Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

[PleaseNotPoll]

Spending money hasn’t even been much of an issue for the club over the last few years, it’s just who we’ve spent it on that has.

Sanchez, Aurier, Lucas, Ndombele, Lo Celso, Bergwijn, Sessegnon… that’s about £220m+ right there. Then you’ve got what I’d class as “filler” signings like Foyth, Doherty, Clarke and Rodon who’ve barely played and whilst none have been the most expensive, they all add up (Rodon should definitely play more though). In the last 4-5 years we’ve probably wasted around close to £300m on players that have done pretty much nothing for the club, Lucas maybe earned his price tag from the semi final performance but all in all he really hasn’t been a hugely successful signing, the rest have been flops, including two of our biggest ever in Ndombele and Lo Celso.

I think it was PowerSpurs that once said along the lines of needing to have a 50% success rate with transfers to do well and I’d agree, for Spurs in the last few years though we’ve had about a 10-15% rate, I’m excluding the signings from this summer as it’s too early to judge albeit this bunch may actually be the first batch of good signings but I don’t wanna jinx it. So when you factor in just around 10-15% of good signings with a squad that’s declined massively and a lot dross have outstayed its welcome, it sort of shows why we’ve been a bit of a mess for a few seasons now.

We’ve also spent a lot of money sacking managers; Poch, Jose and Nuno plus their staff probably set us back about £35m+ and we’ve just hired Conte on a huge deal now too albeit initially on an 18 month contract (which again, like this summer’s signings, may actually be the right appointment but I don’t wanna jinx that either). So again, it’s not the money that’s the issue I’d say, it’s just what we’ve been doing with it that is.

I don't even think that the players that we've brought in have been bad, necessarily.
We've just bought in areas that we didn't need to and neglected areas that needed strengthening.

We don't have a creative central midfielder, lack backup for Kane and only have one right-winger.
We've got tons of left-wingers, attacking midfielders and centre-halves.
The last of those might make sense now that we've got a manager that likes 3 at the back, though.

We need a Modric, Pirlo, Xavi, Carrick or the like to make the team tick.
Such players seem to have virtually disappeared from the modern game though, for some reason.
Anyone with the capacity seems to get shoved forward into an attacking midfield role.
I can't think of any suitable players in that position that isn't quite old or at least in their prime.
Maybe Bellingham at Dortmund, but we've clearly missed that boat.

The other option is trying to bring White or Devine through, but that's a massive ask.
Both seem pretty talented, yet I expect them to play less demanding roles first, possibly out on loan.

 

[Dier Hard]

I don't even think that the players that we've brought in have been bad, necessarily.
We've just bought in areas that we didn't need to and neglected areas that needed strengthening.

We don't have a creative central midfielder, lack backup for Kane and only have one right-winger.
We've got tons of left-wingers, attacking midfielders and centre-halves.
The last of those might make sense now that we've got a manager that likes 3 at the back, though.

We need a Modric, Pirlo, Xavi, Carrick or the like to make the team tick.
Such players seem to have virtually disappeared from the modern game though, for some reason.
Anyone with the capacity seems to get shoved forward into an attacking midfield role.
I can't think of any suitable players in that position that isn't quite old or at least in their prime.
Maybe Bellingham at Dortmund, but we've clearly missed that boat.

The other option is trying to bring White or Devine through, but that's a massive ask.
Both seem pretty talented, yet I expect them to play less demanding roles first, possibly out on loan.

I’d say they’ve been bad for Tottenham, especially a few of them anyway but they’re not essentially bad players. Many of them excelled in other leagues or other clubs but haven’t brought those levels to us for one reason or another.

