It's a simple idea. Just but a striker. He will score goals, he will bring us joy, success, harmony and a taste of lilywhite ambrosia. But is it really that simple? Lee Hunt makes his debut and discusses.
Just buy a striker and make us successful
I’m not a business man, I’ve never run a business but I’m not stupid. Year after year, season after season, transfer window after transfer window, most ‘loyal fans’ think it is imperative that we buy expensive, world class players resulting in instant success.
It isn’t going to happen. The age old saying ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ springs to mind.
ENIC took over in 2001 when Spurs were a mid-table club. Our finances were ok, but not in great shape. All through the 90s, we were financially unstable, we got docked points one season, we were kicked out of the FA Cup one year, we had Chris Armstrong up top for Christ’s sake.
In 2001, ENIC started a project, a 15 – 20 year project. An investment.
Slowly, little by little, Levy has stabilised the club financially as one of the richest in the world and has secured our place as a top 6 team in the league. Of course, we all want trophies and Champions League every year, but it takes time. I do believe hwoever, we will eventually get there.
I have read literally hundreds of tweets recently, saying “LEVY OUT!” “ENIC OUT!” “SPEND!” “BUY HIM, BUY HIM!”
It’s hilarious. Yes, we all want World Class players like Madrid, Barcelona, City and Chelsea. At the end of the day, we simply do not have a spare £40 million to buy a striker like Diego Costa, for example.
People are tweeting, “What about our TV money?” “What about our new sponsorship money?” “But we haven’t spent the Bale money!!!”
How can anyone be so narrow minded to think that every bit of revenue we get is available to spend on new players?
We have a club/business to run. With money coming in, it needs to be spread out evenly among things like wages, stadium maintenance, training facilities, youth system and of course the new stadium etc. The rest is then spent to help fund the players we do actually buy.
It is physically impossible for Tottenham to be financially stable, successful and build a new stadium all at once. Success isn’t instant. As I’ve grown up, Spurs have become a much, much better team and I’m happy where we are as a club.
Returning back to the 15 – 20 year plan. ENIC stands for English National Investment Company. They buy businesses and sell them on for profit. Tottenham are just a small part of ENIC, so why do fans think we are their main priority?
Their plan was to establish Tottenham as a worldwide household name, improve finances, secure league safety every year, build this new stadium/community in North London and then sell at a profit.
As soon as the ground is completed in 2017, ENIC won’t be around. Hopefully we are bought by someone similar to City and Chelsea’s owners who do pump millions in to the club but until ENIC leave, we can’t compete with the world’s ‘biggest’ clubs. Deal with it. Stop comparing our lack of activity with world class players to other clubs.
The only bad point about Levy/ENIC is that they are very quick to sack a manager. We all know a manager needs time but it isn’t their style. Surely you’re used to it by now? I am.
That being said, I think things are different with Mauricio Pochettino. The purchases of Michel Vorm, Ben Davies, Eric Dier, Federico Fazio and Benjamin Stambouli are all standard Poch players and suggests that Levy trusts him with cash. (I believe Yedlin was a Levy deal to build rapport with our American partners Seattle Sounders).
Our main problem last year was our awful defence. How many mistakes were there? It is so plain to see that Poch and his team are building from the back. The average age of the squad is 24. The world class strikers will come, just not this second unfortunately.
Anyway, make of that what you will. Feel free to @ me on Twitter, @LeeHunt87, with your thoughts.
All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.
21 Comments
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03/09/2014 @ 12:56 pm
Good article – Im never happy to lose but the Liverpool result would have tempered the we’re gonna get top4 CL – title etc brigade in check.
If Poch can do at Spurs what he did at Southampton last year – ie unearth English talent and make them England players – by that I mean uncapped to capped I for one will be very happy.
That is the future – promoting from within, not spending mega dosh on players who only really come for the money…have no idea of what the club stands for – its ethos etc.
03/09/2014 @ 1:59 pm
Thanks for your reply.
Of course it would be nice now and then to be able to splash big on players. Tottenham simply don’t have the financial backing to do that and keep the business stable. We aren’t City. Fans need to realise this.
I agree with you, I’d love to see Pochettino do at Tottenham what he did with their youngsters. Surely it would be more rewarding to see Harry Kane score 20 a season than a foreign player coming in? (I’m not saying Kane will score 20, but you get my point.)
Thanks again.
03/09/2014 @ 1:11 pm
Sensible article. The Spurs players wage bill must be very much higher than it was just a few years ago. Players like Soldado must be on circa £100k per week otherwise he wouldn’t have come to Spurs. I’m guessing that the players annual wage bill must be well in excess of £50m per year. We can never match the spending power of the likes of Man Utd, Chelsea and Man City. The latter 2 have extremely wealthy sugar daddies who are adept at bending the financial fair play rules. While Man Utd have an annual revenue stream more than 3 times that of Spurs. It’s likely that the wages of Rooney, Falcao, Van Persie and Mata equal the total wages bill of our entire squad.
