Harry convinced Spurs target could play at 'top level'... | Vital Football

Harry convinced Spurs target could play at 'top level'...

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Former Spurs manager tells Mauricio Pochettino why he must go back for failed summer target
The midfielder could be exactly what the club needs to add more quality through the middle of the park

By
Greg JohnsonEditor
  • 06:30, 17 MAR 2019

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Harry Redknapp has praised Jack Grealish and told his detractors that the Aston Villa midfielder is destined for the very top.

Last summer, Tottenham Hotspur tried to strike a bargain with the Birmingham-based club only for a deal to become impossible.


At the end of last season, and the former Premier League side failed to win promotion, financial difficulties almost forced them to sell their homegrown star for cheap.

However, following a takeover that alleviated the immediate issues, the new regime became intent on retaining one of the squad's top performers.
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Spurs had planned to secure Grealish at a low price. That plan no longer held as Villa could hold out for a more generous offer.

The 23-year-old returned from injury at the start of march and has so far been directly involved in three goals from four games, with two goals and an assist.



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Jack Grealish during Aston Villa's derby match with Birmingham City. (Image: Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images)
"Apparently they were going to take him, weren't they?" said Redknapp on Tottenham's interest in the summer on TalkSPORT.

"The club was in trouble and maybe Daniel Levy thought he could really get him very cheap. Then the new owners came into Villa and they didn’t need the money suddenly."
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Redknapp tipped Grealish to excel at a higher level, above the Championship, and Spurs could go back in for the midfielder in the summer with Mauricio Pochettino's squad needing more quality in his position and homegrown players to fill their quotas.

"I love Grealish," said the former Tottenham manager. "I think he’s a real talent, honestly. I love watching him play.

"I think he’s a kid who could play at the very top level."
 
I'm not sure Spurs getting recommendations from Stockpile Harry is a great way to do our recruitment.

He might have a point on Grealish though. He's already shown glimpses in the past that he has the qualities to play at the highest level. I can't argue that having a fit Grealish in our squad this season would have helped.
 
Nick Real Deal said:
We've already stockpiled with Aurier, Davies, Foyth, Moura and Llorente, none of whom are good enough and taking the place of potentially better players.
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Foyth will be good enough though, I'm sure of it. He just needs time and to accumulate minutes and experience. Davies has been playing with an injury this season, but judging him longer-term he certainly is good enough to fulfill a valuable role in the squad. Aurier? Yeah you could be right. Llorente, a decent scoring rate, but someone younger filling that role would be better. Moura, yeah, you might be right again, but I'd like to give him time like we gave Son. Who knows, next season he could rip it up!

Just my opinion mind you............
 
walmsley73096 said:
Foyth will be good enough though, I'm sure of it. He just needs time and to accumulate minutes and experience. Davies has been playing with an injury this season, but judging him longer-term he certainly is good enough to fulfill a valuable role in the squad. Aurier? Yeah you could be right. Llorente, a decent scoring rate, but someone younger filling that role would be better. Moura, yeah, you might be right again, but I'd like to give him time like we gave Son. Who knows, next season he could rip it up!

Just my opinion mind you............
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I'm looking at their quality for a top 4 PL team and CL challenger. Keeping in mind Rose gets injured a lot Davies will play often and is not good enough IMO. Foyth has potential but Toby is going so he will need to step up. I'm not sure squad players is the level we need anymore.
 
Nick Real Deal said:
We've already stockpiled with Aurier, Davies, Foyth, Moura and Llorente, none of whom are good enough and taking the place of potentially better players.
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Didnt think we could find players that were better than what we’ve got Nick . ........ that’s where Poch,s comments come back to bite him on the arse
 
USAFSPURS said:
Is it just me or don't we have more pressing needs than Grealish?
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Eriksen is leaving, we need another 'creative' and Grealish is certainly in that mold and when fit is the difference between a medicore AV and a very good one.

He doesn't appear to have too many weaknesses, but clearly doing it at Championship level and PL level is an entirely different set of challenges.

As I've made clear, in the absence of too many other candidates with his skills and with the chances being we can get him, I'd have to take that risk - people forget, Eriksen was largely written off by many here in his first season as he adjusted as being too slow, too lightweight and not good enough....
 
I think Grealish would absolutely thrive in our team. The lad is quality.
I would also be making sure of tying up a deal for Jarrod Bowen as soon as possible.
Let's face it we ain't gonna be signing £80M+ players so we need to unearth potential diamonds and I really think these 2 are.

We missed out on Maddison who would be my first choice to replace Eriksen.
Get Grealish and Bowen in for reasonable money and spend big on Ndombele.
We should also look at picking Sessengnon up cheaply seeing Fulham are all but down.
 
Comparing Grealish to Eriksen is fruitless and setting him up for failure. Eriksen was a 21 year old free pick when he played his first season for AVB. Never kicked a ball in the English game and took a while not to go missing in the biggest games. He turned into that Rolls Royce eventually though.

Grealish would start next season as a 24 year old and would probably start as a squad filler. It would interesting if he could take his games to new levels with better players around him. Once he breaks the "trying to do it all himself" thing then he could be an important cog in our machine. I don't see him as one of the worlds finest though.

Importantly though, we have to break this dependency on 4 of our full-backs being homegrown. We'll never improve there if we don't distribute the HQ quota throughout the squad better. That's why Grealish makes sense at the right price.
 
