Same people that said it would never work in Tottenham and Stratford was the ONLY way to take the club forward no doubt..
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Same people that said it would never work in Tottenham and Stratford was the ONLY way to take the club forward no doubt..
Blimey old cock that's spot on .
The big net spend about 7 or 8 years ago was a bit of a panic . We were near the bottom ,
The Spanish bloke was sacked after being stitched up by Levy with the Berbatov fiasco
and we needed major investment to ensure premier status . I think during these years
there was genuine ambition from above for champs league status but on a conservative
budget , Over the years this has changed as the premier tv deals have exploded , the
backing of City have made it not worth the investment to establish a top 4 place .
As they see us as a business , around a net spend each year of 30 million may get you
in the top 4 but is far from guaranteed . Balance that against champs league Tv money ,
the risk in their eyes is not worth the gain . The Premier tv money rewards them for
mediocrity . Through the smoke screen they have given up .
They know spend on the infrastructure of the club to increase value for the eventual
sale . I hope old Joe lives long enough for his gigantic rewards and I'm not even sure
he will be around long enough to see the new stadium completed .
Love them or hate them , that's our lot .
Some would say " Goodnight Vienna "
Our net spend was quite high culminating in the CL run, then it drops off to nothing. make of that what you will.
Difference is at that time was we didn't really have any top players that anyone else wanted so didn't offset any of the spending we did against that. The reason we are so tight financially now may be because of this high spending then.
One may have been posted before, but is there a table detailing our incoming transfer spend? Willing to bet its pretty consistent throughout the last 10/11 years...of course net spend will be skewed when you sell Bale for £85m, Modric and Berbatov for £30m etc. Disclaimer...I'm not saying its the right way of going about it i.e. selling our best players just to sustain transfer spending to a zero net.
So, Academy players, training grounds, stadiums and other things that football clubs do are bullshit? Kane, Mason, Bentaleb, Pritchard and others are bullshit because they're not transfers?
There's more than one way to skin a cat. We don't have the money to buy Champion's League-level talent for every position. We need to either buy young, cheap and develop, or skip the buying part and just develop youth in our Academy.
We spent, and then the talent that actually was really good left, and we couldn't replace them. There was no continuity. It was a one-shot, one-off trip. We bought a lot of peak year players, churned through a ton of waste because of a lack of any direction, and in the end, other than a Real Madrid reject, our best talent all came from players we bought as youth product, and which the fans slagged off for their first couple of years here.
We never followed up with replacements, because we couldn't buy them, and while we tried developing them our managers wouldn't play Academy players.
We have no right to expect Champion's League football every year. There are 5 teams which are bigger than us and have more money to spend. We have no right to expect to buy world class talent on massive wages when we have not got the money to pay either the fee, or the wages they want. That's life. Fans expecting that are frankly delusional. We don't have that money lying around. We never did. That's not my ego talking, that's what the rest of the football world is saying to us.
I haven't said that. The stadium will close the gap, but it's still a 6-way fight for four (soon to be three) spots in the Champion's League. We're not going to make it every year. We're not odds-on to make it this year either. You say we need to compete now, but we don't have the money to buy success and have no right to expect others to go into debt to do it.
The club are looking to add players around an Academy core. They're looking for particular kinds of players, and are trying to be careful and actually finding the right ones, rather than the endless churn of the past half decade. Your, mine, or anyone else's bleating about that doesn't matter. We have no say in this, and are simply along for the ride.
The club's already said more than once that the money is budgeted for the stadium, and the work on the training grounds expansion. They've also said that a portion of the transfer budget is ring-fenced. So, some money clearly is budgeted for future transfers, but not all.
If you agree that those things (which the club have done) are better value for money, then why are you trying to make the case that the club isn't being invested in? It is, but the majority is not spent on transfers, which is completely reasonable.
Just not Gestede
Great article
WindyCOYS
thanks. This sentence summed the situation up perfectly I thought,
"We are in limbo – not because of the way we are run, but because of the nature of the Premier League."
*although I still think it's inconceivable we are in a situation where we only have one striker - that's unforgiveable imho.
WindyCOYS
thanks. This sentence summed the situation up perfectly I thought,"We are in limbo – not because of the way we are run, but because of the nature of the Premier League."
*although I still think it's inconceivable we are in a situation where we only have one striker - that's unforgiveable imho.
Because the quoted cost of the training ground was only 30m. The missing cash pile is much larger than that.
