Spurs Survive & The Rebuild Begins | De Zerbi's South Stand Moment, Vinai Venkatesham's Interview & Transfers (Q&A)

0:00Jack:This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

0:29Jack:Gavon, mate, doesn't the world just feel just that little bit brighter now that our season is up. And I say this on the eve of Arsenal being in a Champions League final, but nonetheless, it just feels a little bit brighter, doesn't it? There's a bit of weight lifted from the shoulders. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think it's like when you've been working for a really long period of time and you finally get some holiday, you're sat on the Sun Lounge and you open up your Tom Clancy's novel or something like holiday reads. Philip Pullman. have that first sip of beer and you you realize the first time that you've been really tense for weeks and it's like you feel it in your shoulders and suddenly they feel looser and uh yeah you you have like a big um sigh of relief which is what this feels like i think i think i think i think it was you that said to me a few weeks ago hopefully it's going to feel like taking your shoes off after a big long walk and it's like yeah yeah that's it it's just it's it's that it's just we've stayed up and it's good and i'm happy and yeah i'm actually if anything now doing the classic spurs fan thing of getting wildly optimistic about what we can achieve under deservey right yeah yeah yeah of course yeah and um i wouldn't have it any other way either um i think to be honest he pretty much is solely responsible for keeping us up i i think him a combination of him benson kerr coming back from injury actually i think was important and Kinski probably coming in kind of saved the season but Dezerbi alone you know it shouldn't be forgotten just how just how relegated we were we looked so relegated for such a long period of time and I think that the transformation is you know can't ever be overstated Did you happen to see the moment at the the final whistle when he's going over to sort of clap and you know make merry with the south stand and you can hear just even just through the the clip I've watched on my phone, the deafening, deafening rendition of O When the Spurs, that whole sort of wall of white shirts, flags.

2:34Jack:And you can, to me, there was that moment where I feel like he looked at this and just suddenly thought, oh shit, like these lot are actually massive. Like they are actually huge. I agree. I actually thought he looked a bit emotional when that was happening. You know what it really reminded me of when Pochettino was looking around White Hart Lane before it was knocked down. And there was definitely a sense of pride, I think, etched on his face. And I guess, you know, he deserves a huge amount of credit. But it does feel like, let's be honest, it does feel like there could be a really good match here, I think.

3:13And you don't want to get overly optimistic. We have just finished 17th two seasons on the bounce, which probably suggests the squad is in need of a fair bit of work. But he has, for me, the right blend of emotional intelligence and tactical nous. I think he got all of the emotional beats spot on throughout this process. And even to the final weekend when suddenly he just changed tact, didn't he? And he said, this is on the players. We're fighting for something here. We're fighting for the club's dignity. I think he actually said, like, this would be embarrassing. This is embarrassing. And it just felt like he really connected at that point with how all of the fans were feeling as well.

3:56But I think it was the right moment, having just built up the players for five, six, seven weeks, to then say, you really need to fight for this now. And you need to realise what is on the line just for that little bit extra. And it felt like it worked at the end of the day.

