Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester United

For me that Ultimately means we will have to alter and indeed break our wage structure a few times in order to get that player. My criticism does not mean I want Eriksen gone. Every positive you give about him, I agree with. However for me he lacks that winners spark. Lamela has it in abundance...he just doesn't have a brain at times. However I do think...we as a team need to level up or where we will stay still and more likely decline as our 'golden generation' ages or starts to dream of pastures a new...because every other team that we are competing with don't mind paying the money. I also don't believe we don't have money to use. Sissoko for 30 mill, 5 minutes before deadline day proves that.

 

I definitely agree about having the money, I said just the other day that asides from the obvious few, we could essentially afford 95% of the world's players these days, in fact probably could even afford to buy someone at the price of Pogba/ Bale/ Ronaldo although that would be a real one-off and we'd need to pray it worked out.
The problem for us though is actually persuading them to join us. I feel we're in a situation in that the next level of player beyond our current ones are already playing for title winning/ challenging sides. Let's use Eriksen for example, the level up on him would be the likes Ozil, de Bruyne and Iniesta etc, even though we could probably afford to buy one of those, there's near enough no chance of actually attracting them to the club and I think that applies to other areas around the pitch. Hugo can only be upgraded by Neuer, Kane can be upgraded by Aguero/ Suarez/ Lewandowski etc, Lamela with Di Maria/ Robben/ Bale etc and the list can go on for other areas, those players listed just wouldn't join us unless we offered astronomical wages.

So in my opinion, I'd say our options are:

A) Hope to unearth a gem or two that no one else takes a punt on but pretty much becomes top class instantly, like a Berbatov & Modric.

B) Going down the City and Chelsea route of getting a new trigger happy owner with near enough unlimited funding who can buy four or five £30m-£40m+ players on £150k-£200k a week to come in and take us to the next level.

C) Hope the players in our squad - who many are still young in their careers - can go on to reach that next level and thus see us begin truly challenging for major honours.

 

But as Utd are showing, spending power alone is no guarantee of success .All clubs, however wealthy, can't just go out and buy a successful team/squad. There needs to be a balanced transfer policy - recruitment and development of youth players, recruitment of younger players who can develop further and marquee signings. The wealthier clubs may have an advantage in buying elite players - and in paying wages and retaining players who develop into star performers - but there is scope still for a club of the size of Spurs to compete with an effective transfer policy, allied to good management of the players recruited at different levels. Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli etc are examples of that.

 

I do sometimes looks at the likes of Atletico, Dortmund, Schalke and Napoli (all of whom are slightly to significantly 'poorer' than us but at the same time would probably beat us comfortably in competition) and wonder if we are to an extent victims of the abnormal volume of cash flying around the EPL. Dortmund and Schalke benefit tremendously from the fact that there is only (realistically, at least until this Red Bull club settles in to the Bundesliga) one club in Germany that isn't a traditional 'sell to buy' outfit: Bayern Munich. And since Bayern can only fill so many squad places with expensive talent, the likes of Schalke and Dortmund have rich pickings of a huge pool of talent that simply can't fit into Bayern's dressing room. And they will acquire said talent at knock down prices and reasonable wages. Same for Spain with Barca and Real the only non 'sell to buy' clubs, same with Italy and Juventus (not even the Milan teams can hold their own financially any more)...

....In all of Europe's major leagues, the financial 'second tier' of clubs is left with a far larger pool of talent than the PL, a league with - uniquely - SIX teams in the Forbes Top 10 wealthiest clubs: Real, Barca, United, Bayern, Arsenal, City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Juventus, Spurs. The reality is that any talent thinking of heading to these green shores is more than likely to be hoovered up by one of FOUR clubs in the PL who are non 'sell to buy'; City,United, Chelsea and now Arsenal too based on their last few windows.

When you look at the level of talent sitting on these teams' benches, being sent out to Belgian teams on loan for 2-3 seasons, and generally not being used, it becomes clear just how hard it is for the 'second tier' clubs like ourselves, Everton, Soton and West Ham to pick up that talent without resorting to ridiculous transfer fees and wages.

I'm not sure if any of that made sense as I've had a long day...but might just be worth a thought