We've actually been spending all the excess revenue on either wages or transfer fees. In fact we've made a loss for each of the last few seasons so we've overspent compared to revenue. That's possible because the interest rate on the stadium loans is so low that the interest payments are only about 40% of the depreciation so the cashflow is greater than the profit. I think there are a few reasons why we are not seeing a difference. The first is that the 2019 squad was vastly better than the price we paid for it so even with the extra revenue it was always going to be difficult to keep the standard that high. Secondly our high value signings have generally vastly underperformed. When I mention luck in football, one of the things that covers is transfer success. We had a great run between 2015 and 2018 and a much poorer one since. Liverpool did something similar. Thirdly, while we have caught Arsenal and Chelsea on revenue, we haven't caught them on squad value. Both can still outspend us in the short run, because they don't have loan covenants restricting their flexibility. Whether we can do Chelsea's trick and sell something to a related company for a profit, I don't know...there is a loophole in PSR that allows such things but I suspect the banks that loaned us the stadium money have better lawyers than the FA.
Our wage ceiling increased year on year following the stadium move, but with a number of very high earners (Hugo, Harry, Dier, Ndombele and Perisic) leaving in quick succession without like-for-like replacements, that ceiling seems to have come down significantly. Same for average net spends in the market. We've seen a huge increase in that area, but for the problems I've cited above, haven't seen enough value for money or ROI. We're stuck in a catch-22 in that we can't afford the players the likes of City, Chelsea and Liverpool chase (and even if we could, they probably wouldn't join us as we don't win trophies and don't offer regular CL football), but we can comfortably afford the players the likes of Villa, Newcastle and Brighton chase. The problem with the latter is that there is nothing to guarantee value for money so a superb scouting and recruitment network is crucial or we run the risk of picking up duds. The other major and more obvious problem is that selling clubs take one look at our stadium, another look at the Forbes list and slap on a hefty VAT to the asking price, simply because when push comes to shove - we can afford to pay it and if we're desperate, we will. See Richarlison, Solanke and Johnson for further details. This results in further questions about value for money because whilst we're not signing bad players per se, their price tag will always weigh against their contribution and when the time comes, we will almost certainly be forced to sell them at a loss.
So, with PS’s data comments in mind, and what you’re saying here about not being able to compete with certain clubs (which PS has also alluded to, saying we simply just need more money), is it not fair to say that we’re making poor decisions compared to those clubs you mention (Newcastle, villa, Brighton) are at our level? That’s the 6th, 8th and 9th placed teams (respectively) in the league who currently look miles better than us. The worst of those 3 (Brighton) has 10 points more than us, constantly loses players to bigger clubs, and has had a few managerial changes in recent times. Surely it can’t be down to luck, and, for us, it’s got to be down to recruitment choices which stem from the top? Ange definitely has to take some of the blame, but surely levy has to take most of it? - Brighton are forever finding talent for next to nothing, where as we don’t know whether to sack our manager or buy players in a transfer window. It’s this sort of thing that absolutely reeks of us not ever having a real plan.
Where I find we’ve been going wrong in the transfer market, especially now post-stadium is that we’re targeting too many players that’d happily join the likes of Brentford if they made a bid/ had the money. I agree in general with what CK says in terms of the elite won’t join us and that we end up overpaying for average ones but I do believe there is a bracket of player in between those. Players that are deemed very good but not quite elite (yet!), players that would definitely say no to midtable Prem sides but are perhaps not on the radar of the truly big dogs (or maybe on their radars but with little intention to bid). Players in the past that fit that sort of mould for me would’ve been the likes of Dembele, Vertonghen and Son. They’re the standout ones that instantly came to mind. A more recent example would probably be Romero. If we targeted more players like this, we’d be a real problem in the league, especially if they were also accompanied by promising young players as well as a few who the data based analysts spot. This is why I’ve often said we should look at emulating clubs like Dortmund or Brighton but equally understand we have considerably greater resources - especially now. Despite our horrific plight at the moment we are a very big club in Europe, yet I generally feel we don’t act as such far too often.
