I don't think it would have changed much. We would still have been left with a defence on its last legs and prone to ridiculous errors. They were creeping in long before Maureen took over (the difference being he has added 2 FBs, 1 CB and a DM yet we somehow managed to become even worse). We would also still be faced with the reality that our best creative player had long since downed tools while the 2 players supposedly signed to take on the creative burden have turned out to be a complete waste of £95m. Skipp wasn't ready to become the fulcrum of our midfield. Even an excellent season in the Championship does not a premier league star make. We have Sessegnon currently proving that. I have every confidence Skipp will go on to be a top, top player but even next season I expect him to be second choice to Hojbjerg until he proves otherwise. There are lots of 'what ifs' I mull over with regard to Poch's last months at the club. Near the top of that list is 'what if we'd sold Eriksen and Toby as the whole country expected and landed an extra £65m to push Dybala/Fernandes over the line?' But I guess ultimately I cannot escape the bitter reality that when Poch was finally given significant funds to rebuild, he blew £140m on 4 players who thus far have done varying degrees of sweet FA. I know this realisation was only possible with hindsight, but when a team is crying out for immediate improvements - not fancy prospects who might come good 3 years down the line - our approach that window was astonishingly naive. Perhaps Poch genuinely believed he would received the entire 5 years of chapter 2 to see his signings come good? I suppose only he knows the answer to that question. For me, as painful as it is to say it, the fact that he showed no interest in bolstering a decaying defence (in fact he further weakened it by letting Trippier and KWP leave without replacing them and by letting Rose stay when frankly his contract should have been cancelled), added to the fact that he made established players like Dybala and Fernandes second priority to massive gambles like Ndombele and Lo Celso, demonstrated that he simply wasn't the right person to oversee the rebuild. The fact that Levy thinks Maureen IS the right person is another story.
Is it just me or is what Mourinho said here being reported completely differently by different people and even the same people over time?
I don't think that it matters anymore. There is no reality, only perception. The perception of Mourinho's management is that it's over. If Levy's stupid enough to test it in front of a paying audience, he'll be next.
Really good post. I’d also add that alongside the £140m spent in the summer of 2019 as part of the “painful rebuild”, some rebuilding/ future proofing was done beforehand with the signings of Aurier, Sanchez and Foyth. As they were all signed to either be long term heirs or equal calibre replacements for Walker, Jan and Toby. Foyth admittedly was more hopeful than expectant but nonetheless it was a player signed with aims to go far. Yet thus far: Sessegnon hasn’t had much of a chance but in the games he did have he looked out of his depth and nowhere near prime Rose's level, hopefully he comes back rejuvenated but with Reguilon in his path it won’t be easy. Aurier isn’t a patch on Walker, whilst he’s also inferior to Trippier (minus the 18/19 season where it's now known he was playing injured). Sanchez isn’t fit to lace Jan or Toby’s boots and I doubt ever will be. Foyth is 50-50 as to whether he'll even be a Spurs player depending on whether Villarreal pay the purchase price, so that likely will have proven not to have paid off. Ndombele isn’t fit to lace Dembele’s trainers, let alone boots. And Lo Celso shouldn’t even be allowed near Eriksen’s boots or trainers. Adding all these in with most of the other poor purchases we've made in recent years, Poch’s/ Jose’s/ Levy’s/ Hitchen’s rebuild(s) have been nothing short of disasters.
So the issue is really the success of the transfer policy. Spurs rely on mid-price signings paying dividends. You need to get top class players without paying market prices for them. Vertonghen, Eriksen, Alli, Alderweireld were inspired signings, but repeating that success was always going to be an impossible task. The Ndombele fee would have paid for all of the above. It's unlikely that a transfer policy can be successful if it relies almost solely on finding diamonds in the rough. Utd and Arsenal were successful in this area but were able to bring in marquee signings too, which gave those mid-price signings like Vidic and Evra time to settle in and find their feet. The current crop of Spurs' signings don't have that luxury.
