By simply doing better. I know that sounds incredibly glib but that’s what it is. We have to invest in the squad better, be better at moving players on to help us do that. Make better decisions around coaches and style of play. There’s a massive mentality issue at the club and I think what’s being proven during the times of Mourinho and Conte at the club is that you can’t buy it quickly, it has to be built over time.
I think the biggest benefit we've had from the CL has probably come from leveraging better deals on loans for the new stadium - CL equals higher profile club which in turn equals more collateral. It has also helped us immeasurably to raise our wage ceiling and keep the likes of Kane and Son financially happy relative to where they could move to. However, even this has been a bit of a poisoned chalice, as it also means we have the likes of Ndombele, Dier, Lo Celso, Lucas and Richarlison are on stupid money and unsurprisingly therefore proving impossible to shift. All in all, it isn't clear how if at all the CL has benefitted us on the pitch. However, I doubt any of us would willingly sacrifice nights like Amsterdam, City or Dortmund. Ultimately those are the games we live to see our team play. Even the Marseille game this season, while not a glamour tie, produced the most amazing rollercoaster of emotions with an incredible finish the likes of which you just don't see as often in the PL simply because there usually isn't nearly as much at stake (at least that is the popular perception).
These days, Tottenham Hotspur football club exists merely to generate revenue for ENIC, that`s it, nothing else. There is zero interest from the ownership in the football team winning anything, to them a place in the CL is success, because it is the biggest financial reward to be had from the team, if they can do it with the smallest financial outlay, then even better. The financial rewards for winning domestic cups is a pittance in comparison to the PL & CL, the players are probably on a bonus for finishing in the top 4, so you can see why they can`t get up for an FA Cup game.
Since ENIC withdraw none of the revenue this cannot be true. I am pretty sure that ENIC are more driven by the value of the club which would be slightly enhanced by winning a domestic cup and massively enhanced by winning the PL and CL. We are spending as much money as Liverpool and Arsenal and have moved from being well behind them in the League to usually finishing above them. The fact that they have won more trophies recently is just one of those things.
I don't think this is particularly surprising. We've suddenly started competing for players with the really big clubs. They have had much more practice than us, mostly still have more money and are a bigger draw for any player due to their past success.
But that’s the problem, we haven’t. What elite player have we even tried competing for since being in the CL? All of our big money signings have still largely been those with potential and with not much interest elsewhere, whereas I’m not quite sure what category Richarlison fits into as he’s neither someone with potential nor elite level pedigree. None of them came with truly established reputations in the world of football. We’ve had interest in some players but as far as I can remember we’ve not been in a tug of war for anyone truly significant and won - or even lost. Utd paid just £10m more for Casemiro than we did for Richarlison. A world class defensive midfielder who was part of one of the best midfield trios in footballing history and a guy who does a pigeon celebration whilst playing for Everton. Even with CL money and stature, we’re largely not targeting nor competing for the right players.
Just play 'Billy bingo' . Choose a round number N, and see whether the Nth word in a Billy posting is "Levy" or "ENIC" . Pro tip : choose N <= 15 will see you win very often.
Not exactly. They had 1 shot on target. 4 shots in total. We had 17 shots, 4 of which hit the target. Makes it sound better than it was, to be honest.
Casemiro's 31 and he's on about 3 times the wages that Richarlison is. We still can't compete financially with Utd. Virtually nobody can, barring sportswashing clubs.
You’re right but ignoring age and resell value (although Spurs will be lucky to get half the Richarlison money back) it’s makes a statement signing world class players like Casemiro who have won it all and seen it. Spurs probably hoped Perisic would be that guy to pass on a winning mentality and bring experience to the team but it just hasn’t worked out.
And he’s worth every single penny and some. Our guy, bag of chips. And that’s the problem, we’re not targeting players who’ll elevate us, we’re just massively overpaying on bang average quality.
Schoolboy error to think that the cost of a player to a club is solely their transfer fee (dare we mention "Adeb---r" ?? ) .
Casemiro was an excellent signing for Utd. He's virtually immune to red cards while playing for them. Even throttling somebody got the press rushing to his defence. We still can't attract players from the likes of Madrid though and we can't afford his enormous wages. I think that we should put Kane on that sort of salary, but a new player wouldn't get that much.
Regarding signing players in recent seasons, it's an obvious thing to say but it's not only that the financially doped clubs win all the trophies, but they've also hoovered up most of the best players (often not to be in their starting XI). It would be fair to say I think, that had Chelski and Citeh not existed in their current form, a lot of the players that went to them and helped them win stuff would have been available for other clubs to buy, including us. Of course to suggest such things on TalkShite and similar simply leads to shouts of bad loser etc, as they continue to refuse to discuss where the money came from, and how responsible it was for winning all those tainted trophies.
I think that would probably imply that there’s only about 20 or so top level signings available and realistically there’s closer to 100-150. Chelsea this season have also largely overspent on average players. I think the very best clubs like City, Bayern, Paris, Madrid etc have around 6-8 truly elite players in their XIs, surrounded by a bunch of other very good players. A club like us has one truly elite player in Kane, with Son just a small step behind plus the likes of Kulusevski, Bentancur and Romero who are also very good. If we could add just a few more on the level of Son and co, let alone another Kane, it’d do wonders for our league positioning and progress in cups. What we need to stop doing though is paying elite player prices for players who aren't elite. Especially when we’re in Europe’s premier competition. It’s killing us and setting us back years in development, as we’ve seen/ are seeing with the signings of Ndombele, Lo Celso, Richarlison etc.
They are taking revenue out of the club to build go-karting tracks, hotels etc, they don`t put a penny of their own money in, they use the clubs own money to develop infrastructure that has little benefit to the football team.
Finances are a big factor. I recently had a look at the silverware "diversity" for the English league, on a per decade basis. So how many different winners per decade of the league and domestic cups. I recall that the numbers were quite consistent until the PL really got going, and notably overlapping with when UEFA initiated the "Champions League" competition format. The period seems to be where the financial "have and have nots" occurred (the "Sky 4" etc) , and the "vicious circle" that only the Sugga Daddy FCs were capable of usurping / gate-crashing.
