The way forward for THFC ??

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Dier Hard said:
This bit especially is the harrowing part of our spending, add Sessegnon and Emerson into that too as that's another £55m or so. It's practically killing us and any manager we have.

Not only are we wasting the money we have but we're unable to really bring in replacements for these until they're out the door, and getting them out is much harder than it used to be due to Premier League paying wages generally far beyond what European counterparts can offer.

We need to stop spending huge money on mediocrity (Richarlison) or spending huge money on potential (Ndombele, Lo Celso, Sanchez etc) because potential is never a guarantee, no issues with punts like Clarke, Udogie or Spence who cost us drops in the ocean and have generally been our bread and butter but otherwise we need to spend on actual current ability when we're looking to really break bank.
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The thing with Ndombele is he wasn't signed on potential, not for that fee: he was signed to be the centrepiece of our midfield

Our track record when we splash the cash has always been littered with cautionary tales, because for every success story like Modric or Romero there's three or four or five or six examples where it's not worked such as Ndombele, David Bentley, Barren Dent, Helder Postiga, Robert Soldado, Sergei Rebrov, Dean Richards, Paulinho etc etc etc

That's why the low cost/high potential approach worked so well for us, because if the player slotted in then everything was fine, while if they were a bust it wasn't such an issue as we'd likely recoup a decent chunk of the fee moving them on, but it was just as likely we could flip them for a small profit like we did with Benjamin Stambouli or even make a random massive profit like we did with Kevin Wimmer - which also meant that, if we did make a dud statement signing, we could eat some of the potential loss with other sales

But moving away from that approach completely only serves to put more pressure on the big signings to perform, and if they don't...well, we're ****ed on the pitch in the immediate term and ****ed on the balance sheet at the end of the season
 
humanbeingincroydon said:
The thing with Ndombele is he wasn't signed on potential, not for that fee: he was signed to be the centrepiece of our midfield

Our track record when we splash the cash has always been littered with cautionary tales, because for every success story like Modric or Romero there's three or four or five or six examples where it's not worked such as Ndombele, David Bentley, Barren Dent, Helder Postiga, Robert Soldado, Sergei Rebrov, Dean Richards, Paulinho etc etc etc

That's why the low cost/high potential approach worked so well for us, because if the player slotted in then everything was fine, while if they were a bust it wasn't such an issue as we'd likely recoup a decent chunk of the fee moving them on, but it was just as likely we could flip them for a small profit like we did with Benjamin Stambouli or even make a random massive profit like we did with Kevin Wimmer - which also meant that, if we did make a dud statement signing, we could eat some of the potential loss with other sales

But moving away from that approach completely only serves to put more pressure on the big signings to perform, and if they don't...well, we're ****ed on the pitch in the immediate term and ****ed on the balance sheet at the end of the season
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He was signed for both, because at 21/22 he was far from the finished product and was expected to become an excellent player in time, as well as immediately slotting into a midfield that had previously been occupied by Winks and Sissoko. The hope was that Pochettino would turn him into a Mousa Dembele capable of scoring and assisting. Now four years later at still only 26 he's on loan at Napoli playing a bit part role, whereas he *should* essentially be one of the best midfielders in Europe about now based on what we spent and expected.

Low cost high potential is a great route to go down and one I have zero qualms with. High cost high potential is something we've been burnt far too heavily with and needs stopping, it's just too risky regardless of our previous failures with it.
Then as for spending £60m on Richarlison, who is neither high potential nor high quality, is something only those involved with the deal at the club will ever understand, the Brazilian is basically our Maguire, just about everyone knew the player was nowhere near worth the money spent yet the club spent it anyway and here we are, about to enter April with a sulky individual who's yet to score a domestic goal for the club.
 
humanbeingincroydon said:
We do invest in the team

The issue is the team-adjacent part has been a mess for a good few years now, be it the failure to integrate academy players into the first team and routinely losing top prospects for next to nothing (or even nothing), or how we have completely lost our way in finding low cost/high ceiling players who can grow from an untapped youngster we sign for £5-10m to somebody who inevitably gets tapped-up for £50m+ and instead are paying £40m+ for players who we're going to be taking one cold bath after another on if and when we sell them

