CL football is extremely unlikely next year - and Europa League not certain. CL football is worth something like £50M to the club - so it would seem that with the loss of THAT revenue, Spurs made a 'profit' of around £30M odd -- and -MOST of that has been 'wasted' on players not good enough. Of course there'll be some of you who will say that if Spurs didn't sell Bale when they did, they would have ended up letting him go for nothing.
What a strange article. Assumes that Spurs would've made the CL if Bale stayed, that he'd have been willing to work if we'd have kept him and that he'd be instantly worthless the following season, for some reason. Odd. Trying to keep a player like Bale when he has a ****bag of an agent, the media are trying everything that they can to shift him and he's being offered £300k pw is very difficult. We don't pay players even a third of that and we're not Real Madrid, who can spend what they like and then get bailed (Baled?) out if it goes wrong.
I thought we should have kept Bale another year, and still do. But either way it was a big gamble. We took the safer option (one reason I was against it). We really have no idea how it would have panned out, as anything might have happened (CL, no CL, less money for Bale, the same, a little more). It may have been the chance of a career-altering injury that was the toughest to risk. A more certain mistake was not signing Moutinho, though this was apparently the mistake of leaving it too late rather than being penny wise and pound foolish.
What ifs! If we had not signed Bale in the first place, if Modric had gone to Chelsea, if Redknapp had discretion, if Berbatov had realised where his best chance had really been, if Ledley had not had a chronic injury, if Wenger had gone to Bayern, if we had opted for cheeses sandwhiches instead of Lasagne, if Chelsea had let in just one goal in the CL final, if Klinsmann returned to the lane, if Hoddle was a bit more intelligent, if I was a Palace supporter........................I wouldn't care! But I'm not and I do, so I am not going to measure my football team based on ifs; but buts on the other hand...........................
If Harry had somehow been a shock selection for the '66 team (and he wouldn't have nursed a lifelong dream of managing England to make up for the disappointment of missing out), if it had occurred to Bayern to watch Drogba at the near post on a late corner with a one goal lead (and who could have guessed that was a potential danger) if the ratio in my sig was just a goal or two better than 15:1...even if it was the one Marriner bottled in my sig, it would have put a little more pressure on Arsenal; every hypothetical redo means rerolling the dice from there, so Spurs could have nicked the last CL spot... ...actually this is kind of fun...
I believe there is at least as much evidence that it was the selling club that changed the terms at the last minute. Anyway these are things we never really know the facts, but being this board it is the anti-Levy version that is commonly believed. At some stage Bale would have left. Personally I think it was unavoidable and the only option was to get the best deal. But again there are those that will only see the worse. However clearly at some stage he would leave and that would leave us facing the same problem we had this season.
"I believe there is at least as much evidence that it was the selling club that changed the terms at the last minute. Anyway these are things we never really know the facts, but being this board it is the anti-Levy version that is commonly believed." The REALIST version of events is that : - Porto were faffing about at the end - Correspondingly there was a serious amount of Levying going on too during the saga (which puts the back up of selling clubs and means things go less smoothly) .
Porto are renowned for asking high prices, moving goalposts, etc. Having said that, I'm sure Levy was probably up to his usual tricks trying to save a few quid. Water under the bridge. I doubt either one of them will change their way of doing business owing to it.
given that 'my' team is in L1 (just) - I feel that I can have a slightly more impartial viewpoint on matters relating to other clubs. I have not 'assumed' that Spurs would have achieved CL football for next season if Bale had stayed this year - but Spurs probably would have stood a better chance. I can understand the dilemma for clubs regarding selling a player that everyone else wants - I am grateful that I have't needed to make THAT decision..... but didn't Sherwood say something about Bale being sold 'cheaply?' I do believe that there are plenty of Spurs fans who will concede that some of the players purchased with the money from Bale's transfer haven't been the best 'investment' - and - harshly could be considered a waste of money ( in footballing terms - rather than individual character ) - so if that 'assumption' was accepted, it gives fuel to my OP question.
Bale refused to train. The refusal followed a long spell out with a couple of different injuries. How did he pick up a second injury when he wasn't training due to the first? It was the usual malarkey of a player perfectly willing to forget about his legal and moral obligations as an employee and a human being because he feels they prevent him from acquiring more money, success and fame. It's all very well to say you should make him play, but there's no guarantee he will play nearly as well as he is capable of playing. Also, the presence of a player who's demonstrated he does not want to wear your badge is unlikely to be a positive influence on your team.
Sherwood did claim that the most expensive player in the history of the game was sold cheaply, but he also claimed that holding midfielders are pointless and that Sandro's not good enough to play for us. I don't put much stock in anything that he has to say, frankly.
I'm actually surprisingly blasé about the rest of the season, but Sherwood seems to be going out of his way to piss me off, for some reason! I try to be positive about Spurs as often as I can and I'm sure that we've all seen enough to know that things at the club are never going to be an entirely smooth ride, but I can't stand the crap he's coming out with. It's like being managed by Redknapp after he's suffered a significant head injury or something. He's forgotten most of what he knew about football, doesn't have enough diplomacy left to stop slagging off the players and fans, but will still play to the press, despite not knowing what he's waffling on about. We always knew that Redknapp had his own best interests at heart most of the time and he'd give the media what they wanted to stay on their good side. That was mitigated by the fine football on display and the fact that he was fairly interesting to listen to, when he wasn't just stringing them along or saying that everyone was triffic. Sherwood is trying to be him in the same way that Lidl own brand cola tries to be Coke. We deserve better. I'm pretty sure that most clubs do though, sadly.
All football managers are like this PNP it's just that those with a native command of the language can say more and therefore piss us off more. Hence the popularity of foreign managers, the less said the better.