03/09/2014 @ 2:05 pm
Thank you, I agree completely.
ENIC are doing a fantastic job with the resources they have. If Tottenham were there sole priority then we would have all the cash in the World.
Unfortunately, we are only one of many investments they have.
03/09/2014 @ 1:58 pm
How true, year after year, after year….N still No Striker.
Whether we had Dofoe, Adebayor, Kane or Soldado , It WAS proven…..NOT good enough.
Erratic ADE, Young Kane, ineffective Soldado, No onder the goals are missing.
Spurs need a Bony or Benteke ‘ types ‘ to put in additional 10 or 15 more goals.
Not easily bullied, but who can put some fear to defenders.
WHY R Spurs NOT DOING IT.
03/09/2014 @ 2:03 pm
We had the Bony or Benteke type player in Soldado. We paid £28m for him and look what happened. He misfired. What if Bony or Benteke were to misfire? Would you then want ANOTHER £28m spent on a striker? Then another £28m the window after?
The long story short is we simply don’t have the funds to successfully run the club and buy lots of expensive players.
As long as ENIC are there, we will be stable. The future is bright. We have a new training facility that’s just been built, a 56k seater stadium on the horizion. As I said in my article, the plan is nearly finished.
Success doesn’t happen over night.
Thank you for your comment though.
03/09/2014 @ 1:59 pm
What an enjoyable, incredible reasonable and rational article.
I’m not having any of it, we’re gonna win the league!
COYS!!!
03/09/2014 @ 2:22 pm
very well balanced article
I totally agree – we niether have the resources to compete with the biggest clubs, nor should we !!
Arsenal who enjoy bigger revenue streams than we do had to put the wallet away for over 5 yrs in order to move to a bigger/better stadium……..of course Spurs will have to do the same to some degree
I slightly disagree that one issue with Levy/Enic is that they sack managers to quickley – it is more they do not apoint the right person in the first place.
AVB was a truely awful appointment on a number of levels, Tim S was always a quick stop option the contract given was more to make sure the players treated him as a manager and not a caretaker
Harry burnt all his bridges with the board and as much as we all loved the boy Jol I think we all knew he wasn’t the guy to take us on.
Santini and Ramos …….well I don’t really need to add anything here ‘eh !!!
As a Spurs supporter of some decades I have to say that was one of the best transfer windows I have seen from the club
normally t/windows see one of the following
1/ we try and buy every midfielder in the country even tho we already have 20 on the books
2/the manager just spends the money because he thinks it will keep him in his job
3/ Ignore the fact we haven’t had a left back for over 20yrs and buy another average centre back
4/buy players that never give us another option – just bring in more of the same
finally we have a manager that will be patient in the market….bring in the RIGHT players for his style and build a balanced side for the first time in years.
i think Levy will give Poch all the time he needs as I think he can see that the playing side of the club is in good hands
all you people that wanted us to spend millions are the same people who have been holding us back for decades…..everyone is entitled to their opinions but expensive quick fix’s have done nothing for us or any other successful team
patience, intellegent spending, team building is the only way forward !!!
04/09/2014 @ 11:28 am
The mention of Arsenal putting their wallet away to build a stadium has made me realise people did actually listen to what I said. We simply do not have the resources to spend, spend, spend whilst running a club and building for the future. This seems to go over some people’s heads.
Maybe we don’t employ the correct manager in the first place, you’re right. That being said, how de we know he isn’t the right manager if he is only given 9 months in charge? Something to think about.
I agree completely about your points on Pochettino and bringing in the RIGHT players. Yes, they aren’t household names but they have been hand picked to suit his playing style.
Look at Leeds for example. Look how far they have fallen from grace since their Champions League Semi-Final. They spent millions for quick success only to end up where they are now in less than 10 years.
Thanks for your comment. #COYS
03/09/2014 @ 2:30 pm
Thanks for this interesting article.
I agree with everything except I don’t want an oligarch or middle eastern (or anywhere) sugar daddy. It may bring success like City and Chelsea but there goes the soul of the club. I know this is an old fashioned view but Im an old fashioned bloke.
At the moment, there are some frustrations with Enic, which the article touches on but overall I’m happy. We’re building carefully, only spending money we have and the new stadium is on the horizon.
On the striker issue, any “world class” strikers will go where the money is. Something else that gets overlooked is that modern footballers no longer tend to grow up supporting a club. There’s little or no emotional attachment. It’s all about their career.
