Are Spurs Acting Differently? | Van Hecke's World Cup Records & The Tonali Transfer Saga

18:20Phil:If that was the cost to get the player we wanted, then fine. I think a lot of this, and I've sort of had to check myself on this a lot, right? And it's also the same thing with the, do you want to win the Carabao Cup or do you want to finish in the Champions League spots? These are all Daniel Levy things that he's been gaslighting us with for 20-odd years. The fact that he, you know, that's a very embarrassing thing for him where Simon Jordan showed the text to Ben Foster and he like called it out on TalkSport. It's probably the last text Simon Jordan is going to get from Daniel Levy, I imagine.

18:57Phil:But again, yeah, all right. There are sort of financial structures in place. But if we wanted to play and that's what it cost to get him, I mean, you know what? We could have paid 70 million for him last year So we get two years or an extra year out of him earlier. I don't, again, I don't, I'm going to stop caring about all these kind of ideas about what stuff costs because it isn't my money. And it's about time, you know, we spent money or the club spends money. And I think that, you know, sometimes we're going to have to take a hit as well with things like that, because we've got ourselves into such a dreadful, dreadful situation with our playing staff that we're going to have to overpay sometimes because we haven't, we didn't pay last season.

19:38Phil:You know, we're just kind of using that money that we didn't spend now. Again, that's why should we have signed him in January? Should we have signed him in last summer if we wanted him? Again, it's a Deserby thing. It comes down to the fact that Deserby wanted him and we got him for him and we got him for him early as well. There's absolutely nothing to be concerned about from my point of view about the price tag. The Nadelons, they're looking pretty good as well, aren't they? They're knocking the ball about nicely. I had them as a bit of a dark, my dark horse, actually, I have to say. They just, they maybe lack a little bit of, let's say, a Xavi Simmons, that sort of a player.

20:15Phil:They kind of know what they're doing, don't they? They're kind of set up quite well. The team, I think, that's been together for a long time, which is, I think, something which people overlook quite a lot, which is, again, why it's probably Henderson's in there, because it's that sort of mainstay thing. Whereas I do think England are a little bit kind of mishmash. They're trying out new things. They're kind of, you know, Anderson and Rice, are they gelling that well? The wingers are new or, you know, certainly in a starting berth. So I think there's a lot to be said for a team that knows each other and with a few additions and a few changes here and there.

20:49Phil:But yeah, so that's what I think they're benefiting from.

20:52Jack:I always, like, I was looking at them, looking at like a couple of other teams, like Morocco's another example of one. I think Mexico's another example. there are some teams that tend to just come to a world cup and even if even when there's players that you know full well from the premier league um that you've seen play sort of week in week out that seem to take on a i don't know a second life in international tournaments especially the world cup they seem to play with colombia is another example of this as well um where just some of the players they just seem quite up for it they seem like they're less afraid of things going wrong and they're just kind of playing they're going for it and i always i just i always find the same thing other than maybe 2018 under southgate when there wasn't much expected from england i always sort of see england play with this like i know i just always feel like they're playing on rails a bit and i know it's such a like it's such a trite observation about like england and though they're bogged down by the weight of expectation and all that type of thing which is probably true to a degree.

21:57Jack:But I just, again, I just, I always wonder what it is like, because we've got such an unbelievable squad, I think. I think England's is, it's not quite up there with like France's, but I genuinely don't think it's a million miles off. When you look at kind of like top, top players, I think France probably have more good players, more players available to them. We're thinking first choice starting XI. You know, I think they're both very good sides. Let's put it that way. but I just I don't know I just don't get because like I was saying I watched Netherlands just knock the ball about easy breezy really really nicely with just some spark with some guile they look like a team that kind of realised that in tournament football you just kind of have to go for it a bit and I just I don't know maybe England will surprise us maybe they will grind out this tournament because that was kind of my feeling I thought you know Tuchel might as he did with Chelsea in the Champions League maybe he'll grind this out for England but I don't know

22:53Phil:I think it's interesting. I think England has set up and I heard, I can't remember where I heard this, or maybe it's just a common understanding that the way he's set us up is to be able to beat the big teams. So, you know, bring them out, hitting them on the break, that sort of thing, creating space. Someone like Ghana aren't going to fall for that because they don't need to, you know. And I say someone like Ghana, I mean, a team that has got their first win and need a draw in their second game to go through. So, yeah, I mean, that, which is all good and well, but that just means it's going to be a bit sticky against the not so big teams, let's say.

