Rival watch

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The one thing that doesn't stack up with the "ENIC are leeches" theory is that our average transfer spend has continued to rise, as has our wage bill, since moving to the supposed cash cow that is the new stadium.

As far as I have calculated, we're close or at maxing out on transfer fees every year because of the loan covenants (which are widely reported as being among the most reasonable ever negotiated for a project so big). Wages could grow circa 25% and I'd like that to happen immediately as it's the one thing we haven't tried yet, but at the same time I understand the reluctance of the owners to do something that drastic overnight instead of gradually.

We also seem reluctant to sell players even at a huge profit, see for example the interest in Bergvall for circa £40m in January...truly greedy owners would have jumped at that opportunity. Instead we only seem to sell players the manager doesn't want.

In other words, there isn't that much evidence that they are abusing the football operation as a source of income.

However, the alternative is possibly much more terrifying: if they aren't mismanaging us because of greed, they're doing it because of sheer incompetence and stupidity.
The main issue with our board is they seem to be in a pattern of doing things that worked in the past, without understanding why they worked

Take appointing Frank for an obvious example: they brought in a coach from an unfashionable club they thought would scale up because Harry Redknapp was brought in from an unfashionable club and scaled up - but this ignores the fact Harry played protagonist football so it's possible for his football to scale up with a higher budget available, while Frank's football really doesn't

Same thing can be said for Ange having a young team thinking they would grow together like Poch's did - but this ignored that the core of Poch's early team had plenty of players in their mid-20s (i.e. Dembele, Vertonghen, Lloris) meaning it had a core of players in their mid-20s with 100+ top flight games under their belt and handfuls of international caps

You can probably chuck in Ange being seen as Martin Jol 2.0 as well, as somebody who would be the midwife for our fortunes improving - but ignoring that Jol was a highly-regarded coach, while Ange is more of a motivator than a tactician

I'd honestly chuck the 3ATB fixation the board seem to have on there too, given Poch's team was like a buzzsaw for the period they played that - but that's because we had a rock solid midfield pairing, not a handful of talcum powder standing between the opposition and the back four
 
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The main issue with our board is they seem to be in a pattern of doing things that worked in the past, without understanding why they worked

Take appointing Frank for an obvious example: they brought in a coach from an unfashionable club they thought would scale up because Harry Redknapp was brought in from an unfashionable club and scaled up - but this ignores the fact Harry played protagonist football so it's possible for his football to scale up with a higher budget available, while Frank's football really doesn't

Same thing can be said for Ange having a young team thinking they would grow together like Poch's did - but this ignored that the core of Poch's early team had plenty of players in their mid-20s (i.e. Dembele, Vertonghen, Lloris) meaning it had a core of players in their mid-20s with 100+ top flight games under their belt and handfuls of international caps

You can probably chuck in Ange being seen as Martin Jol 2.0 as well, as somebody who would be the midwife for our fortunes improving - but ignoring that Jol was a highly-regarded coach, while Ange is more of a motivator than a tactician

I'd honestly chuck the 3ATB fixation the board seem to have on there too, given Poch's team was like a buzzsaw for the period they played that - but that's because we had a rock solid midfield pairing, not a handful of talcum powder standing between the opposition and the back four

Yeah I’m sure current board were definitely thinking of things that happened decades ago and wanted the next Martin Jol or Harry Redknapp to fix the issues in 2025/26

Let it gooooo
 
Oh f***, more dinosaurs escaping <yikes>
Technically less

Entirely because the sixth film had dinosaurs living wild across the globe, but the writer of the seventh film decided they all died out as that was the only way he could think of that would make his script make sense

Some people should be less concerned that AI will take their jobs than others. Just saying...
 
It looks like having to play Chelsea might be a positive advantage for Spurs.
Losing 0-2 to Brighton. 0-8 SoT
Never. We could be top of the league and them bottom of league two and they’d still beat us at the bridge!

Sure they’ll put in their one performance for the season when spurs come to town.