Tom Barclay says the second leg against Liverpool will be Ange's Waterloo, unless things go south against Hoffenheim and/or Leicester ...at which point do you notice how blatantly Barclay is setting up "See? I told you so" if Ange gets sacked after any one of those three?
I don’t get why we’d sack him if we lost to Liverpool? anfield is a place we never win at anyway even if we were top and Liverpool were 15th in league two so not a judge of a spurs manager. I think unless we lose on Sunday, Ange is here till end of the season at least when we’ll have more chance of getting the manager we want if he does go.
I think it’s down to the fact that the cup is what’s keeping him in a job at the moment. His league form is sackable, his cup form isn’t. Lose in the cup and it’s almost certainly bye bye.
The logic is we avoid the optics of sacking a manager before a cup final again But the weasel wordery of the article sneaking in a suggestion he could be sacked in the interim makes it clear they're Mystic Megging
Your analysis is basically correct but overlooks one important fact. The very best players probably prefer to join 8 or 9 European clubs as well as the 5 bigger clubs in Europe. If you take the top 25 players in each position out of the equation then the difference between the ones that are left is pretty small. In sports like tennis, matches between the world no 25 and 75 are often very close and if you were trying to decide which of the players ranked 25 to 75 to sign you would have quite a problem. The clubs you mention might be doing better than us now but that doesn’t prove they have a strategy that would work for us...they have rarely been above us. I agree with @Dier Hard though. We need to buy the very best of those available to us but how we guarantee that is a bit of a mystery.
Levy has to take the blame for not strengthening when we were in a position of unexpected strength. I get that the stadium build was a major distraction, but where PS and I fully agree (a rarity) is that the team we assembled under peak Poch had no business playing for Tottenham Hotspur. When you compare what we spent to assemble that team and then imagine we sold all of them at the end of the 2017 season, the gap between cost and worth would have been utterly ridiculous. We're talking £600-700m profit comfortably. Levy should have been prescient enough to realise that this minor miracle wouldn't last forever, and moved heaven and earth to give Poch whatever he needed to keep that group fresh and competitive. We didn't do that. Instead, we failed to invest at all in 2018-19, hang on to players well past their sell by date and allowed others to run their contracts down. And then when Poch was finally given solid money to spend, he got three months to make chapter two work. Some of us, iirc it was myself, Brian, DH and Spurlock, predicted then what we are seeing now: Having allowed a good thing to slip through our fingers, the chances of lightning striking twice would be slim to impossible, and our average level of quality would decline steadily. This was clearly our hope with Ange, that he would be another BMJ/Poch relatively unknown repeat of lightning in a bottle, but it hasn't worked out. In fact he's probably more of a polar opposite to Poch than even Jose or Conte were because of his lack of tactical nous and the fact that the senior players are not responding to his methods. Jose and Conte at the very least got the best out of their best players. And so now we're stuck in the catch 22 I described above. It can be partly fixed by not making simple mistakes like signing players we don't really need, blatantly overpaying for some players and carrying underwhelming players for years hoping they'll come good. If we stop doing these three things we are at worst on par with Villa, Brighton and Newcastle and our relatively higher wage ceiling and size should (should) give us access to better players than them. But there is a long and precarious road ahead of us and the margins for error are shrinking every year. There is every chance we could be permanently outflanked by the likes of Villa, Brighton, and Newcastle. Add them to the usual 4/5 teams who almost always finish above us, and we are officially a mid table side.
That’s the time to do it. The Poch team which had two good chances to win the league, but lost out to Leicester and Chelsea, would probably have succeeded with some investment in the transfer market when the team was strong. Win the title and the Spurs fan base around the world increases, new income streams open up and then when you add in the match day revenues generated by the new stadium, Spurs have the financial clout to compete for the best players and stay at the top. It’s not that Spurs have pissed money up the wall like Utd and Chelsea and are now in a hole it’s difficult to dig out of, it’s just that there was no speculation to accumulate. Levy seems risk averse and is content for Spurs to grow slowly but steadily financially on the back of being average on the pitch, flirting with success, but not achieving it. Ultimately though, I don’t know how long income can be generated at the levels required without winning something. Utd do at least keep winning the odd cup, although the financial power is weakening and will continue to do so if the team is nowhere.
