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Ryan Mason goes on loan to Lorient in France.
Attacking midfielder Ryan Mason joins Lorient on loan for the remainder of the season. Continuing the trend of the last few days with a number of Tottenham yutes going on loan abroad instead of the lower leagues in England.
The other thing with "Moneyball" is that it definitively worked, and then enough of the rest of the league caught up and it became much less of an advantage. There is no "new market inefficiency" that has been clearly identified since. Usually, there aren't any clear advantages like that to be had. There don't appear to be any in football now, either.
Edit: Cokes
Is Diame a Boras client? Did Jon Heyman report this?
I think that to the extent there is a "Moneyball" to be had in soccer it is going to be in tactics rather than players. Whether its formational or stylistic I think that's where we'd see something off beat have a meaningful impact.
I think you could argue that Stoke City's approach is an example of a team getting maximum benefit out of doing something differently from other teams. Because the player movement rules are so different from MLB it's not a simple matter of finding the unknown players, but how the players you have are deployed I think can be very impactful.
Jose, I believe you should have prefaced this with SPURS/RED SOX THINK FACTORY, what with you, me, and Matt Clement having that particular set of allegiances.
Oboy. Last car interview I saw at Stoke was Maurice Edu...
Ahem.
Shakhtar would be nuts not to accept it, but Willian has said often he wants to play in England as he feels isolated in the Ukraine and I imagine that feeling wouldn't change in Russia.
And the funny part is I'm not a Spurs fan. I like seeing them do well largely because of the number of people here that root for them but I don't have any particular allegiance to Spurs. I'd rather see them do well instead of the Manchester teams, Chelsea or Arsenal but given my choice of a Premiership team I'd root for Everton or Stoke.
Hey transfer deadline:
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Lovely people, those Merengues.
Yeah, I knew I was forgetting someone (and apparently incorrectly including Jose).
And Pique getting hit with a cigarette lighter.
My two takeaways were that Xabi Alonso's game against Barcelona mainly consists of kicking people after the ball is gone and then lecturing them when they complain, and Raphael Varane is really really good.
Just shoot me now.
Belgian winger Steve De Ridder has completed a loan move to Bolton Wanderers from Southampton.
Simon Dawkins (nominally of Spurs, but erstwhile loanee to San Jose) has joined Aston Villa on loan until the end of the season.
Aston Villa have loaned Simon Dawkins in from Tottenham until the end of the season. Yeah, I had to look him up, too. This is the attacking mid who was loaned out to San Jose and did OK there.
Villa, in a desperate relegation struggle with a nasty set of matches coming up in February, have made the the following moves in the January window, in total:
1) Flog Alan Hutton off to Spain.
2) Flog Stephen Warnock off to Leeds.
3) Buy a decent young d-mid from the French second tier, whose chance of improving the abominable Villa midfield right away is slim to none.
4) Loan in an attacking player who was decent in MLS playing for the league's best team. Keep in mind, Villa have talent up front, it's the spine that sucks.
5) ... wait, there is no five.
That's it. ~2 million pounds net, and a reduction in the wage bill. What an absolute disgrace.
Edit: Coke to Mattbert. But I had to compose the rant.
P.S.-Sky Sports reporters sure are fun to watch. I have no idea nor do I really care what is usually discussed on that channel.
Barry Robson on a free transfer. I know you were all anxious to see where he'd land.
They deserve much better than this.
All in all, not a bad window. Holtby looks like a steal, Pritchard re-signed, we trolled Sir Alex and Jenas finally has a new home while finding some good loan situations for some of the younger players (though it kills the Next Gen team!). I'm a little flabbergasted they didn't at least find a warm body to play CF in a pinch, even a Louis Saha type like last year. Hopefully AVB and the braintrust have a plan.
I'm pretty sure he'll improve it as long as he has two legs.
