Spurs finishing positions, last eight seasons: 2014–15 5 2013–14 6 2012–13 5 2011–12 4 2010–11 5 2009–10 4 2008–09 8 2007–08 11 Most common finishing position 5th. Mean finishing position, 6th. Well done. Now **** off back to your board, you tedious prick. Vin
Sorry if I wasn't very clear Schad, I wasn't saying other clubs were spending beyond their means, it was more a comment about how many other clubs are spending more of their income on squad wages and transfers whereas Saints seem to deliberately try not to spend large amounts so its a difference in policy as much as anything else. It's been successful for us for the last 2 seasons but has come to a point where our policy isn't working anymore. I also didn't really mean that other clubs were spending future income, more that they were more confident about spending money now as future income will be massively increased. The only clubs that need to worry about high spending are those that will be relegated this season.
I think we're doing what Newcastle would like to do. Clearly we can't sell the crown jewels every season and expect improvement too but to date we haven't done too badly have we? The difficulty is that regardless of what our stated aims and policies are, when big clubs come calling for your best players, what do you do? My common sense head says that there's no point keeping anyone who wants away whilst my SFC head says ignore all advances and hold players to contracts. Would we have done any better retaining the big money signings we allowed to leave for a couple of years and then missing out on all the cash they brought in? I rather suspect not actually so I won't feel too bad when Mane, Wanyama and VVD pop off for a combined £100M at the end of the year.
Man U know that Rooney is over the hill. It's happened quicker than they expect. So, when they come for Mané waving, say, £150 - £200,000 a week at him, what can we do? Not what would we like to do, but what can we actually do? Vin
Yep, and the issue is is every time we uncover a Mane who a bigger team wants the cycle continues. When we have nobody the big teams want we will be destined for mid table or lower. Sadly with the way football is at the moment the cold hard truth is that 13 teams in the top flight just tread water before eventually getting relegated
No worries; apologies for misunderstanding the crux of your post. And I don't mean to doom-monger here...it just seems clear that we're hitting a fairly important moment in terms of the club's direction. The very well-regarded manager has just laid down the gauntlet, so we cannot ascribe the lack of spending to his belief that he has full financial backing and is confident that we have all the talent we need. The most recent accounts show that we are owed more in transfer fees than we owe, so we cannot ascribe it to onerous future obligations. And while the club has made noise about being hamstrung by our (genuinely) low commercial revenue, that too will undoubtedly increase with the expiration of our shirt sponsorship/kit provider, at the same time that it is dwarfed by the increased TV money (both the Sky deal and the international deal, which hasn't yet been announced to the best of my knowledge). The confluence of those factors is such that it's quite possible that we already have plans to spend much more heavily in this upcoming summer than the two previous. If we don't however, we've eliminated enough variables to really be left with just the one conclusion...and potential and current players and managers are likely to arrive at the same.
Sorry to disagree......We may indeed be one of the smaller clubs in the division but it took 27 years before to get us relegated. Surely you wouldn't say we were treading water in all that time? While it may be true that teams of saints current size will probably never win the league. They normally give a good account of themselves. If their owners don't keep up with the game then they suffer the same as we did. So a lot of any troubles are caused by owners not reinvesting enough. So not really treading water.
This is it. We have few choices as fans: 1. We hope some big billionaire buys the club and sinks billions in sponsorship of the stadium and we then have a bottomless pit of money with fancy lawyers to get round the laws. (I keep reading that fans don't want this) 2. We support United, City, Chelsea or Arsenal 3. We accept that we are who we are and stay positive, hoping that we carry on improving. We can also hope that the increased TV money keeps closing the gap and making it easy to pay higher salaries and this keep players longer. We stay supporting Saints and We March On Together (you can have that last bit Ralph)
I disagree Beddy. For the majority of those 27 years, yes we were treading water. The exceptions being a few years under Lawrie in the early 80s and a blip under WGS. We spent years treading water with our heads only just above the water level too. If we weren't treading water, in what years were we threatening to be a force. One second place (pre big money days), two cup finals and an 8th place finish.
Lawrie was pretty pissed off with the total lack of vision and ambition when the opportunity to develop the site of the old electricity generating station where Toys-R Us is was lost. The history of our club is one of a succession false dawns of which this is the latest and the only person who had the courage and the balls to challenge that was Cortese and he was shifted on PDQ.