In a way we have become victims of our own success. It is little secret that selling clubs hike the price up as soon as they hear that a PL club is on the phone. Then they hike it further still when said PL club is flush with CL money and a brand new stadium. We have been properly fleeced for all of our recent big money signings. By which I refer to Sanchez, Sessegnon, Tanguy and Lo Celso. And whilst similar can and does happen to the likes of City, United and Chelsea, they have the financial clout to absorb those misses. We don't. And so while we can afford to take a punt on the likes of Aurier or Hojbjerg, the big money punts are genuinely crippling. Added to that our wage ceiling has risen significantly as a result of said cash flush. The end result is we are left with a group of players who are nearly impossible to shift as they simply aren't nearly good enough to play for anyone who could afford to pay them. It is a growing problem but one that isn't without a solution. Stop trying to be smart arses every single time a major decision needs to be made. Stop this pig headed cavalier attitude of 'we'll show 'em' by trying to do things differently to the way the rest of the footballing world has done things for nearly a decade now. By all means chase a promising youngster here and there. The fees we paid for Reguilon and Rodon, as well all of the players you've mentioned, dismantle the nonsense that a bargain can't be found if you try hard enough. We've become stuck in an abysmal halfway house of trying to act like the big boys in the market but just, just lacking the finances to do it. And so as I have posted elsewhere, we end up signing B-list players on A-list fees and wages, which is the formula to concoct an Arsenal mk. II. Which is where I see us heading once our last few world class players leave. As @PowerSpurs has argued repeatedly, why sign 9 average players when you can sign 3 superb ones? Other than trying to do things differently, what logic is there? Other than giving the appearance of being a genuinely big club, what is gained in the long run? We need to look at our rivals and what happened to them after they signed established stars and learn a long overdue lesson. We need to realise that Dybala + Fernandes = Tanguy + Lo Celso + Sess + Clarke. We need to realise that Van Dijk = Aurier + Sanchez + Doherty, and start to understand that quantity does not make up for quality. Not at this level. And certainly not with a manager renowned for diminishing the quantity of his squads by freezing players out and throwing others under the bus. And so here we are, a club trying to act like the big boys by doing everything different to the big boys. Good luck working us out.
Eriksen and the others were game changers. The recent signings aren't. The game changers in your team now are Kane and Son. It raises the conundrum many teams have had before. Stick or twist? Do you risk that financial stability by spluging a load of cash on established stars or spend within a set budget on players you hope might come good? Levy will always choose the latter. At present, it's not really working - although you still have a shot at top four and are ahead of the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal! It's not that bad. Should the club have been more ambitious when the team was competing for trophies? How much are the financial constraints resulting from the costs of the new stadium a factor? I can see the argument from both sides but ultimately maintaining success on the field maintains the revenue streams needed and so you have to be ambitious and speculate to accumulate.
You are talking to a fixed audience, they love it when their club "Levy's" someone and think it's clever. The fact that other clubs let players go for reduced prices never causes concern in their minds
Can't think of a Levy masterstroke since Van der Vaart. He's been dining on that success for 10 years. You'll find very, very few Spurs fans who consider Levy 'clever' anymore. A shrewd and driven businessman whose stewardship of the club has delivered enormous off-pitch development; but at the same time - on the 3 occasions the on-pitch picture looked likely to take the next step (Jol, Redknapp and Poch), he got a series of crucial decisions wrong that ended up setting us back 2-3 years.
I've highlighted this because it just isn't true anymore, and in all honesty hasn't been since we sold Bale. Maybe Walker joining City at a push as we made something like a £40m profit on a player who 'came good', as you said. I've analysed elsewhere how our policy in the market since those departures (although in all honesty selling Carrick and then Berbatov to strengthen United actually sowed the first seeds of this policy - which itself demonstrates that we were striving to join the elite clubs long before the new stadium was even a blueprint) has been to hold on to key players for as long as possible, and to never sell them to a rival club unless absolutely unavoidable. Hindsight is a polished turd, but with it it is possible to now see how flawed this policy has been, causing us to sell Eriksen at a hugely reduced rate. It will also likely lead to us missing out on over £100m combined from the sales of Toby, Dier, Dele and the like. In short, even if/when players 'come good', we don't capitalise on it, instead letting them stagnate for years on end until their market value is roughly back down to what it was when we first signed them. Secondly, is it really possible to look at the fees we shelled out on the likes of Sanchez, Lo Celso and Ndombele and call them 'within a set budget you hope might come good?' Just how good did we envision Sanchez getting that we'd make a significant profit on the £42m we spent on him? Or the £55m we spent on Ndombele? The £48m on Lo Celso? You'd need them to become among the top 10 players in their position in world football for that to happen, and what are the chances of success when you've narrowed the bullseye to something so improbably small? That's why buying the likes of Carrick, Berbatov, Modric, Bale etc. for peanuts and selling them on at huge profit made a lot of sense. But we simply stopped doing that. Dier, Dele, Eriksen etc. are living proof. But it would be one thing if we were still spending £13m on the Eriksens of this world then stubbornly holding onto them well beyond their sell-by date. Nowadays we're spending £42m on the Sanchez' of this world and doing the same thing! Something is seriously broken at this club.
