Real Football Man All of the Football, All of the time
After the departure of two Centre Midfielders this week in Paulinho and Lewis Holtby, the number of departures looks set to increase to 4 with the imminent departures of Etienne Capoue and Benjamin Stambouli to Watford.
The French duo are looking to be snapped up by the newly promoted Watford with a fee and personal terms already agreed for Capoue, while negotiations for Stambouli look set to be complete in the next 24 hours or so.
Ultimately this means the Centre Midfield department is getting thinned out quite considerably but as I alluded to in my end of season review a few weeks back you could quite easily make a case for selling all 4 of these players so it’s not as if they will be missed very much. If Capoue and Stambouli do complete their moves then this will be the 2nd and 3rd departures from the “Bale Money” signatures which just goes to show how much wastage there was and I wouldn’t be surprised if 1 or 2 still were to depart (Chiriches hopefully and Soldado possibly).
Even with these 4 departures we’re not particularly short but it also highlights how we seemed to be collecting average Centre Midfielders over the past two seasons. We still now have Bentaleb, Mason and Dembele as our primary central options while also being able to utilise Eriksen and Chadli in these positions if need be. Also with these exits it must push Dele Alli and Alex Pritchard up the pecking order and I would assume they are now going to play a proper part in the first team squad next season. As for Tom Carroll I’m not sure if he will feature and wouldn’t be surprised if he was loaned out again.
Although 4 Midfielders have left in a week I still think we could do with at least 1 top quality name coming in, Morgan Schneiderlin is the first name that springs to mind for me but ultimately this will depend on what other clubs come in for him as if Arsenal and Manchester United are also interested then they have the obvious advantage of offering Champions League football.
No doubt they would be the preference if the Southampton Midfielder was to move, so I think we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed on this one. So it seems to be some positive movement at Tottenham Hotspur in terms of getting the unwanted players out, now lets hope we can get some quality names in to take their place. As always with Tottenham I’m sure there will be plenty of transfer drama still to unfold over the next 7-8 weeks before the window slams shut. As always I’ll give my views on anything that does happen at White Hart Lane. Come On You Spurs!