Agreed. My only real concern is the lack of quality cover in central midfield (and on the wings if Townsend is indeed gone to QPR on loan). The striker crisis is overblown. Dempsey and, I believe, Bale can fill in there for a week or two until Adebayor gets back. If they finally DL Defoe now that there's no reason to play games about the extent of his fitness issues, then Ade's the main man. Which he likes and, indeed, probably needs in order to thrive. Playing in his best role and having Holtby supporting him won't hurt either. I really think he'll step up.
On the other hand, if Dembele goes down again and/or Parker doesn't turn it around big time then Spurs are proper effed right in the pooper. I am more hacked off with letting the Sandro-shaped hole go unfilled than I am any striker deficit because there appeared to be a very reasonably-priced stopgap measure called Diame staring them right in the face.
I'm a relative latecomer to backing Villa, and have an MLS team to root for... I can only imagine the agony for those who have followed the club their whole lives. They stuck with it through two decades of Deadly Doug, watching a great power within the game fade away, and now the guy who claimed he was going to put them back in the discussion for actual silverware has more-or-less deliberately relegated them instead. Maybe Lambert can arrange some kind of miracle and keep them up, but even if he does, this season has destroyed their dreams. At best, they now get to look forward to an Evertonian future, scrabbling for every point they can get in a generally futile attempt to participate in the occasional Europa league fixture. At worst, they will enter the Leeds/Wednesday wilderness and become irrelevant.
But the Diame option is staring a lot of teams in the face and no one has gone for him. That seems odd. Mousa Sissoko is the one I think we'll regret.
Well, the photos I've seen so far have only been from the waist up, so even this is not guaranteed.
That's true. I figured somebody would snap him up at that price given that pretty much all the clubs chasing a top four finish could use a reasonably skillful ball-winner in the engine room. Maybe we've all overrated him and there's a reason nobody's pulled the trigger.
Sissoko would have been a good get on the cheap. Everyone says Capoue's been the far superior player for Toulouse this season, mind.
Infamous agent fees and wage demands again? Who knows what the real cost would have been.
That's awfully hard to defend if you're Daniel Levy, I'm sorry to say.
:-O
I thought he hadn't played this year, but he got 10 minutes at the end of the first game of the season.
At least they play Villa at home this Saturday (apologies to Villa fans), a win is key there as they still have games away to United/Spurs/Arsenal/Liverpool/Chelsea upcoming the rest of the way (they do get City at home).
EVERTON THINK FACTORY END TRANSMISSION
Do you think they're counting on Vertonghen as the backup? He's played there before for Ajax right? He seems like he'd be able to do a credible job in the position. Of course, I'm not sure it's a sign of good squad construction to have your starting center back as primary cover for two other positions.
I really hope not. His mobility is an asset in central defense but, I would imagine, a liability in central midfield given the pace and stamina threshold for that position in England compared to the Netherlands. I'm sure he could fake it there in a pinch, just like he did at fullback, but his appearances at fullback said to me that he doesn't quite have the engine for that kind of running.
Interesting, I thought he looked quite good at left back. Maybe that was just in comparison to Naughton.
I figure he'd probably have a similar experience deputizing as a holding midfielder. He'd be fine technically, and he certainly wouldn't embarrass himself with his passing. I'd wonder about his positioning (he's played a lot more fullback than midfield) and his tendency to fatigue after an hour or so of trying to cover a lot of ground, though.
Barry Robson on a free transfer. I know you were all anxious to see where he'd land.
And they also land Johnathan Forte on loan 7 years after letting him go because he's no good!
Both moves are cancelled out by the cowardly sale on Nick Blackman to Reading. Scumbags. The natives are restless.
SHEFFIELD UNITED THINK FACTORY END TRANSMISSION
It turns out Reading offered 10 million for Gylfi Sigurdsson. I'm glad Spurs didn't bite at that as I think he has a bright future. Also, the Alex Pritchard loan has turned out to be a weird one. Peterborough wanted him to replace George Boyd whom they they they'd sold to Nottingham, but Nottingham canceled the transfer because Boyd didn't pass his vision test (!!!!) so now Pritchard is blocked by Boyd and I'm not sure how much time he will see on the pitch. The canceled transfer also led to rumors that Alex McLeish quit as manager from Forest though it turns out that's not true. Can Boyd not wear contact lenses or something? I don't get that one.
