I think you’re saying similar things to me here. Spending more doesn’t guarantee success but having more resources makes you a more attractive proposition to players and selling clubs as you can offer higher wages and transfer fees. I think coaching is a bigger edge than you imply here and this is demonstrated in the table right now. Ultimately unless you have the resources of a City, sooner or later the players and managers get taken by the wealthier clubs. And like you say the money effect definitely scales. But money means very little if you’re not using it well, and with vision.
The main issue ultimately boils down to the fact plenty of clubs have learned to spend big (by fair means or foul) and we haven't really had that, which puts us in a similar bracket to Everton or Villa - but as we spend bigger more often, the fact we haven't learned sticks out more than it does with them Ndombele is symptomatic of this, not just in terms of the fee but also the second he arrived he was guaranteed at least £120k a week, a base salary that it took H or Sonny three or four contract renewals to be paid, which mainly makes us thankful that even before his various loans he rarely looked like taking home the metric ****ton of bonuses in his contract that would push him to the oft-quoted £200k figure He's hardly the only example of this, for example I vaguely recall Soldado was getting paid something around the £100k mark the second his Easyjet flight landed, while Barren Dent was somewhere around the £60-70k mark at a time where (let's split the difference) £65k p/w was a salary you really didn't see outside of the then-Sky 4
There are considerable tiers that fill in between world class and then the rest though. I agree we can’t really sign established elite players, mainly down to draw than finances, but beyond that there is then a level of player we can target who are significantly better than what clubs looking to just scrape into say the top half of the table can sign, let alone bottom half. The problem for us is that we’re largely paying either world class/ just below world class fees for players that are absolutely bottom half standard players and we’re being left in a situation where our top players are having to overcompensate for this - and that isn’t sustainable long term, as we’re now finding out, because one below par season from Son and an injury to Bentancur and we’re now looking very, very mediocre and on course to finish 8th. Give the people at Brighton or Brentford our finances and they’d probably have City and Arsenal looking warily over their shoulders.
Brighton are a lot like Dortmund. Everyone there has a price because they always seem to have a plan and confidence in their recruitment. Not everyone they sign will be a hit but enough will be. The challenge is being comfortable with the uncertainty of selling a big player, and dealing with the conflict that can come from it, certainly from a fan point of view but also internally and with the perception of the club. Some years ago Levy clearly decided we wouldn’t be a selling club any more and while that is in some ways an admirable (and bloody-minded principle based) approach, I think it’s probably also a symptom of just having no confidence in anyone’s ability to properly spend the big money we’d get from a Kane or a Son, who have realistically been our only big-ticket assets. Player turnover has been really low (in terms of established first team players) the last few years and it’s really starting to tell.
I read Souness giving Harry Kane a rollicking after a tv interview. Didn't Souness run away from Spurs to Liverpool when we weren't doing too good at the time!?
I'm wondering if all these international breaks messed up the players minds too.......Spurs minds definately went out the window!
No. We sold him to 2nd tier Middlesbrough. He wanted regular football and couldn't get into our team.
Leicester v Everton turning out to be a surprisingly good game. Classic Vardy goal. Doesn’t do it often these days.
Leicester are ten points behind with five games to go, and while Chelsea have two games in hand their run-in has them play all of the top four They're not safe by any stretch of the imagination, especially since the Spammers once went down with 42 points
Sky camera got a shot of pickfords water bottle and it had printed the % of where Maddison, Vardy and Thielemann put there penalties, Maddison was 60% down the middle and pickford chose to go with the averages
This has hurt us in the long term imo. It was the double whammy of losing Modric and Bale to Real in back to back seasons and subsequent fan retaliation that seemed to bruise Daniel's ego to the point that he basically would never again sanction a key player moving anywhere unless they effectively did a Kyle Walker and forced through a move in the most snake-like way. The post-Bale reaction was quintessential Daniel: 1) Fail to comprehend the bigger picture (we were and still aren't anywhere near Real's level and therefore there was and still is no shame in selling to them) 2) Misinterpret fan reaction (fans were more pissed at the fact that the sales were pitched as part of a "special relationship" with Real than what they actually were: young players who we'd developed and grown to the point where they were simply too big for our club and again: there is no shame in that). 3) Total panic (cancel the "special relationship", confirming that it was bollocks all along. Simultaneously make a gung-ho announcement about never being a "selling club again": little did we know this would mean literally hanging on to the likes of Moura, Sanchez and Ndombele until their contracts expire). 4) Stick stubbornly to that panicked decision based on incomplete research and despite evidence mounting that it was the wrong decision to make (block moves for Eric Dier and Dele Alli to leave the club for extortionate fees to United and Real respectively which denies the club crucial income at a time when there is little to no investment anyway.)
