Fair enough. You’re being very kind imo. We finished 9th in 04/05 and most of that 20 were complete and utter flops... none of the youth made it and we had Stella names such as Edman, Pamarot, Andy “Pieman” Reid and Sean Davis in there... Jesus... It’s more like hit and hope to me.I would absolutely disagree over Frank Arnesen. Brought in over 20 players in the summer to help totally transform Spurs together with coach Martin Jol who got us to 2 successive 5th places, at the time our highest league finishes for over 20 years. Big success as DoF despite being here for only a year or less
Bringing in that number of players - half for the first team and half as a development stars on a relatively limited budget meant that quality was mixed - but that included Carrick (who wanted out after a season to join ManU) whose sale realised £16m of which £10m was invested in Berbatov, so the player trading opportunities to develop the squad further that we got from Arnesen's summer shouldn't be under estimated.
Absolute hammer blow when Chelsea tapped him up, but I'd suggest he played a big part in starting the change in Spurs from lower PL table fodder to our current status.
Carrick, Robinson and Dawson were the standout with Naybet and Mendes being good pros.
If I was to be generous myself I’d say he probably had a good part in scouting the 05/06 list of incomings, assuming we didn’t change tack, which is where those two 5th places came from... Davids, Lennon, Tainio, Murphy, YP Lee, Huddlestone...
But to each his own I guess. For me he was a fucking merc and we’ll never know what would have happened if he’d have stayed.