I see Andy Najar has moved to Anderlecht. He's a nifty player and it's too bad MLS are losing him.
Harry Kane has been recalled from his season-long loan to Norwich. Striker crisis averted!
You mock, but I think he's perfectly fine as an emergency striker. Shaq Coulthirst could be an emergency sub, too, along with Obika. Spurs actually have a good set of young strikers in the reserves/academy, even with Coulibaly off on loan.
If there's a footballing equivalent to a AAAA player, Obika is one. He's put up pretty big numbers in the various youth competitions the last couple years, but I see that as a function of his size and strength allowing him to bully young defenders at that level. Once he's up against real pros who can handle him physically, he doesn't have much to offer.
Super Shaq has some potential. I'd like to see him in the cups next season if he continues to perform well with the development squad.
Coulibaly has reportedly found it difficult to settle in London and may have his eye on a permanent move back to Italy after his loan is up. Hopefully he finds his comfort zone and decides to give it another go in England. He's still very raw, but I think there have been glimpses of the sort of talent that could lead to a Jermain Defoe type career.
He's the best of the lot, fo' sho', plus his name is Shaq Coulthirst which is freaking fantastic. Whatever happened to Cameron Lancaster? He had one nice appearance for the first team last year and he's disappeared. Injured?
I hadn't been here in a while, saw this page, then went back and read the last few, and yeah...SPURS THINK FACTORY is about right. How did that happen?
He has a point. I'm not sure what the right thing to do is, but if the game stopped every time racist chanting happened, it would give the ######## a lot of power. Do the clubs do anything about it when given penalties such as the team having to play a later game in an empty stadium? You'd think that money would motivate the clubs. But cracking down on supporters can also lose money.
Spurs are always a hot commodity in the media on deadline day, and many of the most prolific soccer posters on this site are Tottenham supporters for whatever reason. So it goes.
As always, I encourage fans of other clubs to post more about them. I would love to know more about academies especially, but I always enjoy the "insider" stuff from our posters who follow Liverpool, Everton, Villa, Bolton(?), Chelsea, Fulham, et al. As well as those who have a much deeper knowledge than I regarding the continental leagues and MLS. I would have added West Ham to that list, by the way, but I suspect RB is secretly ashamed of his decision to hitch his wagon to such an embarrassing institution so he's been reduced to mainly just sniping at others from the sidelines in order to deflect attention from his own shortcomings.
I would love to spend lots of time rooting out random minutiae about other clubs, but as it is I barely have time to do that for Spurs and follow Hamburg in half-assed fashion.
He will not be in the squad Sunday against Spurs.
He has a point. I'm not sure what the right thing to do is, but if the game stopped every time racist chanting happened, it would give the ######## a lot of power. Do the clubs do anything about it when given penalties such as the team having to play a later game in an empty stadium? You'd think that money would motivate the clubs. But cracking down on supporters can also lose money.
There really isn't an easy solution. Hopefully Jozy's prayers do some good, I guess, 'cause that's all I got. What I was surprised to see is that the monkey noises started before the game even started. I assumed they'd started as AZ started kicking ass. The Den Bosch chairman was very upset and embarrassed but I'm not sure what he can do--the club is barely holding on financially as it is.
I think several posters here are between one-quarter and one-third of the way there.
I am very disappointed by how little on that list I've achieved. I've got the obscure jersey down, though!
-wouldn't have guessed Football Weekly for hipsterism. Feels too professional for that.
-James Richardson really is great, though. 99% of podcasts would be improved with his hosting.
-if loving everything Zlatan is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Agreed on Football Weekly. The true hipster move is to say that FW is nothing compared to Richardson's video reviews of European papers.
:)
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