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Town beat off top clubs for Tijane signature
           
           


  SWINDON Town beat off competition from the likes of Benfica, West Ham, Tottenham and Stoke to sign Portugal Under 21 international Tijane.

           

http://www.thisisswindontownfc.co.uk/news/headlines/10521812.Town_beat_off_top_clubs_for_Tijane_signature/?ref=rss
           
           
           

Say what?

All the usual Agent talk

No wonder Tottenham like us so much if we're going to these LENGTHS

This guy could be a talent, or he could be Ibrahim Atiku 2.

Lets hope its the former as we have signed him on a 2 year deal!

Out of all the signings this one excites me.He is supposed to be a real quality player

Looks promising, but I do remember feeling exactly the same way about Oliver Risser this time two years ago.  Time will tell.

The only Club we've been beating off is Tottenham

He does have the look of a man who was told he could have signed for Benfica, West Ham, Stoke or Tottenham and ended up at Swindon.

It's hard to really tell how good he is from the videos, but compared to what we finished with last year, with Roberts on one wing and Ferry on the other, having Tiajane as the inverted winger on the right and Pritchard outright flying winger on the left can surely only be a step up.

I'm happy we're taking the young, unpredictable but with potential route to the old, proven and on high wages route that led to us signing Navarro, Roberts and Miller last year.

TBF if we can get players with calibre of Pritchard I hope our legs are spread wider than Katie Price's.

Out of all the video clips I watched last night, Pritchard excites me the most, the guy oozed class in those youth games.

stretching the truth, I think stoke and west ham had him on trial a year or two ago and failed to impress.

Absolutely agree. Hopefully we'll become the first port of call whenever Tottenham need to give their young talent some experience. No problem with that at all. Lets get 'em spread

This isn't a pop, but how do we know he is any good? I guess Posh fans would be a good gauge..

One word, 6 letters.

You tube.

Alex Pritchard is rated as one of the best upcoming talents in English football, obviously we don't know for certain how he actually performs but Spurs rate him as one of therir best product of the youth academy in several years.

http://www.cartilagefreecaptain.com/2013/6/26/4467104/tottenham-hotspur-prospect-rankings-youth-academy-alex-pritchard

Did that trip to Thailand make you forget how to count?

Judging by that article we got ourselves a live one. Third only to Tom Carroll and Andros Townsend in terms of Tottenham's best young prospects. Luongo was rated ninth by the way.

Something unusual with Tijane and Pritchard. If we do sign both (which is quite possible) then we will have a predominantly left footed winger who prefers to play right wing and a predominantly right footed winger who prefer to play left wing.

Interesting.

reading the artcle on there regarding us signing Hall and Luongo on loan and potentially Pritchard the comments are not very complimentary about us. I can't blame them.

Another mention of the £1 buyback clause too

counting and general numerics has never been my strongpoint!

On a slightly related note about ranking young players, this was linked on another forum. FourFourTwo top 100 youngsters in world football 2001. Worth a read.....and a laugh in places to....

In particular Cherno Samba at 71 above Michael Essien, Dimitar Berbatov and Kaka...

You need to be very careful when Prem clubs big up these lads, because the reality is somewhat different when they're playing against overseas competition.  I did a post a few days back about how the limitations of England's top Prem youths have been exposed in the FIFA U'20 tournament in Turkey. England drawing with Iraq and Chile, then losing to Egypt, thus strtching a run of 17 games in these finals without a win dating back to 97 when Michael Owen scored a winner.

Danny Mills summarising was particularly scathing about the kind of players the Prem U21 system produces...."technically not good enough for the Prem, and physically not strong enough for the lower leagues"

So the Prem clubs import the foreign lads, with the technical ability....and the lower league clubs take the English kids who often struggle because of hype, over payment and the physical nature of the game.  Of course there will be exceptions to thse rules, but we've seen a couple recently who've been involved in England age groups...Nouble and Bostock, who haven't set the world on fire.

I caught a bit of that after you mentioned it... Harry Kane (#4 on that Spurs list, coincidentally) was an utter donkey up front!

Aren't you in finance, or was I just making a logical leap based on your current and previous locations?

Harry is a classic..big, strong and willing, but a bit limited. Nevertheless you'd expect him to have a career in football, just not at a high level.

Guilty as charged! :)

Crikey. So now at last we know who to blame the recession on.  >:(

Tad harsh! I am not really that involved in finances really anyway, more testing that the systems are calculating the correct numbers and all that jizz.

Jizz as in 'Hut'? Well then you're a bally hero, man!

It's like that line from The Wire, when Stringer is trying to go straight and Avon says:

"I look at you these days, String, you know what I see? I see a man without a country. Not hard enough for this right here and maybe, just maybe, not smart enough for them out there."

http://www.theshedend.com/topic/22268-fourfourtwo-top-100-youngsters-in-world-football-2001/ (http://www.theshedend.com/topic/22268-fourfourtwo-top-100-youngsters-in-world-football-2001/)

And check out who's at number 99!

Great list. Players like Chopra and Pennant have always played with the attitude that the world owed them a living and this list tells you why. Being told you're number 5 on a list where Iniesta  was 20th would give most people a sense of entitlement.

All of which tells us the need to avoid hyping up these players who've done fuck all, when they're kids. When interviewed Barca management keep going on about humility as a required top quality as well as abilty. Of England players of recent vintage, I'd say James Milner has it...when he was with us, you could see he was giving it his best shot.

Couldn't agree more.

Milner has the opposite problem.  He has a brilliant attitude and has done a lot with his limited talent.  The problem is that is exactly what his talent is - limited.  Someone like Iniesta - who admittedly is a special case - has the attitude and the talent.  Get three or four of these in a team and you're sorted - see Spain circa 2008/09/10.

I think Milner has the talent.

Sadly his problem is he went to Man City to win things which in fairness he has but he doesn't play every week.

When he was the first name on the team sheet at Villa he was superb for them. Similar to Scott Parker, SWP, Andy Carroll and Daniel Sturidge, all the better for playing regularly.

Done a bit of wiki-esk research into our unknown Tijane.

On trial with stoke last season.


Obviously came to nothing but it shows that other teams had scouted him.

Started career at Benefica U19, so they obviously knew a bit about him anyway.

Last played for GD Chavas in April 2013, they won Div 2 title (finished 20 points ahead of Boavista!), 11 appearances in total, 1 goal, 3 assists.

Season before 21 appearances, 1 goal
Season before 22 appearances 4 goals

Played 10 mins for Portugal u21s in June 2012. This was in a euro qualifier which they top the group. Obviously a decent caliber of opposition and team mates.

Only fan quote I could find was:


Which was translated...

I know YouTube is nothing to go by in these young foreign players but I'm hoping, should we ever see him, that this is a signing with big potential.

I was having a bit of trouble with his name. Anaconda it is then.

So we 'beat off' Spurs for Tijane. Shah is coming in to good use then, Daniel Levy must be happy.

Eh?

Ah, just looked at page 1.

Carry on . :-[

Was having a look at the International Clearance thing and I guess this part of the contract may explain why we are having our away week in Portugal? Hope this Tijane kid is the real deal.

Players may train or play in ‘behind closed doors’ friendly matches without International Clearance. However, in
these circumstances, the Club should have the permission of the player’s former Club and confirmation that the
player is not under suspension. For friendly matches played in public the written permission of the other
National Association is required

So if we did beat off Tottenham for his signature I take it he has a 'Spurs release clause' written into his contract, so if does turn out to be the real deal they can can take him for free?