30 million would be the bargain of the summer
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“they are ready to prepare to discuss with California psychics when the right moon phase will be for them to consider a bid or maybe float the idea to management about valuation. but be assured AFC is very serious about their intentions to think long and hard about this guy and 47 other targets and at any moment could pounce with a bid - or not…”
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Absolute nothing piece from Mark there.
They’ve picked up that some of us picked their Exclusives were actually true and they’re now abusing it.
Was it a month ago where he said we had to settle on fewer players because we missed out on CL, lol.
We know Tielemans is quality and we’re getting him “cheaply”, mostly because he had a poor season by his standards(and Leicester were poor as a whole mostly). Get this deal done early and sit merrily under the sun/moon/rain/whatever. Let’s get this done.
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Not that it matter but I assume his contract plays a bigger part? How much could LFC demand if he had a good season? Probs still around £30m
Great deal regardless though
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It all depends on demand really. Jesus could have cost us 30m too but he was highly sought after which bumped the asking price.
Doesn’t look like Tielemans has the same market.
To be fair to Tielemans though, the market for midfielders is much, much deeper. He’s also not the only one in that market that has a year left in his deal.
Leicester are just a pain in the ass to deal with, apparently.
I’ve just clicked they’re the same age. Youri has been around for some time now…
I think that £75m is just fantastic for the two 25 year olds. Strikers will often fetch a little more than midfielders outside certain names. I think if we land this we’ve done really well.
It sounds like a lot of money and it obviously is, but for two players coming into their prime with as much EPL and international experience it’s simply nice business.
There’s nothing guaranteed in the game as we’ve learned this week but you could see both coming here, having good to great arsenal careers and even being sold on for profit.
It just feels like excellent business, nothing overly ostentatious, just pragmatic and clever.
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Not that I care for metrics but that shows what I’ve been saying for a while, Tielemans is a progressive player but he’s not a complete non entity in defense either.
I think people just had their brains scrambled after everyone and their brother shared that video of him jogging back while the opposition broke the other way.
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Yeh lmao. That was pretty funny tbf, my man was like a dad playing with his kids at the park.
You’re correct though that little anecdote became a factual representation for a lot of people on Reddit/Twitter etc who haven’t watched a lot of Leicester. He’s really not like that at all.
I do think he’s better with a player like ndidi but if we were to do a madness and get both Tielemans and SMS I genuinely wouldn’t be worried about playing them in the same pivot. We’d always have the ball and against the likes of City/Pool or tough away days you could simply stick Elneny or god forbid Xhaka in the anchor role
He’s not useless defensively but he is suspect of lapses in concentration, sometimes losing the ball in dangerous areas and not tracking back well.
May come as a shocker to some but everyone’s favourite Bissouma is also another one like that but people watch a compilation of his tackles and think he is the next Makelele.
Bissouma simply isn’t the out and out destroyer people think he is. He’s athletic and good without the ball but that was always an overplayed misconception. If you look back to last summer I actually held that argument with quite a lot of people. Hojberg and him are probably multifunctional enough that it should work but I don’t think Spurs are going to be a fantastic watch this season period
TBF I think a lot of people would have wanted Tielemans and another midfielder in order to push Xhaka further down the rotation.
I don’t think our situation has changed much in terms of needs, it’s just Xhaka is definitely not going to be allowed to leave this summer.
You say that but I think a lot of people just wanted Bissouma period. And if some came around the idea of accepting Tielemans, it was moreso get Bissouma in and then Tielemans.
People look at Bissouma physical profile and equate it to him having the quality to be a destroyer when really and truly he just isn’t that kind of player.
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Is it like how football pundits in the USA look at Lukaku and talk about how he’s definitely a target striker? 
Yep.
The guy is very much an #8 still.
He is also gets gassed like Lacazette who 9/10 looked knackered by the 60-70th minute.
Bissouma likes to press high and usually chases people like a dog. It’s often effective but he does get caught out of possession, and then his team is pretty much left wide open. This happens a lot deeper into the games.
It’s good to see a player press and show the hunger but you also need to be smart about it. Most teams have moved on from that constant pressing. It’s all about pressing triggers now.
I’ve seen him throw away multiple great performances in the second half by not showing the same workrate he did in the first. Literally letting Brighton getting cut open. This shit doesn’t show up in the fancy graphs that people post.
Is there a player there? Yeah. But he is far from a ready made thing as some think. Will be interesting to see how Conte uses him. I don’t think he’ll walk into that Spurs team.
But their midfield is so shit. I think he’d probably start there.