4:10Jack:I mean, I'm obviously delighted we didn't go down. But there is that part of me that, in some ways, wonders and maybe i will sort of concede because it's been said to me by a few people you know don't you realize spurs have to get relegated for the people in charge to sort of you know shape up if you like and i've never bought that but i would halfway concede that maybe it is this maybe it's this actual and and this is this is a tangible brush of relegation now we stayed up at a coin toss on the final day um the when you kind of when you when you when you take that sort of step away from i guess the immediacy of needing points getting worried about what the future holds if we go down the narrative that being built around spurs by basically the majority of the media who were delighted about the idea of us going down um i think it was simply spurs who tweeted like you know the the glorious feeling knowing that every championship club is having to delete their Tottenham away draft tweet um so it's just that whole feeling and I think once the relief of all of that has gone and we'll get on to Vinav Enkitesh and all those sort of things in a minute but just from from our perspective from my perspective I've gone from feeling like completely I guess checked out in many ways about Spurs not just because we were like losing so many games even though that played a huge part of it just this overall feeling that like it drifted so far away from what I knew Spurs to be felt like the people the stewards in charge of the club didn't have the club's best interests at heart blah blah blah blah blah all that type of thing right and I just for me as well seeing that seeing the scenes on the final day seeing the way in which the fan base has consistently reacted all right there's been moments of booing and stuff but you know people people can be forgiven that it's been an emotionally fraught season but when the when the chips have been down spurs fans have been there at every turn they've been there meeting the bus they've been filling up the stadium filling up away ends being in full voice constantly that i just feel like defiantly tottenham now i feel like more than anything i suddenly feel like actually do you know what bollocks to all this lot to all of them i don't care that us live on the league i don't care that you know i mean i do care that gary never wants us to go down but i like it's time to shut out the outside noise and i wonder if that's if it's just one of those rare moments like you said with pochettino being there on the last day in 16 17 where it felt like the fans the players everybody were all one i'm hoping that now the mission is suddenly everybody realizes we are up against it we're up against kind of everybody but we have each other and i know that sounds very kind of twee but i just wonder if this is just an organic cultural reset as well as much as anything if you get my blithering yeah yeah no totally it's almost been like a collective trauma isn't it um and you know you're right the the media and the potential to rail against that and and another journalist like the alice of rudd stuff which is an absolute disgrace i think um is sorry if you can hear my dog howling by the way because my partner just got home and that's why he's doing that i couldn't but okay good so i think that like we've had a really good we've got a really good opportunity now to almost generate a bit of a siege mentality but in uh in a really positive way and i think you saw the final whistle just how much this genuinely meant to a lot of the players because they looked totally spent like even poro you know laying out on the floor um head on the turf almost like he just won a major trophy you can see that they've gone through a huge amount of probably emotional turmoil they probably had a few sleepless nights i imagine because you know they're all mercenary figures at the end of the day but they wouldn't want to have been tarred with this they wouldn't want to have been tarred with a relegation you know tottenham's first in the in the premier league era um the neville stuff by the way just to touch on that was particularly infuriating so to go from saying you know spurs being relegated would be a good thing for the league to then going in on the club on the on the final day because we'd stayed up felt like rank hypocrisy um and that's that's kind of what what he's all about i guess so yeah i mean i i agree i agree with all of it and i think as well you say about being defined that's that's exactly how i feel i think deserve he's very defined as well he's got that right blend in press conferences of spikiness but with a little bit of a kind of wink and a nudge um so it's never overly aggressive in some ways that might be even more unnerving i guess this is the smiling psychopath but um he does also have this ability to win people over and i think defend the club whereas when andy used to do it it just felt bellicose it just felt spiky and aggressive and like he wanted to get around with someone i liked the uh the moment i mean jack pickbrook assures me that it was all very friendly and everything like that but to your point there was that interesting sort of moment in the in the post match press wasn't there with tom oln that way he was just like get the guy in here who kept writing all the negative stuff get get him in here i want to see him right now at this moment like you say it's it's a it's not spiky it's it's a more i don't know did you hear the full story of that tom olnott went into it on the uh tothman way podcast oh did he no no no please yeah so apparently um after that happened because tom olnott was in the mix zone and the tothman press officer um came out and said you need to get into here like right now and he was like oh shit like what's happened and walked in and so didn't really realize what had happened and then apparently deserved he'd obviously sort of calmed down a bit by then brought him over but afterwards they spoke and um he said something like to deserve it with his translator look it's not it's not my job to be positive as a journalist i'm just here to report and deserve he said yeah but it's my job to remember the words you're saying and i was like that is i i have so much time for that yeah yeah holding people to account um yeah because it you know a lot of that stuff comes and look as much as i've moaned about him in the past ang was quite good at doing that um even if it did like you say it was often a bit less i don't want to say sophisticated it was just more spiky right wasn't it was definitely was he he wore his heart on his sleeve and right and you know i've got a lot of time for that as somebody that's you know similarly inclined myself but he um he yeah the way he deserve he kind of handles that sort of ground has been something that's come as a as a huge surprise to me um because i probably have had these well a lot of it's come from the thing with stellini you know when he was bright and gaffer and him and stellini had that funny That was weird.