Yeah i appreciate it's not global mate but you must agree there are a few on here who still delight in the thought
The trouble is that we have paid stupid money for players that have simply not worked. £52m Ndombele £39m Sanchez £30m sissoko £28m Lo Celso £27m Bergwijn £24m Sessegnon £17m Janssen £217m wasted in just 5 years. That's without looking at their wages or the ludicrous decision to give both Dier and Alderweireld massive pay rises in December 2019. Levy has been very good for the club. We were a basket case when he arrived but that doesn't mean he is still doing a good job. His choice of managers has always been shocking. Hoddle was a vanity signing and many of us were doubtful of him as by 2001 he had a serious reputation as a poor man manager who regularly fell out with players. Pleat made even less sense than Hoddle...a 9 month caretaker ffs. Santini was a disaster. Jol was effectively appointed by Frank Arnesen (our then DoF). The treatment of him towards the end was appalling. Ramos was a car crash. Redknapp was an excellent choice. A shame he was a dick after we supported him through his court case. AVB was simply stupid. Sherwood? See AVB. Pochettino was a great choice. Mourinho? See AVB with bells on. 5 of those choices were never going to work (Hoddle, Pleat, AVB, Sherwood and Mourinho) and hindsight has nothing to do with it. Imho Levy needs to be removed from all football decisions and if he can't accept that he should be removed as chairman.
If true that that’s damning and shows as well wasting money on the wrong players that Spurs don’t spend enough anyway.
I can't see how you can be Chairman of a Football Club and be removed from all football decisions*. I also think that the only way to measure the performance of the Chairman is on the overall performance of the club. If you look at individual decisions then lots of them will be wrong. They will also look as if they are clustered but that's almost always illusory. Levy has one major quality that very few people see. He understands that the only way to long term success is to increase the revenue of the club so that we can compete with the bigger clubs. In fact I think his aim is to become the biggest club in England. In any walk of life, it's always a huge advantage to be the biggest. You get your choice of the best people because you can usually pay more and they want to join the most famous company. I think he missed a trick early on because before FFP he could have tried to do it by throwing money at the team and hiring top managers (the City and Chelsea way), but that is much more risky than the way he has implemented. So my measure of Levy's success is revenue as I believe everything else follows from that. On that measure is he doing rather well and I think that will continue. * If he isn't going to be involved in football decisions who is going to appoint the the person who is going to take football decisions?
That table neatly demonstrates that net spend is not well correlated with outcomes. Hardly surprising when developing and selling players that don't make the grade counts against the measure. Liverpool don't even appear.
What this really proves is the people who bang on about amBisHUn really need to pipe down How many of those clubs with a higher net spend have routinely finished ahead of us in the last five years? Let me outline it 2015-16: Leicester, Arsenal 2016-17: Chelsea 2017-18: The Sheikh Mansour Team, Penchester 2018-19: The Sheikh Mansour Team, Saltypool, Chelsea 2019-20: Saltypool, The Sheikh Mansour Team, Penchester, Chelsea, Leicester In other words, the following teams on that list haven't: Everton, West Scam, Crystal Palace, Stoke, West Brom This proves two things 1.) Barring a select handful of examples in all of world football, league position isn't based on how much you spend on transfers every summer 2.) The list of teams finishing above us actually increased when we started throwing cash around instead of carefully curating the squad
You’re right but that’s not a enjoyable way to support a team if you’re more focused on revenue than winning trophies and good football (how long do we have to wait for revenue to be at a decent level before we can expect trophies and good football) I could be wrong but I don’t think there is a fan base more obsessed with finances of their club than Spurs fans
It's utter bollocks mate! We've spent well over £500m over the last 7 seasons. We have recouped over £330m in the same time Signings 2014-15 £43.63m spent on Davies, Vorm, Stambouli, Dier, Dele, Fazio and Yedlin. 2015-16 £63.9m spent on Son, Wimmer, Alderweireld, Njie and Trippier 2016-17 £75.15m spent on Sissoko, Janssen, Nkoudou, Wanyama and Lopez 2017-18 £111.17m spent on Sanchez, Moura, Aurier, Llorente, Foyth and Gazzaniga 2018-19 Zero spend 2019-20 £133.65m spent on Ndombele, Lo Celso (loan fee), Sessegnon, Bergwijn, Clarke Fernandes (loan fee) 2020-21 £99.45m spent on Lo Celso (bought), Rodon, Bale (loan), Doherty, Hoejberg, Hart, Vinicius (loan fee) and Reguilón. Total spent is £526.95m Sales 2014-15 £39.74m selling Sigurdson, Livermore, Sandro, Newton, Dawson,Friers, Falsque, Gomes and Obika 2015-16 £78.82m selling Holtby, Soldado, Paulinho, Capoue, Townsend, Stambouli, Churchill, Fredericks, Lennon, Kaboul, Veljkovic 2016-17 £47.07m selling Mason, Chadli, Pritchard, Yedlin, Carol, Fazio 2017-18 £93.42m selling Walker, Wimmer, Bentaleb, Njie, Fazio 2018-19 £4.82m selling Dembele 2019-20 £58.85m selling Eriksen, Trippier, Janssen, Nkoudou 2020-2021 £11.97m selling Kyle Walker Peters Total sales £334.69m Net spend £192.26m *Loan fees received not included* Figures from https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/tot.../plus/1?saison_id=2020&pos=&detailpos=&w_s=#/ which is pretty OK as a site.
