Liverpool, Man City and Man Utd all have more revenue than us and Chelsea have a year to catch up so of course we won't be in the top four spenders. You said that we wouldn't spend at all
I agree that this is what will happen. We'll shift some players out and have a relatively low net spend.
If we sign a DM that may well count as a little but it would get us on the path of a long way While nobody can fault Sissoko or Winks for their workrate, and they're certainly two players who have played all season like they give a ****, I would sooner go to my local Wetherspoons than see either of them deployed as an ersatz DM again
If it doesn't then we are ****ed because there is no prospect of a net spend high enough to bring in 5 or 6 elite players. Even if there was our record of getting bang for the buck is much worse on expensive players. Here is the list of signings over £20m Bergwijn Ndombele Lo Celso Sessegnon Sanchez Aurier Lucas Sissoko Son Lamela Soldado Of the seven of those that we have had time to judge, only one is elite quality. One might become so in time, three are on the fringes and two not even close. The four most recent ones look to be following the same model. So to get five quality players we would need to spend 400m plus! When people accuse Levy of not backing the manager they might be better looking at how much money has been pissed up the wall on expensive rubbish. Our record of cheaper purchases is massively better and we could afford to get half of them wrong which we generally better.
Lucas is another too, he was around £27m IIRC. Semi final heroics and a few good spells here and there aside, he also hasn’t exactly set the world alight.
Thanks. I've edited my post to include him. Makes things worse than I said. So of 11 signings for 20m plus, we have two good ones, three average ones, two terrible ones and the jury is out on the other four.
The problem is that, if we sell players, the odds are the shoutiest of our fanbase would go apoplectic Case in point, if we sold Lucas you can guarantee the club's Twitter would be aflame with...well let's take a quick look at our Twitter this morning, eh? ...and you have to love the one blowhard who says there's been no investment in the club when replying to a picture of one ****ing great big investment in the club The fact that Poch couldn't even bench Eriksen or Vertonghen at the start of the season without the Lunatic Fringe creating about it for days on end says what will happen if we decide to let Lucas (to name one player) go to free up some funds as you'd get a couple of dozen tweets howling about his hat trick against Ajax within a minute of the tweet announcing his sale going up, most of which looking exactly like the ones listed above. Same can be said for Dele being sold in a Coutinho-like move to free up funds, which is something the r/coys crowd are increasingly fixating upon, as if that won't lead to an audible bellow from the Enfield area that could be heard for several miles That's the one potential benefit of a the transfer market being shaped by the pandemic, as there is a chance of hitting two birds with one stone and that will keep the Lunatic Fringe merely seething instead of posting spit-flecked tweets every five minutes, case in point the rumour about us offering cash + Lucas for Milinkovic-Savic that's done the rounds in the last few days would neuter the bellowing significantly because a.) We signed a player, and b.) Signed a player who looks genuine quality - all of which would lessen the number of spit-flecked tweets about letting Lucas go, even though a.) With Bergwijn and Lamela at the club he is easily expandable, and b.) Lucas has been a Brazilian Andros Townsend this season whose main purpose is to be where our possession goes to die
i would say though, in recent years (might dip cause of corona now) and the huge tv money but 20m isn't really classed a lot of money and will get you an elite player. lamela and soldado was big money back then but lucas, sessegnon, aurier is standard money. In fact people thought you were picking up these two well reputed players at very good prices (a levying so to speak). when the likes of tyrone mings, alex iwobi, renato sanches even nathan no goals solanke was 19m then i don't think you can be talking about 20m signings as expensive (yes footballs farked)
To be honest if you lower the floor of that figure to £15m that continues to show the same pattern Luka Modric Mousa Dembele Vincent Janssen David Bentley Barren Dent Paulinho That gives us two of our best players of the past twenty years - yet also three of our all-time dud signings, plus Paulinho who everyone seems to have a blind spot about how poor he actually was Indeed there was a period where it seemed the moment we spent more than £5m on any player they were destined to fail: Serhiy Rebrov (£11m), Dean Richards (£8.1m), Helder Postiga (£6.25m...thank god for add-ons) and Les Ferdinand (£6m) all failed to justify their fees, and that was a time where £6-11m was actually worth £6-11m, as opposed to now where that's worth approximately £3.50
Correct but doesn't alter the fact that these are our 11 highest priced signings. If you look at other clubs top 11 signings the story is not dissimilar, so I can see where Levy gets his cautious view about big money signings.
