The way forward for THFC ??

[The RDBD]

The general topic arises periodically (usually after a notable
defeat ) . so this time I thought I would produce an article
directed at the specific topic.

So the question is : what is the way forward for THFC ??

What are the objectively good / "best" practices in recent times that
the club :

- does
- did (but no longer does)
- is not doing


Are these practices stand-alone, or are they inter-linked in some manner ??


Before we get going, I have produced an initial set of objective
dimensions on which discussion can be done. Please feel free to suggest
additions/amendments as you see fit ...


-------

1. Revenues

a) Match day
b) On-pitch prowess
c) External


2. Player costs

a) Transfer fees
b) Wages


3. Managers

4. DoF

5. Player acquisition

a) Academy
b) Scouting
c) Route to the seniors
d) The market place


6. Supporters

 

[PleaseNotPoll]

I've said numerous times that our best way forward is to establish an identity on the pitch.
Choose a rough style of play (433 attacking, for example) and then build around that.
Hire a good manager that uses that philosophy and a DoF who understands it.
Repeat throughout our academy teams, coaches and scouts.

Levy should largely divorce himself from things as much as he can after this is done.
Concentrate on the commercial side of the club and perhaps establishing links to other clubs.
I don't like the way that City and Red Bull have done things, but we're suffering from not doing it.
Our **** loans and lack of a bridge from academy to the first team are inarguable.

What can we do to make the support better? No idea.
Lower ticket prices, maybe? Some way to get fans access to academy games?
Virtually every game sells out, but the atmosphere is very mixed.
Part of that is down to the large number of tourists and day-trippers, but that's the norm now.

 

[The RDBD]

1. Revenues

a) Match day

New WHL has delivered an extra 66% in spectator capacity,
Catering s apparently decent, so revenues there.


b) On-pitch prowess

- PL

The PL itself ironically does not generate extreme revenue.
The payment across the PL is equitable, with each
difference in table placing being worth ~2m.

The big income comes from broadcast TV revenue.
Specifically the viewer numbers. We know from USA
PL viewer figures last season that Spurs games were
highly viewed even for lesser opponents.

If the football Spurs play is not vaguely entertaining,
that revenue will drop.


- CL

It is such a big revenue stream, participation + broadcast TV.
And given at best 5 PL clubs per season can have their
snouts in that trough, tis a way to financially damage your
rivals (re them lot since 2017) .


c) External

All kinds of things happening on this front.
People like me who are full "sweat the asset" , are happy with that.
What I do think is necessary is for the ENIC businesses
to be as transparent as possible on the details/use of the revenue.
Specifically :

- what is the net revenue received from the externals
(as a % of annual match day revenue etc)

- what % us being used to service the new WHL debt,
and what % is being fed to on-pitch budgets (transfer/wage costs etc)


So the executive summary is :

A1 - play entertaining football

A2 - continual qualification for the CL (in which A1 IMHO helps a lot)

A3 - new WHL event streams are a bonus (though not derided)

 

[The RDBD]

2. Player costs

a) Transfer fees

In the main this has been driven by the revenue streams.
As the revenue streams have increased, so are the
transfer fees. The Levy "add-on" clauses for signings may
have helped in the recent past.


b) Wages

This is the one thing that Levy has done supremely well on
(compared to the usual suspects) .

Internally there does not appear to be high variance in
wages across the squad (which helps squad harmony) ,
even though players such as Kane rightly justify high wages.

Regular new contracts to increase player wages due
to performance seems to work ok.


Executive summary :

Transfer/wage costs have been managed well over the past decade.

However you cannot generally escape the market :
player transfer/wage costs are what they are.


A1 - trying to shave off a bit here and there is in itself
not bad, but not to potentially lose a player whose
ROI could be an order of magnitude than the savings.

