because, as I've said, I think we'll yo-yo for a while like Everton have done, for many of the same reasons and it's going to be frustrating watching everyone throw their toys out of the pram during the bad times and forget about it during the good. Mind, most on here seem to have a pretty sensible approach

 

 

Anyway... this is a Cheik thread. Sorry

[Guest neesy111]

MA chose to pay a reported £135m for a business that (allegedly) would have ceased to exist if he hadn't restructured the debt. In other words he could either use his vast wealth to address the financial situation or lose £135m pounds. Why we should turn a blind eye to everything else he has done because he chose to protect his investment is beyond me.

 

The next set of accounts will be out in a few months and should make interesting reading. And that is all I have to say on a subject that has been done to death and really didnt need to be dragged up again.

 

Tiote has been poor this season and I'd be very surprised if anybody wanted to buy him.

 

 

Any money Ashley lost to do with long term debt at the club is all his own making.  You really have to be an idiot to not do due diligence on any business you want to take over.

[Guest tollemache]

True, he cocked up. Fact remains though: no Shepherd recklessness, some schmuck coming in and being sensible = good, whether he's forced to or not. Cheik!

[Guest neesy111]

Fans have to see some ambition though and so do some of our players or they'll be off.

[Guest tollemache]

There's certainly a balance to be struck. Next couple of transfer windows will be interesting. You can afford a dud one here and there - in fact you should be worried if you're bringing in all your targets at whatever price - but 2 or 3 in a row will kill you, making it worth the extra expense. They're making the right noises about January so far though, right?

 

All the same, I don't think it was ludicrous to think that a side that finished 5th would at least get a decent top half finish if it stayed together, which it did. Not many would've anticipated a slide like this, and there'd be no talk of a lack of ambition if we were currently in 8th.

[Guest malandro]

Tiote was one of three players (the other two being Cabaye and Cisse) that earned Graham Carr his wonderscout reputation, but his form this season might be the first indication that GC isn't a miracle worker after all. There is no question he looked a very good player early on but after a while the booking every other game problem became apparent, with him missing a large amount games. This season his form has dipped dramatically and after his SO against Sunderland he seems to be confused - moving between being a clumsy free kick generator to an ineffectual wonder pass failure. Throw in his farting about on the edge of his own box and careless back passes and we might be seeing why he was available for £3m. Still a bargain but not quite a wonder signing, and perhaps a good example of why we might struggle to build a consistently good team while the club sticks to its policy of targeting bargains

[Guest tollemache]

I don't think it's fair to blame a collapse in form a full very impressive season down the line on the scout... How do you scout for that!?

[Tooj]

How can you blame Carr for Tiote's dip in form in his third season?

 

Is he the reason for Cisse and Cabaye's poor form this season too?

 

Obviously fuck all to do with the manager.

[Guest malandro]

How can you blame Carr for Tiote's dip in form in his third season?

 

Is he the reason for Cisse and Cabaye's poor form this season too?

 

Obviously f*** all to do with the manager.

 

I'm not. I'm asking if the reason Tiote cost £3m is because there are issues with his game that weren't quickly apparent, and not because GC was the only scout in Europe who recognised his hidden brilliance.

 

It's an import question because the club's transfer policy is heavily dependent on GC and his much hyped (and possibly exaggerated) ability to spot the potential in players lesser scouts can't.

 

[Guest tollemache]

I don't see how you can do a better job as a scout than find a player for £3m who subsequently sets the league alight and finds himself linked with big money moves to top clubs. If the brief is to find players with great resale value, that's about as good as it gets. If the brief had been to find superstars no matter what their value, then you'd have some justification for quibbling over the signing of Tiote, but it wasn't. He could play like dogshite for the rest of the season and we'd almost certainly still make a decent profit on him.

