• The Houseboat

  • Transfer Business at Other Clubs (aka the other Wish List)

I wish we would have done with Cesc what Levy did with Modric. I have no doubts whatsoever that now that the window is closed, Modric will accept things and perform as well as before.

We did exactly that last year, Rex.

£40 million for Modric! 😆

If you cant take that sort of money for a player like Modric and improve your team then you're stupid. And I think Modric is a perfectly good player by the way. But £40 million...blimey!

Exactly. It's crazy, silly, stupendous money.

Wenger probably promised Cesc last summer that he'd let him go if they didn't win any silverware. Wenger was the guy pushing for the transfer in the end and made the decision to sell for cheap.

Tim wrote:

£40 million for Modric! 😆

If you cant take that sort of money for a player like Modric and improve your team then you're stupid. And I think Modric is a perfectly good player by the way. But £40 million...blimey!

And just how easy did we find it to improve our team with the Nasri and Fabregas money? Great players don't go to good teams. They want to rub shoulders with Aguero and Xavi, not Gervinho and Huddlestone. Spurs did the right thing. Once they are able to identify a super quality player who is equivalent to or superior to Modric, then it would make sense to sell.

Yeah, the flaw in your logic is that Cesc is twice the player Modric is or ever will be. Cesc was pretty much irriplaceable, Modric is not.

With the Nasri money we've essentially got Arteta, Gervinho and Park. We'll see how things develop, but you'd have to say that we've come out fairly well from that. Worst case we've come out even and that was with a 'mere' £24 million.

Tim wrote:

Yeah, the flaw in your logic is that Cesc is twice the player Modric is or ever will be. Cesc was pretty much irriplaceable, Modric is not.

With the Nasri money we've essentially got Arteta, Gervinho and Park. We'll see how things develop, but you'd have to say that we've come out fairly well from that. Worst case we've come out even and that was with a 'mere' £24 million.

Lol. Modric is good enough that a club deemed him worthy of a 40m pound bid, allegedly. Very few players have been transferred for more than that. In this league, only Cristiano and Torres have gone for more than that.

Does it mean he is a better player than Fabregas or Aguero? In my opinion, no. But there is a difference between how good a player is and what he is worth to a team, whether it's his own or the team that wants him. Chelsea value him highly, and judging by their actions, Spurs value the option of not selling him now greater than 40m pounds. And I can respect that. Modric, while being no Xavi or Cesc, is a fine player and probably the best and most important player at Spurs

Two words: Andy Carroll.

I can see why Carroll would have been worth so much money to Liverpool in January.
I'd like to think we would not go after him, and if we did, he wouldn't be worth more than a third what Liverpool agreed to buy him for. In similar vein, I think this is a summer when I would have been fine spending a little more than we would normally deem appropriate on a Benzema or Hazard.

This is all getting long winded and rather pointless. £40 million is ludicrous money for a good, but far from great, midfield playmaker. They could have improved every area of the team with that sort of money, and there were dozens of very affordable, readily available players to pick from.

Caligula wrote:

judging by their actions, Spurs value the option of not selling him now greater than 40m pounds.

I think opinion was pretty divided behind the scenes. Levy wanted to keep him, Redknap wanted to cash in.

Caligula wrote:

Modric is good enough that a club deemed him worthy of a 40m pound bid, allegedly.

Circular argument. You can't justify Modric's quality on the back of the size of the bid when the whole discussion revolves around whether's he actually worth it.

Ricky1985 wrote:

We did exactly that last year, Rex.

And we should have done it again this year.

Do you think if Spurs fail to qualify or the Champions league next season that they will be able to do the same again?

I know they have a better chance of qualifying for the CL with Modric than without him. If they can keep him next year is all about how much time he has left on his contract. They really only HAVE TO cash in on him when he is in his final year.

I really disagree with us selling Cesc btw, especially at a cut price as we did. What choice would he have had other than to get over it and do his best? Sulk for 3 years? Not likely.

Nobody does that though Rex - look around football, it just does not happen. We got one more year out of Cesc, a pretty poor year at that, Spurs will do the same with Modric, and will probably fare worse because it has all got very messy there. Then they will sell next summer for a lot less than the £40M they could have had to strengthen their team with.

Spurs need to buy to improve their squad and they couldn't buy without selling.

If Spurs had taken the £40 Million, they could have bought Arteta, Ju, Mertesacker, Santos and Benayuon, well in theory anyways and in my opinion would be much stronger than they are now.