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

One thing we really need to stop doing is approaching transfer windows thinking that the only signings that we need to make are statement signings

One thing which genuinely baffles me in the last four years worth of transfer windows is how we habitually look past players who could be bought for chicken feed because instead what we need to do is spend £30m+ on a player in that same position - and then sit and watch as the player we could've signed for chicken feed becomes a player worth £50m while the player we signed more often than not devalues

Case in point (and I know that I keep bringing this up, but there's a reason) we were linked with both Kim Min-jae and Kvicha Kvaratskhelia around this time last year, yet passed on both - only for Napoli to sign the pair for a combined €28m, and now the likely cost of the pair of them would be north of €80m at the most conservative estimate

Similar could be said about scouting promising homegrown youngsters, which was the club's mission statement when Arnesen was our DoF hence we were picking up the likes of Defoe, Carrick, Davis, Jenas, Huddlestone etc during that period, and even after Arnesen was tapped-up we continued with that plan and brought in the likes of Walker in the Ramos/Redknapp years - but we did a complete 180 on that for a three year spell, as between signing Jack Clarke in the summer of 2019 and Djed Spence last summer we simply overlooked that entire transfer strategy, outside of the academy anyway

 

[The RDBD]

3. Managers

It is obvious to Spurs supporters that during the ENIC
era, the best on-pitch performances over a season
have come from managers who have set their teams
to play exciting attacking football.

From BMJ to Arry to Pochettino.

No rigid adherence to a formation (even the Pochettino
pressing game was measured and nowhere near Bielsa-ball) ,
just get out there and at them.

We saw the difference between 2015-16 and 2016-17 :
tighten up the defence in MF a bit more (Wanyama) and
watch both the GF and GA improve massively.

Even extremes like Liverpool 2013-14 (scored 2 goals
for every one conceded - and they conceded 50 odd) is
better than Portu-ball.

And if you don't win a single trophy, get in the CL etc,
the supporters will have less complaint because they
have been ENTERTAINED.

Executive summary :

A1 - bring in an attack-minded manager, ideally with
some notion of how to deal with the defence + not
dogmatically wedded to particular formations.

 

[The RDBD]

4. DoF

For me, this is the biggie for on-pitch matters,
and it literally has to be all or nothing.

The one who controls, and is fully accountable for :

- setting the technical requirements for the capabilities of
any player that emerge from the academy pipeline

- ensuring the scouting networks are top tier

- selecting the manager of the senior squad

- providing the best personnel (coaches, physio-logy/therapy,
fitness, nutrition, data science) , and having them work together
to get the "global optimum" for the N-variable problem

- acquiring (for a given transfer/wage budget) those players
that will serve the needs of the club


Executive summary :

A1 - commit FULLY to having a DoF responsible for ALL of the above

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

4. DoF

For me, this is the biggie for on-pitch matters,
and it literally has to be all or nothing.

The one who controls, and is fully accountable for :

- setting the technical requirements for the capabilities of
any player that emerge from the academy pipeline

- ensuring the scouting networks are top tier

- selecting the manager of the senior squad

- providing the best personnel (coaches, physio-logy/therapy,
fitness, nutrition, data science) , and having them work together
to get the "global optimum" for the N-variable problem

- acquiring (for a given transfer/wage budget) those players
that will serve the needs of the club


Executive summary :

A1 - commit FULLY to having a DoF responsible for ALL of the above

When it comes to the DoF, one particularly grating comment I've seen popping up time and again is we need "a progressive DoF", which is tied to the idea that Paratici only understands catenaccio and what we really need is a DoF from La Liga or the Eredivisie

The obvious issue with that line of thinking is the obvious point where you could drop Romero, Kulusevski and Bentancur in our 2016-17 team and they would slot in beautifully, which exposes how nonsensical that line of thinking is on its own without simply pointing to Cuti playing for Atalanta (easily one of the most progressive teams in Serie A for the last few years) and Argentina (a progressive national team)

Secondly this line of thinking ignores the fact that Spurs' recent(ish) history has clear evidence of a DoF signing a bunch of non-progressive players because that's what the manager wanted, namely Frank Arnesen signing the two slowest FBs in club history in Thimothee Atouba and Erik Edman because Santini was wholly against FBs crossing the halfway line at any point in the match...and when Santini was out the door, Arnesen signed the far more progressive Lee Young-pyo and Paul Stalteri entirely because Martin Jol wanted FBs who could actually move the ball forwards at anything faster than walking pace

