Andrew Wills takes a look at Tottenham's transfer policy and manages to see the good points. Yes, there are some. Read it.
Tottenham’s transfer policy
Christian Eriksen came out recently saying he “has a secret plan” for his future. Vald Chiriches’ agent said in October that Spurs are a good club to get to Chelsea, plus we all know Gareth Bale aspired to play for Real, and Luka Modric spent the last two years agitating for a bigger move.
The signs are ominous.
Players see Spurs as the fast track to the so called ‘big time’. Don’t pretend you haven’t thought it. We’re perceived as a selling club, and after the sale of Bale it was confirmed to the football world.
Three questions occurred to me when I realised this cold, disappointing truth.
One – if the players know this, (they don’t seem averse to coming out with it to the press), then is it actually Tottenham’s short-term strategy until we reach the financial promised land a bigger stadium would bring?
[linequote]We’re perceived as a selling club, and after the sale of Bale it was confirmed to the football world[/linequote]
I for one would not be surprised if the sales pitch to prospective new players is exactly that; sign for us and in 2/3 years time you will be playing for Real Madrid, or Manchester United.
Two – if this is the strategy, it means winning something (or getting into the Champion’s league) is not part of the immediate goal, as the goal is to tread water until we can get to the next phase. Any immediate successes would just be a bonus.
To appease the fans and keep the players (and prospective players) interested, the official line is that top 4 is the target, but this is marketing ourselves as a club with immediate aspirations.
Three – is it actually a bad thing to sacrifice short-term success for long term consistency?
The emotional part of me despairs at all three points, but the logical side thinks this is a realistic policy to move us forward.
It’s been covered fairly well that ENIC and Daniel Levy have moved us on since the Sir Alan Sugar days, and they have since become victims of their own success. The problems of the Sugar regime were relatively simple to fix in business terms, we had a level of cash and support, a rich history and could attract a good level of players. It was only a matter of time with the chains off spending before we would get to our level (around 5th / 6th) on a regular basis.
Once we hit that point, punching through the ceiling required competing with the big boys in terms of wages, worldwide support and reputation.
[linequote]the strategy is to buy players, sell players and make profit, continue to keep the standard of playing staff at a reasonable level[/linequote]
This is when we might have hit an impasse, and football methods alone couldn’t push us forward. A policy to tread water and avoid being washed back downstream was needed. The obvious strategy would be to establish loans (like Everton) and get players above our means, spend nothing on transfer fees and fill the new stadium’s coffers with any money saved.
For not doing this, Spurs should be applauded. They know their fan base, and they know what message this sends out (we’re not able to compete).
So the strategy is to buy players, sell players and make profit, continue to keep the standard of playing staff at a reasonable level, even if the best possible team would never play together given our fast turnover. This is more beneficial than one-year loans, as we get 2/3 years out of them, plus a return for turning them into stars.
The problem with this policy is that it can’t last after you get found out, and here I think Spurs have played a masterstroke. They admitted it. Used this fact as a selling point. We have sold players to Manchester United, Real Madrid and the like, so we have a proven track record. We can deliver.
With this the best players at our level would choose us as their destination, rather than teams like (at the time) Liverpool, Inter Milan or Ajax for example, where a next step is less likely.
This becomes a platform for success in the near future, we get great players, keep them for a while, and hopefully with the right manager, they can be steered to a bit of glory every now and then. If not then we make a large profit and it would take less time until we get a new stadium (so we don’t have to sell our players). Nor do we have to go through a period of stadium payback, like that lot down the road had to endure.
It also explains why the board doesn’t speak to us about it’s policy or targets.
[linequote]They’re not putting profit ahead of success, they know that success isn’t possible until we have a certain level of income[/linequote]
If they said – we need compete for the league every season – they would be held accountable for not achieving it. If they say nothing and it is assumed, then it becomes an aim not a target. They’re aware of where we are in footballing terms, but it’s difficult to publically admit that. Impossible even because the message is wrong.
It’s kind of like promising a mate you’ll do something for them, but you can’t do it for a week so you dodge their calls until you can. They’re not putting profit ahead of success, they know that success isn’t possible until we have a certain level of income. Telling us that would be met with derision, non-belief and unrealistic demands.
