Spurs 80 million pound profit the largest in history...

for an English club. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/29/premier-league-finances-club-by-club

 

I think I might know how many fans will respond to this news...

Of course it's much better that the club are in a good position financially rather than a bad one but still - that's a hell of a profit. Enic have got Spurs to no longer be massively underacheiving but basically we're finishing up around where our turnover and wage bill would have us.

Biggest profit ever, best paid chairman in the Premier League - champions of the spreadsheet and a great job being done if you happen to own the club and are not too fussed about attempting to go beyond our "default" league position.

I don't mean to totally dismiss this as good news but feel a bit "meh" about it really. We're still a 5th/6th/7th kind of side and that's just nothing special considering the size of the club. Not bad but not good either.

And I don't blame Levy that much either - it's not like the club have not been able to spend on transfer fees and wages - it's just that we're currently in the midst of the effects of some terrible footballing decisions which means that all those transfer fees and those highest-ever wages have been hugely ineffective. I hope, and sort of expect (purely due to the law of averages) that we will get better results in the transfer market in the next couple of years than we have had in the last two.

 

The amount Levy earns is absolutely ridiculous.

People slate the Arabs of Man City and praise Levy but look who gives to their club and looks who takes.

 

If we didn't have a stadium to pay for, I'd be ticked off. Since we do, I'm inclined to say it's very good management, which (I hope) will shorten the time till we can compete with the biggest clubs. We also seem to have a plan consisting of investing, first, in our own young players, and, second, in youth players from elsewhere. It's a strategy that promises to keep the profits needed to pay for the stadium coming in. As to Levy's wages: I'm not happy. I don't think they're appropriate for an executive at a football club. He would point at the profit the club made and say he earned it, no doubt.

As for the transfers: everyone says they've been awful. On the other hand, the seven signed with the Bale money produced 38 goals and 32 assists in all competitions this year. Is that really so bad? What standard should our buys be compared to? The only team which tried to spend a similar amount of money on a similar amount of players is Liverpool, and Liverpool make us look like geniuses. In any case, I think we won't see many big buys in the near future, given a youth strategy seems to be in place.

 

Well how many games have we played this year? 53? So for 7 players (the majority of a team) 38 goals and 32 assists is not that hot. Take out Eriksen and I guess those figures plummet.

I judge players purely on how good they look when they're playing. I see all the games on TV so assessing things like positioning and effort are a little bit more tricky for me than those who see the games live. But I can tell (I think) pretty well and pretty quickly whether someone has a bit of class about them - how they control the ball, the kinds of decisions they make, the accuracy and ambition of their passing etc. Obviously not every defender can be Ledley and not every midfielder VDV or striker Berbatov. But I just got a sense early on that Chirches was accident-prone and fancied himself on the ball a bit too much, Chadli had poor control and skill and didn't fancy taking on his man enough, Paulinho lacked ambition in almost everything he did and just never looked dynamic. Lamela just looked a mess. Soldado is still a mystery cos I swear he's class - he just can't bloody well score.

Basically my criteria of a good transfer is that, at some point (hopefully early on) I look at the player and, for whatever reason, think "he's a decent player". It's got nothing to do with stats for me. And for that reason I would still maintain that the only decent transfer with the Bale money was Eriksen. Chadli does score a few goals and for that reason I'd have him in the starting 11 no doubt - but I'm still not convinced that he's a particularly good footballer! (Though maybe as a front man he might have a lot more to add - his finishing and heading are without a doubt his strongest attributes and he never seems to get much done in the areas more traditionally associated with a midfielder).

I suppose in slightly more objective sense you can go by which teams would want to buy a particular player. Any chance that a CL club will be tapping up Paulinho this summer? No - so he's probably not turned out that great.

I'm really quite forgiving of players too, I think. There have been far more players that I thought looked really good but turned out to be nothing special than ones that I thought looked useless but then turned out to be quality.

 

Levy is a businessman, not a billionaire trying to raise the profile of his country by throwing money at football team. When a business goes from being worth £80mill to £400mill, or whatever the figure is now, the chairman has done well and gets paid very well for it. It's also worth remembering that he still gets paid much less than someone like Adebayor, who in theory should have more to do with our performance on the pitch and subsequent success/failure in the season.

I haven't checked the dates exactly but we would've received over £100mill in payment for our players at the beginning of that season, whilst only being charged the depreciation of assets on player purchases(I believe) so if we treat our spend as one £100mill player over a 4 year contract then we'd be charged £25mill each year(assuming it's a straight line depreciation) which explains the £80mill profit pretty well, even if this is just guesstimating and simplifying the figures. Over the course of Enic's ownsership they've shown little interest in creating big profits so I'd suggest that this is simply an unavoidable profit that they didn't actually want.

 

"Over the course of Enic's ownership they've shown little interest in creating big profits
so I'd suggest that this is simply an unavoidable profit that they didn't actually want."

More a technical profit that has no bearing on the way the club is operated
(the profits are not gorged on as dividends etc) .

 

Kind of what I meant, they are taxed though. The club runs on the basis that the money in the club is best spent rather than held over long periods in their bank accounts, or withdrawn in dividends. It's a sign of ambition in itself, any ambitious business should act in this way, rather than like Arsenal paying off debts early(it was never explained if there was any reason for this) and keeping £100mill+ in the bank at any one point in their period of selling and not spending much. A good business can reinvest a surplus better than they can do keeping it in the bank or avoiding fairly nominal interest payments from loans.

