Antonio Conte has ruthlessly ‘banished’ FOUR senior players from Tottenham training

If Lo Celso was a driving force behind Argentina’s Copa success then you’d be right, but he was just a good team member and just because he was in the team doesn’t automatically mean he’ll be a £50m player. He’s a decent player, but his stats are not that good to warrant a huge fee otherwise someone would have bought him. I don’t think this is too difficult to comprehend, but there you go.

There are countless examples where personal perfomances drove up transfer fees and these were accepted by the buying club. Look no further than our own Dimitar Berbatov, Michael Carrick, Kyle Walker, Luca Modric and Gareth Bale. Look at John Stones, Virgil Van Dijk, Grealish and more recently Kalvin Phillips. None of these won a saucepan in England before their moves.

Ndombele was just a huge misstep. No idea why he was paid like he was. Awful. At least Ozil had some good moments early in his career… For Ndombele to be an Ozil figure is inexcusable.

I do not know if Sours could win enough to ever polish that turd into marketability.

Now Winks ? Reguilon ? Win some pots, snd those two go away easily at reasonable money.

Far be it from me to defend Levy over player valuation… But Lo Celso’s market value for an Argentine international coming off of a Copa America should be higher than it presently shows.

Win some comps, raise his club profile, and other rising profile clubs will come for him at reasonable value.

The loans seem to be the best option for now to give the players playing time whilst buying time for some winning ways. That, or a great fit to where the player creates an avenue for himself to move on.

Or in the worst case scenarios, until the contract is played out.

Quickest solution is for Spurs to win some comps. Players from winning clubs are better perceived.

I don’t necessarily agree with your assumption. Players become marketable depending on their own personal displays, not how the team they play for performs. If you play well you will get bought, as long as the price is right for the selling club. The only reason we can’t sell Lo Celso is more to do with Levy’s price tag on the lad.

We finished fourth in the Prem so we are in among the top 10 or so sides in Europe whether we win a cup or not. That doesn’t mean for a second though we can offload underperforming players, particularly Ndom and Winks. We can’t sell them because they are not very good and we are paying them wages no other club will match.

So forgive me , but we cant sell anybody until we’ve won something ?
My point is that good , very good and even great players , if surplus to a managers requirements , have to go into some sort of hibernation , which cant be right .
Spurs are not the only ones in this predicament I’m sure , but it would be ridiculous for players of this standard to be allowed to stagnate ?
The loan system goes someway to righting that wrong , so how about placing all relevant players into a sort of pool so that all clubs might offer for on short-term lets ?
Sounds slightly bizarre but I’m sure there’s the essence of a logical solution in there somewhere , easing financial burden on the ‘owning’ club and giving the player a stage to display his talent ?

There is no mystery to any of this. It is not to do with any obscene amount of money in football as being a scapegoat for Spurs’ unwanted players’ unmarketability.

That is like saying that Learjet prices need to come down so that more middle class families can afford a Learjet. Wish all you want, but not going to happen.

Sure, Covid may have played a part, albeit only a very small one. This lull in selling players has an obvious fix, especially in an emerging post-covid football world.

Again, no mystery. This is what happens when a club does not win competitions whilst trying to keep pace with the clubs that do. This is what happens when a club’s veneer is prioritised much more highly than its actual product.

The simple solution? Win a significant competition, go deep in others, and all of the players’ profiles and values rise.

THIS is why City, Liverpool, Chelsea can sell their offloads more efficiently… Their players are associated with winning clubs, and their profiles and values are perceived accordingly.

If Spurs want to fix this issue, unwanted player unmarketability, they have to start winning a few competitions, and going deep in the others. They have to do what big clubs do. They have to win some finals, and keep winning finals until they have the opportunity to win a big prize. Then the other big clubs and the clubs trying to rise come calling.

There is no more pretending. Spurs have to win now if they want to remain sustainable in competing with bigger clubs.

Some contracts work out better for the Club – Harry, Sonny – and some don’t like Tanguy. So now Tanguy and Gio et al can accept lower wages if they want to play somewhere else, or just play with themselves until an acceptable offer comes in. Maybe Levy will cut his losses but he hasn’t seemed inclined to do so in the past.

That’s how it works. What the problem is?

The power of a contract! To us fans it is obscene, but Levy gave them out so he is accountable. The hard faced negotiator got his pants pulled down on a few that is for sure.

A club cannot get every transfer right, I would say Grealish isn’t fulfilling his potential at City (although his role has changed massively from Villa) and Keita at Liverpool is a bit of a dud. The problem lies when clubs can’t afford the loss and £100m (Nodom and Lo Celso) is an enormous amount of money for us.