And that's why the talk of a "progressive DoF" fails, because the argument behind it is a DoF is married to a style of football and that simply isn't the case, as we saw with Arnesen - and for another example Luis Campos went from working with Claudio Ranieri to Leonardo Jardim at Monaco and is currently working with Christophe Galtier at PSG, which is three very different coaching philosophies and yet he has worked as intended with all three without any glaring breakdowns in communication

What we need is a clear line of communication between the boardroom, the DoF and the manager so we don't get repeats of Martin Jol flat out telling Kevin Prince Boateng he never wanted him in the first place after Comolli played Football Manager on Levy's dime, or Conte immediately creating a schism when Djed Spence was signed with the "club signing" comment

 

[RRich]

I think continue what we are doing the trophy will come in the next year or two as our resources keep increasing.

The only method I want changing is moving towards attack minded coach/manager when that time comes. Which should ALWAYS be the default.

Not too much going wrong beyond that.

Unless we spend Top 2 big we’ll always be in that 3-6 placings. Hell to pay if we finish 6th playing dogshit defensive football though. If it gets CL football then fine.

 

[The RDBD]

The only method I want changing is moving towards attack minded coach/manager when that time comes.
Which should ALWAYS be the default.

Some also think this.
Whether that is a majority opinion (consequences therein etc)
is the kind of thing I hope this article will show.


"Unless we spend Top 2 big we’ll always be in that 3-6 placings."

2016-17 would be a counter-argument to that
(granted that N consecutive seasons were required to
get the squad to what Pochettino had for 2015-16) .


"Hell to pay if we finish 6th playing dogshit defensive football though."

Indeed.


"If it gets CL football then fine."

For how many consecutive seasons would supporters
tolerate that though ( !"rinse repeat" seasons of Portu-ball etc
just to be in the CL) ??

 

[Spurlock]

I think the supporters on the whole are a bit passive and a disappointment, especially the match goers.

20 plus years of ENIC have put us, some of us in our place and convinced us trophies don’t really matter

so maybe if the fans can start priding themselves with a real desire for silverware instead of this ‘so long as we knock it about a bit’ I’m happy, attitude.

Maybe the aura can start to change….like I said not everyone but enough are still passive about the glory.

 

[Dier Hard]

We’ll likely be taking steps back before going forward in my opinion. Too much uncertainty over key personnel at the moment, especially Kane and I fear his loss more than any other player in the past, should he go this summer, I’d expect us to finish around 8th-10th next season, possibly worse.

It feels as if some of our top four rivals are closer to achieving short term and long term goals than we are and the window of opportunity to have made some space between us and others seems to have closed to the point we’re now potentially the ones in space behind.

In order to move forward and improve atmosphere at the club though I think:
Lower ticket prices, get working class fans back at games. Fans x club relations is at an all time low, club has to find a way to appease them and that goes a long way.
Accept pretty much any incoming offers for unwanted players.
Be ruthless with unwanted players too, place in reserves and remove their squad registration to force them out.
Stop overpaying for mediocre players like Ndombele/ Lo Celso/ Richarlison and if you’re gonna pay large sums make sure it’s on someone with genuine pedigree.
Offer Kane the world to stay, make him the highest paid in the league if he agrees.
Hire a progressive manager.
Keep Levy away from footballing decisions because he’s still making some despite having Paratici.
Open/ reopen links with lower league clubs like Yeovil, Leyton, Swindon etc and send multiple players on loan to them.
Bed-in younger players in order to start building towards moving forward; Skipp, Sarr and Gil have all shown more heart, effort and skill in minimal showings than most senior players.

 

[PowerSpurs]

I think the supporters on the whole are a bit passive and a disappointment, especially the match goers.

20 plus years of ENIC have put us, some of us in our place and convinced us trophies don’t really matter

so maybe if the fans can start priding themselves with a real desire for silverware instead of this ‘so long as we knock it about a bit’ I’m happy, attitude.

Maybe the aura can start to change….like I said not everyone but enough are still passive about the glory.

Literally no-one thinks trophies don't matter. The reason that I support Levy and ENIC is that I think their strategy maximises the chance of winning trophies in the long run. The fact that we've not won more on the way is just an outcome, not a good measure of whether the strategy is right.