23:25Jack:Just on the Netherlands and moving it back a bit to Spurs, Micky van der Ven, playing at left back for the Netherlands and we've sort of speculated as to whether or not De Zerbe might utilise him in that role given the sort of purchases we've been making this summer. I haven't been overly impressed with him playing in that position if I'm brutally honest. I don't think he looks very comfortable or particularly natural there. Has that given you pause for thought about him maybe occupying that role for Tottenham?

23:52Phil:Yeah, a little bit. I mean, he didn't play yesterday, did he? I was just checking. Yeah, I mean, I've kind of always had this idea that he's playing the centre-back for a bit because he's got a well-cut coming, certainly this last season. And he's, you know, going to be concerned about his hamstrings. But maybe, you know, that's where his natural position is going to be. But again, he hasn't really kind of lit the place up, is he? We've not seen one bursting run. And again, this might just be reflective of, like I said before about the group stage is just being this be stodgy don't overexert yourself get the results and then you can open up when you know when you have to in the knockout rounds because there's there's more jeopardy so maybe we'll see that but yeah I mean with him he's he's starting to look quite awkward at centre back I mean he was better at the last few games of last season under De Zerbi because I think he was being asked to do less but he looks quite awkward at left back as well so yeah kind of remains to be seen what uh how his career progresses

24:53Jack:well correct me if i'm wrong but um cast iron said no one ever saw sports boom have reported that christian romero uh is encouraged by roberto de zerbi wants to stay at spurs but i guess you know this begs the question with van hecke with sanesi with mickey van der ven still there as well Is it an awkward development for Tottenham, do you think? Or is it actually quite a nice problem to have?

25:20Phil:Definitely a nice problem to have. I'm very suspicious of him suddenly saying, or this idea suddenly coming out that he's open to staying. It's like, what, is Daddy Simeone not going to pay you as much pocket money or something, mate? Is that why?

25:33Jack:I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. I think, though, I think Paul O 'Keefe said in one of his mid-thread bombers that the interest in him hasn't been as expected. I think the last link I saw genuinely was somebody like Brentford were thinking about making a bid for him, which is kind of wild, you know, but also speaks to the Premier League having a bit of dosh, doesn't it?

25:52Phil:Yeah, yeah. So that's good from our point of view. I mean, I'm trying to kind of move away in the same sort of thing with Bergvold, which we can get onto in a bit. But this idea that, oh, I want Argentina's previous World Cup winning captain to be good for Spurs because I like the idea of that. But actually, I just want the best player in that position. And if that means that Romero has to step up and stop doing this daft stuff and stop buggering off to kind of, you know, put everything else a priority above his Spurs career, which is, you know, maybe an unfair accusation, but definitely an accusation that was put to him end of last season and prior to that.

26:33Phil:If it makes him a better player and the competition for places is, you know, which benefits us, then great. I mean, you know, there is a bit of an irony here that he's been talking about, you know, the leadership or the board of the club lying and letting us down and not kind of doing, you know, not keeping to their word, which we all took at the time to be him saying, yeah, they haven't made any signings because that's what he wants. I think that it was more to the point that he was like, he wanted to go and he wanted to leave to Athletico and, you know, wasn't allowed to. But still, the fact that now we are putting the dosh down, now the leadership are seemingly keeping their promises, it makes his starting position at risk because we've signed the last of centre-backs.

27:20Phil:But again, don't care, good. Whoever's the best out of those four to start every game. Yeah, I love the idea of Mickey van der Ven because of doing what he's done, doing what he did against Copenhagen. I love the idea. I want to see more of that. But if it means we win more games without him, then great. If Sinesi and Van Hecker become the best partnership we do or Danso or whomever, don't care. Got to remove ourselves from this popularity idea. Who's the best player to execute what the manager wants to do to be successful and just focus on that?

27:48Jack:I feel that a bit because let's talk about Bavar because I think it's a natural segue into the next part as well. Because it feels like at the moment I'm seeing and just anecdotally when I go through Twitter I see a growing sense that people are suddenly thinking oh what have we done bringing Deserby in and this is this has mainly been exacerbated by the talk around Luka Vuscovic being a player that he doesn't really fancy and also about Lukas Bergvau being the type of player that he doesn't really fancy and I'm just I'm just interested to know how much of that feeling as you say comes from Spurs fans as we do having these strong emotional connections falling in love with the idea of Luka Vizkovic being that 16 year old prodigy that we signed going on to become the best centre-back in the world when actually when you're cold about it and you're rational about it you perhaps do take that step back and think it's really really hard for a player to become a top level player we bought him when he was 16 for what let's say just short 20 million euros or something I'm not sure exactly what it was but I think it was around that kind of figure the money that's been spoken about now if we're selling him on to Brighton for 45 50 million pounds it's just good business isn't it it's just good business especially if the manager doesn't fancy him see also Lucas Bergvall you know a player that obviously obviously has bags of talent obviously has a big future ahead of him but at the same time we're looking at trying to be a successful football club we're looking at being a club that has just finished 17th twice in a row, we're looking for a remedy to that.