11:04Jack:It was weird. It was quite bizarre. But I mean, the main thing is now is that it feels like a guy who I'm pretty sure he said in his interview with Hainsey this week that now the squad, everybody is going to see the real him. So, you know, you wouldn't be surprised if I would imagine I would imagine the first order of business now is it doesn't matter who it is. It doesn't matter how big they are. He will be sitting down with all of them and saying, do you want to be here? Do you want to stay? You know, it doesn't take any prizes for guessing who I'm talking about. Romero, Van der Ven, players like that.

11:38Jack:Maybe even Kudus, where we've heard some murmurs. I imagine he'll be sat down with them saying, clean slate. Do you want to be a part of it or do you want to go? And, you know, like Pochettino did at the very start of his sort of tenure. There was a painful clean out of some players that we loved a lot, but he just didn't see them fitting with the vision. I imagine that'll be our first order of business, as well as bringing in a few new players. We can talk about those, but before we do talk about those, let's talk about Vinay Venkateshin, who's been doing the, well, we've had a letter from Peter Charrington, we've had a letter from the Lewis's, which were both fairly, chat GPT, can you write me a letter that says, we know we've done bad things without actually apologising and promising all the good things still.

12:28Jack:um but it felt like you know vinagre van kateshin has he's had like a one hour interview or 50 minutes to be precise with the bbc um he sat down and done an in-house interview with ben haynes yeah um and i believe i believe alistair gold said there's another one as well that somewhere it might i think i think there's another spurs internal interview or so i can't remember exactly but he's been out talking they've been talking saying we're not blaming anybody but the way the club's been yes yeah the way the club's been run for the past decade is not very good um it feels like at the very least even if it's an act of master manipulation they've listened to a lot of the concerns of the fans because he was essentially addressing pretty much every single point that i hear every single spurs fan podcast youtuber whatever talk about when they're talking Mount Spurs and their problems with the ownership so I guess the question I want to put to you Gavin is are you willing to just go along with this to walk hand in hand with Vinay Van Kotechenman and the Lewis's and give them that one last chance that one last kind of hope that they are finally going to change their ways that this you know one of the big things that was highlighted is that we're resetting the entire system everything is is a hard cultural and operations reset at the football club which began in september and it's still ongoing um do you believe them are you are you extending them the benefit of the doubt i think i'm more cynical about the motivations than anything i think this probably really put the wind up them because of the financial implications of of what would happen if we had gone down i mean also do you think it done all of these interviews and they'd be releasing all of these statements if we if we'd been relegated?

14:19I don't think so. I think that there's been a little bit of hiding over the last few weeks and months. And I think only now are they able to stop shaping the narrative because we've managed to stay up. So they can potentially congratulate themselves on hiring Deserby and subsequently making a good decision. Even when he was questioned about the Tudor appointment and said, I don't know if it was the BBC or Ben who said, do you accept that was a mistake? He just refused to say, yes, that was a mistake. The kind of answer was around, oh, you know, obviously it didn't go well or something like that.

14:54And this is probably somebody that preaches a great deal of transparency, you know, as in his kind of executive role. So I found that a little bit frustrating as you often find with senior executives. I think they often preach one thing, but actually are unwilling to sometimes hold themselves to account, perhaps given, you know, their sort of their feelings of self-worth or maybe something like that. Um, do I, do I believe them? Well, we don't really have much of a choice. I think that even if the motivation is purely financial and they're concerned that the commercial, well, the commercials will suffer greatly should they continue on this sort of road, then sort of so be it.

15:36I don't really care what their motivation is so long as that actually they make Tottenham a competitive football team. The other thing that annoys me is we still don't say in any of these statements, we want to win the Premier League in five years, in 10 years we want to have won the Champions League. You do hear statements like that sometimes from other owners and I feel like it would be nice to hear that as a definitive target almost rather than just saying we want to compete with the best clubs because for me that's still quite intangible, that's still quite vague, you know, just competing for Europe.

16:03Jack:Because that's kind of what we have done, isn't it? Exactly, yeah, exactly, that's kind of no different and that's why we are in this situation. um we like a lot of a lot of the noises I think uh have to be taken in a in a positive sense and you assume now that we won't find them find ourselves in this situation again because something would have gone drastically wrong um if we do and the reset thing is interesting I think we've you know you hear everywhere about the need to reset the culture at the football club and one thing I thought was really interesting was what he said about the the training ground and Spurs Lodge about needing to be an actual centre for performance, not like a five-star hotel.

