Arsenal outspend us, as do virtually every other team that wins the FA Cup. Since 95/96 I think only Portsmouth, Wigan and Leicester haven't. 3 out of about 28 is not a lot, is it? Each of those clubs has had very dodgy finances, too. I didn't even notice that until I typed it out.
Then the question has to be asked, do they have more income than you or are they just putting more of it back into the club/team.?
Relationships help but ultimately you just need the right fits for the club and manager. Luck can definitely play a part too. Most of our signings this season on paper made a fair bit of sense but Conte’s massively messed up with tactics and squad management and it’s resulting in a number of new and existing players not being anywhere near as good as they can be, Bissouma especially is/ was regarded by many as one of the best CMs in the Prem yet Conte has not only sparingly used him prior to his injury but has been playing him as a DM. That’d be like ten Hag signing Casemiro to play him as a playmaker instead of a DM where he’s been one of the best in Europe for almost a decade. But speaking of Casemiro and Eriksen, I think that’s what’s really helped ten Hag, he’s managed to bring in two players that came with the guarantee of being huge hits. Of the other four signings, Martinez has largely done well after a shaky start, the other three not so much but three successful signings out of six is a positive outcome and it’s shown in Utd’s improvement from last season.
The other clubs? They have more income than us and they're putting more of it into the team. That's before you even look at a club like City and their alleged off-the-books spending. Our revenue overtook Arsenal during covid, IIRC.
Clubs like Brighton and Brentford have used slightly different methods for player recruitment. It's worked out well for both of them so far. They've yet to win a trophy, though. They've seen their staff picked off by other clubs, which highlights the problem.
Very well run, with a superb scouting network, a clear vision and style of play that transcends all age groups and coaching teams, and a knack for picking the right managers to lead that vision. They also aren't afraid to sell players if the price is right, even if the time might be wrong. These are all crucial ingredients if you can't simply buy your way out of problems. We used to possess a lot of these qualities as it happens. We now have very, very few unfortunately.
They've had more income until two years ago. There is a lag between spending and seeing the benefits.
Having more money is a significant advantage. If you look at the top three in the league over the last 25 seasons, 69 out of the 75 places were from clubs in the top 5 incomes. The six exceptions are Leeds, Newcastle, Leicester and Spurs three times. Winning a domestic cup is bit easier to achieve but the vast majority of winners come from the top 5 richest clubs....41 out of the last 50 winners. Of the other 9, Spurs feature twice, as do Leicester.
I don't see the players Arsenal were buying when they were winning these recent FA Cups as being out of Spurs reach. And my other point was that there's no excuse for a club like Spurs not to be winning a trophy in 15 years. For me it's largely about the way a club is run. The owners and board employ the Chief Exex and DOF who know what they want the football and ethos of the club to be about. They recruit a manager and players that suit that goal and then you have everyone pulling in the right direction. Something Arsenal have done and we're once again beginning to do, but Spurs continue to fail in.
The problem with just looking at it like this is that the players don't become better just bcos they're more expensive. The traditional richer clubs have always been expected to pay more for their players. Selling clubs will rinse the richer clubs with a premium on the sale value. And btw no one knows that better than Daniel Levy. The bigger question is why are players more likely to leave than stick with Spurs like Harry Kane has. It's partly bcos they don't see success there. And what's happened to Harry Kane will only be another reinforcer of that notion to future players.
Former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp says he would "love" to work with Ryan Mason if he is appointed interim boss. (talkSPORT)
managers and players once they leave Spurs to a club of similar size or slightly above, start to bag the trophies sad but true
Let's wait and see how they do in the FA Cup before drawing too many conclusions. If they win that and achieve European qualification too, I'd say they've just had a better season than we've managed since 2019.
Which of these qualities do you think we possessed? the clearest vision maybe to some extent since we prided ourselves on ‘knocking it about a bit’ but that came more from yesteryear achievements and the fans…not the ownership…I’ve never felt any positive football energy from our owners. I don’t think they have much of a vision for the football team…never have. 14 managers under Levy and counting I’m not sure he has a jiffy about anything to do with football.