Oh, and of course there's Daniel Levy's insistence that that expenditure wouldn't affect the transfer budget.
Hey, you want to brow beat people for asking ENIC to sink capital into their business for investment purposes like every other business owner on earth, that's fine. You're right, it's not our money. But then maybe the company should stop claiming that that's exactly what they're doing.
Our net spend was quite high culminating in the CL run, then it drops off to nothing. make of that what you will.
Our net transfer spend in that period vs now reflects of the types of players we have imo.
When Enic took over our squad consisted of ageing players like Poyet, Redknapp, Sheringham and Ferdinand - all of which had no sell on value, so every incoming transfer had to be a net spend. We also had a terrible record of producing our own players, the only one who had any value left on a Bosman.
Contrast that with now and we pretty much exclusively sign players in their early to mid 20's and very rarely let their contracts run down, and we also have youth team players that other clubs pay decent money for like Livermore and Caulker.
For all the Levy haters: I am interested to know what your expectations are. I hear reams of people saying Levy's fucked this or that up. But I don't really understand what your expectations are, so I'd appreciate it if you could just explain it to me. So for instance, if Bill Kenwright had taken over in 2001, how do you think last season would have been different? Obviously if Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour had taken over things would've been different. But excluding them. Just write me a sentence saying.
"If ___________ (Lerner, Morgan, Ashley, Gold, Henry, the Gazers etc.) had taken over in 2001, last season would've been different because_____________."
"If ___________ (Lerner, Morgan, Ashley, Gold, Henry, the Gazers etc.) had taken over in 2001, last season would've been different because_____________."
That was 2009. We don't know what actually was the real result. In the recent meetings on the stadium, he explains the transfer budget and overall finances differently (http://www.thstofficial.com/thst-news/thstthfc-board-to-board-meeting-minutes-30-march-2015). The cost of the training ground seems to be a floating number. I've seen that 30 million number. I've also seen 45. The missing cash pile you claim exists doesn't seem to be missing.
They did invest the money. In stuff other than transfers. That's a completely legitimate decision. I think it's the correct one, you don't. Either way, we don't have to run the club. They do. No one in England has finished ahead of us without having a much bigger pile of money to spend, so I don't see claims that they're spending it wrong to be having very much merit.
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Imagine that.
You've got the wrong guy. I recognize the value of Enfield and the new stadium, etc. I would also recognize the value of retaining key players with large wage offers, if that's what was actually happening.
Great management and wise financial policies put us AHEAD of several of those teams and created an ongoing opportunity to add massive new revenue streams. Impatience and refusal to add capital into the club scuppered all of that.
I think we can all see that this is a classic internet battle of "who types last". En garde!
I'm really worried that a lot of that was due to Sherwood. He really did an amazing job with the young players prior to getting the big seat.
It will be interesting seeing Poch's coaching effect on individuals in the long term.
Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. As you think they're refusing to add capital, and I don't see that to be the case. So, en garde indeed, first to find someone else to argue with wins!
He was pretty clearly a decent youth coach. But he wasn't the only youth coach, and we still seem to have a lot of talent moving through the system. Time will tell us, and him if he was better off in the Academy.
I know this won't be popular amongst the 'want-it-now' generation of football fan... but I think the direction Levy has always wanted to go down (and now seems to have the manager in place to do so) is the Youth coming through the ranks... which unfortunately, takes time... but will eventually bear fruit.
Yes, we'll have a couple of naive 2-goal leads tossed away (see last Saturday) but maybe our over-reliance last season on Kane & Eriksen to come up with last minute winners will be replaced by a cohesive, team unit gelling, and getting the right result together... for eachother!
It's not gonna happen this season, and maybe not next... but if Poch/Levy can keep this current crop of youngsters together, we will reap the benefits. Look at Pritchard signing until 2019 today... he's the future... we've got Mason, Alli, Bentaleb, Kane, Davies, Dier, Wimmer, Carroll, N'Jie in or around the first team... with Oduwa shining already at Rangers... we have an unbelievable Academy, with players coming through all the time. The rest are also still young, hungry, and willing to prove themselves at the top level.
They will mature together, bond together, have an affinity with eachother that means they look out for eachother. No more 'me me me' individuals in the team ... it's a strong unit of we we we!
I now need to go to the toilet! (for a wee, not a wank!)
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I agree. I don't want change. I just hope Sherwood wasn't key.