Deary me
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So for an investment of less than 100m they have turned around a 2bn business.
Where has that value come from?
Us. The punters.
Where has that value come from?
Us. The punters.
And they came in just before the premier league exploded in popularity. They hit the jackpot. Got there hands on a sleeping giant for peanuts and nearly 2 decades and 1 league cup later have increased the value of their investment more than 20fold
Who fucking cares?
Christ almighty, you'd think we were Blackpool the way you bunch of sissy go on.
Yes ENIC would make money if they sold the club - so would the Glazers, and they have been getting Man Utd to buy it for them. Every PL team bought in 2001 is probably worth 10 times as much now.
I think the point is though, no one would begrudge ENIC for making a huge capital gain on their investment, if only they backed it up by actively investing in the FOOTBALL team, and had more than just 1 league cup to show for nearly 2 decades of ownership
Ok. Just to spell it out. I said the FOOTBALL TEAM. The playing squad. And not just 1 league cup in nearly 2 decades.
Firstly, it is the facilities that get you players like Kane, Townsend, Pritchard, Mason and Winks from the academy. Secondly, it is the also the facilities that attracts players.
I don't think you're flattering yourself with the constant calls to "invest" in the playing squad. The fact that we generally manage to 'break even' is not down to lack of spending, it is down to the extraordinary fees the chairman manages to convince people to pay for our players.
Honestly, it seems like you'd be happier if we were in the exact same position, but drowning in debt with another bellend like Scholar who acted like he couldn't count.
Never called it a gift. It's an investment to improve their asset. One that really helps the club. They bought cheap, want to sell high, but have also brought the club to a place of much greater health. We have a competitive team, a new home for the next century, and play good football. How many other clubs' fans can say that?
Fuck me our fans have turned all Joey deacon and Pochs a count........oh well
Some here think that the only important money is that which is spent on new player acquisition. I am not blind to the idea that we have to develop our own players and buy in quality too. The thing is that we have.
You can argue about silverware but you can also demonstrate progress. For the first time in our history we are going in to the champions league for a second season in a row. Sorry if this doesn't fit the narrative but I like our manager, I like our squad and I like, mostly, how the club has been managed from above.
The only team in the past 20 years that has not spent the most money on their squad is Leicester. To buck the trend is not just hard, it's momentus. There are only Six clubs in the last 25 years to win the premier league. Of course I want us to be one of them, yup we've been poor in the FA Cup and could have done better, also we should have been better in Europe, we're not there yet but that does not mean we're going backwards.
ENIC have not bought us as an act of charity or love. But we haven't been bought as a rich man's vanity project, or had massive debt levied against us like a venture capital situation. I have said it before, it is in their interests for their investment to be a success because they want to sell the club as something worth buying, it enhances their credibility and maximises profit.
The next question is how they have seen the club turn in to something worth more than a billion pounds? In saying 'the punters' I think it's both right and wrong, the growth of the Premier League is the big revenue raising factor, it means that commercial sponsorship has gone to a higher level, that's because more people are interested in football and they're prepared to spend money on it, because the league has done an amazing marketing job, they have changed the entire nature of the business and created more markets and more punters, which is why clubs in the league are so attractive to investors.
Make no mistake that we have capitalised too, when the premier league begun we were mid table at best and I think we only started to look really competitive from the 2008 season. I think it's easy to forget the times white hart lane didn't sell out, when the champions league was a pipe dream and the top 4 was another level.
We're not there yet but you'd have to be pretty selective not to acknowledge we've come a long way.
You can argue about silverware but you can also demonstrate progress. For the first time in our history we are going in to the champions league for a second season in a row. Sorry if this doesn't fit the narrative but I like our manager, I like our squad and I like, mostly, how the club has been managed from above.
The only team in the past 20 years that has not spent the most money on their squad is Leicester. To buck the trend is not just hard, it's momentus. There are only Six clubs in the last 25 years to win the premier league. Of course I want us to be one of them, yup we've been poor in the FA Cup and could have done better, also we should have been better in Europe, we're not there yet but that does not mean we're going backwards.