I think Lo Celso and Ndombele were meant to be the creative midfield additions. Lo Celso was seemingly Eriksen’s replacement and Ndombele was Dembele’s but both have been nowhere near their predecessors. That there though is arguably an issue as maybe the club shouldn’t look at replacing players with likely poor imitations and instead target the best possible players in a position and then utilise a tactic that suits them. Dembele was never a like for like Modric replacement but he made the midfield position his own with his own style, and that’s maybe what Spurs need to do, instead of trying to replace Dembele, sign a great midfielder and utilise their ability in a tweaked system that fits them, rather than hoping they become Dembele part 2.

Agree on the dying breed of those deeper lying playmakers, I guess it’s a little understandable as those listed are unbelievable players so they don’t come along often but it seems like they’ve all just vanished. I reckon Italy is possibly the best place to look at the moment though, feels like Serie A / Italy is getting a bit of a rebirth and it’s produced an abundance of very good midfielders with the likes of Veratti, Barella, Jorginho, Locatelli, Pessina, Cristante and Tonali all seemingly the types of players we and others would love, not forgetting the likes of Milinkovic-Savic, Kessie and Brozovic who’ve been developed in Italy too. It’s probably a good thing right now to have both Conte and Paratici as hopefully they can tap into that market with their knowledge and experience.

I wouldn’t be against either of those two getting chances, Devine especially seems a massive talent and it’s a shame he doesn’t yet qualify as HG as he’d possibly have made the squad for some ECL games already.

 

["Thanks for that Brian"]

I know some will find an entire post using only one syllable words impressive but the only thing that'll impress me is if you can convey this message through interpretative dance ... I await your video good sir

Right....

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

Not one person has "made out" that you have £400m to spend
Most people understand the basics of FFP and what the article is saying, that being the fact that the money you spent on playing staff in regard to your income left you with a potential to spend a further £400m over the FFP period if you had the money to spend.

Except the ones bringing up the figure of £400m or how we can spend half of that figure

A figure which doesn't exist, due to being an estimate

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

Whether people spent more (recouped more in sales) or spent badly (fools with money), it still doesn't deny the fact that for a club in the CL and relatively low wages, you guys are being outspent by clubs with less money. I can only conclude its because the club is conscious that they need the money for the stadium. Regardless if this is true or not, the initial statement of fact is tottenham were not spending much money net on transfers during that period.

Here is the net spend of the clubs for the entire 17/18 season.

1.City 260m
2.Man U 140m
3.Chelsea 70m
4.Everton 70m
5.Brighton 60m
6.Watford 47m
7.Huddersfield 45m
8.WBA 43m
9.Palace 41m
10.Bournemouth 30m
11.Leicester 30m
12.Tottenham 20m
13.Newcastle 17m
14.Stoke 12m
15.Liverpool -1m
16.Arsenal -6.5m
17.West Ham -14m
18.Burnley -13m
19.Swansea -15m
20.Southampton -33m

Your "HUGE" spending put you only 4m net spend over the most tight of chairmen in the world (Mike Ashley)

see source

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/pre...saison_id=2017&s_w=&leihe=0&intern=0&intern=1

Except we weren't being outspent, you introduced net into the conversation after it was pointed out that, no, twelve Premier League clubs did not spend more than us in the summer of 2017

Brighton did not spend more than us
Watford did not spend more than us
Huddersfield...you get the point

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

The other day a friend and I were mulling over a radically new idea whereby points gained are adjusted for money spent. E.g. if City beat someone like Burnley they'd only receive 3 points if they won by 6 goals. Winning by a single goal would only generate 0.5 points etc.

It would a nightmare of a system to implement and oversee but would certainly make things interesting and would also stop teams parking the bus every game as if for example Burnley beat City, they'd get 7 points instead of getting 1 for drawing. Giant killings would be properly rewarded while teams spending GDPs to improve a squad would see little benefit.