That's just it Muttley we cannot afford the worlds finest no matter how much we would like to. Whilst ENIC are still in charge we cannot compete with the big boys plain and simple.
Chelsea and City have transfer bans but that still means that we have to compete with United and Liverpool not to mention the big European teams.

We need to unearth gems and turn them into superstars ala Bale and Eriksen.
 
rackny said:
That's just it Muttley we cannot afford the worlds finest no matter how much we would like to. Whilst ENIC are still in charge we cannot compete with the big boys plain and simple.
Chelsea and City have transfer bans but that still means that we have to compete with United and Liverpool not to mention the big European teams.

We need to unearth gems and turn them into superstars ala Bale and Eriksen.
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What's interesting is we're the 10th/11th biggest club in Europe based on finances. The big teams only churn very few players each summer and 2 of them are precluded this summer. When you then think that some of these clubs are looking for the older finished article then that means there's more space for us to pick up the younger prospects.

So you'd think based on our financial muscle we'd be winning the transfer battles. Even with alignment on the transfer strategy, there is clearly something amiss on our execution. That's my concern.
 
Nick Real Deal said:
We've already stockpiled with Aurier, Davies, Foyth, Moura and Llorente, none of whom are good enough and taking the place of potentially better players.
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Of course, you omit the longest serving bang average joe Lamela, into his sixth year but still not good enough to cement a starting place. The shining example of the message you convey, but you choose to exclude him.
 
muttley said:
What's interesting is we're the 10th/11th biggest club in Europe based on finances. The big teams only churn very few players each summer and 2 of them are precluded this summer. When you then think that some of these clubs are looking for the older finished article then that means there's more space for us to pick up the younger prospects.

So you'd think based on our financial muscle we'd be winning the transfer battles. Even with alignment on the transfer strategy, there is clearly something amiss on our execution. That's my concern.
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It's a simple question of where/how you spend your money;

ON the one hand you have those who argue that the only priority should be spend on players; trouble with that is, as we have seen, unless you win everything in sight and keep doing it, it is financially unsustainable and eventually every club that has tried and failed have destroyed themselves in the trying.

Of course the multi/multi billionaires playthings who were prepared to do this had some incredible success (Chav's and now ManCitybags); the difference was (and I get tired of going over this) our billioniare was never a cash-in-bank billionaire, but was heavily invested in real assets and the cash that tavistock seemed to have was always chasing listed assets (PLC's) or new projects.

I've tried many times to look at old Joes asset to cash ratio and out of his 3 - billion £ net worth, I suspect only around 20- perhaps 30% was only ever the cash he had as 'risk' cash, and even then, I think that was at his 'peak' cash holding.

So to me it was never ever on the cards that he could spunk £1-1.5 billion as the chav's and City have done.

Our place in that financial league table now is based on our retained profits (yep, there's that dirty word again - profits-) which by and large have been used for the academy/training ground/ property related purchasing for the Stadium project and last but perhaps for some least - player buying.

The club always tried to make fans see that we couldn't go above a 55% threshhold of T/o to wages ratio, and if we did it was only in 'emergencies' and had to be authorised by the remuneration committee as per Stock exchange rules (done once to my knowledge when Harry came in and demands spending on players that we knew would breach our limits).

So, full circle: we're back to the concrete base building argument V risk taking on players and stripping huge amounts of cash out of the balance sheet to fund significantly higher wage percentages (some other PL clubs have briefly hit 70-86% only to eventually collapse internally as it was unsustainable).

I once heard one football exec say that fans are like 'dogs' they live in the moment and can't see beyond the next game - we had an almighty slagging match after that, but to some extent, I understood his frustration and why he said it.
 
RichmondSpur said:
Of course, you omit the longest serving bang average joe Lamela, into his sixth year but still not good enough to cement a starting place. The shining example of the message you convey, but you choose to exclude him.
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Lamela has cemented starting places in the past and was almost first name on the sheet at one point before his surgery. So within 3 years not six.
 
Nick Real Deal said:
I was referring to Poch stockpiling, Lamela was here already but you carry on with your own agenda.
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Whether you like it or not Lamela is very much part of our stockpiling group, the timing of his arrival is irrelevant. He is inadequate and is blocking the place of a potentially better player joining the squad.
 
RichmondSpur said:
Whether you like it or not Lamela is very much part of our stockpiling group, the timing of his arrival is irrelevant. He is inadequate and is blocking the place of a potentially better player joining the squad.
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He is a useful sub to inject energy and pressing plus a goal creator and threat. Poch didn't buy him and has not sought to sell him probably because he recognises his uses.
He was given a new contract and I trust Pochs opinion more than yours. He may again as he has in the past force his way into a starting position, if Eriksen and Son underperform probably sooner than later.
 
RichmondSpur said:
Whether you like it or not Lamela is very much part of our stockpiling group, the timing of his arrival is irrelevant. He is inadequate and is blocking the place of a potentially better player joining the squad.
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Perhaps, but the lower hanging fruit is Llorente, Janssen and Nkoudou and the guys that looks like leaving of his own accord is Eriksen.

With Janssen and Nkoudou only making up numbers, we surely need to replace Llorente and Eriksen first before we cut deeper with Lamela.

Ideally, one of Roles, Edwards or Sterling would step up and displace him that way. That doesn't look likely though.
 
Not even interested in what the king of the jungle has to say.
I’m telling you he’d be shitting the bed if poch won a trophy.
George Graham and oneday Ramos won more than good old H with lesser squads.
Massive under achieving manager anywhere else wouldn’t get the headlines he does.
 
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