16:45And I thought that was quite a telling little tidbit. And maybe there is a degree of needing to focus now on, I hate this phrase, like that kind of high-performance culture rather than just settling for a comfortable environment for the players to sort of thrive on. So, yeah, that was interesting. and we've made some interesting early movement um so yeah i mean what do you what do you think do you do you feel sort of because i thought the lewis family statement was quite defiant as well actually um i mean i i'm i'm not totally convinced that a group of individuals that have made series of terrible decisions for the last few years are going to necessarily start making the right ones basically yeah I mean my head's a bit all over the place because of the season we've just had

17:37Jack:right so I feel a bit I feel a definite level of fatigue um yeah I feel I feel almost like a sense of like anger fatigue or outrage fatigue about Spurs um just in so much as I just don't think I have the capacity to be frustrated with them anymore um we've stayed up and I think just on a on a purely emotional level i'm just very very happy that we stayed up um i was i was certain that we were gone you know yeah same i was like especially after you know if the forest came things like that yeah i was certain that we were gone um so we stayed up and you know i'm delighted i have a newfound sort of level of appreciation you know you feel like somebody that's had like a brush of death or something yeah where you've got a newfound appreciation for life um and that of course after in time will will be worn down again in the the day-to-day of you know existence the trudgery of existence catches up with everybody right but still for now I'm just kind of happy that we've survived happy that we're here and I guess there's that part of me against my sort of better judgment is choosing to just go with this yeah um and I think that's that's not that's not because i think that like anybody has made like you say a particularly like compelling argument it's all been fairly nebulous it's all been stuff that we've had before um i guess the the only way if i were to try and apply sort of like a non-emotional sort of more of a rational lens on things that was positively skewed i would say getting rid of daniel levy is seismic um and that's probably something that we all got swept up in it happened um and i think now it's it may be starting to fully settle actually quite how massive that is um yeah quite how huge a deal that is so perhaps perhaps we you know the idea that they are working to reset everything is is not complete bullshit um because i think that you know that is a huge thing for to lose him to lose donna cullen and a lot of people who have been at the very heart of everything for a long time.

19:51Jack:So I know the flip side of this is that doesn't suggest that they're any good at what they do, which is, I guess, another concern. But I think the other thing I would say is it's been so long now since we've actually heard people from the club come out and speak directly. I mean, in the last few years of him being in charge of the club, Levy just didn't really bother anymore, which is kind of wild. Like, and I am glad that it is addressed. And I think, you know, look, it's made quite clear they're talking about Daniel Levy as much as they say they're not talking about anybody. The fact that football wasn't prioritized and the fact that, you know, essentially the club culture broke down.

20:32Jack:Yeah. Because it did. It's been a totally, in many ways, a totally neglected asset. inside you know um and i'm glad that that is at least being called out it's at least being recognized even if it is done in the way that very powerful and successful people do which is to not really actually apologize or to really kind of no i don't think it's fair to say that they haven't been contrite because i i think they have been i i you know i think that would be an unfair reading to suggest that the lewises haven't at least said on our watch this has gone bad and also i think with the lewises it wouldn't surprise me if they do have a genuine degree of affection for for the club because they've probably grown up with the club in enix hands and although they're obviously extremely privileged individuals it doesn't necessarily mean they might not have a degree of genuine affection for a club that's probably been a massive part of their lives you know for a number of years now so although they might be motivated by a number of different factors I like to think that there is a degree of love somewhere there for the actual institution I like to think that maybe naively there is some sort of view that this is just bigger than than us and then the commercial picture you know and and actually the the response from the fans in the last few weeks and and it's been picked up a lot of times um just highlights that you know it's uh well it's not a Thursday it's a Friday but this is the Q &A by Gavin so I've asked for questions from the listeners um so I'm going to tie these in seamlessly with the point we've reached in the conversation um Andy Perry has asked do you think something will happen this summer where we can say Enoch have changed and that we really are moving in the right direction for you what would that be that is that is a good question um I think if we look solely at player recruitment and retention my perspective on that has changed enormously over the last couple of years I don't think really that there are many irreplaceable assets at a football club and I think that if we see early on an ability to shift players almost as much as we're signing them that would for me mark actually a really significant change than desperately waiting for values to increase or whatever it may be like you know there are a number of players that we know are probably disposable particularly now we don't have european football next year i think if we start taking 10 15 20 million for a handful of players within the squad who are probably surplus to requirements that for me actually would mark a change in strategy.

