- Jul 15, 2012
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Hopefully he's appointed within the next couple of days. My money is on Friday. Let's just hope he's been in the loop with Levy/AVB and things will progress quickly.
Any reason to be excited for Baldini? Feels like all the tranfers go through Levy anyways.
Any reason to be excited for Baldini? Feels like all the tranfers go through Levy anyways.
I'm not even slightly worried about signings this window. We have signed some great players since AVB joined and for respectable fees. Pretty confident we can do the same again.
Not so sure that he's been too involved in the so called great signings.. Vertonghen was a done deal before he got here. Adebayor had already been here on loan. Lloris was a Levy deal. Demeble was a last minute deal once the Modric money was in and we activated his escape clause threshold.. That then leaves Siguardsson, Dempsey and Holtby as AVB signings, which are not quite the great players you previously mention.
Not so sure that he's been too involved in the so called great signings.. Vertonghen was a done deal before he got here. Adebayor had already been here on loan. Lloris was a Levy deal. Demeble was a last minute deal once the Modric money was in and we activated his escape clause threshold.. That then leaves Siguardsson, Dempsey and Holtby as AVB signings, which are not quite the great players you previously mention.
Realistically there are not that many teams that they may prefer to us though:
In Spain: Barca, Real and maybe Athletico.
In Italy: AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus
In England: Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal
In Germany: Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund
Others: PSG and Monaco
Out of all of those clubs I can only see Arsenal wanting Villa (maybe Monaco), and both Dortmund & Athletico wanting Leandro. So the players waiting for bigger moves shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I would say probably only the Holtby signing was a definite AVB one. Sig, Vert were both done early. Lloris had been earmarked for a while. Dembele was cos we knew his release clause, but i'd like to think AVB liked the look of him too
Even though Dempsey was while AVB had been here for a time, it was more to do with Levy seeing a quick and easy enough deal to seal for what he thought was a good price
I don't think you can say Dempsey was an AVB deal. He is not an AVB type of player and with all things considered he was dirt cheap at 6m. Sigurdsson I think was signed before AVB was there. Holtby is the only one that seems anything like an AVB deal, and more importantly it was more of a Steffen Freund deal than anything else.
AVB hasn't had his fingers dipped in any of the piggy bank if you want my opinion or we would've had Moutinho, Atsu, Leandro, and maybe even Meireles.
I think AVB had targets that were unrealistic when he first came. I think it is the exact reason that Baldini is coming in. AVB had great ideas but expensive ones. Levy probably sees that he could get away with giving AVB what was reasonable last summer as were still feeling AVB out. Now that he seems legit, AVB ideas need to be taken very seriously and having a guy like Baldini means that the club can do a better job of pinpointing the next "Hulk" or next "Moutinho" rather than the actual Hulk and Moutinho. And to be fair to AVB and Levy, they almost did it with Oscar. But that last second bid by Chelsea screwed that
So we could chat about Arshavin as well right? He was ITK a few years ago...