We'd had a few drinks but it seemed an interesting idea at the time

You joke, but 12-15 years ago Ligue 1 floated an idea of teams getting a bonus point if they won by more than three goals, as this was somehow the best solution they could come up with in response to Ligue 1 being particularly 1-0ish for a few years before that point as opposed to maybe considering that it might help the league if clubs didn't regularly have their most promising starlets poached by Premier League and La Liga clubs when they were still at the clubs' academies

I'm trying to work out why that idea died a death more: was it because UEFA shot it down as soon as they caught wind of it, or was it because pitching it as "Like they do in rugby" is guaranteed to draw a particularly disdainful Gallic look from several dozen club owners at once?

 

[Citizen Kane.]

In 2018-19 we'd have won the league Just by turning up

Also the 2016/17 season wouldn't have been nearly as painful as Leicester would have had the title wrapped up by February.

Actually come to think of it under my new system West Ham will probably win the title this year, so I think we'll shelve the plans for now

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

In words of one syllable...

The men who own the club have spent all of the cash on a new ground to play games, a new ground to train the squad and to buy land to build homes, shops and stuff. This means that the men who own the club, Joe and Dan, need to find more cash to put in to the club, to buy part of a new team for our new coach or we will get more **** than we are right now. THE CASH THE CLUB HAD IN THE LAST THREE YEARS HAS ALL BEEN SPENT. THEY NEED TO PUT IN NEW CASH FROM THE HUGE WEALTH JOE HAS.

The rules mean that they can do this but they have not, as they want to build more stuff and have now bought a golf course. Rich men like Joe and Dan, like to make more cash. While they do this, each new chump of a coach will fail and we will have to pay them a lot of dosh to **** off. A lot of the fans are now cross and want Dan and Joe to spend their cash on the team. Right now! The old team is...well, not too good, so Kane wants to leave' Our great new coach will leave too, if they do not put in the cash the team needs...

Get it?

In words with any basis in reality
1.) An article estimating the club can spend £400m and still comply with FFP is not an article saying we have £400m in cash
2.) In the past two years we have spent at least £150m on players, most obviously Ndombele, Lo Celso, Sessegnon, Bergwijn, Emerson and Gil, so saying that "all of the cash" has been spent on anything but players is patently absurd
3.) Which is the one asset the club has right now which is generating revenue from multiple sources, for example the NFL deal and so forth? Oh right, that would be THE ****ING STADIUM. And what's the one thing we had 0 revenue from for over a year and, until recently, had a statistic bout there being more matches played in front of empty stands than in front of crowds entirely due to our cretinous government placing landlords' interests above maybe considering taking any measures at all to head off a global pandemic spreading our way? Why, it would be that same stadium, almost as if the one thing that was designed and built to generate higher revenues was hamstrung by the fact that you can't generate a penny of revenue if the entire country's in lockdown
4.) The rules mean that, if the club has £400m, they can spend every last penny of it and comply with FFP. What is the operative word in that sentence? HAS, because if the club doesn't actually have £400m to hand - which, and I'm going to hazard a guess here, just like 99% of clubs in world football it doesn't - then it can't spend £400m without racking up several hundred million quid of debt, what that estimated figure says is that if we had the liquidity from Champions League football, regular income from the stadium and money from TV deals then it can be spent, but you remove one of those pillars and those revenue streams get a lot smaller, and guess what? Two of those pillars were removed in the last couple of years

 

[BobbyD]

Except we weren't being outspent, you introduced net into the conversation after it was pointed out that, no, twelve Premier League clubs did not spend more than us in the summer of 2017

Brighton did not spend more than us
Watford did not spend more than us
Huddersfield...you get the point

Of course it is down to netspend. It always is as that is the barometer of how much the club is putting into replacing its players and investing into the football side of things. You could spend 200m tomorrow and "OUTSPEND" everyone in the league but if you did that on the back of selling Son and Kane then you might as well forget that the club has outspent everyone as you have weakened your team (hypothetically speaking)

 

[remembercolinlee]

