Harry Kane

[Citizen of Legoland]

I don't believe this at all. No buying club paying £100m+ for a player does everything on the selling clubs terms. Its fanciful at best to suggest we were trying to a deal of this magnitude, with the attitude that we would hang fire for weeks on end while Spurs tried to find a replacement. We might have done something like this with Villa for Grealish but did so knowing that with the buyout clause, Villa couldn't turn round and kibosh the deal.

We have walked away because we are not willing to meet the asking price, an asking price that by all accounts hasn't changed for weeks. We thought Spurs would lower their demands. Spurs thought we would increase our offer. Both wrong.

Levy is completely within his rights to ask for a higher figure that is true, but the question for him to answer isn't "what is Harry Kane worth?" it's "how much money do I need to make out of this deal to allow me to lower some of the debts and keep the playing squad at a similar level?". The prices are barmy because everyone has lost money in these last 18 months and the higher replacement costs meant he needed to test us with a higher request.

Remember we didn't technically need Kane, we can make do as it worked okay last season and there is talent breaking through from the youth ranks. He was a good choice though because he's proven in this league, seemed happy to join us and therefore low risk so it was worth trying for as long as we could. I don't see why that was the wrong thing to do.

In any case there are still options and another transfer window in January. If you use a scatter gun approach to transfer business you look desperate and get screwed, I prefer this patient method even if it doesn't work.

 

[OrigamiNinja]

This is my point though, Kane is a transfer virgin, his agent is nothing. City, as the professionals, with a whole team of people working on this for months should have been in the position to tell the player we are no where near here, this isn't happening, don't go burning bridges. Instead they led to him believe it was possible when it just wasn't.

The £75m + £25m offer is so ridiculous it has been bothering me since I heard it. Do you not think it is plausible that Kane told City that his gentleman's agreement with Levy was that if Spurs underachieved (whatever that is) he could leave for £100m? City saw an opportunity and thought we will have a piece of that and made the offer, only for Levy to renege on the agreement and say we want £150m. So yeah, they were miles apart on fee. However, I think its entirely possible that City made the offer and expected it to be accepted based on info provided to them from Kanes camp and therefore never had any intention of going to £150m.

 

[wolviedinho]

It won’t end well for Levy imo. No matter how this episode is dressed up.

He turned down a lot of money
He is left with an unhappy player
Reputational damage for Spurs will be a factor

At least it’s taken the scrutiny off their role in the super league and the debt level.

Spurs can’t compete to win the league and should recognise their standing in the game is a media myth just like don levy.

We tried, we failed, move on.

 

[FantasyIreland]

I suggest you stop reading comics.

Exactly,just like twitter and all these pod casts,people are making money and gaining fame from talking bollocks and leading the gullible up the garden path.

The world is full of bullshitters and chancers.

 

[TonyColemansbagofapples]

That's the way a million transfers that never happened played out. 2 years in a row you have been involved in very public transfers that never had a chance of happening because the clubs where so far a part. If club A is not willing to get anywhere near club B's valuation then it should end with a thanks for taking my call and never get anywhere the news.

And can you all stop with the myth that Tottenham fans think Levy is some kind of hero. We are aware of the many errors he has made. Danny Rose walked the out for free, he turned down 50m for him and he barely kicked a ball for us after that.

City try their best not to make any dealings public. It was made public because Sky are trying to make a big thing of this particular transfer, and lets face it, it is/was a high profile player. Didn't help with those two Spurs dickhead reporters on Sky, Solhekol and Bridges.
Personally, I wouldn't have gone above £120 for Kane. And that is £20m above what I consider his true value.
He's one of your own and I hope, for his sake and ours, it stays that way.

 

[Gaylord du Bois]

I wonder if stuff like this has a knock on effect of potential signings for Spurs?

'Don't forget. You're here forever'

Welcome to the Hotel Tottenham Hotspur.
Such a lovely place, such a lovely place.

 

[give it to gordon]

This is my point though, Kane is a transfer virgin, his agent is nothing. City, as the professionals, with a whole team of people working on this for months should have been in the position to tell the player we are no where near here, this isn't happening, don't go burning bridges. Instead they led to him believe it was possible when it just wasn't.

You dont know that !
City might have been happy to pay levy price.
The stumbling block could have been levy didnt want to pay over top for kanes replacement but happy to get City to pay over the top.
Spurs would need to pay over the top because what can spurs offer a new player ? Europe Conference league ? The fa / league cup ?

