Rival watch

So they got docked 15 points, had them given back, and were instead docked 10 points after Napoli won the league?

Still more effective than PGMOL...

 

Not sure PGMOL have the power to dock points.

 

Defamation (Pep IS the messiah and Arteta is a nsughty boy) .

 

Pretty sure they don't have the power to operate a lightswitch

 

Very true yet many moan about them costing teams points or giving teams points.

 

They're at least supposed to turn their monitors on, yet sometimes it's genuinely worth asking if they've done that

 

The Ros Atkins piece was very concise

 

How the living **** isn't that a red!
VAR didn't even send the ref to the monitor. Dodgy as ****...

 

But remember, we don't talk about FFP in reference to 1995, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2015, 2016, or 2017

 

Leicester are desperate for a win.
86 minutes gone - no shots

 

Barcodes in the CL.

 

No,Leicester were desperate for a point, they got it.

 

A point improves their chances v Leeds, but not Everton. If Everton win, they are relegated. Had they beaten Newcastle, it would have been in their own hands.

 

Same pts total (70) required as last season.
My gut feeling several weeks ago was that
Spurs would have needed 73 pts this season
(we shall see if that actually would have been the case) .

 

They're everything we're not at the moment. A proper footballing chairman, a well respected chief exec and an ambitious manager on the up with a playing squad clearly in it together.

 

it all starts at the top

 

Also getting dismantled by the Manc clubs and Liverpool in the next couple of years, if history repeats itself for the umpteenth time

 

They absolutely are. They’ve had a run of excellent recruitment decisions and it’s showing. I think it’s worthwhile to take learnings from their approach and incorporate it into how Spurs are ran, but we should also be looking to get ahead of the next curve. Their approach won’t be a differentiator for ever. The league is too competitive for that. It’s much, much harder to be Dortmund in the PL, and it isn’t easy to be Dortmund in the Bundesliga.

Football is cyclical. Southampton had a run of 8th, 7th, 6th and 8th beginning almost a decade ago, with a series of players (and one manager) who would go on to make moves, many wildly successful, to ‘Big 6’ clubs. Their academy was seen as the envy of the league and their recruitment was smart and a breeding ground for clubs at the sharp end of the league and Europe. Now they’re relegated. Just like Leicester may well be, who won the league in a perfect storm, recruited well for a while, won the FA Cup, and now their hot streak is over and they’re in serious trouble. I know their owners have had financial issues off the back of Covid too. But both these clubs were held up as examples of how to do it, for a while.

The only way to break the cycle is serious ‘**** you’ wealth and a ruthless pursuit of excellence. We don’t quite have the former (though we have a lot of revenue generation now) and we clearly don’t have the latter right now. But I’d rather we try and be the best version of Spurs than copy Brighton or anyone else. Learn from others and learn from what made us successful in the past too, even if some of that was down to good fortune rather than pure planning. And always keep an eye on what’s next.