29:21Jack:The remedy to that is buying more players who are senior, who are advanced and ready to play now to help take Tottenham Hotspur back into a position that we deem to be more respectable. You could take a step back and say, well, having two centre midfielders, you can argue that their roles are slightly different, but still you're having to incubate Archie Gray and Lucas Bergwald at the same time, try and bring them both up simultaneously to the required level to make Tottenham a competitive top end of the table side. That's just going to be difficult. Again, Lucas Bergwahl, who we signed for, you know, a few million euros.

29:55Jack:If we again can sell him on for a huge profit, he can go on and be happy, have a great career elsewhere. Kind of suits everyone, doesn't it? And it feels like, to come back around to the start, De Zerbe feels like the type of manager who, as you were saying, mate, comes into this situation and says, what has to change? Because he's demonstrably already done that, right? He came in at the end of last year and turned a team that looked destined for relegation into a side that actually looked like it was functioning again, actually was capable of winning games again and saved us, kept us in the Premier League.

30:27Jack:So I guess the thing is here, a lot of this, like you were saying, a lot of the sentimentality that we have around these players and our vision for what they could be. Is Roberto De Serbi just that awkward, cold voice that says, sorry to break it to your kid, but the world doesn't work that way?

30:45Phil:Yeah, potentially. I think that, you know, you can say maybe using Jack Grealish is the wrong example. Him staying at Villa before coming, you know, when there was that, the suggestion that he might come to us and we ballsed up the deal. Does he become the player he then became if he comes to us? We don't know, right? It's a hypothetical. We don't know. Might be the case with Bergvold. Is he going to develop into the player that we think he can be if he stays here? Who knows? I mean, you know, if he's not, it's really tough, especially in the situation Spurs are and the situation Spurs have been in for the last couple of years.

31:16Phil:We can't really afford to be taking a risk on this. It's tough because, again, the idea of Lukas Bergvau, you want him to kind of be this shining light in Spurs, but also we've got to focus on what we need right now. And if that means him going, unfortunately, that's the case. Again, this idea is not a popularity contest. It's not about these personalities necessarily. We all have these kind of ideas about what we want our squad to look like and whom we want these players to come good under the Spurs banner. But we also need to not be in the relegation battle again to be honest so you know unfortunately some of these players that we bought under Langer might need to go by the wayside and then you know this other point and it might be a bit churlish to make this point now but kind of how I was thinking towards the end of last season and this is definitely down to the fact that you know they weren't it wasn't working under Tudor they kind of stopped playing for Frank and all this sort of thing then this idea of what the culture was like at Spurs you know we've had Vinay reference the the training ground being more like a hotel than a sports you know a sporting excellence um academy or whatever but the idea that um the culture is bad maybe we do just need to get rid of all of these players or the majority of them you know root it all out because if that's the hardest thing to change in people's minds so something i'm not saying lucas bergwell is a bad bad egg or anything but that's sometimes what you have to do it's the nuclear option right of getting rid of this bad culture getting in players who actually kind of you know have a different mindset and haven't fallen into these bad habits which it seems like you know whether it's their fault or not the players have they've become too comfortable which is why we've you know ended up where we have ended up partly but certainly you know it in part due to that so get rid of all of them been a more go unless i don't

33:08Jack:know if they decide to be good this year maybe well yeah it's up to them you know they can change

33:13Phil:you their mind space mind space my brain's gone mate no that works that's fine mindset

33:19Jack:it was headspace and mindset wasn't it i see what you've done there um sandro tonali so i think it's a daily mails craig hope um led with an exclusive last night that newcastle have rebuffed tottenham's second approach for sandro tonali the spurs apparently didn't improve the initial offer but just uh called out newcastle and said oh go on please please please take the offer um the talk seems to be that tonali actively wants the move to happen he wants to come to tottenham um so i guess do you think this is just a matter of time before this happens or are we seeing same old same old tottenham play out again in front of our eyes not sure to be honest i've

34:03Phil:not got a hell of a lot of confidence in this this strikes me as one that is you know the agents are like shopping him around a bit which you know when you get a whiff of that it's always very um it never usually works in Spurs favour put it that way to my mind so Arsenal and City have never disappeared have they from the picture no and I just I just wonder if it's like if it's going to be one of those where we finally agree to the deal and someone else comes in and is like how much you paying for him all right we'll match that we give you more money and then suddenly this his heart set on coming to Spurs suddenly disappears and he gets 20 grand more a week at