 

So we're the best club with no net debt? Is there a trophy for that?

 

"Is there a trophy for that?"

 

"The club runs on the basis that the money in the club is best spent rather than held over long periods in their bank accounts, or withdrawn in dividends. It's a sign of ambition in itself, any ambitious business should act in this way, rather than like Arsenal paying off debts early(it was never explained if there was any reason for this) and keeping £100mill+ in the bank at any one point in their period of selling and not spending much. A good business can reinvest a surplus better than they can do keeping it in the bank or avoiding fairly nominal interest payments from loans."

At the time of the Library, loan rates were fairly high.
So capital repayment near the start makes a big difference.

But football clubs really should not have big surpluses if not a PLC or the Empire.
That money at the very least can satisfy the transfer/wage costs of players who will move you upwards.

 

£80m seems to have rid us of any debt at all, given us something of a surplus and could pay a sizable chunk of the stadium off.
These things tend to only tell the full story over the course of several seasons though, so we'll have to wait to see just what's happened.
This summer should be fairly revealing, but any significant sales could skew it.

 

Exactly, in that time they lost Nasri, Van Persie, Clichy and Cole cheaper than they'd have liked due to expiring contracts and they got taken to the cleaners by Walcott too, who may be about to repeat the trick.

Levy places far more importance on contracts as you can see just from the fact that Kane has been given 2 new deals barely 6 months apart to insure he's earning a wage that he's happy with.

 

That sounds right to me. The profit was due to Bale’s full sale value counting as a credit, and our buys not counting as debits, at least to their full value.

Very interesting. I use my eyes more in boxing, where I know more what I’m seeing. But if I were to analyze the players by eye, I’d have similar conclusions to yours, though a bit more positive. We agree about Eriksen and Soldado.I like Chiriches, in particular. He’s a good player and he’s entertaining. He has a crazy streak which does make him too much of a risk to play CB. But he’s been an underappreciated RB this year, and has a good future there, I think, with someone. He’ll always put in a tackle, and try something interesting. I’d also say that while Lamela has often looked bad, he’s often looked decent and has some brilliant flashes. Goals and assists may not tell that much, but they do say something. Five of our seven top goals/assists per minute players are five of the seven Bale buys, one of whom (Paulinho) isn’t even really an attacking player.

How much they’d go for is probably the best judgment, as you say. But what would they go for? How much would you sell Eriksen for, if Lallana at age 24 went for 25 million? Levy would get a very good price if he was willing to sell, I’d bet. Anyway, if you want to see bad buys, ..

Player Club Fee Date
Fabio Borini Roma £10,400,000 13 July 2012
Joe Allen Swansea City £15,000,000 10 August 2012
Oussama Assaidi Heerenveen £3,000,000 17 August 2012
Nuri Sahin Real Madrid On Loan 25 August 2012
Samed Yesil Bayer Leverkusen £1,000,000 30 August 2012
Daniel Sturridge Chelsea £12,000,000 2 January 2013
Philippe Coutinho Inter Milan £8,500,000 30 January 2013
Luis Alberto Sevilla £6,800,000 22 June 2013
Iago Aspas Celta Vigo £7,000,000 23 June 2013
Simon Mignolet Sunderland £9,000,000 25 June 2013
Kolo Touré Free Transfer Free 2 July 2013
Aly Cissokho Valencia On Loan * 20 August 2013
Mamadou Sakho Paris St Germain £15,000,000 2 September 2013
Tiago Ilori Sporting Lisbon £7,000,000 2 September 2013
Victor Moses Chelsea On Loan * 2 September 2013
Rickie Lambert Southampton £4,500,000 2 June 2014
Adam Lallana Southampton £25,000,000 * 1 July 2014
Emre Can Bayer Leverkusen £9,750,000 3 July 2014
Lazar Markovic Benfica £19,800,000 15 July 2014
Dejan Lovren Southampton £20,000,000 * 27 July 2014
Divick Origi Lille £9,800,000 * 29 July 2014
Javier Manquillo Atletico Madrid On Loan 6 August 2014
Alberto Moreno Sevilla £12,000,000 * 16 August 2014
Mario Balotelli AC Milan £16,000,000 25 August 2014

 

I think we have to be happy overall that the club is profitable and financially stable. For sure, we're tightening our belts to ensure we have the pot well and truly filled for the stadium build.

In recent years, I've come to the point where I can accept us as being a 5th/6th/7th placed club because everything is about that new stadium and beyond. The huge increase in gate receipts will take us into a different class when it comes to wage potential and that's the point where we'll see what ENIC's true ambitions and intensions for the club are.

It wouldn't surprise me if the club was sold when we reach that stage but in the same breath, it would also be amazing if Levy and co took us forward and used that additional revenue to attract top talent to compliment what appears to be a pretty bloody good youth academy developing at Spurs and build us a team that can challenge for honours.

I think we have a very bright future but we have to wait a good 4-5 years before we start to see it come to fruition.

 

You can see why Levy fancied the Olympic Stadium, Wet Spam have received £600,000 of Public funds. If Cameron wants to cut benefits by £12 Billion he should start by asking Wet Spam for the money back!

 

Wouldn't it be nice for us to say to Mr Levy...."Daddy,can I come home???"