 

[BobbyBoy]

You seem to know a lot about our dealings. We pulled out of the Koulibaly deal because, like Kane, the other teams chairman is a greedy twat as well as a smartarse.
Watch my lips carefully..."City will offer a sensible price for our targets and pull out if said target is over-priced (in our opinion)". As a result we have won more trophies in the last eighteen months than the entire reign of Levy's spell as chairman.
Twenty years he's led your club and I'll let you tell me what you've won. Ok, over to you

The £75m + £25m offer is so ridiculous it has been bothering me since I heard it. Do you not think it is plausible that Kane told City that his gentleman's agreement with Levy was that if Spurs underachieved (whatever that is) he could leave for £100m? City saw an opportunity and thought we will have a piece of that and made the offer, only for Levy to renege on the agreement and say we want £150m. So yeah, they were miles apart on fee. However, I think its entirely possible that City made the offer and expected it to be accepted based on info provided to them from Kanes camp and therefore never had any intention of going to £150m.

I suspect Kane was told we won't stand in your way if we don't qualify for the CL, no figure would have been mentioned. Kanes understanding of "won't stand in your way" was a million miles off from Levy's.

In my opinion its City's job to verify if Kane is right through whatever sources they have. They didn't and that is where this mess developed from. I mean what's your first reaction when you hear gentleman's agreement and Daniel Levy? Kane may have been stupid enough to believe it but a club the size of City with the resources available should have known better.

 

[Great Kompany]

There is one thing I mentioned before too which has now actually happened was - How obstinate and thick Daniel Levy is.
He is know to cut his nose to spite his face and actually lost a good number for players for peanuts because of his irregular demands from the buyer club. And he often offers sumat when he wants to buy a player.

So why were City so naive. Where is this parallel world City thought they can get Messi out of Barcelona because Jorge Messi gave a late night call to Guardiola or when Kane insisted he can get out for 100 million.
Levy was is and will always be difficult. Everyone would have guessed that.

Also a lot of people had this opinion that Levy always caves.
Well here it is. He didn't.

 

[BobbyBoy]

You dont know that !
City might have been happy to pay levy price.
The stumbling block could have been levy didnt want to pay over top for kanes replacement but happy to get City to pay over the top.
Spurs would need to pay over the top because what can spurs offer a new player ? Europe Conference league ? The fa / league cup ?

Off course I don't know but we do know Kane gave an interview to get the ball rolling, he then missed his covid test, 2 actions designed to aggravate. He proved he was willing to play his part. There is no way after doing that he just goes silently if the only hold up his is replacement.

I'll add that we can offer players more money than 99% of clubs in the world. We won't sign Grealish or Sancho if City or Liverpool are in for him but players like Dias or Torres could easily be Spurs players of City showed no interest. I mean if the choice was stay at Benfica or Valencia or move to Spurs then Spurs it is. There is only maybe 10 clubs in the world that players would choose before us given the choice.

 

[Marvin]

I suspect Kane was told we won't stand in your way if we don't qualify for the CL, no figure would have been mentioned. Kanes understanding of "won't stand in your way" was a million miles off from Levy's.

In my opinion its City's job to verify if Kane is right through whatever sources they have. They didn't and that is where this mess developed from. I mean what's your first reaction when you hear gentleman's agreement and Daniel Levy? Kane may have been stupid enough to believe it but a club the size of City with the resources available should have known better.

It's not City's board that broke this deal, it was Levy's insistence on getting every pound of flesh. It blew up in his face as City got tired of waiting and a better proposition appeared on the horizon.

Proverb for Levy: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

 

[give it to gordon]

Off course I don't know but we do know Kane gave an interview to get the ball rolling, he then missed his covid test, 2 actions designed to aggravate. He proved he was willing to play his part. There is no way after doing that he just goes silently if the only hold up his is replacement.

At the end of the day City had their value of Kane. Levy has his value. They couldnt meet in the middle.
Like Pep said spurs arent prepared to talk.
It was Kane decision to act the way he did, like you said earlier kane is a transfer virgin. I dont think his actions helped the situation.
But non of us know what went on its just guess work really

 

[mccity]

I'll probably get a bit of stick for this but I think everybody involved could have done a bit better.

I don't think City helped themselves with the apparent low ball opening bids.
I don't think Kane's actions helped.
And there's a whole list of stuff Levy could have done differently, although he got his big PR win so I'd wager he's happy with how things transpired.

 

[hammocity]

Where have all the "we won't leave him hanging" posts gone? All I see is Kane and Levy taking flak. All transfers involve the buyer discretely finding out if the player will move, once they have his indication they go and find out if the club will sell. This is established practice, Kane did his bit, twice, City let him down. A club the size of City should have known what spurs would take before getting the player to start letting off grenades. They acted either amateurish or naive, if Spurs price was too much the player should have been informed in May. We where told it was "close" less than 2 weeks ago when in reality it was never close. Kane nor his agent have ever been involved I a transfer, the onus was on City to to indicate how well or otherwise things where developing. They either completely misunderstood the situation or just plain had no clue.