23:22Jack:I think as well to be more basic about it I just think a massive you know if we drop 100 mil on Wharton for example just off the top of my head that type of signing I mean that would obviously be seismic yeah. It's that type of thing for me because that's what they've not done at any point look we've kind of we've danced around it and Dombele, Richarlison, Solanke you know we spent big ish money on these players but other than Ndombele who I who I probably would say was the biggest sort of mark of ambition and I say that just in terms of basically all of Europe's top clubs were chasing him and I think it was a genuine coup for Spurs to get him um regardless of how it turned out we won't revise history on the on the on the you know how excited how excited people were when we signed him i think since that point we haven't signed all those chavis siemens yeah maybe actually to be fair is is close to that as well um but you know i mean i know i know it's not a name that that won't go without discourse but even say a marcus rashford when you think about like a huge kind of name like that i've actually thought about that quite a bit Yeah, I think that could be excellent.

24:40Again, that would be a player with maybe not loads of resale value as well. And perhaps, you know, we've already seen a bit of that with the early transfer movement. I don't think the kind of the Bosman transfer market is something we've dipped our toe into too much over the last few years. So I assume that we've been able to offer sufficient wages already for both of the players that we linked with to attract them quite quickly. And again, maybe that is a sign we very rarely move with speed. once the season ends. So there's that. And then I think probably less focus actually on the pitch. I think it would be nice to see some sort of serious consideration for the atmosphere and for seeing sections and for actually, I know there's already been good dialogue with the fans, but for something serious to be done about that as well.

25:30And that would show a welcome return to dialogue between the club and the fan base.

25:34Jack:And also, you know what? build the bill nick statue build the sonny statue you know like just yeah yeah stuff like that just start doing stuff like that you know yeah like yeah i agree completely yeah get it done yeah we're we're more simple creatures than we like to let on you know big shiny things like that are they make people happy you know they just do that's it um yeah totally so fred um at fred thsc 98 says should we be concerned that our targets for this transfer window seem to be the same as the last few windows i'm guessing um are the same people that have been so poor with our recruitment the last few years still running the show so i guess if we're to talk about this andy robertson who's been linked for quite some time savinho who's been linked for quite some time as well are there any i'm missing well the bournemouth defensive sensei yeah yeah and i guess james trafford is a name that's always sort of like hovering around i mean it's i don't know if it bothers me so much um i would imagine if we are employing some sort of data when we're doing our sort of player searching you would imagine the data will consistently say well we've been looking for players that fall within these brackets and thus it will consistently show those type of players right yeah i did i did think this i'm i'm sort of on the fence bit i know i know what he's saying because like randy robertson for example i think makes sense a lot of ways in terms of his age his experience his profile he's always guaranteed to break his leg at the world cup now isn't he um but i think that they a lot of the a lot of the individuals are known names.

27:16It doesn't necessarily suggest that we have some kind of incredibly sophisticated scouting system. Then it doesn't necessarily need to be. I mean, everybody knew, I guess, who Declan Rice was, didn't they? When he signed for Arsenal and Gokeres as well. I think you do get to a point as a club where a lot of the players you sign are probably extremely high-profile individuals. I don't have a problem with that as such I just yeah I hope that we kind of there's a lot of work to do with the squad and I hope that we get the balance right I hope there's some really tough decisions that are made and that we're able to start making some obvious improvements where there's been gaping holes for a number of seasons you know my biggest thing I just want to really just sort the midfield out I think you know somebody like a Warton and maybe a couple of others would do that very quickly we haven't really had a competent central midfield it feels for three or four years

28:18Jack:now maybe longer how do you uh how do you feel about the under robertson deal um seems like it's happening right it's pretty much yeah yeah i i can't remember it was another podcast that said this that he's that player that you always hated playing against when he came up against your team and that's sometimes a really good sign when he then signs for you i i've sort of undenied a bit with it but I don't think I'm against it actually I think it'll provide cover at left back he knows what it takes to to win he's been an extremely high performing Liverpool team for a number of years um I don't think it will necessarily represent a backward step for us currently as a team I think that we need to have ambition but also maybe be a bit clever and sensible and and you know make best use of the options that are out there I guess do you think in some ways like because I've seen some people say, oh, you know, it's another mediocre transfer, which I think is a pretty unfair read on it.

