I agree that some players are earning far more than they should . Kane was one of our own , so we didn't go out and buy him . I'm concerned that as soon as we highlight a player we always lose out because other clubs gazzump us and offer that little bit more for them . Don't you think that when we identify a player we need , we should go out and get said player and pay that extra to bring him to the club . It could be the difference to whether we win a cup or even league . We always miss out because of Levy slamming the brakes on the deals .
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To each his own, I have no ideas what Uncle Joe’s views are on a myriad of topics so won’t cast aspersions on that front . It’s degrees of being a wrongun that we can or cannot stomach I suppose , but I think there is no moral high ground .
As Groucho once said
These are my principles, if you don’t like them I have others .
Because I haven't read the financial reports in a good long while.
The information is available; it's not a mystery.
I thought the statements were quite tricky to work out exactly where money is going given the way the club is split into a tottenham hotspur company and other subsidiaries?
How many of those stories are true though? The whole "Levy is a tight arse who doesn't pay wages" may have been true when we had to be more "artistic" with our finances, but I don't think it has been the case for a number of years now.
The media report these things knowing that people will think the worst and believe them, but I'm not so convinced they are all genuine
The outliers are the ones that are accurate to the statement.
The correlation tends to be that the Top 6 are usually finishing in the Top 6, and pay the Top 6 of money. But that's incredibly lazy when the argument is thrown around, because it is actually used to stress than 6th highest paid Tottenham are not challenging for the title (or getting top 4).
There have been only two distinct teams to have won the PL in the last 8 seasons. 6 were Man City, and 2 were Liverpool.
Both times Liverpool won the title they were 5th in the 'wages' table.
The 2nd place Woolwich finishes of 22/23, 23/24, and 24/25 saw them 6th, 3rd, and 4th
| Season | Champions | Runner-up | Third Place | Fourth Place |
| 24/25 | Liverpool [5th] | Woolwich [4th] | Man City [1st] | Chelsea [3rd] |
| 23/24 | Man City [2nd] | Woolwich [3rd] | Liverpool [5th] | Aston Villa [7th] |
| 22/23 | Man City [2nd] | Woolwich [6th] | Man Utd [1st] | Newcastle [9th] |
| 21/22 | Man City [3rd] | Liverpool [4th] | Chelsea [2nd] | Tottenham [6th] |
| 20/21 | Man City [4th] | Man Utd [1st] | Liverpool [6th] | Chelsea [2nd] |
| 19/20 | Liverpool [5th] | Man City [2nd] | Man Utd [1st] | Chelsea [3rd] |
So, on a really high level look at the "top four" over the last 6 PL seasons
- The highest salary budget has not won the league
- The second highest budget has only actually finished 2nd once
- The third highest has not finshed 3rd
- The fourth highest has not finished 4th
- it has only been predictive with regards to the salary table for 1 out of 24 finishing spots.
- Every title winner has over-achieved with respect to the salary table
- 15 out of the 24 finishing spots have "over-achieved" with respect to their salary ranking
- 8 out of the 24 have been clubs that have had a salary outside of a 'top 4' salary, including 2 of the title winners and 1 of the runners up
- The 3rd highest salary payers have only finished in the top 4 in 4 out of 6 seasons (66%), and the 4th highest only in 3 of the 6 (50%)
So highest statistical odds there to win the title are to have 2nd or 5th highest wage budget
Capital expenditure.
Paying down debt on the stadium (though due to the stadium's revenue generation that is a huge net positive to the finances), but also all the development in Enfield, the hotel, other real estate development in N17, they never stop finding ways to plow money into things other than the men's first team squad.
Part of the justification is that these are investments, this is stuff that will return money to the club, or benefit the team in other ancillary ways. And the size and grandeur of the stadium and the quality of the training ground? Sure, true enough.
But is the Whitewebbs golf course a good investment? Is a separate women's academy on the same site necessary? Was the huge added cost of making the new stadium a whiz-bang convertible American football facility a worthwhile expense? Does a fancy hotel on the Tottenham High Road pencil out?
Reasonable people can disagree on those bits and pieces. The broader story loops back to the core reality of this thread and this whole debate, it's about ideology and values.
It is core to Daniel Levy's being, his raison d'etre in life, his very soul, that endlessly expanding the holdings of Tottenham Hotspur PLC to adjacent lines of business is brilliant and visionary and modern, while ruthless determination to get the top player, to complete the squad, to push the team that last fraction above its rivals is silly, childish superstition and a foolish waste of money.
Managers yes, directors of football yes, if it's in the realm of suits and charts and organizational structures it gets sorted into the "real" section of Levy's brain. But players? Never, ever, ever. That's waste, that's back page journo nonsense, SMART PEOPLE do not let themselves get seduced by that.