04/09/2014 @ 11:31 am
It was more tongue in cheek when I mentioned about us being bought by a billionaire oil tycoon. Building up to being successful would taste far greater than being given instant success, surely?
Exactly. Spot on about footballer’s going where the money and having no passion for the club. Spurs do very well attracting the players they do with the resources available, I.E funds for wages.
03/09/2014 @ 3:03 pm
I’m afraid that I can’t agree with you that Soldado is a Bony or Benteke player. He’s not strong enough to cause the problems that either of them do playing alone up front. This is one of the issues I have with Levy and ENIC. There is no coherent recruitment strategy in terms of bringing in players that will add that little necessary extra to the team due to the constant churn of manager and the intrusion of Levy into matters that he does not know enough about, namely player suitability. I believe that Daniel must be responsible for Soldado as he is never going to work in a single sriker formation as favoured by AVB and Pochettino.
Also you state a 15 year plan. ENIC arrived in 2001 so 13 years later it should be coming to fruition. Sadly the evidence on this is scanty.
After the disaster of the Sugar years, it was a shaft of light to see Levy and ENIC come in. However, the years since have revealed how little they have to offer apart from a sense of “running to stand still”. Much of this has to do with a reluctance to take a measured risk to move forward and Levy’s vanity. On the ground rebuild, it still seems we are making remarkably slow progress. I know that some will point to planning issues and resident objections but what stands out to me is the lack of real dynamism in moving this forward.
Levy has become more and more of an issue as time has passed. For many player purchases or sales, the Levy acolytes like to come out and highlight what a great negoitator he is. They do this by saying how we got one over on Perez, Pearson, Southampton and so on. This approach has a limited shelf life as other clubs, players, and agents decide we don’t deal with self promoting sharks.
More worryingly for a group that claims to aspire to a structured and considered approach to growth, Levy does not seem able to hold on to a manager for more than a year or 2 so that we’re constantly starting all over again. I can see why some managers had to go but Jol and Redknapp both deserved more time. It’s also an indictment of Levy’s management recruitment policy. Based on past behaviour MoPo will do well to last 4 years. Seems to me that some of this is based on Levy’s vanity. If a manager gets too much of the limelight, then it’s time to move him on.
I do not believe that Levy has done enough to back up MoPo which is worrying for the months/years to come. For several transfer windows it has been obvious that we are weak up front particularly when Ade goes to the ACN. Nothing has been done to address this. Last season, aside from a few heavy defeats to the big boys, it was obvious that our biggest problem was scoring goals. Levy sat on his hands. With a bit of vision, it would have been possible to have got Bony before Swansea. Accepting that mistake, we should have still tried harder for Bony this window. If sufficient money wasn’t there then set sights a little lower and look at the likes of Ulloa, or Mane (not a central striker I know). Having to sell before buying is not an adequate defence. Sometimes you have to take a risk to move forward. After all, Joe Lewis risked plenty on Mitchell and Butler and Bear Stearns (much to his cost in this case). I’m not looking for a Leeds type of bet the club approach just a considered and adventurous step when the situation requires.
This comes to my biggest criticsm of Levy, his failure to communicate. Everything seems to be done through an announcement on the THFC web site. Daniel sits up there on his throne looking miserable and rarely seems to engage with the fans. As for letting us having some insight into what is going on. Not a chance.
ENIC do not seem to have the capacity, courage or vision to move my beloved Spurs up to the next level. Daniel Levy does seem to have a genuine affection for the club. If so why doesn’t he demonstrate it by identifying another person or group who has the wherewithal and will to advance THFC to its rightful place and hand over the reins. Then he will assure himself of the position of respect in posterity amongst the Tottenham faithful that he yearns for so much.
If it carries on as it does at present, I fear that it will all end in tears.
03/09/2014 @ 6:30 pm
gerry your wrong, we have been a top 4 club for the past 10 years and heres how, without the roman’s and mansoors abundant wealth chelsea and city wouldn’t be anywhere where they are now strange as it might sound to you, enic and levy have not failed us at all they’ve kept this club in good stead, we have a very good squad and a state of the art stadium to be built soon, all this without the aid of sugar daddy’s be told, but ill tell you this, when the footballing bubble inflates and eventually bursts we”ll be the last ones standing and smiling wheres others knelt crying buckets mate. coys.
