What is this ‘signings’ that you speak of?!
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Well I certainly understand it's more complex than that, ai was trying to avoid getting into a financial debate yet lend more thought to the matter not quite being as simple as "we spent £1Bn and still made "£150M". That was the point of including the house building project by way of example - that includes spending money borrowed from a bank to build an asset for yourself the funding of which you will pay off over time.
As you say, an overly simplistic analysis is we've made a record profit and Levy shiuld oull his thumb out and sign some fucking players. All I was trying to point out was you can't divorce that reported profit from the mountain of debt that has also been loaded onto the club at the same time. And like you pointed out, it's far more complex.
Thats the worst spelling of London Olympic Legacy Committee i've seen
Absolutely. As Levy himself has said in the recent articles going around this week, the last 18 years have been about building the physical infrastructure of a European contender. At the same time, the club has managed to somehow stay competitive on the pitch while being run with a focus on making sure the financials enabled the infrastructure to happen. That was a tricky balancing act. Levy's done the really had work, now he gets to focus on just maximizing the support to the on-pitch effort.
This doesn't make us a "Manchester United-level/money doesn't matter" giant. But it means that we can fund a CL-contending squad with the facilities to turn that group of contenders into winners if the talent and application are there.
Fingers crossed this happens sooner rather than later, but the results are the one thing that cannot be controlled.
www.independent.co.uk/sport/football-turbulent-times-at-tottenham-hotspur-1491853.html%3famp
From 1993 - giving a little snap shot of where we once went to.
In context ENIC have been excellent financial controllers and decent owners.
The only sad part is spending too much of my life watching the likes of Woolwich and Chelsea dominating us, how did it ever get that bad ?
From 1993 - giving a little snap shot of where we once went to.
In context ENIC have been excellent financial controllers and decent owners.
The only sad part is spending too much of my life watching the likes of Woolwich and Chelsea dominating us, how did it ever get that bad ?
Wenger came along, right place right time and was a bit of a pioneer regarding diets, extensive scouting networks. That guy made that club at a key time when money came into the game. Chelsea, had a little spell where they gambled on older players like Gullit, Vialli etc and that coincided with blood money pushing them on. Stamford Bridge I noticed had a fair few empty seats last night. I wonder if it'll get as much of a mention as the empties the new place saw last night.
Chelsea are clinging on. Of Hazard goes and the transfer ban occurs it's a real hammer blow for them, Champions League or not next season.
Spurs smashing the wage war.
That's one way to look at it I guess...
This is correct. And there are implications to that.
ENIC are making an absolute killing owning Spurs, the club are a smashing financial success.
If our miracle team is left to wither and die over confiscatory ownership practices utterly, RADICALLY out of step with the rest of English and major European football, Levy should be a pariah in his own golden palace.
We've got nine figures to pump into this team without breaking a sweat, period, end of story.
We have 9 figures? I don't know about that. It's not quite that simple, and it's also really odd to characterize Levy's management as confiscatory, since ENIC have not actually taken any money out of the club to date. In 18 years. It would be radically out of step if that continued, since just about everywhere else is either having the owners collect payments or they're oligarch's playthings.That's one way to look at it I guess...
This is correct. And there are implications to that.
ENIC are making an absolute killing owning Spurs, the club are a smashing financial success.
If our miracle team is left to wither and die over confiscatory ownership practices utterly, RADICALLY out of step with the rest of English and major European football, Levy should be a pariah in his own golden palace.
We've got nine figures to pump into this team without breaking a sweat, period, end of story.
The club does have money to invest in the squad. It also did last summer. By his own admission, Frenkie de Jong didn't want to leave Ajax yet, so he turned us down. So don't get carried away with false narratives about spending money.
It hasn't been confiscatory...yet.
Both the incoming and outgoing money have sharply turned in the past year or so. We're sitting on a pile of cash. The squad is in need of investment in a way that wasn't as strongly true a couple years ago. Higher wages are sought by some of our key players.
This is a critical moment in ENIC's leadership. A hinge point.
