Sorry but that just sounds like an excuse. Whatever way you look at it Spurs spent a whopping £110m last summer and finished up worse off than the season before. By anybody's standards that is a monumental failure.
Since the thread has a transfer flop theme, I thought I'd add this from the Guardian, from a Derby fan who justifiably claim Earnshaw as the transfer flop of transfer flops during their epic eleven point Premiere League year. "“We signed Rob Earnshaw for a then-record £3.5 million to add some proven Premier League quality ahead of the campaign but managed just one goal in 22 league games – ten months after he arrived, in a 6-2 home defeat to Arsenal. To rub salt in the wound, he was then sold on to Nottingham Forest – at a loss, unsurprisingly – where he was a great success, averaging over a goal every three games in the league, including two in a 5-2 humiliation of Derby. So in summary, one goal in a season of record-breaking lows, in a hefty defeat, long after anyone cared, and then a big success for our local rivals, particularly when playing against us.” One more time: If your net spend is zero, (or less, as Spurs was) then the more money you spend, the greater turnover you have, and the worse you ought to be in the short term. To say otherwise is like saying you'd be better off starting next season with eleven strangers than with the eleven who finished your previous season as starters. The headline news for Spurs last year was that the year itself was disappointing, and both the two biggest signings could fairly be called failures. Look a little more closely, and the story is more complicated. The biggest goal had to be to get a huge rising star, and it's so far, so good with Eiriksen, who had more (combined) goals and assists than Ozil, and didn't fall short of Ramsey and Silva by much at 22. (He had a goal/assist per 113 minutes of play in all comps). The other four of the seven transfers have been fairly good, on balance. The real problem may have been AVB, who was not the right coach for that team. The same group of flops helped Sherwood become the most successful Spurs manager ever. No one knows what will happen this year, but it's a young and promising squad and manager, and Lamela has looked good in preseason. We'll see how things go. I do agree we have too many players of around the same ability, though. I'd love to see us lose six players and gain two of the quality of VDV or Ade or Eiriksen.
I think Piskie understands really RWAEB. Or perhaps if we now sold the 7 players we bought and re-signed Bale, Huddlestone, Caulker, Parker and the rest he would be stupid enough to claim that we had spent another whopping 110m and should be a shoe in to win the league despite having exactly the same squad as one year ago.
I'd never be stupid enough to claim that the Spuds are a shoe-in to win the league, I leave that to your manager(s) and fans This net spend issue is a smokescreen from you spuds. You got lucky with the Bale cash and ended up with a huge transfer fund. Even your own fans were saying that it was a good thing that Bale was sold as it would enable you to strengthen the whole squad and not rely on one player. The simple facts are that it was spent haphazardly and you ended up finishing up worse off than the season before. Are you honestly trying to tell me that you are happy with that ?
I'm never happy when our performance gets worse but I don't think its because we spent the money. You surely don't think we'd have finished higher by leaving the Bale money in the bank? Assimilating 7 new players, 2 coming back from loan and 2 from long-term injury was never going to be easy but I don't see we had any option but to try it.
I'm not so sure. From what I can tell, Piskie believes that players bought are the only important factor in determining how successful you will be, and that players sold don't enter into it. So even if our player sales equalled 200 million, we should still have improved (though he does make clear he wouldn't pick us to win the league, tbf).
Harry Redknapps departure was a major blow for the club more than Levy would have anyone believe. It was a match made in football heaven but I guess nothing lasts forever eh! Do I feel sorry for them? Do I ****!
Enough to see that they weren't worth the £110m you paid for them. Unless you think that almost £60m for Soldado and Lamela was money well spent ?
No one would pay 27 million for Soldado now. But I wouldn't take 37 million for Eriksen. Preseason means nothing (except when Arsenal lose to the New York Fizzy Pops, of course, and become the answer to a trivia question: Who are the only PL team to lose to a soccerball team in 2014? The Soccer Guy is in heaven.) but Lamela scoring three and Soldado two in limited action has done nothing to diminish their value.
