Mario Sultana, Lukas Podolski, the Horse and a whole bunch of techincal annoyance
You guys and gals are practically doing my job for me. Wonderful to see. So yes, Mario Santana is all all but a Yiddo. Don’t get too excited just yet though. Levy & Co. have reached an agreement with Mazza’a club Fiorentina for £4m. That doesn’t mean we’ve reached an agreement with him. He may not even want to come to the UK or Spurs, which is more or less what happened with Eto’o.
In all likelihood he’s going to be keen and even Fiorentina sporting director Pantaleo Corvino said:
“I expect Santana to join Spurs within the next few days as he has been offered a three or four-year contract in London.”
The trouble is, there are one or tow things bothering me about this deal.
1) Why are the selling him, and 2) why is he only worth £4m?
“It is a figure that satisfies us because Santana does not feature in our plans for the 2008-09 season,” says Corvino.
Why isn’t he going to feature? Let’s take a look at him first.
Mario Alberto Santana is a 26-year-old right winger from Argentina. He’s 5′11″, 11st 5lbs and last season he made 26 appearances, picking up 5 goals. Not too shabby. Here’s his head…
Ah, well it would be here but for some reason the new version of WordPress (blogging software) is fighting me, but I wouldn’t worry, it wasn’t a killer pic. In fact it was this one.
Anyway, take a better look at him score some reasonable goals and perform one accidental trick that made made little difference to the accompaniment of some beautiful Spanish guitar music. It’s the same piece of VT from earlier but with a nice Xmas decoration in the corner…
…well, ok. So we want him ahead of Bentley and Little Aaron, do we? Hmmm. Now, that’s not a bad hmmm, it’s just a hmmm. Hmmm.
Why buy him if we’re about to buy Bentley? Sure, he’s cheap but that brings me back around to why is he cheap. I suppose Steeeve wasn’t expensive but then would we want to buy another player like him to help us push for tht top four. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got plenty of time for Steeeeeve but in The Bagel’s Spurs of the future, he’s a squad player, so is that what we’re looking at here or is this one of the Perfect Juan’s special conversion jobs alla Freddie Kanoute? We’ll see.
Unfortunately, I’ve used all my time banging my head against this new software which doubtless will be good once I’ve learned how to harness its powers. There are two stories I’ve been itching to write about though.
One is Lukas Podolski who was even on telly last night for us all to scrutinse. For those uninitiated, Lukas is a Polish born German national player who made a big money move from Cologne to Bayern Munich last season and now at the age of 23 doesn’t get to play an awful lot stuck behind Klose and Luca Toni at club level. However, the peek we got last night against Portugal in the second half wasn’t too bad at all. Far from the finished article but he was inches from burying a screamer. Let me see if I can find it…
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June 20th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Good perseverence (spelling?) Bagel, Podolski looks awesome and the way he went about setting up Germany’s first goal was very Tottenham-esque. Odd situation with Bentley and Santana, is this the end for Lennon?
On a side note, that Barclays PL World show on Sky Sports has got a whole thing on Tottenham and Keano this week so give it a look if you can.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
or not…. http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.acffiorentina.it%2Fit%2Farticolo.aspx%3FCtn%3D290717&sl=it&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
June 20th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I reckon Ramos wants two quality players for each position - as is necessary these days. Plus we have an extra 2 positions on the subs bench - meaning an increase in the need for quality across the whole squad.
Ramos seems to be a coach who likes to have versatile players - his signings so far back this up. This makes Lukas P a likely target (left mid and striker), whether we get him or not is a different matter though.
Still its nice to be linked to players of his calibre - i remember not too long ago being linked to the likes of Micheal Ricketts….
June 20th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Fiorentina have rubbished the rumours linking him to spurs claiming the guy who spoke to the Sun doesn’t even speak English. Lol, bit of a let down he was pretty good for my Fiorentina Football Manager team
but maybe he isn’t so good after all… hmmm.
To be honest I can’t see Juande signing 4 (5 if you count good Gilberto) first team midfielders, presuming we get Bentley or someone of that ilk to complement Modric and Giovani so I was skeptical about Santana from the start - especially as this deal had somewhat come out of the blue.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
It was fun while it lasted but maybe it means we will get Bentley?
NO SPURS MOVE FOR SANTANA
By Mike McGrath, PA Sport
Fiorentina have ruled out the sale of Argentina midfielder Mario Santana to
Tottenham.
Mario Cognigni, vice-president for the Italian club, has described suggestions
of a move to White Hart Lane as “completely false”.
“We have created so many good players that it is inevitable we are handed
requests about them,” he said.
“But in this case there has been false information. I guarantee you that as a
club we don’t have in mind any talk of transfer.”
June 20th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Is Bentley actually any good? I know he’s highly rated but, to be honest, except for the odd beckham-esque set piece I really haven’t seen anything special from him.
June 22nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Transfer window = silly season = load of journalists doing absolutely no work and still taking home a fat pay cheque = typical sunday tabloid stories full of supposition and thin on quotes.
Check out this one today in the Sunday Mirror:
Spurs agree £20m deal for Spanish star David Villa
By Steve Stammers 22/06/2008
Spurs have agreed a £20million deal to sign the goal king of Euro 2008 - Spain’s David Villa.
The Valencia star, 26, has been the striking sensation of the tournament.
Villa scored a hat-trick against Russia and a last-minute winner against Sweden. He has been the number one target for Tottenham manager Juande Ramos and Spurs have made it clear they will pay the £20m asking price.
Let’s take everything with a large pinch of salt!
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:18 pm
it’s that time again ! anyone with a pulse is goinr to, linked with on the verge of signing for..
dont worry every thing will be ok
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
it’s that time again ! anyone with a pulse is going to, linked with on the verge of signing for..
dont worry every thing will be ok
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:26 am
well, its getting more and more like Pro Evolution Soccer come true….
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“If you can fly a Sopwith bagel, you can fly anything”
The Bagel loves Biggles! I watched that film far to many times as a kid…
True story too…
It actually happened…
June 26th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
4-1
June 26th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
even geremi scored