 

Or do you think it's fair to demand more of Carr? That he should sign players for under £5m whose form never ever dips? We don't know exactly how much Cabaye cost, but that's a Champions League-standard playmaker... I mean, he's clearly done an absolutely superb job

[Guest malandro]

I'm not criticising GC. I'm questioning if his ability has been overhyped. As you say if selling players for more than we pay for them is the club's only objective he's done a good job, but there's more to scouting than being able to spot a bargain. Bringing in Chopra on a free and selling him for £500k might generate a transfer profit but wouldn't be of any benefit to building a good team, in the same way bringing in Oberton and Marveux has been a waste of time....

 

Tiote is a one trick pony. His passing ability is poor. His shooting is poor. All he can do is break up play and he can't even manage that without getting booked every other game. He also still hasn't learnt to stop taking risks around his own penalty area, which suggests he plays the way he plays and can't adapt. He was good value at £3m and the club would make a decent profit if they sold him next month, but in terms of building a competitive team that plays attractive football he isn't good enough.

 

[Guest tollemache]

Disagree. He's shown he's a really good player, he's just not playing well at the moment. There was nothing at all wrong with his distribution last season for example. He can do it, and he has. I don't see any reason to write him off as a dud

[Guest malandro]

He's not a dud, and I never said he was. He's OK. Better than the £3m we paid for him but nowhere near as good as his hype. More Winston Palacios than Claude Makélélé. More importantly he demonstrates that no matter how good GCs bargain hunting is building a team by targeting bargains is a game of chance not a coherent strategy.

 

Interesting article in today's Journal about AP telling him to curb his aggression, or in other words telling him to stop using his biggest (and possibly only) strength to avoid getting booked.

 

[Mick]

Disagree. He's shown he's a really good player, he's just not playing well at the moment. There was nothing at all wrong with his distribution last season for example. He can do it, and he has. I don't see any reason to write him off as a dud

 

His distribution was a problem last season when he came back from injury or suspension, not that he's a poor footballer.  He does struggle though when he's been out of the team for whatever reason and this season he's still struggling and been in the team for about a month since he was injured.

[Guest micky_123]

Tiote has been absolutely hopeless this season. Reckless challenge after reckless challenge every game, as well as giving the ball away over and over again when he isn't even under pressure. He did this last season as well to a lesser extent. If one of our other midfielders has put in the performance he did against Fulham everybody would be furious.

[Guest tollemache]

He's not a dud, and I never said he was. He's OK. Better than the £3m we paid for him but nowhere near as good as his hype. More Winston Palacios than Claude Makélélé. More importantly he demonstrates that no matter how good GCs bargain hunting is building a team by targeting bargains is a game of chance not a coherent strategy.

 

Interesting article in today's Journal about AP telling him to curb his aggression, or in other words telling him to stop using his biggest (and possibly only) strength to avoid getting booked.

 

Targeting bargains is not a coherent strategy if what you want is to immediately have a superb team, but if you're good at it (which we seem to be), it's a great way to make sure you're upwardly mobile.

[Guest malandro]

In terms of team building its a farce. Consider Cisse, he may or may not rediscover some of last seasons from but he is a poor partner for Ba, who we signed because he was available on a free. Our resale value transfer strategy results in making it up as we go along team building, which isn't a basis for sustained progress.

 

We need a left back but won't sign one because we can't get a bargain. We need a CH but won't sign one because GC can't pull a rabbit out of the hat. We need a left sided midfielder but bought Marveux because his injury record made him cheap.

 

It's crap.

 

[Guest malandro]

He's not a dud, and I never said he was. He's OK. Better than the £3m we paid for him but nowhere near as good as his hype. More Winston Palacios than Claude Makélélé. More importantly he demonstrates that no matter how good GCs bargain hunting is building a team by targeting bargains is a game of chance not a coherent strategy.

 

Interesting article in today's Journal about AP telling him to curb his aggression, or in other words telling him to stop using his biggest (and possibly only) strength to avoid getting booked.

