Over recent years there have been a number of players we were interested in but have been sold to rival clubs because Levy prefers to keep the money in his own pocket rather than investing in the team. Last year Kane was flogged due to his lack of buying back up, as has been shown recently.
This year it was Michy Batchuayi who we had been looking at for ages but let Chelski come in , as usual. It is also reliably rumoured this is why we lost our chief scout.
Previous years I can name a whole list of players we were interested in but lost out on due to Levy. Here is a list:-
Loic Remy
Lukaku
Wijnaldrum
Christian Benteke
Daniel Sturridge

There are no doubt many more but at the end of the day we have an investment company run by Levy rather than a football club board interested in winning football trophies.
I know there are many fans of Levy , as a business man, but it takes more than this to be a successful club.

And was it necessarily a bad call that you didnt overpay for Benteke, potentially Wijnaldum, Remy?

At the time, there weren't many people, including Liverpool fans who thought that £30m on Mane was a good price to pay.... Liverpool did, and went for it and it has paid off so far... tottenham, and other clubs didnt ....

Forget previous years, on page 33 of this thread you said Levy needed to spend a substantial figure on a back up striker for Kane.

What's a substantial figure? And most importantly who?

Taking the points of my previous post into account, why would we spend a substantial figure, on a top player, with big wages to ultimately be a back up forward who will sit on the bench?

The point is a good striker wouldn't necessarily sit on the bench because a) he could play when Kane is injured or b) in cup games which would give us a better chance of staying in competitions instead of going out early whenever he doesn't play Kane or c) as a second striker on some occasions!

So the majority of the time he would still sit on the bench based on those points.

You still haven't answered my questions though.

What striker should we buy?
What's a substantial figure? (Based on your analogy that we went with the cheap option with Janssen)

Look at the list of players I gave you. They all went for around £25m - £30 m .
This seems to be the going price which Levy seems to ignore.
Personally I think we should try for Sturridge as he doesn't seem completely happy at the pool and he's certainly better than any of our options outside of Kane as was shown in the cup match.

Apart from the upfront cost, wages for a top striker are £6-7 million a year, and then you need to be playing CL football for them to get out of bed.

I agree Levy has been somewhat reluctant in recent times - he has been taking punts on cheaper strikers - but goodness knows we've had our fingers burned with them in the past under Levy.

Fwiw, I don't think Poch has been into Levy for one - contrasting with the fact he definitely wanted Sissoko. As we know, Poch is also very wary of a big bollocks attitude and won't have it in the squad.

Not sure any Chairman is going to spend £30 plus mill if the manager isn't screaming at him to get a new striker in.

Cant see it. Been talked about so much.

The Sissoko deal will puzzle us all to our dying day. £30m down the toilet. Why we spent that on him instead of a better striker is baffling. If you add that £30m to Janssen's fee then we could and should have been in the market for a £50m striker. To suggest that Janssen is the "best we could get" is an insult considering we were entering the season in the champions league and as a genuine title contender.

Even with buying Janssen, two strikers was never enough to go into the season with. When Harry got us into the champons league in his first full season, he did so with a forward line of Defoe, Keane, Crouch, Pavlyuchenko and Gudjohnsen. It shows you dont always need world class superstars, they all offered us something different and it worked as we got top 4. If Janssen does'nt start scoring soon then what ? Put all our eggs yet again in Kane hitting form and then flog him to death in every game as there is no other option. How we have let ourselves get back in this position beggers belief. Its lunacy that a 34 year old Defoe coming off the bench last Sunday would have been a better attacking threat then what we currently have.

only once the rest of the team is functioning properly and Janssen is still unable to buy an outfield goal will I be prepared to think about criticising his signing. he's a striker that thrives on service, and there's not been a great deal of that so far this season.

I've been trying to wrack my brain to remember Watford away last season - I remember Son's back heeled winner but, turns out, it was the 28th December so that might explain why I can't remember it.

Anyway, that was the only time Poch played 3 at the back before Sunday. tbf, the big diff desn't seem to be in the three itself - Dier usually sits almost between the centre backs anyway, it seems to be more in the shape of the midfield.

I suppose we should also acknowledge Harry Winks as the new Tom Carroll, plus some - Poch giving him the opportunity to build on the Liverpool game (in the Tuesday Cup).

We need real competition for Kane and then Poch can rotate or play two up.

We need to buy in Jan. No other option.

We have more than enough players for centre midfield so I can't see that we would be interested in Schneiderlin despite the Poch connection. Just the Express speculating methinks.

"The Express reports .. "

Apparently Janssen suffered a concussion last night and "lost 20 minutes of memory".

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/footba...-loses-9230748

Could be out for a while I imagine - they won't want to take any chances with a head injury.

Should'nt be rushed back with that sort of injury. Shows that even with Janssen we clearly went into the season with not enough forwards.

Walker and Rose did well last night I thought but then again Scotland didn't provide any real quality as opponents.

Crosses create goals. Its so simple yet we havent seen it much at club level recently.

Great goal from Eriksen too.

Bad week for Wimmer.

At least the real football starts again next weekend ..

Not concerned about Jannsen who I assume will be fine so that leaves us with Deli - out for a few weeks, and Ben Davis - two more weeks.

In terms of other key players, I see Kompany is back (again!) for Citch and also that Costa at Chelsea has no return date yet .. the goons have several injuries coming into a very busy and important 6-7 weeks.

http://www.physioroom.com/news/engli...jury_table.php


Amazing how so many players get fit in time for after the internatonal break ..

Common sense

Seems a bit of a waste of a call-up really, if it was only just in case they were desperate.

Surely if those were the criteria, why not call up Jermaine Defoe ?

I guess as Kane played in the Arses game, he had no choice but to report for international duty even though Southgate agreed to only use him as a super-sub, if absolutely necessary. At least Southgate and the club have been communicating over Kane's use, no point risking him the friendly against Spain.