In words with any basis in reality
1.) An article estimating the club can spend £400m and still comply with FFP is not an article saying we have £400m in cash
2.) In the past two years we have spent at least £150m on players, most obviously Ndombele, Lo Celso, Sessegnon, Bergwijn, Emerson and Gil, so saying that "all of the cash" has been spent on anything but players is patently absurd
3.) Which is the one asset the club has right now which is generating revenue from multiple sources, for example the NFL deal and so forth? Oh right, that would be THE ****ING STADIUM. And what's the one thing we had 0 revenue from for over a year and, until recently, had a statistic bout there being more matches played in front of empty stands than in front of crowds entirely due to our cretinous government placing landlords' interests above maybe considering taking any measures at all to head off a global pandemic spreading our way? Why, it would be that same stadium, almost as if the one thing that was designed and built to generate higher revenues was hamstrung by the fact that you can't generate a penny of revenue if the entire country's in lockdown
4.) The rules mean that, if the club has £400m, they can spend every last penny of it and comply with FFP. What is the operative word in that sentence? HAS, because if the club doesn't actually have £400m to hand - which, and I'm going to hazard a guess here, just like 99% of clubs in world football it doesn't - then it can't spend £400m without racking up several hundred million quid of debt, what that estimated figure says is that if we had the liquidity from Champions League football, regular income from the stadium and money from TV deals then it can be spent, but you remove one of those pillars and those revenue streams get a lot smaller, and guess what? Two of those pillars were removed in the last couple of years

Let's cut the **** ... enough of the poncey word crap

Interpretive dance or mimes videos to decide this or everyone stfu.

 

[BobbyD]

In words with any basis in reality
1.) An article estimating the club can spend £400m and still comply with FFP is not an article saying we have £400m in cash
2.) In the past two years we have spent at least £150m on players, most obviously Ndombele, Lo Celso, Sessegnon, Bergwijn, Emerson and Gil, so saying that "all of the cash" has been spent on anything but players is patently absurd
3.) Which is the one asset the club has right now which is generating revenue from multiple sources, for example the NFL deal and so forth? Oh right, that would be THE ****ING STADIUM. And what's the one thing we had 0 revenue from for over a year and, until recently, had a statistic bout there being more matches played in front of empty stands than in front of crowds entirely due to our cretinous government placing landlords' interests above maybe considering taking any measures at all to head off a global pandemic spreading our way? Why, it would be that same stadium, almost as if the one thing that was designed and built to generate higher revenues was hamstrung by the fact that you can't generate a penny of revenue if the entire country's in lockdown
4.) The rules mean that, if the club has £400m, they can spend every last penny of it and comply with FFP. What is the operative word in that sentence? HAS, because if the club doesn't actually have £400m to hand - which, and I'm going to hazard a guess here, just like 99% of clubs in world football it doesn't - then it can't spend £400m without racking up several hundred million quid of debt, what that estimated figure says is that if we had the liquidity from Champions League football, regular income from the stadium and money from TV deals then it can be spent, but you remove one of those pillars and those revenue streams get a lot smaller, and guess what? Two of those pillars were removed in the last couple of years

You realise that FFP is a function of the clubs annual revenue against the football expenditure. If you have the highest FFP number, it means your club is GENERATING more revenue but spending LESS than everyone else.

that income generated has gone somewhere else and not on the club side.

 

[BobbyD]

Let's cut the **** ... enough of the poncey word crap

Interpretive dance or mimes videos to decide this or everyone stfu.

Well volunteered to going first RCL

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

Of course it is down to netspend. It always is as that is the barometer of how much the club is putting into replacing its players and investing into the football side of things. You could spend 200m tomorrow and "OUTSPEND" everyone in the league but if you did that on the back of selling Son and Kane then you might as well forget that the club has outspent everyone as you have weakened your team (hypothetically speaking)

No, it isn't. For example, say Burley bought three players for £10m each and sold nobody, while Liverpool bought three players for £25m each but sold somebody for £100m, that would mean Burnley "outspent" Liverpool by £5m when, in actual fact, Liverpool clearly spent more than three times what Burnley spent

