Urban development and sports entertainment (boxing, concerts etc) is far more profitable for ENIC than the football operation. They have probably realized that completing for top 4 and more is simply too expensive for them to swallow, ENIC will be happy as long as we make a profit, stay top half of the PL and keep the TV money rolling in. Spending money to achieve CL football or silverware was dropped from the agenda long ago, if by chance it happens, then great, but there is clearly no ambition to go after it at the expense of profit. Levy has had his fingers burnt with the likes of Ndombele, Sanchez, Bergwjin etc, so will probably be even more wary of making new signings. Obviously January is a difficult time to bring in new players, but other clubs have already brought in players that would have improved Spurs, so players are available of you try hard enough. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is about as irrelevant as it has ever been, Harry Kane knows it and you can bet Conte knows it by now too.
You seem to have no understanding of how football finance works. The ONLY way for Spurs to generate enough cash to compete with clubs who have always been much more successful than us (Arsenal, Liverpool, Man U) or who have been financially doped (Chelsea, Man C) is to maximise the contribution from all sources. Every Spurs owner before ENIC has ignored this basic fact which is why we were so far behind when the CL started. We are now at the point where our potential future income is pretty similar to the others.
At present ENIC could spend £400m on new players and not fall foul of any FFP sanctions. The money is already there should they want to find it. What they want is their cake and to eat it, by increasing revenue to spend on the football operation while at the same time trousering healthy profits. This business model will not elevate Tottenham Hotspur Football Club back to being even fairly regular trophy winners, which is why ENIC need to disappear and close the door behind them on the way out.
They have not 'trousered' a single penny of profits though. All has been reinvested so the £400m that we could theoretically spend is not available. There is no other business model which is better other than a criminal or a dodgy foreign government laundering money through the club.
please log in to view this image The obvious flaw in this thinking is that we're in that position because of ENIC. The very stuff that's being moaned about created that FFP balance.
Let's just see how many first team signings all Premier League clubs have made this window Arsenal - 0 Aston Villa - 2 Brentford - 0 Brighton - 1 Burnley - 0 Chelsea - 0 Crystal Palace - 0 Everton - 2 Leeds - 0 Leicester - 0 Liverpool - 0 The Sheikh Mansour Team - 0 Man Utd - 0 Newcastle - 2 Norwich - 0 Southampton - 1* Tottenham - 0 Watford - 1 West Scam - 0 Wolves - 1? But sure, we're the outlier...
As I said the first time this "statistic" was bandied about, there's a world of difference between the club being able to spend £400m and the club having £400m to spend Just like there's a difference between me being able to walk into the Aston Martin showroom on Marble Arch and me being frogmarched out of the Aston Martin showroom on Marble Arch when I ask if they can loan me a DB9 for the weekend
It's from a study conducted by the University of Liverpool for the Daily Fail. This bloke did it: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/management/staff/kieran-maguire/ He's using pre-tax profits as his yardstick, IIRC.
Reinvested into what, the football operation of their enterprise? They are property developers, there is way less risk with that than developing a successful football team. The bottom line is, with the competition Spurs are up against, as long as ENIC are here Spurs will not compete consistently on the pitch, their business model is not conducive to it. As such the football operation is largely irrelevant. Not all prospective new owners (before some Levyista comes along and says name them, I do not know who, but there will be people out there) are criminals or dodgy, 20 years of the misery of ENIC really has brainwashed some of our fans.
Ah, the realities of "on paper" wealth. The "money is there" for me to give you at least 900K. After which I won't have a penny to live on, or house to live in. I can break it down into : 1. cash = 200K + 2. pensions - 400K odd 3, house - 300K min (75K mortgage outstanding) Big difference isn't it, in terms of asset "liquidity" (I was once told that one of clan Getty said something akin to a man with £50 in their pocket is worth far more than £5000 in a house) .