It has to be said that, during the Arnesen era, there was certainly a better grasp of what we needed to do 1.) Bring in young English talent for affordable fees, shine them up, and then move them on and reap the profits 2.) Don't spend big on squad players, spend smart And for the most part this policy was working, even if Santini was doing his best to undermine it The issue was that, especially when Comolli came aboard, spending smart went out the window - for example while we made a £12.5m profit on Carrick leaving, spending £8.7m on that on Zokora because we needed an immediate replacement was a complete waste as Zokora wasn't a replacement but somebody LARPing as Patrick Vieira even though he lacked both the defensive abilities or the ball control to do so. Same goes for a couple of years later, where spending smart wasn't on the agenda when he pissed away £16.5m on Barren Dent even though he wasn't needed (which also saw Defoe ask to leave due to being pushed down the pecking order) or some of the absurd waste of the Keane/Berbatov cash such as £15m on David Bentley. Similar can be said for Paul Mitchell, frankly, considering we spent a combined £29m on Janssen and Nkoudou when, in that very same window, spending £16m would have got us Timo Werner and Ousmane Dembele Spending smart is what got us the likes of Berbatov, Woodgate, Carrick, Alderweireld, Dembele, and Dele, among others, while spending big has got us a long list of high profile duds like Bentley, Bent, Paulinho and Soldado. Obviously there's examples in both columns that say the opposite, but on the whole when we use a blank cheque things tend to go south pretty damn quick
well you need to take into account spending levels not the gross amount. You might as well say real madrid robbed you for getting modric so cheap (he wasnt at the time) but football moves onto different wealth levels. The likes of Berba and Keane were big money signings at the time (even though they were for 10m which is probably your 50ms at the time). I would say it's been a bit hit and miss with your big signings with them being more miss lately although you only need to compare your two big signings recently and your cheap ones to see your hit rate. You had your golden period with toby, alli, wanyama,son and even trippier and davies to a certain extent (all relatively cheap) all coming through the short period whereas of recent note: Sanchez - Big money iffy Gazza - cheap, okay Moura - normal money, okay for the price but not outstanding Aurier - normal money, bad transfer Foyth - Cheap, speculative, hasn't worked out so far Llorente - Cheapish, really good buy surprised he wasnt kept Sessegnon - border between normal/expensive money, hasn't lived up to his reputation so far Ndombele - really expensive and so far tragic although has shown flashes Lo Celso - Big money and looking excellent Fernandes - big loan fee? hasn't really had a look in but looks okay Of this, 3 big money buys, 1 success, 1 failuture (ndom) and 1 okay but would have hoped for more of the mid range buys of around 20m, 2 failtures and 1 doing okay but would have hope for more the cheap ones, only llorente and the other 2 you could write off have done okay but taking up a squad place without contributing really.
One thing we certainly need to address is how predecible our transfer business is, and by "predictable" I mean we have a very narrow focus when it comes to scouting, as our transfer business since Poch was appointed makes abundantly clear Premier League Ben Davies Paulo Gazzaniga Fernando Llorente Ryan Sessegnon Moussa Sissoko Kieran Trippier Victor Wanyama Michel Vorm Football League Dele Alli Jack Clarke La Liga Toby Alderweireld* Federico Fazio Giovani Lo Celso Bundesliga Son Heung-min Kevin Wimmer Ligue 1 Serge Aurier Lucas Moura Tanguy Ndombele Clinton N'Jie Georges Kevin Nkoudou Benjamin Stambouli Eredivisie Steven Bergwijn Vincent Janssen Davinson Sanchez Primeira Liga Eric Dier Gedson Fernandes Primera Division Juan Foyth MLS DeAndre Yedlin Obviously there's no issue scouting the English leagues considering how important the HG quota is, but on the other hand the over reliance on Ligue 1 and, to a lesser degree, Eredivisie really stands out when you lay out our transfer business since 2014 This is where our scouting is going wrong, for two reasons First of all, if numerous clubs from the Premier League and beyond are also scouring a league for talent, which is certainly the case with Ligue 1, if we do the same then we're always at risk of coming second best as there's always going to be a team with deeper pockets and/or friends in the media who can get a leg up on us, as demonstrated as much by Marseilles hanging on for a FFP-covering bid from Chelsea when we were after Batshuayi a few years ago just as it's clear from the tapping-up campaign Los Ladrones have started as they look to secure Edouard Camavinga Secondly, look at all the leagues we're completely overlooking: Serie A is the most obvious one, but the Belgian, Croatian, Swiss and Danish leagues all have plenty of players who not only clearly have talent and can add to our squad, but carry far less liability due to their lower prices - for example Dani Olmo cost Taurine FC Leipzig £17.5m from Dinamo Zagreb in January - yet if he played for Real Sociedad, let alone one of the bigger names in La Liga, he'd be costing upwards of £30m. Same can be said for Robert Skov, who cost Hoffenheim a little more than £7.5m from Copenhagen last summer, yet he'd cost two or three times that at least if he was a Ligue 1/Bundesliga/whatever player. Hell, look at Salah, who cost the Chavs just £11m from Basel a few years back This is where our scouting has fallen down for years, because not only is our scouting's reach not wide enough so we're overlooking certain leagues constantly, but we keep going back to the same league time and again even though by this point it's clear there's not much value to be found in Ligue 1 as most clubs are based around screwing a few million extra out of English/Spanish clubs every summer to cover their FFP for a couple of seasons
Ralph Hassenhuttl not doing himself any harm if Spurs decide to go for yet another Southampton manager in the future
Who do I want next? Somebody who doesn't provoke this reaction when he walks in the door please log in to view this image * Although this may just be sneaky editing on Amazon's part for the trailer