The league cup winners get the Conference league place, its a total of 7 European places (West Ham will get an extra one if they win their final)
TBH the issue started with Poch not commiting to the system change he was trying to implement in 2019, as he had the building blocks to change to a 433 - but then hedged his bets, so the defence was set up like a 433 but the rest was half 433 and half 4231 that gave us that rhomboid of dross which we don't talk about, before going back to 4231 to try and ignite something approaching form when the results didn't pan out The issue, though, is bigger than just that: of the players signed that summer, Ndombele was always going to be a liability in any central midfield role, Sessegnon arrived injured and when he did play was at least half a yard slower than he was pre-injury, and Clarke was clearly a raw talent who needed games but was unlikely to be starting over Lucas (and, it has to be asked, did anyone expect him to be subbed on for Lucas within six months of being signed?) If he committed to 433 and maintained that direction, while 2019-20 would still have been a comedown from the previous 3-4 seasons as obviously some of the signings would not have panned out while existing squad members were surely going to be phased out if they weren't compatible and/or were walking liabilities, the core of our side would likely have better continuity than it has in the last couple of seasons
The players you mention cost the sixth highest spend in the PL and have finished sixth on average. How does that show they are worse than expected?
You normally put forward strong arguments PS but this is not convincing. They are worse than expected because we know that players like Lo Celso, Ndombele, have plenty of ball skills. We know that Bissouma was a great success at Brighton but hasn't yet showed that at Spurs and you can go through the whole team and find that almost all of them are performing below their known capabilities. I don't think any one argues that our three management appointments following sacking Pochettino have been a success. Everyone agrees that we have let our defence decline to a state where it compares with teams fighting relegation. With these prevailing conditions it is clear that Spurs are underperforming because of poor decisions not because of lack of investment. It's not just about money.
Who are you and what did you do with powerspurs? The real ps would have said build a theme park and invest in money creating enterprises rich dad poor dad style so that the club can create more money until you overtake the finances of the top 6
I think the best place to start is to analyse how many appearances were made by the players who cost the 6th highest net spend to finish an average of 6th. That's the biggest red flag. During the time we've averaged 6th place, the players supposedly signed to get and keep us there have hardly featured. Ndombele and Lo Celso have been out on loan for a year and a half, Rodon for two years. Sessegnon was on loan for a year and hasn't been a regular since returning. Vinicius, Fernandes, Bergwijn, Doherty, Reguilon and Gollini lasted no more than a year or two before leaving. None of them ever solidified a spot in the team, apart from Reguilon under Jose. Currently none of Richarlison, Danjuma or Lenglet have started regularly either. Sarr wasn't sent out on loan yet has barely kicked a ball all season. If you take the entire cohort of players we've signed over the past 4 years and compare their appearance data against the PL average for first team players, I am convinced you will have plotted a line in the lowest percentile. So unless our recruitment policy is officially to sign players we have no intention to use regularly, which is beyond insane, it would seem that the recruitment model itself is totally broken. This is why we average 6th without much help from any of those players, because none of them have tangibly helped us. It is also the reason why the likes of Dier, Sanchez and Lucas keep getting minutes. Because the people signed to replace them haven't been nearly good enough, and that's a shamefully low bar to fail to clear. I would agree with you if the data evidence supported your point, but it directly contradicts it. The only signing we've made in 4 entire years that has the unanimous approval and admiration of the support base and whose data confirms this support, is Bentancur. A case could be made for Kulusevski, Romero and Hojbjerg but many are on the fence regarding their usefulness and quality. One definite and three maybes in 8 (EIGHT) transfer windows is shocking.
There is another explanation for that though. If by chance we acquired players above the 6th best squad a few years back then an average spend in the subsequent years would expect to yield players who are on average worse than those we already had. Those players look below par so get dropped or sent out on loan and are replaced by another group of players of similar standard who also don't last long. I think this will continue for years unless our spend gets much higher. Our income won't grow fast enough to make a big enough difference so now we need a change of strategy if we are not to stagnate. One upside of where we are now is that we've got about 30 of these mediocre players with various different skill sets and styles of play so any incoming coach has plenty of options for squad players at least.