And that is what happened in the summer of 2017: Palace spunked £50m up the wall on effectively three players (Sakho, Riedewald, Sorloth) while only receiving one substantial transfer fee for Mandanda while releasing a bunch of players. That does not mean they outspent more than half of the Premier League, that meant they spent marginally more on three players than we spent on Sanchez, and that's why claiming net blatantly obscures the actual numbers involved

Same goes for Leicester: they spent £80m+ and the only substantial fee they got was the £35m for Drinkwater, so does that mean they spent less than Palace? No, it doesn't, because they paid considerably more that season than Palace did

 

[PowerSpurs]

In words of one syllable...

The men who own the club have spent all of the cash on a new ground to play games, a new ground to train the squad and to buy land to build homes, shops and stuff. This means that the men who own the club, Joe and Dan, need to find more cash to put in to the club, to buy part of a new team for our new coach or we will get more **** than we are right now. THE CASH THE CLUB HAD IN THE LAST THREE YEARS HAS ALL BEEN SPENT. THEY NEED TO PUT IN NEW CASH FROM THE HUGE WEALTH JOE HAS.

The rules mean that they can do this but they have not, as they want to build more stuff and have now bought a golf course. Rich men like Joe and Dan, like to make more cash. While they do this, each new chump of a coach will fail and we will have to pay them a lot of dosh to **** off. A lot of the fans are now cross and want Dan and Joe to spend their cash on the team. Right now! The old team is...well, not too good, so Kane wants to leave' Our great new coach will leave too, if they do not put in the cash the team needs...

Get it?

By the way we have not bought a golf course. We have leased land that used to be a golf course to build new facilities for the women's team. The cost seems to be 75k per year from year 6 with a premium of 500k up front. It's a good project and the cost is negligible in the grand scheme of things.

 

["Thanks for that Brian"]

By the way we have not bought a golf course. We have leased land that used to be a golf course to build new facilities for the women's team. The cost seems to be 75k per year from year 6 with a premium of 500k up front. It's a good project and the cost is negligible in the grand scheme of things.

Sorry, Daniel. You are correct and I did know that but I was concentrating on using one syllable and omitted to say leased.

I will make sure not to do it again.

 

[PleaseNotPoll]

You realise that FFP is a function of the clubs annual revenue against the football expenditure. If you have the highest FFP number, it means your club is GENERATING more revenue but spending LESS than everyone else.

No, it doesn't. It means that we're generating more and not spending as much of that revenue.

I'll make it a hypothetical.
We generate £400m and spend £100m and Palace generate £160m and spend £80m.
We've spent more than them, but they've eaten into far more of their FFP limit.

 

["Thanks for that Brian"]

No, it doesn't. It means that we're generating more and not spending as much of that revenue...

...on football related matters.

You'll get in trouble if you don't say that the money's all been spent.

 

[BobbyD]

No, it doesn't. It means that we're generating more and not spending as much of that revenue.

I'll make it a hypothetical.
We generate £400m and spend £100m and Palace generate £160m and spend £80m.
We've spent more than them, but they've eaten into far more of their FFP limit.

i'm not sure that's helping the argument mate, so you're saying that they are keeping money back in the coffers eh? For things like a golf course and making spurs more profitable rather than helping the team?

 

[PleaseNotPoll]

i'm not sure that's helping the argument mate, so you're saying that they are keeping money back in the coffers eh? For things like a golf course and making spurs more profitable rather than helping the team?

I'm saying that increasing our revenue also increases our FFP limit.
That's why... certain clubs are sponsored by connected interests, let's say...

 

[PowerSpurs]

i'm not sure that's helping the argument mate, so you're saying that they are keeping money back in the coffers eh? For things like a golf course and making spurs more profitable rather than helping the team?

We've literally spent nothing on a golf course.
By the way the extra revenue created since leaving White Hart Lane is already around £200m despite Covid. So half of the ffp headroom wouldn't even exist if we had not invested in the stadium.