I am sure a player’s contract could include a ‘forced’ loan if they were not part of a manager’s plans. It just needs agreeing to. What does a player care as long as they are getting their wages? Chelsea, under Roman and Maria G never had an issue in getting their players on loan (such as Batshuayi, Zappacosta, Bakayoko) so neither should we.

Give him some beers in Nando’s ..no sympathy whatsoever he has the money to sort his head out but chooses not to …

Conte has been left to manage a situation that is not of his own making and he should not be criticised for not wanting players who are surplus to requirements. Levy, Hitchen and the scouting team (I really would love to know who these guys were) are to blame for bringing in sub standard players on big contracts without doing their research on personality, attitude, fitness, statistics against other players. This is the sort of due diligence I would expect off a League One team, but it is as though some turnip watched a highlights reel and Levy accepted this. I would like to think I am very wrong, but any one of us (as stated in the past) could have researched Ndom and realised he might be troublesome, but yet Levy broke the club’s transfer record on him. It really does beggar belief.

I am confident Lo Celso, who I still like as a player, will find a loan club. He did really well for Villareal and if he wants to get in the Argentina World Cup squad he will need to play.

If Reggie and Harry have any self respect they will forego their egos and go out on loan at least, although it is in their Agent’s best interest to leave so they should be working hard on a deal, as they will get a wedge of the fee. Good agents are always working on new deals so they keep getting paid. There are a plethora of clubs around Europe who will have Reggie. Winks though is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He is a Championship player who has national team aspirations. I hope Winks does not think he deserves Ch Lg football otherwise he’ll be with us for the foreseeable.

Ndom is doomed. Fair play to him and his agent for pulling off one the greatest con jobs in football history.

Each one of those players is capable of sublime football , yet no one steps forward categorically and says “i want you in my team ” and all because of wages . We surely are intelligent enough to find a system that still allows them to play [in a lower league or division if necessary ] and lift the quality in those areas ?
For all Ndombele’s faults he is capable of audacious skill and elusiveness , he should have a stage to ‘perform’ on .

supply and demand, capitalist society… etc. It is what it is and has been controversial since before the first Million £ transfer and will still be after the first Billion pound transfer

When you think about it , this world is so sickening [ sports-wise] with its contempt for money .
Four players , who at the peak of their values , Reggy 35m ? , Winksy 25m ? Lo Celso 40m ? and Ndombele £65m ??? are almost worthless inasmuch no interest and their value has decreased sharply, dramatically , spectacularly.
I know this is in contrast to players we’ve bought who’s value have gone the other way but it still seems ridiculous extremes , largely to do with being in and out of favour with management . It appears that wages are the fault , that clubs , possibly not CL qualified , simply cannot afford to employ these players and are way over budget for them.
It is insanity that they can sit out contracts , not playing for anybody , whilst claiming CL wages . Their talents seemingly just ‘wasting ‘ on the bench .
Surely this must be addressed by our administrators ? Massive reform is required , morally , legally , the world-wide football fanbase is being “mugged off” every day .
Ridiculous gate prices and TV ‘rights’ mean the continued rip-off of billions of people around the world . I love the game but its gonna kill itself eventually…………

Imagine we were operating as before waiting to spend after selling three or all four of these players (cold shiver).

We might not net spend £150 mill (never imagined we would tbh) but that shift in making those funds available and doing the sales after (most of) the purchases must be the way we always operate going forward.

Need to keep acting like a ‘big club’ if that’s what we are.

Yes, I would agree it’s a bit hard on the likes of Winks, as a boyhood Spurs fan and Reguilon also, who was a good teammate, but as in any business there is no nice way to say “you’re fired!”. Like you say, they’re big boys on very big wages and any slightly dent to their egos will be more than compensated by the size of their wage packets which will continue to be guaranteed for the length of their contacts, until they’re sold!

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that this fab 4 are not in Conte’s plans, at least right now. But things change, you never know. What if Perisic and Sess get hurt or Skipp is long term out again? I hope not, but why give these guys away for free if we don’t have to?

Exactly. If you’re not going to be involved with the squad on the pitch, there’s no point being involved in drills on the training field. It’s a bit brutal, particularly for the likes of Winksy who’s been there forever – although he’s known for some time that the writing was on the wall for him – but they’re big boys with big cars and big houses on big wages. They’ll get over it.

It’s not something which just happened today, nor has he ‘banished’ them from training. They are merely training separately, still with a club coach, whilst the club tries to secure their departures. I don’t see that as being either remotely controversial or illogical.

Conte has been entirely honest with those players and informed them that are not part of his plans moving forward. That being the case, it would be actually counter-productive to have them train with the first team squad, whilst the team works on tactics and formations.