 

Targeting bargains is not a coherent strategy if what you want is to immediately have a superb team, but if you're good at it (which we seem to be), it's a great way to make sure you're upwardly mobile.

 

When we sold Carroll do you think we targeted Ba as a replacement and it was just good luck that WH got relegated making him available on a free? If WH had stayed up would we have paid top wack to get him to SJP because AP saw him as the type of player we needed to build a team that plays the type of football he wants to play? Or did the club just look at who they could get on the cheap without any thought about developing a coherent style of play?

 

[Mick]

In terms of team building its a farce. Consider Cisse, he may or may not rediscover some of last seasons from but he is a poor partner for Ba, who we signed because he was available on a free. Our resale value transfer strategy results in making it up as we go along team building, which isn't a basis for sustained progress.

 

We need a left back but won't sign one because we can't get a bargain. We need a CH but won't sign one because GC can't pull a rabbit out of the hat. We need a left sided midfielder but bought Marveux because his injury record made him cheap.

 

It's crap.

 

 

Ba and Cisse worked last season, they don't work this season because we're not playing them the same way that did work.

[Guest tollemache]

I think when we sold Carroll there's a good chance we'd already targeted Cisse, not Ba.

 

I think we signed Ba because his record suggested he'd probably score f*ckloads of goals if he was fit, and because he was free. There's no chance we'd have considered paying much of a fee for him, if any, because of his knee. I think in light of Cisse's signing it's quite likely Ba was the one glaring example of winging it but the other signings have all made some kind of sense as far as their function within the team goes.

 

Cisse they were at pains to say they'd been watching for ages (no coincidence that the fee was a bit higher). Given that Cisse came after Ba and was clearly the more considered signing, you can only conclude that either they felt he would be a good partner for Ba and were simply wrong, that he was so good he just had to be signed no matter what even though we already had Ba, that Ba remained an injury risk, or that he might leave for cheap thanks to his release clause. Maybe a bit of each. It's hard to know really... It's also hard to imagine a £9m signing like that being motivated only by resale value because unless he really took off we'd never get our money back.

 

Part of going for resale value is trying to get players for cheap, yes, but the other crucial component is that you stick to signing players you think are really really good and can become part of the team for years to come. It's not about sacrificing quality so you can save a few pennies, so I don't think Marveaux and Amalfitano were straighforward examples of plumping for a s*** player because they're cheap. I think Carr thought they had a chance of being really good.

 

I've said before that I thought missing out on Debuchy by refusing to go any higher was arguably a good sign, and that if we stuck to a sensible policy like that we'd have some dud transfer windows for sure but on the whole we'd most likely end up building something decent. It's the exact opposite of make-it-up-as-you-go-along really, in that the emphasis is on identifying good long-term bets and if you can't sign them, signing nobody and waiting til someone else comes up who fits your profile. I don't deny that there will be some rank opportunism along the way - if you see what you think is a bargain you can make a few quid on, you take it, a la Ba - but it is also about sticking to your plan. The signing of Cisse shows that if we think a player is really worth spending a bit more on, we'll do it. The fact we signed him even as Ba was banging the goals in shows that we don't necessarily care when we make the signing as long as it's a good one.

 

I think I'll be a bit concerned if there are two dud transfer windows in a row, but so far the policy we're sticking to has tended to work, bringing in Cabaye, Ba, Cisse, Ben Arfa, Tiote and Santon without making a loss. I'd be surprised if we didn't do anything in January. If we get a decent centre half for a decent price in the next window, we'll feel a lot better about not overspending on one in the last window.

 

I swear I'm not employed by the club - these are my real opinions. 

 

 

 

[JH]

How can we blame Carr?? We're going to get £60m off the Tiote sale when we sell him to Arsenal, Man U and Chelsea in January - result!

[The College Dropout]

In the midfield we have today, he's most likely going to have to try and create stuff. He'll fail at that side.