I guess it depends on your definition of treading water, but I meant never really being a force. Sure the odd season like we had last season, Newcastle have had in reasonably recent times, Swansea aswell, Bolton, Villa if you go back a decade or so and Leicester are currently having. But no team has been able to really challenge the top 6/7 without large investment over a sustained period (and you could argue that when Villa were flirting around there for a few years Lerner was investing heavily). It may take another 27 years, or Saints might never go down, but with football the way it is I struggle to see any realistic way that Saints or anyone for that matter can break the top 6 regularly.
One short series of less than good results is all it takes for some Saints fans to turn. This is the same group of players and Management that went 8 games unbeaten averaging 3 goals to 1 each game. Sometimes freak results happen, especially in a cup game, when the losing team are chasing the game. Liverpool scored with almost every meaningful shot they had on goal, but we weren't good enough defensively, especially on our right side. I think a little perspective is called for now, we had a similar run last season about this time, but turned it around to record our best ever Premier League finish. To say that money hasn't been invested into the squad is quite simply wrong if you add up how much has been spent on it, not to mention the money spent on state of the art training facilities and the Academy. We have a realistic business model, given the size of our attendances and are out performing almost every other similar sized club at this time, I have faith in our owner and board and results back up that faith , as we finished higher up the league every season since the Liebherr's took over.
I was talking to JWP's Goal Celebration in the pub before Wednesday's game. I ventured that we'll make it into Champion's League positions. In about fifteen years. I don't think it's possible without a HUGE overhaul of our income (Man U, Arsenal) or a billionaire funder (Chelsea, Man C) to get in there in the short term. All of them have annual income over £300M. Ours is a third of that. I do think it's possible to do it long-term with work on our income. I also suspect that our management team know that. It's all fine saying "we must keep X" but no-one who says that tells us how we manage the financial implications. By all means keep someone for a season (a la Morgan) but we'll go bankrupt if we run contracts down, even if we sell with one season to go. Look how little we got for Clyne versus Shaw. We cannot afford to pay Mané £150,000 a week as I suspect Man U will offer. Where would that money come from (plus the money to get every other player into the same range)? All the people saying that Cortese had the vision; where was he going to get the money? Force of will wasn't going to be able to keep players being offered two or three times that salary elsewhere. Come on, be factual, what could he have actually done differently to resolve that particular issue. Tell us exactly what actions he could have carried out in the past two years to turn that vision into reality. Be factual and reasonable. I bet you can't. Because the required bottomless pot of money doesn't exist. One thing I've come to realise as I've grown older is that you have to deal with the world as it is, rather than as you would wish it to be. And the reality is that we, as a club, won't be able to keep players from leaving for the top six. That's reality, and we need to live with it. However, that doesn't mean it will last forever, which brings me on to another important point. To all the people who say that Katharina just wants to make a profit and leave, hence the sales of players, there are two points: 1. We HAVE to let players go, as mentioned above. Why is the club then quietly criticised for buying low and selling high, as though it's a bad thing? I think some fans would seriously prefer it the other way round. I've heard people say we should "make a statement" with big signings. That's the way to the workhouse. 2. It's entirely possible that profits aren't being put into Katharina's pocket but are instead being built into a war chest for the point (several years down the line) when we need a final push the last step into the top four places. I know it's futile asking for people to look at a ten or fifteen year horizon when a single bad result pukes up threads like this but I sincerely believe that the board is a little less myopic than the average football supporter. Vin
I think you could describe the period between Chris Nichol getting sacked and Redknapp taking us down as treading water. Gordon Strachan got us afloat for a while, but Rupert Lowe holed him below the water.
I've cut your excellent post down to this bit to join these points up.... this is exactly what Cortese would have done, sorry did ....Dani Osvaldo. Maybe it's the way to the nuthouse as well as the workhouse.
Never. For me it's Athletic Bilbao. With their policy of recruiting players born in Pais Vasco, they are never going to win La Liga or the CL, but they must have the proudest supporters going who take pride in what they have achieved in recent years.
Hmn. I've been to Bilbao (&San Sebastian). All that Basque nationalist stuff really grates after a while.
Well we built a new stadium in order to compete at a certain level in the PL. In order to generate more money in order to improve the quality of the squad, we need a bigger fan base. That is difficult given our location and the nature of footballing fans in the South of England in general. On the other hand you won't find anybody in Lancashire supporting a London team but on the other hand, here in Hampshire ......
