Ramos says he has more freedom over signings than he had at Sevilla

[DC_Boy]

bent was signed to replaced Mido - because in addition to Defoe we needed a back up striker with more physical presence than JD -

clearly we overpaid but that's not Bent's fault -

however in looking at the soundness of our signings, our current forward line cost £33.5m and is worth a minimum of £35m - so that's decent business overall and a pat on the back to Levy & Co- they've also been a key part in winning our first trophy for 9 years - far more important

 

[SpurSince57]

so when jol suggested that we needed an experienced and pref prem blooded central defender, even in the likelyhood of kabouls arrival, did levy sanction this? of course not, levy was too busy watching d.bent videos and plotting jols demise..

of course, i agree with you, there are many worse chairmen , and levy's record is quite flawless. but the praise is not warranted, he doesn't have the fans in his heart, and has behaved quite badly a times, in purely football terms. so if he's learnt, great. if he hasnt - spurs will get stabbed in the backmany times over, just as he has done.

you live by the sword, you die by the sword, as it were

Where and when did he say this? The only quote I've seen is the one where he said that 'we' (presumably Comolli and himself) considered Distin and Chivu, but decided that in a couple of seasons Kaboul would be better than both of them. Doubtless we could have signed Distin in addition, and Jol and Comolli may have suggested this to Levy and been turned down, but there's absolutely no evidence for this. In hindsight it would have been a good idea, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. My suspicion is that we believed Ledley would be back a good deal earlier than he was and felt we could manage without him for a few weeks. What we didn't foresee was Gardner and Rocha getting crocked five minutes into the season.

 

[idlepete]

Where and when did he say this? The only quote I've seen is the one where he said that 'we' (presumably Comolli and himself) considered Distin and Chivu, but decided that in a couple of seasons Kaboul would be better than both of them. Doubtless we could have signed Distin in addition, and Jol and Comolli may have suggested this to Levy and been turned down, but there's absolutely no evidence for this. In hindsight it would have been a good idea, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. My suspicion is that we believed Ledley would be back a good deal earlier than he was and felt we could manage without him for a few weeks. What we didn't foresee was Gardner and Rocha getting crocked five minutes into the season.

The quote I remember is :

"I felt the squad would be unbalanced with these signings, and it proved to be the case. The new manager will probably come to the same conclusion and the club will go out in January and buy the two players I felt we needed. When Frank Arnesen was director of football we spoke together about the players to bring to the club. But I did not have the same relationship with the next man. I think the club wanted to invest in younger players because they wanted to make money on them in the future. The decisions were not being made for football reasons. I knew that in the summer and I realised my position was becoming very difficult."

http://www.spurscommunity.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=22544&highlight=martin

He doesn't name names or positions but at the time I think everyone accepted that one of the players we needed was an experienced central defender. And we did buy one.

 

[SpurSince57]

We did, and a better one than Distin. But that may have been because of the doubts that had arisen over how many games Ledley would be able to play, the fact that Big Tone was simply too injury-prone to be a back-up player, and that Rocha wasn't considered good enough. Perhaps we decided he meant a CB because we were convinced we'd sign an experienced CB this summer.

Agreed, there is no evidence that Jol didn't want an experienced CB in addition to Kaboul in the summer, but there isn't any that he did, either. You certainly can't make a categorical statement either way—although, as some wag on Topspurs suggested, you can't help suspecting that Jol's input went something like this:

Jol: 'I'd like to sign Player A.'

Comolli/Levy: 'Well, you can't have him. But you can have B or C instead.'

Jol: 'Oh. I suppose it had better be C, then.'

However, his words were certainly prophetic, and it does seem that Ramos has a good deal more clout in this respect than Jol did. We did, after all, splurge £20m-odd in January that Levy claimed we wouldn't be spending, and that would have been £30m if Tiago and his agent hadn't pissed us about. There was also a story that we'd tried to sign Amelia but that there hadn't been time to complete the deal.