29:15Jack:You know, like you say, Andy Robertson has been one of the Premier League's better players really the past few years. And all right, he's gotten older and maybe he's not quite as sharp as he once was. But I just sort of, I turn my attention back to the countless interviews we've seen from Ledley King, where he always talks about the effect that signing Nuda and Neybet into the team had on him when he was a when he was a young professional and I'm looking at a doggy I'm looking at Sousa two young players there who you know a doggy's brilliant but he is still quite raw but definitely has all of all the tools if you like as a proper football man might say to be a top player you would imagine so I'm not I'm not really against the idea of somebody like Andy Robertson coming in and I also just feel like I think look I'm not going to pretend I'm overjoyed about it like I don't think this is a huge yeah I don't think it's a huge step away from things I've complained about previously signing you know names that we've all heard of and everything like that I guess I just kind of think that when we're talking about a reset we're talking about a cultural reset and all that type of thing what also comes of that aside for the proper football man intangibles of he gets it he's experienced and what have you is that Spurs are like below below mediocre at the moment we've had two 17th place finishes in a row i think players like andy robertson if they are attainable free transfer for a guy who's only in his early 30s what is he 31 i think yeah 31 years old champions league winner two times premier league winner has been a part of one of the premier league's most successful teams really of all time at least one of the best teams i just don't know if we can turn our noses up at that at the moment i don't think we're the team that can do that right now?

31:01I think, yeah, and we have to take like a holistic approach to our recruitment. Data is really important. Of course it is. But all of the best organizations, sports teams, whatever, don't just base things purely on the data. I think that, you know, you're going to be at your best and you're going to be most successful if you consider things like the influence in the dressing room and the potential to improve other younger players within the squad and the influence on them. And I think that's a sensible way to go about your business and actually shows a degree of perspicacity, to use an incredibly ostentatious word.

31:37Jack:Go on, go on. What's that? Go on, educate me. It's like great, like, insightfulness, basically. And like, a nous. So yeah, I agree with you, I think, by the way. So a few different people have sort of asked, basically, those questions, like Ryan Jacobson, um uh johnny b good has also asked sort of questions around the transfers we've made thus far an interesting interesting mjb hotspur says do you think it's a deliberate recruitment strategy to increase the number of left-footed players in the squad maybe i mean i guess again that's the sort of thing that probably we should be looking at if we're looking at things within real granular detail on like a slightly different note we used to kept talking about the cultural reset have you um have you caught any of that dear england series i haven't i really want to i i actually the funny thing is i actually had tickets to the play and i i did or charlotte had covid at the time when we were supposed to be going so i couldn't go quite quite annoying way so i never went to see the play and like a couple of friends did and said it was really good and i found it it's not a series without its flaws obviously and there is a slight caricaturing i think of some of the footballers.

32:52But a lot of it, the bits I find most interesting are around the psychology and around the sort of improvements of a wider organizational culture and leadership as well. Because I think Southgate obviously isn't your fire and brimstone sort of inspirational classic leader. He is quite softly spoken and like a bit of a nerd, I guess, in a way. And I think that it's interesting to see that leadership style work really effectively in a certain situation and I think that what he does really well which is which is interesting is he he sort of identifies a problem like an issue within the culture I think it's mostly around the burden of wearing the shirt and the burden of needing to to win another trophy and makes all the players feel a great degree lighter.

33:47And the other thing I found really interesting was around how a psychological blocker can have a real physical impact. They look at penalties in particular. I don't know if this is true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it is. They look at the data and see that England take their penalties faster than any other country in the world. And they were taking them within like 2.6 seconds. And the country that took the longest on them, which was like eight seconds, was Germany, who were the best at them in the world. And so it was interesting to see how there was like a physical manifestation in all of that pressure, all of that history on that one particular scenario.

