Offering him a new and greatly improved contract, which he gladly signed, does not equate to "treating him badly", nor does starting him in pretty much every match.
RB
Cheers. One final question. What's his temperament and character like? Is he one to step up on the big occasion or does he go missing? How is he under pressure? Is he a fighter or is he someone like Carrick who just quietly gets on with his business?
What about long balls, seems very good at that.
He's definitely a fighter and seems mentally tough to me. Has no off-pitch issues that I'm aware of. Is a popular member of the squad, very good friends with Alli in particular.
Can he take corners? He's the same level as Phil Jones, but of course the big difference is he's fit. Can play CB/ DM/ RB - sounds very familiar. Comparisons with Carrick are silly, Carrick is a completly different player to Dier. If we gave spurs £40-50m for him, of course they would accept it, he's not integral to either their defense or midfield.
Yes, he can play very good long balls, especially diagonal ones for our wingbacks to run onto, but sometimes tries it a bit too often IMO.
I doubt it.
I apologise if you have already answered this but would you, as a Tottenham fan, consider him a miss if you were to hypothetically sell him?
Of course - he's part of our best XI. He's not a star player like Lloris, Alderweireld, Alli, Kane or Eriksen, but he's still an important player for us.
After last season's Herrera, it would be harsh to find him an upgrade, specially after he turned down Barcelona's approach. I feel this buy, in that sense, is very sensible.
My point was not that we need an upgrade on Herrera. My point was that signing Dier would either mean we would be playing 433, in which case we'd probably need more creativity in attack, or 4231 with Dier replacing Herrera, which as I said I don't think would be an upgrade.
Both, like last season, depending on the adversaries. In general, 4-3-3 more defensive, 4-2-3-1 more offensive. Herrera for high pressing, Dier for sitting back and long balls? I feel it's an upgrade on variety, since Carrick and Fellaini, for different reasons, can't always be trusted as #6.
No it doesn't actually as nobody can force him to play. Good luck with telling him hes not allowed earn better pay. And FAR better pay at that.
I get all that, those are basically the options I described in my post, but I'm not convinced more variety is enough for us right now. We need to improve our first XI to win the league and, for the reasons I gave, I don't see 433 or 4231 working out with the players we have. Hope I'm wrong of course.
We're still missing the winger. After that, I feel we're good to go. You have to give another chance to Mkhitaryan, Martial, even Shaw. And maybe Mourinho thinks we were not that bad last season and it was by fine margin we didn't impose ourselves in the league. Except Lukaku, all buys seem for potential starters. Maybe the devil is in these variety details.
No one will need to. He's hardly going to go on strike with a World Cup coming up next year - he will want to play and play regularly.
What's certain is that Martial and Mkhi will need to have breakout seasons if we are to be productive enough to challenge for the league. They'll need to be posting much better performances and output from here on out. Personally, I am hoping rather than expecting that to happen.
I agree. I feel Mkhitaryan might come good, even if the packed defenses of the Premier League leave him stumbled. Martial, not so sure, maybe if he starts right.
But thats exactly it, there is a supposed better offer on the table and not allowing him to leave is telling him he cant earn more money, he's a footballer and he'll say what they all say. "My career could end tomorrow you have to take each opportunity that comes along". And they are right, anyone of them could do an ACL first game of the season and could never fully recover.
Moura certainly but also youd suspect plenty who ended up at chelsea. Obviously we're an attractive prospect to players but its far less cut and dried than you make out. There are at the very least two clubs who are bigger than us in europe in real and barca and plenty who are as capable of throwing money at a problem as we are.
That fulfils only 1 of the 3 conditions I stated.
Yeah that's what I thought, and why I don't think it'll happen. I'm very open to Dier as a player, but I shudder at what it might cost us, especially after probably getting skinned for Perisic. If we could get Dier for 40 mil in this market I would say that's a very good deal, but I doubt it.
What do you expect them to say? Bring us 40 million and we bend over?
Spurs is the only thing those two have in common.
Interestingly enough, he's not a homegrown.
Long balls team, he and Pogba…