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Tottenham Talk on Sunday 1st Aug

Tottenham Talk on Sunday 1st Aug

Cristian-Romero


Good morning and welcome to Tottenham Talk on Sunday 1st August with the Tottenham Hotspur Blog News (THBN) Sage.

I used to play cricket with an Arsenal coach, he is still a coach at their academy and his son captains the first team at my old cricket club where Dave Masters, a professional cricketer with Essex, came through as a colt while I was there.

Chris Smalling I tried to pick every week, phoning his Mum but as soon as Maidstone Football Club got hold of him his cricketing got put to one side, a decent opening bowler for a 13-year-old.

Jason Lillis carved out a professional career in the lower leagues, another player I played cricket with and had a good few beers with in Chatham.

West Indian test players like their captain Richie Richardson played for Lashings of Maidstone, where we often went for a late drink with David Folb, the millionaire owner.

Folb himself played for Lashings 2nd X1, the 1st XI was all international cricketers.

Folb was also involved with Maidstone Football Club for a while, where, as I say, Chris Smalling used to play as a young teenager.

You meet a lot of people along the way in life, either playing sport or coaching it or organising testimonial games, something else I used to help do.

It's been an enjoyable like in sport.

Anyway enough about me, on to Tottenham Talk on Sunday 1st Aug.

Cristian Romero

All the reports are now that after Romero insisted he wanted to join Tottenham and go nowhere else and amid rumours that Fabio Paratici had asked him to not turn up to Atalanta training on Monday, the Italian side have now authorised his sale.

It is more likely that, as they have only just signed a replacement, announced early of Saturday, that they can let him leave.

So much has been said about this but a deal was agreed ages ago.

I speculated yesterday why there was a hold-up, why they wanted to up the price, why they wanted a different payment structure.

With Romero insisting he is joining Tottenham and is not interested in Barcelona, where he would not be first choice, it was basically sell to Spurs or nothing.

That would have messed Atalanta up totally as Romero told them he would refuse to sign the obligation purchase next summer and Atalanta need the money from his sale anyway.

Naturally they wanted him to stay and have tried to change his mind, tried to stall things to give themselves the greatest chance, while preparing also for his departure.

Juventus would not lower the price on Merih Demiral and thus he became too expensive for Atalanta, having to buy Romero as well.

They turned instead to 21-year-old (22 next February) Matteo Lovato from Hellas Verona after just one season playing in Serie A.

I wrote in Tottenham Talk on Saturday 31st that "Agreement is believed to have been reached for an €11m transfer fee", which was actually written on Thursday and that proved to be true with a deal being completed for €8m + €3m in bonuses.

Buying Romero, selling Romero, buying replacement Lovato, now leaves Atalanta with a profit, much needed with clubs struggling financially across Europe.

I trust there will be no further hold ups and he signs early next week, then once the Olympics are done we can sign Tomiyasu for which the agreement has been in place for weeks.

Moussa Sissoko

I am expecting Moussa Sissoko to depart Spurs, after all he did tell the club he wanted to leave to seek regularly first team football and the club confirmed to the French international that they couldn't offer that.

Toby Alderweireld has already gone to Qatar Stars League side Al-Duhail, who incidentally finished second last season and there was speculation that Moussa Sissoko could follow suit to the MIddle East.

Well, Tottenham and Saudi Professional League side Al-Hilal have been negotiating and now reached agreement for the 31-year-old (32 later this month).

Sissoko has already agreed terms in principle with them and will be travelling over in the next few days to complete the paperwork and sign on the dotted line.

Tottenham can then announce his departure which will free up another £80,000 per week off the wage bill.

We will be getting a younger side on lower wages than the ageing side we had at the end of last season.

Todd Kline

Todd Kline was brought into Tottenham as the new Chief Commercial Officer, a man with a big reputation in the USA in his field, just like Fabio Paratici in his.

The recruitment of quality personnel off the pitch allows Daniel Levy the opportunity to let them do their thing and Todd seems to have done that already with the new, yet to be announced, sponsorship deal with a training kit partner.

His role is to increase the number of sponsorship agreements Spurs have with corporate partners. 

Manchester United are way ahead of the rest of the Premier League in this respect and why they have over £200m more income than we do. 

He is also charged with finding and negotiating a stadium naming rights partner (plenty of rumours this has been done too), as well as negotiating TV broadcasting and media rights.

Europa Conference League

Tottenham will play one of the following opponents in the play-off round to qualify for the Europa Conference League group stages.

Spurs-conference-opponents


Open Training Session

Tottenham held an open training session yesterday at 11am GMT after the stadium opened to visitors at 9:30am GMT.

There were 17,500 fans inside the stadium to watch their hero's go through their paces which shows there is an interest in anything Tottenham do.

This is just another reason why Spurs TV should be looking to create more content the fans actually want to watch and more interviews with former player and ambassadors, rather than interviewing a fellow Spurs TV presenter, as they have for the last 2 pre-season friendlies against Colchester and MK Dons, whose views we have no interest in.

Why not interview an assistant coach, someone at least from the playing side, an injured player perhaps. 

Could Ryan Sessegnon not come along to be interviewed for instance.

Surely it would have been an ideal time to talk to Toby Alderweireld with his move imminent. A lack of planning and a lack of forethought still at Spurs TV I'm afraid.

At MK Dons they could have interviewed Troy Parrott!

Fabio Paratici
After the training session yesterday Fabio Paratici was flying to Italy where he has meeting planned.

He will meet with Atalanta over Cristian Romero.

He will meet with Juventus, also over Cristian Romero but possibly other potential targets too.

He will meet with Fiorentina over Dušan Vlahović and Nikola Milenković.

He will meet with Sassuolo over Vlad Chiricheș, no only joking, presumably over Manuel Locatelli.

Let's see what becomes of those meetings.


2 comments

  1. Good day, hope you are well. With your knowledge of FFP, can you explain to me how Man City could qualify if they spent £200 plus million on two players. In my view they would have to sell players for at least half that amount as surely their income is quite small compared to their neighbours Manure et al.
    Happy days Bob
    • There income is on a par with Man Utd, some £200m+ more than ours. They don't have to balance each and every year but over a period. I haven't looked into who they have sold or the amounts they have to pay out in transfer payment instalments or income they get.

      Buying Grealish, they will pay over the term of his contract so if it is £100m and the contract in 5-years then they will pay £20m per year for 5 years.