Ramos' opinions are severely undermined by the fact that Redknapp replaced him and immediately got a response from the same group of players. Pavlyuchenko and Bent scored the goals in the first game of the new manager's tenure, a 2-0 win over Bolton. Bent scored in the next game, the 4-4 at Arsenal, Pav scored the winner against Liverpool in the next game and then Bent got a brace as we won away to City. Maybe he should've tried managing the players that he had, instead of moaning and not learning the language? As for Villa and Eto'o, I don't know what he was on when he suggested them. Villa had just finished as top scorer at Euro 2008 and turned down a move to Real Madrid. Eto'o was at Barcelona and didn't play til December because of an injury. Is Spurs run as a business? Of course it is. Most clubs are. Levy seems to be doing a far better job than a lot of them, though.
Good point, but qualifying for CL is a form of winning. Both our clubs would love to be mixing it with the likes of Real and Bayern. I know it's not an actual trophy, but a goal all the same.
If winning isn't important to us, as Ramos claims, why did we get rid of him and his coaching staff when it was obvious that winning games was increasingly unlikely with him in charge?
"Good point, but qualifying for CL is a form of winning." In England it is. Especially now we see the easy money the Sky 4 have gorged themselves on for years (no wonder they hate the prospect of Spurs taking any of their places for good) .
He really loses all credibility (I know, loose usage of the word...) when he blames Levy for selling Berbatov. The guy was at Man Utd's training ground and had his medical without our knowledge let alone consent when their ransom demand came in, so Levy is completely blameless in that regard. It's amazing that, in the space of five years, Ramos has forgotten this - because no Spurs fan has forgotten this, and more importantly Levy certainly hasn't forgotten this. Ramos saying that Bent scoring in pre-season is the reason we sold Keane and Berbatov is, frankly, insulting.
He has guaranteed his welcome will be even "warmer" than it would have been. I guess if he'd kept his gob shut, he's have got a polite round of applause due to that victory over Chelsea.
I want the weakest possible squad out there to win the away leg decisively. Then Ramos can enjoy coming to WHL and chatting about the Academy players his team will play.
"The two strikers that I asked for were Samuel Etoâo and David Villa. But we were left with Darren Bent and Roman Pavlyuchenko." Ouch!
Oh yeah and in the interview he says that spurs had to "spend big in the next transfer windows to make up for transfer mistakes"...we bought back Defoe (sold by him) Kaboul (sold by him) Chimbonda (sold by him) and Keane (sold by him) ... the man is a dick ... and HE BOUGHT BENTLEY!!!!! (not that I am stewing over it)
Here's the thing with ENIC - people rightly say how much we've improved since they took over. We're now Euro-regulars and have been challenging for the CL places for the last few years too. But our recent "success" only looks good in comparison with the years of crap under Sugar. Spurs have the 6th/7th biggest wage bill in England (and more like 5th/6th before the City revolution). So finishing higher than 6th/7th is above par and below that is below par. Under ENIC we've finished: 9th, 10th, 14th, 9th, 5th, 5th, 11th, 8th, 4th, 5th, 4th, 5th. So considering that for the first half of that time we probably had the fifth-highest wage bill we've under-achieved 6 years and achieved about what we should twice and over-achieved probably 4 times. Yes - most of the success has been recent and the early failure you can blame slightly on previous regimes. But given our finances our league positions have been about par given the usual randomness and ups and downs of teams around us. I've gone from an overall positive re ENIC to more of a fence-sitting position with them. Yes it's better than Sugar, yes I'm glad they're not going to bankrupt us, yes I do believe that they seem to be working towards long-term goals. My one (massive) complaint is that Levy seems to have a master plan about having a DOF and a fancy foreign manager and then this goes tits-up and, under pressure, he then makes a good appointment. Let's hope that the Santini/Jol, Ramos/Redknapp situation is repeated with AVB/Sherwood. All of our good years have come under the stewardship of managers that Levy did not want. And when that's worked he's gone and sacked them to start the process all over again!
We haven't had the fifth highest wage bill under ENIC though, Lenny. Here's a link to an article in the Telegraph that shows each club's wage bill and spending on transfers from 01/02 til 11/12: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...pending-from-the-200001-season-to-201112.html Our wage bill goes 9th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 8th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 7th and 6th. It's never as high as 5th and averages out at around 8th. West Ham, Villa and Newcastle all spent a fair amount of time with higher wage bills and we're frequently dwarfed by the sides around us in the table.
Boom! Argument killed with excellent facts (and a very good table that is now bookmarked). I rather stupidly forgot about the Leeds and Newcastles of the early 2000s world. Was in a bit of a rush. Hang on - 10th?! Four years ago we had the TENTH biggest wage bill?! That's insane. Was that the year West Ham had Tevez/Mascherano? No they were way earlier. What were West Ham doing? Anyway - going by that table our league position has been higher than our "wage-bill league" position five times and lower five times since ENIC. And one of those "over-achieving" years was when we came 8th but due to weirdness the likes of Pompey and West Ham meant that we had only the 10th-highest wage bill! So about a par all in all.
I think Levy fought tooth and nail to keep berbs and rat boy, but I think the dollar signs lit up very quickly with Bale, it was just a case of spend the money first before others knew we had money to burn. Fair enough really. In addition, I agree with everything Ramos has said, but he doesn't tell the full story. He threw all of his toys out of the pram because he didn't get the backing that he wanted and then played many players out of position because he wanted out. He wanted a pay off. Had he stuck with the squad and worked properly, 20 pts from 8 games rather than two, followed by the same results as Redknapp, he would have moved us considerable forward. I don't do stats, perhaps someone could help me, where would we have finished with another 18 pts? As far as I can tell Ramos expected backing that he didn't get so he slung in the towel. Levy expected Ramos to work miracles without backing him and used him as a scapegoat for the Levy financial model. Just as he has done for a number of managers. Marriages made in hell. However, the common factor in Levy. Better the devil you know or what? As with most things in life, the answer is in the balance.
You can add 2 more on for the overachieving years for 11/12 and 12/13 that weren't in there. Also, teams overachieve and underachieve a lot when their wage bills are of a similar level but when we've overachieved in recent years, we've been mixing it with the clubs who spend significantly more than us. Only Everton have ever really managed to do that regularly. Even amongst the top sides it's difficult to compete when someone's spending a lot more than you, Liverpool have only finished above Chelsea once since Abramovich took over.
You have to look at £ity's progress to be forced into accepting the power that a mega-rich owner brings to a club. £ity was a classic mid-table club before the Arabs took over and purchased the club's way to glory. They were the same as Villa are today. Realistically, we are never going to win the title, as much as we might dream, but neither are Arsenal, United or 'Pool. Those days are well and truly over. The title, and any chance in Europe, is going to come down to which of Chavs and £ity want it most, and it's going to be like that for the next decade. It makes me laugh when you hear Gooners and Mousers taking about "winning the title" when any knowledgeable fan knows it's all a pipe-dream. I have no doubt that the plastic of the futures will no longer be supporting Arsenal or United, they'll be supporting either Chavs or £ity. That's just the way it's going to be.