I'm as anti ENIC as anyone on here but my understanding of the £400m leeway is that it only exists in theory. I.e. we'd need to loan that money from somewhere and would then owe it to someone. The debt burden of that loan won't break FFP rules, but we'd still be £400m in debt. Mafia clubs like Chelsea and City circumvent this issue by loaning the money to themselves from themselves via various shell companies and dodgy sponsorship deals so that they end up not owing anyone anything and also not breaking FFP. That's one option. The other option is to enjoy so much on field success that natural (and legal) revenue streams begin to pay off chunks of that debt. We tried this model and failed. Liverpool tried and succeeded. The benefit of the second option is that success is earned and revenue is above board. The major flaw in it is how unlikely it is to work over the long term. I.e. for Pool to continue doing what they've done well for the past 2-3 years and still compete with the mafia clubs, they'll need to win the PL or CL more or less every season until the Mansours and Abramovich die. The chances of that happening are very slim. So the only real way to make Option 2 sustainable is to create income flows that are not dependent on endless footballing success. Property, tourism, housing, commerce etc. are just a few areas that ENIC have invested in over the years. These are theoretically long-term revenues that allow for a club to compete financially without having to win a major trophy every single season. So I get the logic of how ENIC operate and have often said that Levy is a business genius. But as a sportsman? Complete buffoon. Poor recruitment, far too many poor managerial choices, a series of decisions that tarnished the club's image, thinking he had the nous to build a business empire and take care of footballing matters from 2018 to the hiring of Paratici etc. The list is a long and pretty damning one. I've often said if he left footballing matters to people who understand the game, we'd be in a much better place.
Conte's been promised something in terms of investment on the pitch, or he would have stuck by his decision in the summer, to stay in Italy. Hopefully, he's not been promised more Rodon's than Romero's, as he'll be gone. Even Levy must know that...and that he can't afford another failure. So, I would expect that there's a reasonably substantial sum (for Spurs) coming, but still think that it's unlikely to be a sale of the club, whilst use of the stadium is still at less than maximum. I'm not sure how much more debt the club can carry and even Lewis/Levy will struggle to create long term debt for financing buying players, who are short term assets. Just try getting a car loan for the same period of time as your mortgage or student loan! For a little while (over a year), it's been suggested that ENIC are looking to reduce the value of their shareholding. That would be a way of bringing in fresh money, which could boost the value of shares across the board, if spent in getting us back into the CL and delivering a bumper stadium sponsorship and getting the most out of our existing deals. Nobody's spending top dollar on stadium sponsorship whilst the fans are booing the team and chairman. City sold 10% a while back. We could raise circa £150m by doing the same. As we have the credit in FFP terms, we'd have no issue if we spent it on the team. It's difficult to make sense of the ENIC/Conte deal otherwise...but the money has to turn up...soon would be good...and by the summer TW is absolutely essential...or things will get very messy.
Reinvested into the training ground and the stadium, which is not a property investment as it can only make money if it houses a successful football team. I don't really expect you to name alternative owners but just one example of an owner in any league world wide who has taken a mid table club to being Champions League contenders without access to dodgy funds would suffice. I've not been brainwashed or miserable. I've been able to see my team play the world's best in the Champions League, be contenders in the Premier League, get to numerous Cup semi finals and a few finals, and actually get a season ticket instead of spending years below 10,000 on a waiting list. We've come up just short of trophies it is true but I can live with that given the advantages our opponents have.
There seem to be a lot of rumours that exactly that sort of deal was in the offing. Not easy to get that sort of thing over the line against a deadline though....the prospective buyer is bound to seek last minute discounts.
Agreed. Getting a deal like this across the line can be difficult and the rumour is that's exactly the case...and that Conte's more relaxed about it than many supporters. I've been calling for this kind of investment since WHL closed in 2017, so, as long as it happens and Conte's happy with it when it does, I'll be ok with it. If it doesn't happen, or happens and Conte's already walked, it'll be pitchfork time.