Of course the massive negative in all this is my next few years of supporting Tottenham will be in a state of suspended animation: hope, fail, rebuild, repeat.
That’s what supporting Tottenham is though.
The realization should be liberating, and enrich the times we are successful and I for one, choose (maybe stupidly) not to be disappointed or upset anymore when our best players are linked away or express their desire to leave. Their sales will lead to a more glittering future for Tottenham Hotspur.
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14 Comments
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16/04/2014 @ 3:06 pm
Levy didn’t want to sell Bale.
Levy has consistently, and successfully, opposed selling best players, to EPL rivals, and especially United, since the Berbatov heist.
Otherwise, If each top player we sell leads to a greater store of very good players at the club, as I believe it has, then I can accept that. Folk seem to forget, United were forced to sell Ronaldo, pretty much against their will, and Arsen*l have been forced to sell pretty much everyone they wanted to keep. Spurs fans need to stop being so precious about this.
For the record, I actually think there is a hell of a lot to be optimistic about with the club. With have a very good young squad, an excellent youth set-up, highly rated youth personnel, a great training centre, and the groundwork of a new stadium. What we are missing is a manager to put it all together, IMHO. Not anywhere near as bad as some Spurs fans seem to think – especially in regard to evaluation of our present squad. The immensely disappointing nature of this season shouldn’t blind folk to that.
16/04/2014 @ 3:15 pm
This is ridiculous. We are a selling club but for one reason only: the players we sold wanted to go & ALL of them (Berba, Mod, & Bale), refused to play for us & effectively went on strike. There is only one way to deal with traitors like that & that is to sell them. The option is to stick them in the stiffs for a season & continue to pay them shedloads a week & if that happens, there is only one winner – the player.
I don’t know how/why Pool got Suarez to stay but I should imagine the circumstances were different. Maybe he didn’t really want to go & was angling for more money.
To say we encourage players to sign with the caveat that they can move onwards & upwards in a couple of years is daft.
16/04/2014 @ 4:59 pm
Saying Liverpool kept Suarez is the biggest misconception of the season. Only Arsenal came in for him, and that was half hearted. They didn’t exactly have to fight them off. With Bale, Levy didn’t want to sell him so put a ridiculous price tag on him. It was only because Real called our bluff that he was sold. If they offered a reasonable £50m we’d be talking him up as the player of the season in the Premier League
17/04/2014 @ 2:05 am
Liverpool were offered half what we got for Bale, that’ll be why they didn’t sell…
17/04/2014 @ 10:58 am
If Real had come in with the £85 million and £300,000 a week wages that they offered for Bale, he would have swam to Madrid himself, using his over-bite as a paddle.. Money talks and the only reason he is still at Liverpool, is that no one made a sensible offer. £40M from Arse was a joke and everyone knew it… Nothing to do with amazing management from Rogers or the owners, like idiot pool fans seem to think… let’s hope Real take a fancy to him this year and just watch his loyalty then.
16/04/2014 @ 3:15 pm
Yes, I can see what you are saying and to some extent agree………but how do you reconcile the fact that since ‘Arry’s departure we have not played any football worth crossing the road for? Ajax are a so called selling club but manage to serve up entertaining football and at the same time win cups.
17/04/2014 @ 2:10 am
I think AVB wanted to play good football but didn’t quite get there…he didn’t really have to players he wanted to play his system (no deep lying playmakers, or proper inside forwards after Bale left).
Trouble was he tried to impose it on players that didn’t quite fit so it was a much slower clunky and malfunctional version…with time he might have got there.
Under Sherwood it’s just pot luck as he plays a different team almost every game!
17/04/2014 @ 10:59 am
Bad example… if we were playing in Holland, we would be Champions every year !!
16/04/2014 @ 3:56 pm
To Garry, Ajax also play in a pretty uncompetitive league where maybe a handful of clubs can challenge. Because of this, they’re all but guaranteed Champs League football and can take the cups seriously. If they win the domestic cups, the league form won’t suffer sufficiently for them to finish outside the Champs League positions. By contrast, if we put all of our energy into winning cups, we’d possibly win the League Cup assuming the bigger clubs didn’t bother with it and we might fluke an FA Cup, but we’d probably finish anywhere between 12th and 6th.