34:36Jack:city I mean do you like the idea of him coming if if we do get him I guess is part of the thing

34:41Phil:does this tie into if Deserby wants yeah definitely yeah that's the that's the guiding I personally wouldn't have necessarily picked him as someone that I expected us all necessarily wanted us to go for but again Deserby has earned the right to pick his team and to be backed for once by the by the ownership so I'm just kind of bowing to that really another sort of exciting potential

35:04Jack:deal that kind of again has that whiff of agents about it though selling a player about is matthias fernandez from west ham sort of midfield engine i think they signed him for pennies not long ago from southampton we're looking at again another 80 to 100 million pound kind of deal to take him off of west ham's hands i mean a very very exciting player a player who i think like would work pretty well next to tonali you know you can see tonali being that sort of six pulling the strings from further back fernandez more that's a marauding box to box number eight that i guess conor gallagher kind of is supposed to be as well um i guess like there's there's two there's two things i want to put to you phil i mean we're looking at you know if we're looking at 200 million pounds for fernandez and for tonali as a midfield too are you happy with that i guess i've sort of already asked you that about about deservey but does that to you outside of that side of things look like a midfield that is actually capable of seeing Tottenham become a challenger again.

36:06Jack:Because there's a part of me that feels like even the sense of Tottenham spending that much money gives everybody a lift anyway, regardless of how well or not those two play. But I guess that only lasts so long, especially when you get into winter and everything like that. And I guess the second part is, is this the club admitting that they got it wrong with Gallagher? The fact we're targeting so many players like him. Does Gallagher have much of a future at the club? It seems like a really bizarre situation that we've got there with him. He's almost like the playing version of Johnny Heitinger, isn't he?

36:36Jack:Yeah, yeah.

36:38Phil:We did that deal, didn't we? Because we could, I think, not because necessarily we wanted him. And I think he was all right. And I think he probably did add something, maybe probably in the dressing room rather than necessarily on the pitch end of last season. So I'm not going to kind of go after Gallagher. I'll probably catch him if I did. He's not the quickest, is he? But in terms of Fernandes and Tonali costing upwards of 200 million, it's what it costs. It's what it costs. We've got to start dropping this money. As you say, we start dropping money like that, we're going to be seen as serious, which changes the perception, I suppose.

37:12That's just something we've never really had before.

37:17Phil:So, yeah, it's all these little things that we've let slip. We're cheap. We don't do the deals. We're not serious. We're a laughing stock, all that sort of thing. dropping 200 million on a new central midfield which automatically becomes starters and ups the level of our squad completely it's just it's all part of the same thing we just we've got to get better across everything culture optics standards everywhere and i think it's just part of it do you like where are you at with the lewises are you because i've got to say like i do i think spurs

37:50Jack:are clearly trying things, right? We clearly are trying to move differently. I don't really feel like this is the same as it was under Levy, but I guess we'll see when the transfer window closes, right?

38:03Phil:Yeah, yeah. And I think that this is, I don't think this is necessarily the litmus test because there's no other alternative to doing this because of what we've been through the last couple of years. I know we won the Europa League, but certainly last season, they cannot let that happen again. So therefore they've got to do it. I think the real litmus test is if they keep doing it. And I don't want to get ahead of myself because I just, you know, we've just got to get out of the mud next season and finish higher up the table, really. But if they keep doing it, if they keep strengthening, if they keep saying, you know, we'll drop this players available, we'll go out and get him going and get him early.

38:35Phil:Then that's the real kind of test for them, I think. Don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying what they're doing so far. And, you know, they're ticking a lot of boxes at the moment. but in terms of the proper kind of elite acting or acting like an elite club, it's the, look what Arsenal did. You know, they consistently every season bought and improved and improved and improved and that's what we've got to do and that's what they've got to do

38:58Jack:over the next three, four years. Just in this sort of ongoing saga, mate, just as we have been recording, I've literally just seen that apparently Spurs have come to a complete agreement with Tonali, um a contract until 2032 on 12 million pounds a year everybody is confident that the deal with newcastle is going to be struck um imminently so it seems like that's that's coming from that nicolo shearer who i think some people believe or don't believe but yeah it's um it doesn't seem to be going away that one i'm just going to see if that's been reported anywhere else but look i I think I kind of like you're saying, you know, I think the main thing is, right?

