Thankfully the summer transfer window has now closed and from Spurs fans’ point of view, we can start the season proper (albeit with two games down in the Premier League and 0 points in the bank). It turns out that Tottenham’s bi-annual day of madness, Transfer Deadline Day (TDD), was actually a bit of an anti-climax.
In the run up to TDD, it was predicted – as usual – that Spurs and Harry would be pulling out all the stops, wheeling and dealing, and calling every chairman in Europe to see what bargains were on offer. However, in a reversal of the norm, there was much more movement out of Spurs than in – and that didn’t include Luka Modric!
But as Harry and the public have come to realise, it is Daniel Levy who calls the shots when it comes to transfers. It was Levy who kept a granite-like stance on the retention of Luka Modric’s services, Levy who deemed the services of Peter Crouch surplus to requirements – Harry has always expressed his love for the 6”7 striker – and Levy who saw that the summer dealings ended in profit for the club.
The overly-open Redknapp has often admitted in the Press, that as far as transfer dealings go, it is the chairman who does the negotiations and he simply expresses the players that he wants and Daniel takes it from there. It was Levy’s 11th hour phonecalls that culminated in Spurs pulling off the bargain of the previous summer’s transfer window; getting Rafael van der Vaart for a cut-price £8 million.
There was no last-ditch deal for Spurs this summer, but despite a relatively quiet window by Tottenham's standar ds , the summer moves that were made should still be viewed as positive, even if there should have been at least one more addition the squad, i.e. Gary Cahill:
· Brad Friedel may be 40 years old, but he is a Premier League stalwart who has amassed over 400 PL appearances and even if he doesn’t represent a signing for the future, it is a quick-fix in a position which saw costly, high-profile failures, as the clown half of Heurello Gomes re-immerged in the second half of last season.
· Scott Parker is a steal at £5 million – despite him being 30 years old – and the passionate and battling midfielder is exactly what Spurs need to help level out the flamboyance in the middle of the park, adding bite and leadership. Now we have the Writers Player of the Year to add to the PFA Players Player of the Year (Bale) at our disposal.
· In Emmanuel Adebayor, Spurs have a proven Premier League goalscorer on our books for a season. Despite Crouch’s cup goals and goals for England , he is just not prolific in the league, Jermain Defoe is a flat-track bully and Roman Pavlyuchenko blows hot and cold. Like so many of the strikers we were linked with throughout the summer, Adebayor would have been above and beyond Spurs’ tight wage bracket had Manchester City not agreed to pay a significant chunk of his wages. He may be an ex-Gooner who fans sang a controversial song about and he may be a hot-head, but William Gallas is both of these things and he has been a revelation at Spurs.
If only we could have just paid the slightly inflated price for Gary Cahill we could have proudly boasted the addition of a strong re-enforced spine in our first team, which is what all good teams need. However, injuries aside, we do have enough defensive quality at centre half to not be too devastated at not getting the Cahill deal done.
Frustration for Harry
Harry had been briefed all summer that Tottenham were in a “sell before you buy” position in the transfer market and this frustrated Harry as he was desperate to flash the cash, but he was struggling to get the right value for his fringe players. This was why he was clearly tempting Chelsea to re-bid for Modric in his interviews, maybe thinking Levy resolve would crumble as the extent of bi ds increased. You sense that if it was up to Harry he would have quite happily let the little Croatian go for £30 million and set about using the fun ds for a whole host of new players.
To what must have been the displeasure of Redknapp, Levy sanctioned the sale and loan of a number of players on TDD – Jenas, Palacios, Bentley and of course Crouch – without seeing anymore than Scott Parker coming into Spurs Lodge. Harry has already said that this has been the “worst pre-season ever” in terms of disruption and planning for the already up-and-running season.
Now the dust has settled though, Tottenham players and fans alike should be positive about the remainder of this season. We trimmed the squad down of players who were either not going to have many first-team opportunities or were not good enough last season, we have the addition of a handful of top Premiership players who should improve the first team and we still have the our prized asset, Luka Modric, intact. If he can clear his head, he may be able to help the club’s push towar ds a return to the Champions League places.
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