 

[Tilly'sowner]

I doubt the Club would entertain the notion of reducing ticket prices to enable the working class fans to have access. Why would they? It’s about gate revenue and if they are selling out at full capacity etc, this would encourage them to push prices up to manage demand. Obviously not until the economy settles.

Best thing the fans could do, is simply not attend. When Son leaves, there will be a few extra seats available though!

 

[Spurlock]

Literally no-one thinks trophies don't matter. The reason that I support Levy and ENIC is that I think their strategy maximises the chance of winning trophies in the long run. The fact that we've not won more on the way is just an outcome, not a good measure of whether the strategy is right.

Actually yes it is a good measure of wether the strategy is right because that's the end game...glory, trophies...of which we have won 1 under ENIC ...that is massive failure.

and when you say long term...you actually mean half of my current existence on planet Earth.

Doesn't work for me...I'm just living Levy's dream.

 

[remembercolinlee]

I think the supporters on the whole are a bit passive and a disappointment, especially the match goers.

20 plus years of ENIC have put us, some of us in our place and convinced us trophies don’t really matter

so maybe if the fans can start priding themselves with a real desire for silverware instead of this ‘so long as we knock it about a bit’ I’m happy, attitude.

Maybe the aura can start to change….like I said not everyone but enough are still passive about the glory.

Completely disagree.
Our fans have been excellent, particularly away from home.
The fans are not the issue imo

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

Completely disagree.
Our fans have been excellent, particularly away from home.
The fans are not the issue imo

Ironically, the most passive fans sem to come from teams who expect success

Bayern fans are borderline creepy in how passive they are when walking to another Bundesliga title, while The Sheikh Mansour Team fans are so passive their forum on here is deader than Dilbert

 

[remembercolinlee]

The clubneeds to choose a manager an act accordingly.

If they employ a "need to spend big manager" who plays great looking football like JM or Conte then buy the players he wants, when he wants them no matter what.

If we can't do that then employ managers that can cope on our budget like Jol, Redknapp and Pochettino

 

[humanbeingincroydon]

FYI, only a complete ****ing moron would believe this is the way forward

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Lunatic Fringe deserving that name and then some

 

[The RDBD]

5. Player acquisition

a) Academy

The adademy is definitely not functioning well.
If you consider that from Arry 2010 to Pochettino 2016, all the
following players came into the senior squad :

- Walker
- Rose
- Livermore
- Caulker
- Naughton
- Townsend
- Bentaleb
- Mason
- Kane
- Winks


Regardless of what you think of their quality or longevity, that is
a decent number of players that have come thru the pipeline.

Those that had longevity, have served the club well.

Those that did not, it appears that at the very worst that after
selling them the nett cost to the club was "zero sum" .

In recent times we have had who : Skipp ??


b) Scouting

I cannot say how good/bad the Spurs scouting networks are wrt to
their peers (someone such as Spurcat would be far more ITK on this) .

Are the networks today capable of finding a Berbatov, Modric etc
before others become aware of them ??

How do the networks discern in advance that some players are too fragile
for PL longevity (Lamela, GLC etc) or will be wastes of space
(NDombele etc) ??


c) Route to the seniors

There has to be honesty on this, for academy prospects (Marcus Edwards
etc) , and signings (Spence etc) .

Should there be a "cut off" age where you "use it or lose it" ??
If a player by age X has not made at least Y starts for the seniors,
then by default you have to assume they have no future at the club ??


d) The market place

Transfer/wage costs are what they are : the market decides.
I respect the "Levying" side of things ( "add-on" triggers etc) . but the
finances are now getting to the level where the old ways are not
so vital (unless the seller is taking the p*ss etc) .

If the money side is sorted, is the club an attractive proposition ??
Could a Bale. Dele Alli etc be persuaded to join Spurs now over others ??


Excutive summary :

A1 - get the academy pipeline flow rate back to pre 2016 levels.

A2 - have a "use it of lose it" regime for the youngsters - but be
CONSISTENT with it

A3 - develop more prescient analytics for overseas signing prospects

A4 - the more brutal Levying tactics should be the exceptio
rather than the rule