34:25And I wonder whether all this work that, you know, Spurs are doing now sort of take it back to Tottenham. A lot of it is about trying to remove those shackles and actually get everybody to start playing with a bit more lightness and a bit more belief and just enjoying the game again. A lot of these careers can be quite fleeting, I think, for a lot of the players. You really want them to play for a team that is enjoyable to watch, that the fans get behind. And when you're playing turgid football like we did at the start, I sort of think no wonder they were switching off. If you're just sitting around, you know, it's like that Dele Alli thing, just like knocking it long and defending.

35:01It didn't surprise me really, but I think it's actually got a few interesting parallels, basically that series at the moment with maybe where Spurs are at the moment. I've always thought that Spurs and England have had a few distinct parallels as well. And this sort of confirmed it for me.

35:15Jack:What, big success in the 60s? Yeah, exactly. Perennial dreamers, so on and so forth. Yeah, exactly. Perennial dreamers, you know, big fan base also. Really talented players. I've always had a few superstars, but I've never managed to quite get it over the line when competing for the top prizes, you know. Lily White kit. All that, all that. Absolutely. um i guess on that i've been really encouraged by the mark of senesi signing actually i don't really know why there's even i don't know a sort of a consternation behind it and i just i wonder if to your point this is partly because i guess we've had this culture of being let down so many times by like transfers by signings that maybe people just find it hard to actually get excited or get behind some of our transfers if they seem less than you know if they seem somewhat underwhelming but I mean this this guy I think is really really talented every time I've seen him play I think he's brilliant um yeah I mean I saw like Kish put out a video the other day saying that like you know he's a great passer and all this sort of thing but physically he's not the best but even then like watching a few comps of him which I appreciate isn't always the best sample size it doesn't look like he's like sluggish or anything he looks like a really talented player and I did feel this but I'm going to steal this point from Charlie Parrish my friend who said there's there's a real air of the Tongan around him which is quite exciting quite silky seems quite calm quite assured in what he does and just maybe to maybe just a few more sort of personalities like that maybe a bit of a refresh in certain positions you know we've had it that Romero and Van Der Ven are our sort of starting centre-backs for a long time and I think individually they're both brilliant players but maybe the two of them don't work that well together because when you look at the end of the season you look at van der ven and danso for example everything suddenly felt a bit more calm didn't it um yeah true i think you're probably right i mean we also though for many years have been conceding possession all the time and i do wonder now whether we're just going to be in control of a lot more games and so it makes more sense to have a defender who's who's better on the ball um you know we probably physicality and things obviously come into it but we're probably not going to be quite under the same continuous bombardment as we were under frank and have done under periods like under conte and um marino and and then angible was kind of mad and chaotic wasn't it at times so it's slightly different scenario there but um i like to think that our profile of he's the right profile of defender and if if deserve he backs it as well then you sort of have to say great and yeah i've i just you know i'm the same as you Jack really I just get excited by new signings quite often no matter who they are.

38:00Jack:I think it's growing up playing like championship manager and FIFA manager sort of career mode and stuff like that you know signing players and molding a squad in a in a different direction seeing new faces and stuff in it I think I think all this stuff does matter though I think there is like a tangible return on new things I don't think it is just some magpie effect I think the sense that things are fresh the sense that things are changing is important for a football team because in one hand I would be quite gutted to lose Christian Romero but in another way I'm like it just kind of feels like his race is run at Spurs doesn't it yeah you know it just so yeah it feels like it's all done and we might as well get some money for him while we still can um you can imagine that you know I know Spanish clubs aren't that well endowed financially um anymore but still you can imagine somebody somewhere would have a structured deal worth 50 60 million euros or something like that for him looking at your atletico madrid um and if you know we are signing this player who has a profile of being a you know a ball playing center back like christian romero is then you know what maybe maybe it's just maybe it's best for for everyone you know if we just move things forward now we're not having those same conversations about is he injured does he care more about argentina is he going to get a red card is gary neville going to talk about him all of that just feels so like great that's it and you just kind of want to just like release yourself from that a bit don't you even if even if maybe in a in a in a net return sense we might take a bit of a hit for a while because you know i do think christian Romero is a brilliant player.