I'm not so sure we're sitting on a pile of cash. We're in a healthy place, and we're not facing imminent financial disaster due to debt loads or excessive costs, like most clubs' wage bills. But while the club itself acknowledges squad investment is necessary, no one should expect we're going to spend like some petrodollar club. That would not be in keeping with the pattern of behaviour and would not fit the way the club is run. I'd expect the current pattern to continue, with moments of extra investment in the squad. I would not expect given current revenues and expenses, that we're suddenly spunking 200 million quid this summer.
Two critical points:
1. Going out and spunking 100mm is not operating like a petrodollar club. The petrodollar clubs have raised the bar beyond even that, significantly so. The rising tide has raised all boats, and the question is not whether we can compete with City in the transfer market, it's whether we're going to sit on our hands and watch Everton and Wolves and West Ham speed by us.
2. The ENTIRE stated rationale of the way the club has been run to get to this point, ceaseless focus on creating the physical and commercial infrastructure of a revenue behemoth, was to CHANGE our ability to dedicate financial resources to the playing squad. The message has NEVER been that "we won't spend like the big boys because Spurs aren't that kind of club and if you want to win anything fuck off you plastic wanker", it was "we need to pour the concrete first, to build the revenue streams to make greater investment exploitable and sustainable." We arrived at the endpoint of that decade-plus process last night. Tottenham Hotspur, European financial heavyweight, has arrived.
There will be an interesting dilemma for some spurs fans. The ones who see the new stadium as a good thing as it means me will be richer & can spend more like the big boys. But on the other hand they don't want us to spend big & buy success. Might be bittersweet for them if in say 10 years the stadium equates to us being able to spend big which leads to us winning our 1st premiership title.
It is kinda nice being the underdog & Not 1 of the bigger powerful rich teams. But it would also be nice to win trophies. Shame it's neigh impossible to do both.
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I mean let's be honest, the idea that Spurs are some frugal minnow has always been a bit of a joke, given that even in the darkest hours of the 90's we were better off financially and on the pitch than the vast majority of clubs in England, Europe, the world, what have you.
Harry Redknapp's Spurs at White Hart Lane was mighty fucking glamorous when you're used to the Chicago Fire at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, IL, let me tell you from experience. I'm sure fans of more local two-bit operations like Orient or Ipswich or West Ham would echo that.
This is the big time.
Yeah we do get carried away with the poor tag. We are 1 of the richer teams in England & thats a big reason why we are as good as we are. We do sometimes sound as if we support little Brentford.
I’m sorry mate but I don’t agree. We haven’t just flipped a switch and suddenly come in to massive amounts of expendable cash like city or chelsea did. We also haven’t had years and years of success which has filled our coffers like Man Utd.
This is the beginning of the process if anything. The first step, now we need to clear all that bloody debt and then we might start acting like a European super power.
I would LOVE Poch to be given 200 million this summer, but what’s the point in even thinking like that and getting my hopes up. We have a stadium to pay for and that’s just not going to happen.
Two other critical points:
1) We're already the tenth-richest club in the world. We're still an order of magnitude behind the top 6 clubs on that scale in terms of what we can spend. And we're never going to spend like the petrodollar clubs. We're not run at a loss. That's never going to change, so we're not about to spunk that kind of money. If we sell 100 million, we'll likely spend 100 million, plus whatever is ear-marked right now. Think of us as the same old Spurs, because we still are. The same people run the club, and we're still going to be run sustainably. Just the numbers will increase a little bit, assuming the stadium debt remains as stated here.
2) We might very well watch Everton and West Ham go past us in the spending this summer. That's happened many times in the past as poorly run clubs spend all their TV money in a panic. That has no relevance to what we spend. The issue is how to plug squad holes. I think that can be done for a lot less than 200 million provided the club took a very professional, ruthless approach to doing their business. We have not done that yet, and that's the major problem with Levy and Pochettino's dual management. Neither are willing to take the approach that Lyon, Dortmund, or Roma have in terms of using data to do the initial scouting and speeding up the process while ensuring quality. Too much old school agent input and eye tests on too few players to get a good idea of what to do.
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This is the next phase of the endless battles on this subject on this forum, and I am going to be on the opposite side of it. That statement is flatly incorrect, and in fact stands in utter defiance of everything Daniel Levy has done in his stewardship of the club.