Mousa Dembele, right, pictured with new manager Andre Villas Boas
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club have moved quickly to replace the recently departed Modric, who left for Real Madrid in a figure well over £30m, by signing midfielder Mousa Dembele from Fulham in a deal worth a reported £15m. The Belgian international, who has 40 caps and 5 goals for his country, always demonstrated prodigious talent but it was never fully optimised until Fulham manager Martin Jol moved him further back from his advanced attacking position into central midfield, where his strength, mobility, ball control, ability with the ball at pace and work rate all came to the fore, finishing the season in stunning form.
Throughout summer Dembele had been linked with clubs, Manchester United and Real Madrid amongst them, but no serious bid ever formalised until a combination of the loss of Modric at Tottenham and his stunning midfield performance at Old Trafford on Saturday forced Spurs’ hand into purchasing him as a replacement.
I wish Mousa Dembele all the best at his new club.
~lork
I am devastated by this loss. After losing Murphy & with the Dempsey situation what it is, I’m just not sure what the club are thinking. Take a look at the squad list on the official site & tell me how we are going to survive in the premiership with what we currently have? Richardson is a terrible waste of £2m after a summer of free transfer acquisitions & sales. I can only assume that the shiny new Riverside stand has to be paid for by this sort of squad decimation. I seriously, seriously hope Jol has something planned or we may be screwed. We were linked with Arshavin & Benayoun earlier in the summer & maybe now Jol might go after one or both of them. Who knows. Perhaps we should go after Van Der Vaart? Spurs want rid & we certainly could do with him. Mark Noble is not the answer either. We are an established premiership club now & although I do have perspective & don’t expect us to be going after Messi, etc, we deserve better than toss like Richardson & Noble. *Rant over*
This is such an annoying blog. Pointless article, I could have read this on sky on the bar at the bottom. In fact, I’d probably have learnt more. #JolOut
after dicksons twitter posts i wonder what really is going on behind the scenes! worrying times in my opinion, selling dembele, dempsey on the way out and links to richardson and noble, should we ask ourself what ambition fulham really has? doesnt seem like much so far in this transfer window!
it was a precursor to my fuller dembele article
we will see what the club is thinking when the transfer window is depleted. i am concerned as it is but no point worrying.
Fair point & I agree I *shouldn’t* worry until the window shuts but it’s hard not to. Also, I realise we have lost big players in the past & survived (Saha, Steed, Van Der Sar, etc) but something feels different this time & I can’t put my finger on it. Looking at the PFA unattached player list, I see both Sean Davis & Papa Bouba Diop are available & Steed has come out of retirement…. Bearing in mind our recent signing policy, maybe we should offer them all deals?! Lol! 🙂
hahaha i can see it now!