Farewell, then, Vlad. It’s been all too brief. Although we will at least always have that YouTube video where, in between occasionally playing centre-back for Tottenham Hotspur, you went to Romania and staggered about looking drunk and falling over a lot in the snow. Which was, come to think of it, not that dissimilar to what happened when you were back in England occasionally playing centre‑back for Tottenham Hotspur.
There was a collective shrug this week at the news that Spurs defender Vlad Chiriches is on the verge of a move to Fiorentina. During his two years in the Premier League Chiriches has looked a little startled, a little haunted, a man just about prepared to go along with the basic concept of playing football without ever being quite convinced it isn’t an elaborate practical joke, and destined to spend his Thursday nights stumbling and stuttering in super slow motion on ITV4 while Peter Reid looks sad in a swivel chair.
If Chiriches does go it will be a significant departure for other reasons. Étienne Capoue and Paulinho have already left White Hart Lane. Roberto Soldado is “available”. By the end of the summer we could have reached a tipping point in the dissolution of the Magnificent Seven, that odd-job of players signed in a hurry in the summer of 2013 from the proceeds of Gareth Bale’s sale to Real Madrid.
It must be said the failure of the Sons Of Bale isn’t quite as clearcut as is often suggested. That summer Spurs also sold four other first-team players, who between them pretty much covered the incoming Capoue, Paulinho, Chiriches and Nacer Chadli. For the Bale money Christian Eriksen has been a lovely, gossamer, wispy little No10, both oddly peripheral and oddly incisive at the same time. Beyond that there have been two expensive failures in Iberian goal-disaster Soldado and the meandering semi-brilliance of Érik Lamela.
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