It's that second part which is what is causing our squad to stagnate, because instead of taking a punt on players when they can be bought for reasonable fees we always seem to ditcher and watch their values skyrocket so they're less attainable as a result, with Kvicha Kvaratskhelia and Kim Min-jae being the most obvious recent example given Napoli paid roughly as much for the two of them that we paid for Emerson, while on the other side of the coin Ndombele, Sanchez, Lo Celso and Richarlison cost us around £200m for the four and, if we're lucky, we might get 1/3 of that back if we sell the first three this summer
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We don’t spend it…we blow it

thats wasting

not spending

all because the very top of the tree is clueless
 
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Spurlock said:
We don’t spend it…we blow it

thats wasting

not spending

all because the very top of the tree is clueless
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You think Levy chose Ndombele, Sanchez, Lo Celso, Sessegnon and Richarlison?
Things go wrong WHEN Levy backs the manager which is one of the things I think has changed recently. None of those signings were any sort of bargain hunting of the type Levy gets criticism for. They were actually the sort of thing most fans think is the right way to run a football club...go after the manager's targets and spend whatever you need to get them.
I hope Levy has learned the lesson that most managers are no better judges of who to sign than any of the rest of us...
 
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KingHotspur said:
It’s not even about spending more. It’s about spending better. Look at the money Spurs have wasted on managerial appointments/sackings and on expensive players who have flopped just in the last 4 years alone.

Spurs have less margin for error than the likes of City or Chelsea because they’re run with unlimited money so it’s crucial they spend better and this hasn’t happened for a long time.
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You sound like a Government minister who always blames the NHS, Police, Railways or whoever (except the Armed Forces of course) for not spending money smarter.
The trouble is, most organisations spend their money as smartly as they can and unless you can point to a particular systemic failure at Spurs which is fixable, there is no reason to expect either that we are worse than average at spending money or that there is any way of making us better.
 
PowerSpurs said:
You sound like a Government minister who always blames the NHS, Police, Railways or whoever (except the Armed Forces of course) for not spending money smarter.
The trouble is, most organisations spend their money as smartly as they can.
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Which does not imply that the spenders are smart
enough for the task at hand ( "Peter principle" etc) .
 
The RDBD said:
Which does not imply that the spenders are smart
enough for the task at hand ( "Peter principle" etc) .
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Indeed, but to hire better people you usually need to spend more money so an allegation that money is being wasted usually means the budget is too constrained.
 
PowerSpurs said:
You sound like a Government minister who always blames the NHS, Police, Railways or whoever (except the Armed Forces of course) for not spending money smarter.
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I can’t say what you sound like because I’ll get banned for being personal.

You just keeping burying your head in the sand
 
KingHotspur said:
I can’t say what you sound like because I’ll get banned for being personal.

You just keeping burying your head in the sand
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OK apologies if that sounded personal.
But what improvements do you think we need to spend the money better?
If I said the players need to play better and the coach needs to coach better....is that constructive?
 
Spurlock said:
We don’t spend it…we blow it

thats wasting

not spending

all because the very top of the tree is clueless
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The thing with so many of the transfers where we've blown cash is that it doesn;t really fall on Levy

Barren Dent was on Comolli not listening to Martin Jol's instructions (he said sign a striker if Mido and Jermain Defoe left, not just Mido), although Levy realistically should have had his hand over the killswitch for that one
David Bentley was Ramos apparently forgetting that Aaron Lennon had been a fixture in our team for the previous three years
Soldado was on Villas-Boas, as Baldini suggested Christian Benteke as the striker his system needed by AVB overruled him
Paulinho was on Baldini
Ndombele was on Poch, to the point we refused to sign a stopgap the previous summer
Lo Celso was 50/50 on Poch, given the talk was Lo Celso or Bruno Fernandes (which, in retrospect, looked like we were replacing Dele in the summer of 2019)
Richarlison is absolutely on Conte

Although this does beg the question how our ceiling for transfers that won't go tits up is in the mid-tier fees (i.e. £10-15m a decade ago, around £20-30m in the current market) and whenever we stray above that limit things either go horribly wrong or, in the case of Lamela or Sissoko, take longer to work out than we would have hoped
 
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PowerSpurs said:
Indeed, but to hire better people you usually need to spend more money so an allegation that money is being wasted usually means the budget is too constrained.
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I have worked with enough people who were
paid the "market rate" but they were not very
good (and therefore cost the clients money) .
 
Spurlock said:
What is Levy’s strength when it comes to football matters?

any?
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Picking unsuitable managers He's brilliant at it. BRILLIANT!
Citizen Kane. said:
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But he's perfect, never makes mistakes, best thing since sliced Scholar etc. etc.
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Paul O'Keefe's comments about getting a bargain are spot on. From AVB to Mourinho and then Conte...and Aurier having to get out of PSG...Swansea having to raise money from Rodon...getting Bale back cheap when Mourinho didn't want him...the Grealish saga...

...the bloke's just a market trader at heart...grifting. Penny wise but pound foolish...and it isn't going to change. He'll be at it again with the coach appointment and turning up late in the window with players that the coach won't use...from a bloke he knows down the wine bar.
 
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