Part of the issue is that a fair chunk of deals you mentioned were always going to be temporary - and were treated that way Vinicius and Gedson were loaned in to fill out the squad in 2020-1, and while Vini got games Gedson became a meme Gollini was loaned in for 2021-2 so Hugo had an understudy, only to be so ineffectual we daren't give Hugo a rest Danjuma was loaned in back in January so we could loan out Gil, who was demanding a loan as he was sick of being dicked around Lenglet was loaned in as a punt, since we needed a CB who could pass out of the back who could play CCB or LCB Doherty was signed to be like Trippier, as both cover and motivator for the incumbent RB to not let their standards slip...with Aurier as the first choice RB Bale was loaned in to give us some quality, which he did...when Ryan Mason took charge and actually ****ing played him Hart and Forster are basically the same signing: reliable GK backup who fills a HG slot That's the main issue with the ubermensch's time: of the signings we made, the only ones who felt like permanent additions were Bergwijn, Hojbjerg and Reguilon (plus Lo Celso's loan becoming permanent) while so many others felt like kicking the can down the road until next summer, for example Rodon felt very much a Stambouli-like signing, while Doherty felt like an attempt to motivate Aurier to be anything other than a liability, plus the glut of loanees Weirdly, that is one positive of the Nuno/Conte era, the signings all feel like permanent signings, either ones to make an immediate impact such as Romero, Bentancur, Kulusevski and Bissouma (while an argument could be made for Lenglet, even if he is a loaner), or ones with an eye on the next 2-3 seasons like Gil, Sarr, Udogie or Porro, so at least Paratici gave us a semblance of a vision beyond the 38th game even if Conte had little interest in that
1. We are 8th not 6th...this is our lowest league finish since 2008/09 (our 2 from 8 season). 2. Ndombele cost £50m and his record is 6 prem goals and 5 assists in 63 league appearances. 3. Lo Celso cost £45m including his initial loan and his record is 1 goal & 3 assists in 55 league appearances. 4. Sessengon cost £33m and his record is 2 goals and no assists in 35 league matches. 5. Jack Clarke cost us £10m and we never played him. 6. Matt Doherty cost £16m and his record was 3 goals and 6 assists in 44 league games. 7. Richarlison cost £60m and has scored 1 goal and 3 assists in 26 appearances for us. 8. None of these players have made us good to watch...in fact they have been part of taking us backwards. Richarlison, Ndombele and Lo Celso are our 3 most expensive signings. Sessengon is our 5th most expensive signing (sanchez is the 4th). 9. These players are a huge part of us producing turgid football for the past 4 years bar the beginning 2 months of the 2020/21 and the last 3 months of the 2021/22 seasons. (Ndombele, Sessengon and Lo Celso and Richarlison were not involved in those 5 months !)
We`ve got a crap chairman who knows next to nothing about football, and who tries to drown out his clubs own fans with loud music so nobody can hear all the boos and chants for him to leave. The bloke is overseeing a period of total decline in the football and has no real desire to compete for the biggest prizes, the team is about to finish 8th or 9th in the PL, the football team just stumbles from one disaster to the next and is completely directionless thanks to Levy`s incompetence, the soul has been ripped out of the football club for ENIC`s benefit and the fans are charged top prices for the privilege. This is what Tottenham Hotspur Football Club is these days and I have zero faith these owners will ever take this club to the top. Other than that, COYS.
I don't believe that any club has a long term edge in player recruitment as I can't see how one can be achieved and no-one has presented evidence to the contrary. Consequently it must be impossible to have a negative edge or you could achieve a positive edge by doing the opposite. Therefore all runs of bad or good transfers must be random.
The only important fact about football is that success is correlated with club wealth. The only thing wrong with ENIC as owners is they are not wealthy enough.
Here's the thing: these players aren't the reason we're producing turgid football, the issue is they've been kitbashed into various systems that either don't (or in some cases can't) play to their strengths - Ndombele...okay, I can't see any system that could actually utilise him effectively, apart from 433 with two thuggish DMs alongside him. Every single system we have used since the summer of 2019 would be undermined by having Ndombele in it, simple as that - which is why Poch maintaining he wanted Ndombele and only Ndombele from the summer of 2018 onwards was problematic, because we needed a transformative signing for that role (especially after a season of the Winkssoko pivot) but transformative signings tend to not switch off for the 75% of the game where they don;t have the ball - Lo Celso has shows he can play the football we need when he is a.) Not injured, and b.) Playing for a team who play a flat midfield, be it Villarreal's usual 442 or Argentina's 433 - yet the only time we played systems like that with him was under Nuno...who played him as a RW so Ndombele could fit into the midfield (and, coincidentally, our form went off a cliff) as we've either played the rhomboid of suck with him as an AM in spite his role being a Dele/Lamela hybrid, in a two-man pivot with WBs (which was admittedly his purple patch of form) while Mason played him in a two-man pivot in a 4231, where he promptly got injured (of course) - Sessegnon's biggest issue (other than arriving injured and half a yard of pace slower because of it) was, much like Ndombele, he was signed a year after our initial interest, in that case because Fulham had been promoted and were never going to sell in 2018, and yet we didn't look for a different LB at any point in the period between the two. More than that, though, is he is more a 1:1 replacement for Danny Rose instead so is a continuity signing rather than an upgrade, which is why Reguilon was a better fit for the ubermensch or Udogie is a better fit for Conte (which'll be awkward come July...) because being continuity for one particular system only works if that system is maintained - Clarke just had the worst luck, as Leeds' inability to count, Covid cutting his QPR loan shot, and injury cutting his Stoke loan short is why we decided to cut our losses with him. Would he have been a starter by now? Well, no, but he likely would have been a decent squad option...who would have demanded a loan due to Conte never playing him - Doherty's main issue was, if he was signed to be the Trippier to Aurier's Walker, what he needed to do was come into the side when Aurier's form dropped to motivate Aurier to get his standards up...but instead Aurier was a liability who played every game while Doherty was rotated in for low priority games and only low priority games, undermining the whole concept of that role - Richarlison makes sense for us playing 352, which Conte was definitely nudging us towards pre-World Cup - but one nonformance against Man Utd when we started with a 352 and that plan was scrapped entirely, and obviously wasn't going to make a return when Richy got injured at the WC More than anything else, the systemic failure has nothing to do with any of them (as tempting as it can be to suggest otherwise) and more to do with how it has been painfully obvious that the midfield system that did us so well between 2014-8 was becoming obsolete, and not only did we not address this issue and instead try to simply swap components about with Ndombele coming in as Dembele 2.0 (or Dembele Vista...) but we have failed to address the issue which has been obvious since the back end of the 2018-19 season where our midfield can and does get overrun due to a combination of lacking press resistance (as Villa and Brentford have demonstrated in recent weeks, in May 2023...) and lacking anyone comparable to Parker/Sandro/Wanyama/Palacios who will police our midfield, which is why bringing in counterattacking managers keeps failing because our midfield lacks the strength to protect the CBs, and when the domino in the middle of the pitch falls it's usually followed by dominos in defence and goal, and it continues to baffle me why the only DM we've been linked with in the last three years is Amrabat in January last year when it was obvious in the summer of 2020 that we needed an out-and-out DM, which Hojbjerg and Skipp really aren't
Gives me chills reading that Those names are the Spurs equivalent to listing the greatest horror movie villains, all of them make you **** your pants at how scarily bad they were/ are for us. I do have sympathy for Clarke though, just another young player in a long line that we’ve wasted in recent years. Been excellent for Sunderland this season, if he has another good one next year then he’ll be back in the Premier League, with or without Sunderland.
In Clarke's case he just got dealt a bad hand when under contract with us: Leeds dicked both him and us around entirely because literally half their first team was loaned in so he missed out on matchday squads due to rules on how many loanees you can have in your squads, Lockdown ended his loan to QPR a few weeks after he arrived and started getting games, while at Stoke he got a run of games only to pick up a lengthy injury Unlikely he would have been a starter with us even now, but certainly could have been a decent squad option that Conte would have ignored for months on end
I don't know. We were pretty damn good in the market until very recently, adding at least 2 players every season who really helped us kick on. Often we signed 3 or 4. This is something we used to be much, much better at - and it isn't at all clear to me why the trend has reversed from what it was for so long which was an appx ratio of 4:1 good to poor transfer windows: 08/09 - Modric, Corluka, Gomes, Defoe and Palacios 09/10 - Crouch, Kaboul, Walker and Krancjar 10/11 - VDV, Gallas and Sandro Is it any wonder our performances and results enjoyed a steep upward curve during that time? Then we had the relatively underwhelming 11/12 window that saw us add Adebayor on loan and an ageing Scott Parker. Then 12/13 which was ironically one of our best ever windows in terms of value for money: 12/13 - Lloris, Dembele, Vertonghen, Dempsey Then the chaos of 13/14 which was rescued by Eriksen going on to quickly become one of the league's best players...and I guess therein lies the rub: even after what we consider to be a disastrous transfer window, we still managed to recruit a player who was literally transformative to the quality of the first team. Why have we lost the ability to do that? 14/15 - Underwhelming but redeemed by Dele in January 15/16 - Son and Toby 16/17 - Wanyama (it's starting to dry up) 17/18 - Catastrophic (Sanchez, Aurier and Moura) 18/19 - VOID 19/20 - LOL 20/21 - LOL 21/22 - Romero and Bentancur 22/23 - LOL What the hell happened?! It is far too reductive to argue that we've lost that midas touch because we're now shopping in Harrods and smacks of hubris.
It's just random. Look at any other club and you will get something similar. Ours is probably one of the most extreme but someone has to be.
Listing out the transfers as RCL and CK have done clearly shows how we have declined. Pinpointing why is more difficult. 1. Eye off the ball as the stadium was under construction. 2. Getting to the CL final is a clear mark of decline? Did that cause Spurs to think they were wonderful and the squad was fine? 3. Yes CK shopping in Harrods is a clue I think. We'll show 'em we will spend 50/60 million on players that will send us to the next level? 4. We will have the biggest names in management that will show 'em. 5. It's not worked and because there is so little football knowledge on the board and it's full of accountants they define problems in money terms and miss the point that this is football not manufacturing or banking. 6. Paratici might have made a difference if super ego Conte had left him alone. You can sum this mess up in two ways £50 million for Ndombele? and £60 million for Richarlison? No better examples of Emperor's new clothes signings. Despite all of this there is still enough in the squad that 3 proper and appropriate signings could turn things around. Make that 5 if Kane goes.