Football365 have joined the "Let's Make **** Up" Army by claiming that Conte and Levy had a falling out when Levy blocked a double bid for Stefan de Vrij and Romelu Lukaku First of all, this is clearly bollocks as double deals for established first team players don't really exist and only for youngsters, for example the Walker/Naughton or Reid/Dawson deals - and that’s before the obvious point that the phrase "double deal" implies the two players are on the books at the same club, when Lukaku is on loan from Chelsea. So great research there! Secondly, even if it is true, Lukaku? I'm not bloody surprised Levy blocked a deal for him given how he flopped hard at both Man Utd and Chelsea in the last five years, and frankly I can't think of many chairmen who would be pleased to have a manager who insisted we pay £60m for Richarlison would be keen to drop a similar fee within six months when Richy was barely integrated into the team
I think we used to have a decent knack for spotting youngsters and developing them (Carrick, Lennon, Bale, Walker, Rose, Dawson, Dele etc.). And then we weren't scared of selling them on if the price was right (even if the time was wrong) (Carrick, Bale, Walker etc.). I think under Poch what we added to this was a clear footballing philosophy that permeated the entire club and led to a solid number of academy products who if not Harry Kane's level could at least play an important role in the first team squad (Townsend, Mason, Bentaleb, Winks, Skipp, Tanganga etc.). The latter has almost totally dried up in recent years, which is inevitable when a club changes managers (and therefore visions) as frequently as we have. Plus different managers have differing attitudes toward the academy teams, so whereas Jose was actually quite invested in watching their games and tracking progress, Nuno largely ignored them and per Ally Gold's recent article, Conte uses them as training cones for the senior team. We vastly lost track of the former pretty much the day after Walker left. The first nail was losing Modric and then Bale to Madrid. That hurt Daniel's ego and he became much more stubborn when it came to our previous buy low sell high approach. He shouldn't have, as we still lacked the capital to buy high in the first place. But that was a foreign giant. It got much worse when a domestic rival pinched one of our most established players. That left Levy's ego bruised. It was as if he couldn't fathom how, with a billion pound stadium on the horizon and regular CL football, such a thing could happen. We then started clinging on to players for far too long, way after their performances had declined or their contracts had run so low that we barely scraped a profit when we did eventually sell them (Rose, Eriksen, Dele, Toby etc.). We also began to actually buy high but our scouting network, constant changing of manager and most importantly: the fact that we are still miles off the likes of City, United and Chelsea has led to this being a largely disastrous policy, with Romero our only big money purchase who might be worth the bother. I am encouraged that under Paratici we've started prioritising promising youngsters again. The likes of Gil, Sarr, Spence, Kulu and Udogie used to be the bread and butter of this club. What's changed since the days of Carrick and Berbatov etc. is that our wage ceiling is significantly higher and European football more of a certainty, so logically we will be able to fend off interest from bigger clubs with far greater ease. The stupidity of it though is that Fabio then appointed the one manager on planet earth who detests working with youngsters. I think if we continue to focus our networks on that profile of player, bring in a manager who can nurture the young talent, establish a clear footballing vision that will permeate all age groups at the club, be confident enough to sell players if the price is right and actually stop trying to buy high until we can genuinely compete with the teams who do it every single window, and I think in the medium run we will establish a really solid foundation from which we can build towards success. During that interim time I really hope we can win a couple of the domestic cups but the bigger prizes are at least 3-4 years out of our reach, largely because the last 3-4 years have been almost totally counterproductive. Let's start the cycle again, get the squad back to where it was under peak Poch, albeit this time round by the time that happens we will have a much higher wage ceiling, a billion pound stadium and an exponentially higher revenue, at which point we can genuinely enter the market for the Haalands and Bellinghams of the world, and push from there to challenge for the PL and CL. It isn't rocket science, but as you say and as I've said, Levy is a business genius and a football buffoon.