39:43Jack:And I think this ties into a lot of what we've been talking about with football in general, with the World Cup, like you were saying, you know, at the top when England didn't make the World Cup and we still enjoyed it anyway. I think part of it now, right, is can't we just try? Can't we just try and enjoy football a bit more? We nearly got relegated a few months ago and now we're like getting all upset over spending a hundred million pounds on Italy's best player. like just try and try and enjoy that for what it is do you know what i mean in this whole grotesque theater of football yes i know 100 million pounds in the real world could be put to much better use than buying a footballer but within this silly little game that we call football can't we just like don't we need to just embrace that of it just sort of go with it we've spent loads of money on a footballer on a great player maybe he will go on to be one of the best players in our club's history.

40:34Jack:Maybe he won't be. Who knows? But let's just try and enjoy it a bit more. Imagine when you were a kid, mate, genuinely. Imagine when you were a kid seeing Tottenham sign a player for£100 million.

40:45Phil:You know? Like, you had to be on Mars. That would be about£3 billion now. Did you see that thing about the top signings based on inflation? When Alan Shearer went for, what was it, in 1996 or 1997? £15 mil. It's now like£300 million. So if you think about Tonali, he's a third of the cost of Alan Shearer. Doesn't seem so bad now, does it? No, doesn't.

41:08Jack:I'll be up for that. But I guess in just a bit more of a thud back down to earth, Martin Dubravka, we signed him, official, done deal. We've done the video, all of it. Fine. Do you know what I mean? I think he's one of those keepers of the past. I had a go down on Reddit, had a look at what some Newcastle fans had to say about him. Lots of them actually, genuinely, seem to be quite gutted that they let him go to Burnley last year. year they many of them thought he was better than pope many of them all were complimenting the fact he could play out from the back that he was very good with his feet that he was a good footballer some of them anecdotally say that he often actually trained in a midfield position when he was playing with newcastle that they'd heard that was one of the things they'd heard from the training ground such was his talent with the ball at his feet so i don't think we're signing him to be our number one are we but we're signing a player that if we need to drop a goalkeeper into a early stage Carabao Cup or FA Cup game where we don't have to I guess completely and fundamentally alter the way we play football or the way that De Zerbe wants us to play football it just seems to make

42:09Phil:sense doesn't it yeah no brainer again we always get these kind of transfers don't we like third choice goalkeepers or second or backup goalkeepers it's not one to get worked up about is it it's fine it means if we've got him it means he won't be able to have that random worldy against us which he's probably only ever done once, but it feels like, you know, he's one of those Tim Krull type keepers that manages to keep us at bay. Again, we probably put five goals past him last season for Burnley, but yeah, just, yeah, fine, fine. Good, good. He sounds like a good professional. Sounds like he's, you know, he's experienced, solid.

42:47Phil:Why would you not do it? Bloody, bloody ruddy Tottenham Hotspur. Anything else you want to talk about, Phil? Oh, not really. I mean, I suppose just going back to the World Cup, because there's so much of it, I feel like I've not taken a lot of it in, I have to say. I used to be able to be like, I know exactly what the score was in that game. I remember that player doing that. I'm like, I can't remember who's played who. And I've watched most of it, as I said. I think that's a point about Spurs just cooked my brain last season. And I'm just kind of passively watching the World Cup rather than, you know, getting across all the stats and the detail of it.

43:21Phil:I'm just enjoying football being played out where I'm not, you know, having heart palpitations over potential outcomes. It's quite hard. Should we stop doing this now? I think my laptop's about to explode. All right then.

43:31Jack:Well, thank you, Phil. Thank you for jumping in into this paddling pool of Spurs and football-like delight. That'd be nice, wouldn't it? I hope you've enjoyed tinkling your toes in it.

43:44Phil:That's vile, vile, vile. Not wearing a vest either. I don't think I can support that. I got pelters from that. Yeah, right.

43:56Jack:Ricky said that, yeah, he can see me going down Tesco's and flip-flops in the vest. Oh, God, yeah. I just wear it at home sometimes, that's all. And sometimes on holiday, if I'm, like, by the beach or something, you know? It's fine.

44:11Phil:It's fine. It's your house. It's not body shamer or anything. It was just a shock, all right, to see to both of you, one of you, One of you would have been weirder, I think, but to see both of you in it, I was like, what's all this then? Do I like it? You know, there's a whole load of confusing things going on there.

44:28Jack:What you didn't see is that John's vest had FBI female body inspector on the front of his vest, and mine had an alien with a joint saying, take me to your dealer. Real holiday fare. Proper holiday clobber. Right, Phil, much love. Bye-bye. lovely bye bye