03/09/2014 @ 6:42 pm
This is a great comment. Particularly the point about Bony, add to that Michu, Benteke, Berbatov for a short, second stint when desperately needing to cement Champions League…the list goes on. These would not have been £15-20m investments, some of them not even £5m but, the rewards and counter-effects could’ve been worth £20, £40, £80m+ if establishing a seat at the top table, increasing player and club value, becoming more attractive to sponsors (especially for new stadium rights etc)…..it was not that far away on more than one occasion. We are talking about a long-term, multiple problem with this and managerial appointments and sackings. I’m not saying Levy or ENIC have not done a good job on many levels and, you can’t get everything right but, some relatively minor lacks of investment due to a lack of ambition and/or poor judgement (?, has to be one or the other) have been very very costly themselves. Lurching from one ‘plan’ to another in the meantime has also shown a total lack of conviction and clarity about key strategic objectives. The only one that’s clear to all is that of no net spend on player transfer fees for 5 years BEFORE the new stadium is even one brick high. Lean times for some years yet without some real consistency coupled with some huge slices of luck.
04/09/2014 @ 11:40 am
Thanks for the comment, Gerry.
I’m not calling them the same player, I’m comparing them to the same price tag. I’d have rather us bought Bony, Lukaku or Benteke last year personally. All £22m – £29m players. All are an expensive risk. We just happened to buy the wrong player (so it seems) and we can’t afford to spend that money every transfer window.
15 to 20 year plan. The plan has evidently come in to fruition since 2009. Demolition has started, plans have been approved, most local residents have been moved and housed elsewhere, the Sainsburys supermarket has already opened… The project is well under-way.
Our problem last year wasn’t scoring goals, I disagree. It was the leaky defence. How many mistakes did we make that led to goals? OPTA stats showed that we made the most errors leading to goals, helping us to lose 12 points. Pochettino obviously sees a problem in defence, therefore he has addressed the problems by buying defensive minded players. He is building from the back.
I play football and a good standard, I’m a striker. I have grown up to use attack as the best form of defence. In saying that, I agree with you, we should have bought at least one other attack minded player. Who we want can and probably is completely different to who Pochettino wants.
03/09/2014 @ 5:03 pm
Good Article fella.. I totally agree, we need keep positive, but also be realistic. Someone above said if ENIC are 13 years into the project, they why aren’t we doing better. Well, nobody could have expected two mid table clubs City and Chelsea all of a sudden being bankrolled by billionaires, so if you think and take them out the equation, we would actually be top 4 every year and by all accounts where we want to be… think ENIC, Levy and Poch they are doing a good job. let’s get behind the boys this season.. COYS
03/09/2014 @ 6:43 pm
PS – it was Nanty’s comment that I was referring to, not the article
03/09/2014 @ 9:20 pm
In fact it was GerryMc!
04/09/2014 @ 10:58 am
Sadly, football is not a fans sport, it’s a business. It will always be marketed to convince a fan that it is indeed a fans sport, but reality has a different rule. So with this in mind, let’s look at the grim reality. Spurs can’t compete, because they are not part of the new football business plan. This structure is implemented across Europe with the biggest clubs. These clubs will continue to dominate, as they are governed to do just that. Tottenham is not a club, even when the fan base expands due to a new stadium, that can compete. It’s aim will be to do this, like many clubs across Europe who crave the success that few continuously have, but the reality, if indeed possible, will be some years from now. Whilst this happens, the champions league will be out of their reach, certainly as a club that can continue to dominate it’s own league to be accepted into the top four. So where does this leave a club like Spurs, whose real challenge more than any other, is to at least hold on to their players when they have an inkling of success? It in all probability leaves them just where they are, a well run club, with a solid fan base, that will enjoy a sprinkling of success here and there. In truth, that’s good enough, after all, it’s a fan sport, right?
04/09/2014 @ 11:46 am
I couldn’t have said that better, I really couldn’t.
The part about a sprinkling of success here and there made me smile. That Champions League run we had, for Spurs’ standard, was a sprinkling of success.
We aren’t ready to compete like that every year, not yet. Slowly, the small doses of success will eventually become bigger doses and more frequent. In order for that to happen, we need to allow ENIC to finish their ever so evident plan.
Thank you.
06/09/2014 @ 8:11 am
Couple of quick points to throw in. Firstly, who actually does buy the players and how much influence does the manager have? This still seems to be unclear and as I recall was always one of Harry’s major gripes. AVB also seemed bemused by some of the decisions on recruitment during his time at the helm. If the manager has little or no involvement, then clearly the more recent signings have nothing to do with Poch’s so called playing philosophy.
Secondly, it’s the type of defensive mistakes that are being made that are surely the biggest concern. For example, allowing the opposing full back to run from his own half and score virtually unchallenged as happened last Sunday, suggests a collective failing rather than an individual mistake. You would not expect to see this in a Sunday League match let alone the Prem. The first Liverpool goal was also more of a collective disaster rather than an individual error. It does seem that our pressing game (that AVB also favoured) pulls players out of position and other teams have identified and are exploiting this weakness. Poch certainly deserves much more time to sort this problem out but unless he does I reckon it will all end in tears again.