The last five accounts have very similar ratios between EBITD and interest which is what we know the limit applies to. It would be an amazing coincidence if that wasn't due to the covenant limit. It also explains why we've not been able to spend big during this window.
Spotrac and Capology have generally had accurate details on player wages and salaries for all clubs across Europe. Up until last summer I worked out how much we’d shaved off using their data, it isn’t exactly £500k, just under iirc but the departures of big earners like Kane, Lloris, Perisic, Ndombele and Dier plus multiple others like Lo Celso, Emerson, Skipp, Sessegnon, Sanchez and so on over that 12-18 month period massively slashed our wage budget. Of the players we’ve brought in, only Maddison and Werner would have wages that are comparable to those who departed. Even if you choose to ignore the data from those websites, I’m almost certain we’ve sold/ released more players than we’ve signed over this 12-18 month period, that alone would almost certainly point towards a reduction.
I am sure we are spending at the limit but I can't be sure whether there is a lower spend due to the loss of European revenue until I see the accounts.
I don’t see how they are. Kane was on big money, so was Hugo. Even Dier and Hojbjerg. I don’t think any of the new signings are on more than £100,000 a week.
But even if wages have reduced it doesn't prove that we have scope to increase them as we may have spent the saving on transfers or lost an equivalent amount of revenue. I find the theory that we are deliberately underspending entirely bizarre. It makes no sense at all.
EBITD is revenue minus costs. If we lose revenue by not being in Europe then we have to reduce costs to stay within the limit.
This was why I didn’t get on board with some who were saying that it was a “free hit” to bring him in. By the time his deal ends in the summer, he’ll have cost us around £13m in wages since joining us last Jan, this won’t include any possible loan fee either, not sure if we did or didn’t pay any.
I agree it wasn't a free hit but because of the way the covenant works it was much less risky than say signing someone at £33m and half the wages. That has exactly the same hit to EBITD in the first year but four more years of the same to follow which we can't get out of.
That would surely be foolish if we used the money on transfer fees, no? Wages are generally the marker for a player and team’s quality nowadays with some special circumstances aside. Lowering the wage bill would surely equate to lowering the player quality level?
We've bought a lot of expensive younger players who don't get massive wages. But your point is essentially correct which is why I think any wage decrease is driven by revenue loss from not being in Europe last year. We will see when the accounts come out.
It depends on the way you want to interpret risk. Signing an abysmal player for *cheap* arguably has greater consequences than signing a good player for more.
Agreed but we might have got an equally abysmal player by the other route at effectively five times the total hit.
Of course, albeit to be as bad as Werner you have to go some. Barring a minor miracle this season, we're not going to have European football revenue next year along with the TV money that comes with as such and I'm not sure if this is true so someone can correct me if need be but apparently each position in the Prem is worth around £3m, if that is indeed true and we don't sort our form out, we're currently on course to lose out on around £30m in Prem prize money when you consider we'd expect to be around 5th/ 6th and are currently 15th with little sign of improving.
Joining this conversation late but as this 100 game question is key, are you telling me it was wrong for levy to Sack poch as he hasn't shown a 100 game downturn Sacking all the managers after as they hadn't all been given 100 bad games either?
Yes and yes*. However performance is definitely not the only reason to sack a manager. * It depends on how bad the results are. The 100 match calculation was actually about how many matches you need to be sure that one manager is better than another based on win percentage. Since most Tottenham managers are reasonably close on that measure you need a lot of games to be sure. Having zero wins in 20 games would likely be significant enough to sack but I haven't done the calculation.