The style of play is different, I guess Ajax have sufficient history and reputation that most kids in the Netherlands dream of playing for them and sign up to their academy. Again, due to the lack of real competition in the league, they can afford to give players game time to develop, and sell them on as and when they need to, safe in the knowledge that the next batch of youngsters have been brought from age 5 to 17 playing ‘the Ajax way’ and can step into the team.
By contrast, we have no identity. We compete with all of the other clubs in England for scraps of talent, and if we’re lucky enough to find a prospect, we seem wholly unable to develop them into a decent player. King aside, who have we brought through in recent years that looks good? We’ve seen Thelwell, Gardner, Ricketts, O’Hara, Livermore and Marney turn out to be average, Townsend looks like he thinks he’s made it now and can’t be bothered, while the players we brought in young rarely flourish into anything special. Rose, Lennon, Walker, Huddlestone, Naughton and Bostock all came with hyped up potential, but without my Spurs tinted glasses on, I don’t see any that would get in a top 4 team.
On blogs and forums, fan bang the drum about ‘Tom Carroll, just like Xavi’ and ‘Harry Kane, a future Shearer’, but I see young guys who will repeat the cycle and fade away into obscurity. How can you expect players to come through from the youth set up when by the time they reach the first team fringes, there’s so much emphasis on striving for the top 4 that they can’t be relied upon? They have to learn, but they can’t learn at a club that will develop them for that mentality, so they inevitably fail to become the players that the fans wish they did.
The coaching also seems really disjointed. Rather than coaching from the beginning in tactical systems, I get the impression that because of our lack of an identity and direction, they don’t have any real way of playing. Football looks to have moved on to the 4-2-3-1 system, or however you want to describe it. We look really sluggish to adapt to it, and when AvB brought it in, everybody said it was dull. Well yes it is, but that’s the way teams seem to play now. Dominate possession, press and hope that you can score a goal or two and then keep the ball. The longer you have it, the less time the opposition have to score. But that isn’t the much vaunted ‘Spurs way’. So what? Times change, sports evolve.
To John, so what if they wanted to go? A contract is a two way thing. We can’t criticise them for wanting to go because I sure as hell wouldn’t criticise the club for terminating the contract of several players. Contracts are meaningless. We have to recognise that the players have no affiliation to the club. They can kiss the badge and tell the papers they love Spurs, but anybody with any ambition wants to push themselves professionally. If I was sufficiently good at my job to earn a better position elsewhere, with more money and better opportunities, I know I’d want to move if the company I worked for couldn’t offer me it. Footballers are no different.
Put yourselves in the shoes of someone like Shaw or Lallana. Would you move to Spurs and see it as the rest of your career? For both, it would be a slight step up from Southampton. They could test themselves at Europa level, spend two to three years earning an extra 20-30k a week, and then if they were performing well and still capable, they’d move. Why wouldn’t they and why shouldn’t they? We’re not the biggest or best club in the world. If we were capable of matching the ambitions of ambitious players, great. But we aren’t, and we won’t be for some time.
16/04/2014 @ 4:03 pm
The business side of thfc is clearly more important than the football side and that’s what riles me. Liverpool keep their best player because they want the football club to be a success. We sell ours because those in charge want the business side to be successful!! I support tottenham and always will because I live in hope that we will be a success on the pitch not off it!!
16/04/2014 @ 4:04 pm
Sorry, saw the headline and pissed myself!
16/04/2014 @ 4:10 pm
Lets be honest, as a club we are a laughing stock. As fans, this article surely puts us in the same category. I am so embarrassed right now.
17/04/2014 @ 9:04 am
Thought-provoking article – thanks.
Something that gets forgotten is that we buy (almost) all our players from someone else. So, how come they’re not seen as greedy bastards by us when they arrive but they are when they leave for more money somewhere else?
Does anyone seriously think the seven who came in the Summer came because of a love for Tottenham’s traditions, affinity with the area or a lifelong support for the club? They came for the wedge and/or the passport to more wedge.
That’s the sad reality and all we can hope for is that we benefit for a while as they pass through.
Hopefully, one day, the wheels will come off modern football’s money train and we can restore a better connection between fans, the club and the players. Don’t hold your breath though.
17/04/2014 @ 11:00 am
fair point… we can but dream !!