I've seen numerous times that players won't sign for Spurs because Levy won't let them go, I'd argue City have come out of this worse. Would the agent of Declan Rice or Kalvin Phillips have their player behave the way Kane did in the knowledge City might just abandon them? You never hear of Liverpool, Chelsea or Utd behaving in such a way, they seem to know if a player is actually attainable before getting involved. City done this Koulibaly last year too. Its poor behaviour.

Pile of shite, absolute bollocks post.

 

[DrBlueBob]

I don't think any of the 3 parties involved have come out of this particularly well.

City - Messed around for weeks/months with what seemed to be the expectation that as we got closer to deadline Spurs/Levy would fold. We could have got the same response a month ago and moved on.

Kane - Didn't do enough to push it through. He kicked all of this off by doing the Neville interview and then disappeared.

Spurs/Levy - You have had years of Kane in the side and won nothing. If it had been the other way around I might have expected my chairman to think that taking in £100m+ for a 28 year old might not be a bad idea. If my club had done nothing in the transfer market all summer and was scratching around trying to take players like Traore on loan, I would really consider that a £100m+ influx into the coffers might be a major plus. Especially since Nuno hasn't done too badly bringing in mid-priced players previously. However, Levy is clearly now obsessed with this master negotiator persona he has built for himself, to the extent it now takes precedent over what is best for Spurs. Levy is an idiot and you guys and the media celebrating his idiocy just encourages him to be even more idiotic. £100m+ for a 28 year old and apparently he doesn't even consider it...braindead.

All to blame in this and all losers in it.

I don't feel as though we have lost. Certainly not at the figures involved.

 

[doobyedoobye]

I don't see the problem with the Kane deal collapsing. We made an offer and it wasn't enough. The issue is if we didn't have an alternative in mind..

 

[Dirty Harry]

The £75m + £25m offer is so ridiculous it has been bothering me since I heard it. Do you not think it is plausible that Kane told City that his gentleman's agreement with Levy was that if Spurs underachieved (whatever that is) he could leave for £100m? City saw an opportunity and thought we will have a piece of that and made the offer, only for Levy to renege on the agreement and say we want £150m. So yeah, they were miles apart on fee. However, I think its entirely possible that City made the offer and expected it to be accepted based on info provided to them from Kanes camp and therefore never had any intention of going to £150m.

Thought this from the start, no way have we gone into this without having a very good idea of what figures were being mentioned and what was supposed to be involved, and that would have come from people directly involved.

 

[Phil Mitchell Foden]

Direct from The Athletic:

• They were prepared to pay a fixed £100 million plus £20-or-so million in add-ons, but Levy refused to negotiate
• With the two clubs not talking since late July, the move had been dead for weeks despite Kane’s hopes

Where were all these confident rumours coming from?

Bizarre.

 

[GaudinoMotors]

Direct from The Athletic:



Where were all these confident rumours coming from?

Bizarre.

No point crying over spilt shit.

 

[OrigamiNinja]

I suspect Kane was told we won't stand in your way if we don't qualify for the CL, no figure would have been mentioned. Kanes understanding of "won't stand in your way" was a million miles off from Levy's.

In my opinion its City's job to verify if Kane is right through whatever sources they have. They didn't and that is where this mess developed from. I mean what's your first reaction when you hear gentleman's agreement and Daniel Levy? Kane may have been stupid enough to believe it but a club the size of City with the resources available should have known better.

I agree that gentlemans agreements are stupid and naïve but I suppose it depends on how the relationship has gone before. If Kane considered Levy to be a friend and a man of his word, then I don't think its too crazy to expect a friend to do as they have said.

Wanting £150m for a 28 year old at a time when nobody had paid more than £90m for a player in the PL is not a gentlemans agreement, that is completely one-sided and is Levy saying "I want more than you are arguably worth or you are not leaving". I know Kane isn't the sharpest tool in the box but how did he leave this discussion so sure he had an agreement in place? Levy has either not given him a number but allowed Kane to believe it was a much fairer price, or he has told him £100m and then gone back on his word.

Kane mentioned the £100m figure in his Neville interview and then lo and behold City offer £100m. The only way City could confirm the figure was to offer it and see Spurs response. If City expected to get him for £100m, there was no way we were ever paying £150m and that may go some way to explaining why there was seemingly very little movement on this for weeks.