39:43Jack:But, you know. I mean, also, is there an argument that once a player's been with you for a few years, I don't exactly know how it works. But with that like amortization thing, effectively, if you sell them after three or four years of service, you're not getting a net return on your money, but it kind of still counts in a more positive sense on the balance sheet or something. Is that right? If you don't believe this, I'm not really a finance guy. yeah i have absolutely no i'm just gonna nod i'm just gonna say yeah yeah cool something yeah all that sort of stuff numbers and everything um let me just say i'm just basically most questions are asking about like the transfers and stuff i guess like what i would ask you gavin is like what what do you want to see in an ideal world where do you think we need to strengthen the most and what players would you we won't do a full squad audit but off the top of your head who would you let go get some money for and what sort of players would you want to sign to to see spurs let's say finishing the top half of the table next season is that too much to ask for yeah um so the first thing i would say is that we're going to have to make some difficult choices i think with some of our youngish midfielders so i think of of gray bergvall and sarr i think we're probably gonna have to lose at least one of those aren't we i think it's probably to go mate really honestly speaking if there's buyers for them yeah is Bissouma on a is he is he out of contract now or I believe I want to say I heard on one of the podcasts he has a year left it might be one of those deals where the club have a they have the option to extend it if they want to get money for him basically I see I mean I think it's a bit of a shame so I've actually thought he's a really talented player Bissouma on his day but it probably is time to get rid of him as well I think.

41:33Jack:It's another one of those like Romero isn't it where there's just a circus around it constantly all the time. Yeah yeah yeah exactly.

41:43Actually there are probably quite a few players that do spring to mind. I wouldn't be that upset to see either or both of Solanke and Richarlison go. I think we can probably get decent money for them but I think like both midfield and across the front line we really need to look to improve. Happy to keep Tell, I think, as more of an impact sub next season. We cannot, I think, take into account that Kulisewski and Simons might be back at some point next season. I think we've been burnt by that now, and we almost need to consider that those players don't exist until they do come back, hopefully sooner than planned.

42:28So I think that with that in mind, we probably would need a number 10 as well. And I've always really liked that at Kliouche, at Monaco. I think he's classed. He feels like such a Tottenham player, doesn't he? Yeah, absolutely. He was brilliant against us as well. He looks like he would fit really nicely. Like, forward-wise, we also definitely need a left winger. Odebeer's obviously going to be out injured as well. So it's tricky. I mean, I don't really know probably enough in depth to understand what forwards are actually available this summer and what sort of striker or profile of striker we should be looking for.

43:08But, yeah, there's quite a bit that I think can probably be cut. And I think that that alone will then mean that we've got a slightly leaner squad of maybe focused individuals and maybe players of differing profiles rather than just the same runners that we've had for a number of years. So I haven't really answered the question then. and I've sort of rambled through it, but there's, you know, fundamentally a huge amount of work to be done in most areas. But I think that actually defensively we're not in the worst shape. We might want a new goalkeeper. What was Vicario doing, by the way, when he was like grabbing all hold of his Erby when we scored in the Everson?

43:48Jack:I just think he gets a bit like overexcited with that stuff. Remember that Tom Baforn, he was like throttling Bergvall in that weird sort of... I don't know. I don't really get it with him. Do you reckon he stays? No, I think he probably, I think he almost definitely goes actually. If I was going to put money on one player leaving the summer, it'd probably be Vicario. Yeah, I think so. And I'm interested to see if we think Kinski is going to be number one or if we sign another kind of number one keeper because I think he's been brilliant to put the Madrid performance and everything behind him.

44:21Jack:But I'd be lying if I said there weren't still slight concerns about his overall ability. at this point. He's very young, you know. Yeah, he's super young. It made me laugh because I think it was today that the Tottenham YouTube channel released the best saves of the season thing and Kinski, he had about half of them. They played about 10 games for us all the time. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, really the thing to do, again, in that situation, which would be very un-Tottenham, is to sign a comparable goalkeeper or one that's even better on paper and then allow both of them to compete for that spot.

44:56You know, it's, again, a problem we've suffered with for years is the lack of competition within the team um which is something we we need to address in a serious way i don't know if you saw let me i just want to make