Rival watch

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They're everything we're not at the moment. A proper footballing chairman, a well respected chief exec and an ambitious manager on the up with a playing squad clearly in it together.
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They're everything we're not at the moment. A proper footballing chairman, a well respected chief exec and an ambitious manager on the up with a playing squad clearly in it together.
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Also getting dismantled by the Manc clubs and Liverpool in the next couple of years, if history repeats itself for the umpteenth time
 
They're everything we're not at the moment. A proper footballing chairman, a well respected chief exec and an ambitious manager on the up with a playing squad clearly in it together.
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They absolutely are. They’ve had a run of excellent recruitment decisions and it’s showing. I think it’s worthwhile to take learnings from their approach and incorporate it into how Spurs are ran, but we should also be looking to get ahead of the next curve. Their approach won’t be a differentiator for ever. The league is too competitive for that. It’s much, much harder to be Dortmund in the PL, and it isn’t easy to be Dortmund in the Bundesliga.

Football is cyclical. Southampton had a run of 8th, 7th, 6th and 8th beginning almost a decade ago, with a series of players (and one manager) who would go on to make moves, many wildly successful, to ‘Big 6’ clubs. Their academy was seen as the envy of the league and their recruitment was smart and a breeding ground for clubs at the sharp end of the league and Europe. Now they’re relegated. Just like Leicester may well be, who won the league in a perfect storm, recruited well for a while, won the FA Cup, and now their hot streak is over and they’re in serious trouble. I know their owners have had financial issues off the back of Covid too. But both these clubs were held up as examples of how to do it, for a while.

The only way to break the cycle is serious ‘**** you’ wealth and a ruthless pursuit of excellence. We don’t quite have the former (though we have a lot of revenue generation now) and we clearly don’t have the latter right now. But I’d rather we try and be the best version of Spurs than copy Brighton or anyone else. Learn from others and learn from what made us successful in the past too, even if some of that was down to good fortune rather than pure planning. And always keep an eye on what’s next.