ENIC have not bought us as an act of charity or love. But we haven't been bought as a rich man's vanity project, or had massive debt levied against us like a venture capital situation. I have said it before, it is in their interests for their investment to be a success because they want to sell the club as something worth buying, it enhances their credibility and maximises profit.
The next question is how they have seen the club turn in to something worth more than a billion pounds? In saying 'the punters' I think it's both right and wrong, the growth of the Premier League is the big revenue raising factor, it means that commercial sponsorship has gone to a higher level, that's because more people are interested in football and they're prepared to spend money on it, because the league has done an amazing marketing job, they have changed the entire nature of the business and created more markets and more punters, which is why clubs in the league are so attractive to investors.
Make no mistake that we have capitalised too, when the premier league begun we were mid table at best and I think we only started to look really competitive from the 2008 season. I think it's easy to forget the times white hart lane didn't sell out, when the champions league was a pipe dream and the top 4 was another level.
We're not there yet but you'd have to be pretty selective not to acknowledge we've come a long way.
Dude! When did you start following Spurs?
Currently we have the best team since the 80s, imv
10 years ago we had players such as Stalteri (legend), Tainio, Mlabranque, Lee, Rocha, Jenas forming our core. Berba and Keane scoring loads papered over what was a painfully average team. Losing 5-3 to Fulham was considered an entertaining game.
10 years later we have the best defensive duo in the PL, the second best keeper in the PL, one of the 2 best strikers in the PL, the best attacking mid in the PL and one of the best defensive and creative mids in the PL and up until yesterday the 2 best wing-backs in the PL
We have won the golden boot TWICE in a row as well as the Young Player of the year twice as well as having number of players in the PL team of the year
How the fuck haven't we improved the team?
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Think John only started supporting us during the Redknapp era. Suspect he's about 15.
And for decades our youth system barely produced a player for our first team, or even players who went on to have careers elsewhere at the top level. We were turning out players like Neale Fenn and Paul Mahorn.
Now we have a system in place that will provide first team quality players.
If you think they havnt invested in the football team, it makes you a bigger fucking idiot than when you said you thought Levy was funding Archways legal costs to avoid building a new stadium. what they havn't done is spunk money like they did on sissoko last year (a deal that you wanking furiously in delight, despite the fact that 90% of our support, and 100% of Newcastle's knew that he's a lazy cunt that wasn't worth the money)
Cos for you, its not about who you sign, its about how much you pay for them. which makes me wonder if you are more concerned with others people's perception of the club, than where it actually is (wahhhhh people think we are a selling club")..who gives a shit what a gooner or a chav thinks about us? I dont.
i shudder to think what you would have been like during the Sugar years. when we signed a player (Ferdinand), and about 5 minutes after the ink dried, Sugar was claiming he had been sold a pup.
Carr, Campbell , King , caskey, samways, Howells.barmby.
These are just a few .We have constantly produced youth players.
Take away Harry and ,we bought the rest.
Do do realise the team with tannio,steed, jeanas and Keane won something.
We also had players winning player of the year then and in team of the year then!
Trophies count ,the 87 team pisses all over this team they won nothing.
The point being from about 94 onwards apart from Judas and King most of our youth products were not setting the first team alight. It's safe to say from Sugar era onwards we as a club fell from stature allowing the like of Woolwich and the Chavs to overtake us. We have been playing catch up since it's taken a long time but our club is now back in the position of being on the cusp of something great happening and as a Spurs fan of 35+ years I'm excited to see what is happening.
Of those only Ledley can be considered in any way recent.
I am talking about the players coming out of the youth system around the time ENIC came into the picture, not guys coming out of they system in the late 1980s. Who were the quality players coming out of our youth set up in the late 1990s/early 2000s?
The current management inherited a car crash on the youth side.
