Considering how our start to last season was derailed by GLC getting crocked in a "friendly" (because a match between Argentina and Chile is guaranteed to be civil...) there's times it feels like international breaks are designed with the express intention of ****ing us over somehow
Everton also have a billionaire steel magnate bankrolling them Look at their transfer business for the last five years and you'll soon notice a couple of patterns emerge 2015-16: spent £36m, made £9m 2016-17 (when Moshiri bought his initial 49% stake): spent £73m, made £55m 2017-18: spent £170m, made £110m 2018-19 (when Moshiri increased his stake): spent £80m, made £20m 2019-20: spent £95m (possibly more, given the undisclosed fees for Iwobi and Kean), made £82m 2020-21: spent £42m, made £4m ...and in case you think they were being "ambitious" in the summers of 2016, 2017 and 2019, there's something else worth mentioning 2016-17: £47.5m for John Stones 2017-18: £75m for Romelu Lukaku 2019-20: £52m for Idrissa Gueye & Ademola Lookman With the exception of Kyle Walker, have we cashed in on any first team players in that time period?
Yet this whole discussion was kicked off by my post showing that we've actually spent more than Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton recently. ENIC have mugged off no-one. I've never made excuses or apologised for them because I genuinely believe that they are the first owners we've had who are actually trying to make us into a top club. We've won 17 trophies in our history and 8 of those were under Bill Nicholson. The whole rest of our history has been under achievement with the occasional cup. We were close to bankrupt when ENIC took over and a permanent fixture in mid table. Now we are always at the top of the league and just because we've had a bit of bad luck at the top end of cup runs people have lost patience.
by focusing solely on activities pertaining to the club. < Irving Scholar > "The whole rest of our history has been under achievement with the occasional cup." Between 1978 and the Sugar takeover, the league performances were punctuated with some actual title challenges dying with the business end of the season (the oft-stated "soft underbelly" of the team) , "We were close to bankrupt when ENIC took over and a permanent fixture in mid table." AFAIK, Sugar had taken the club well away from the bankruptcy scenario by that time. As always, people please feel free to educate me otherwise.
They`ve had 20 years, we have waited long enough. The issue is they are a business first and a football club second, and always will be, they have no real ambition to win silverware over profit. They could quite easily spend more in the transfer market if they really wanted to, but they choose not to.
The ONLY way to maximise the value of a football club is to improve its performance on the pitch. Have they done that or not? Did I hallucinate the CL final? If we had won that would everything be fine? If not why not? If so how did ENIC manage to plan it so well?
We are not particularly good at spending big - our 20 most expensive buys are as follows: Ndombele, Sanchez, Sissoko, Lo Celso, Bergwyn, Soldado, Lamela, Son, Lucas, Sessegnon, Aurier, Bent, Bentley, Jansen, Modric, Paulinho, Dembele, Rebrov, Pavlyuchenko and Keane - Of those on a straight success/failure I would suggest 9 successes & 11 failures - but the jury would probably be out on some each way. I have the successes as Sissoko, Lo Celso, Bergwyn, Lamela, Lucas, Son, Modric, Dembele and Keane - I expect that Sissoko, Lamela, and Lucas would be disputed by some and that the jury is still out on Lo Celso, Bergwyn as successes and on Sanchez and Sess as failures.
It’s pretty damning when looking at that. I personally wouldn’t class Sissoko and Lamela as successes to be honest. They’ve had their uses but both were club record signings at the time, they’ve never amounted to being the best/ one of the best at the club, far from it too. Lo Celso and Bergwijn would be too early to judge. Early signs suggest a definite success but another year is needed really. Lucas at £25m has been just about “ok”. Neither success nor failure in my opinion. Very inconsistent player. Sanchez is so-so. Good player but has he reached the potential we shelled out £40m for yet? No. Loved Pav, could do with someone like him now to compete with Kane but he did have his ups and downs. I’d say Modric was the major success of all of those. Best player I’ve seen at Spurs and has become one of the best midfielders the world has seen. Dembele and Son also big successes.
The only problem with that could be the nature of his wealth. If one of the oligarchs gets poloniummed up, then Vlad might carve up what's left for his mates, again.
On the topic of ambition, I guess it depends how you’d determine ambition. It’s been noted Everton and Newcastle have a higher net spend than us right now, but they also have a higher net spend than Liverpool. Are they now more ambitious than Spurs and Liverpool? Personally I don’t think so. It’s actually worth noting that Liverpool operate very similar to us, the biggest difference is that they managed to get a monumental amount of money for Coutinho and their recruitment with his money was spot on and it’s allowed them to become such a brilliant team. I remember Spurs fans a few years back getting jealous when Everton spent £40m on Sigurdsson. A player that didn’t make it with us (mainly as we had Eriksen in Gylfi’s second season) and so does that mean Everton are/ were ambitious by signing a Spurs flop? They splashed about £35m on Iwobi last season too. A player that wouldn’t even make our squad, so again is that really showing more ambition than Spurs by signing players that essentially aren’t good enough for us? We’ve so far made three signings. Two of them in theory improve our XI. I think it’s very likely we’ll sign a striker, possibly before the Everton game but if not definitely by the end of the window (admittedly I’d want them in now). If we do indeed bring a striker then I think that’d represent a solid window for the club. I think in total Spurs need about 3 more new players but I appreciate that can’t/ won’t get done in one window, especially as I know that certain players I personally want sold to make way likely won’t be. I really don’t think we’ve lacked ambition. I’ll admit it’s frustrating that a striker isn’t in yet but other than that, I think we’ve had a decent enough window so far. It’ll be a really good one if we get a striker. It’ll be an excellent one if we can somehow get Ndombele out and a creative player in.
You are right on the last point. But Sugar thought the stadium was about the right size and that was lacking ambition.
He also had an obnoxious habit of holding the redeveloped South Stand over our heads when anyone questioned his commitment The fact the South Stand was the third-largest (or, if you prefer, second-smallest) stand underlines what a feeble thing to crow about that was
It looks like someone's tried to draw a Newcastle kit after they've suffered a major head trauma. Awful. I'm struggling to think of a worse kit in recent years.