That's all there is to the man, and that's all there's ever going to be.
We are stuck in the past by not having multi club.
City can buy a young player and send them to Girona, Troyes to develop, then bring them back to Manchester when they are ready.
Our players fester and then get released.
City can buy a young player and send them to Girona, Troyes to develop, then bring them back to Manchester when they are ready.
Our players fester and then get released.
Not sure this is very helpful! Point is there is a strong correlation between wages and league position. If you can work that out (based on reported wages) for last 10 seasons, it would be useful data to see.
Very true. It is all about investing available capital to grow the value of his asset. I think it's highly debatable whether his parsimonious approach to wages for other "better" uses of capital is optimal, but clearly there are lots of banana skins in player wages. The Ndombele thing must have given the guy nightmares. On a risk-adjusted basis you have to be pretty clever in player recruitment to beat investing in residential property in Tottenham or whatever it is he is doing now.
It's certainly true in a lot of cases , we make an offer and other clubs come in and hoover up our target players . You can't blame the media for us not getting our man , that comes down to the man doing the bartering . You going to tell me that Levy doesn't do the bartering next ? We lose out because Levy won't pay up what it costs for the players . Levy struck gold when he got VDV for a song , he thinks he can do it in every transfer window , but that was a totally one off . He needs to bring in players to compliment and suit our squad - not our wallet .
Bergvall at £8.5m was a very decent piece of business. VdV was about £40m? So yes, a good buy and worth more now, but a bit more than a "song"!
From my experience of Banking Covenants which is about 30 years out of date, they normally constrain borrowing/money owing which would include Loans from owners and/or buying players in instalments. We owe a lot to other clubs for existing players and probably have little wriggle room to increase it significantly. It needs investment from ENIC or a minority investor. The covenants are probably more sophistic nowadays and if the club break them the interest rate on our stadium debt loans goes up or the debts become fully payable. this is not a minor issue.
Of course it is - is basically proves that within the top 6-7 annual salaries in the league, there is basically no correlation between league finish that suggests that paying more yields a better finish.
The club with the highest wage bill has not won the league within the last 10 seasons (probably longer, if we wanted to carry on looking).
As you can see below, in every season since 15/16, a team from outside the top-four salaries has finished in the top 4 places.
| Season | Champions | Runner-up | Third Place | Fourth Place |
| 24/25 | Liverpool [5th] | Woolwich [4th] | Man City [1st] | Chelsea [3rd] |
| 23/24 | Man City [2nd] | Woolwich [3rd] | Liverpool [5th] | Aston Villa [7th] |
| 22/23 | Man City [2nd] | Woolwich [6th] | Man Utd [1st] | Newcastle [9th] |
| 21/22 | Man City [3rd] | Liverpool [4th] | Chelsea [2nd] | Tottenham [6th] |
| 20/21 | Man City [4th] | Man Utd [1st] | Liverpool [6th] | Chelsea [2nd] |
| 19/20 | Liverpool [5th] | Man City [2nd] | Man Utd [1st] | Chelsea [3rd] |
| 18/19 | Man City [3rd] | Liverpool [5th] | Chelsea [1st] | Tottenham [6th] |
| 17/18 | Man City [3rd] | Man Utd [1st] | Tottenham [7th] | Liverpool [5th] |
| 16/17 | Chelsea [4th] | Tottenham [7th] | Man City [2nd] | Liverpool [5th] |
| 15/16 | Leicester [17th] | Woolwich [4th] | Tottenham [7th] | Man City [1st] |
So, to summarise again, this time in the last 10 seasons:
- Not once has there been an exact correlation between 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th biggest salary bill and finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th
- 1st in the salary league has not finished 1st in the league, and has only ever finished 2nd twice
- 2nd in the salary league has finished 2nd only once (Man City, 19/20)
- 3rd in the salary league has not finished 3rd in the league, but has won it 3 times
- 4th in the salary league has not finished 4th in the league, but has won it twice
- The top 4 in the league has never contained all of the top 4 paying teams
- The Champions are, more often than not, the 3rd highest paying team.
- 50% of the title winners have been 4th highest paying or lower
- The runners up, more often than not, the 4th highest paying team.
- The highest paying team, more often than not, finish 3rd.
The only thing you could gather from the data is that being within the top 6-7 paying teams will typically result in a top 6-7 finish. Within that group, it is mostly random as to where you'd finish when trying to associate that to total wage bill
You're missing the point in what I was saying - you're trusting the media that we were even interested in the first place. Everything you're saying is totally unsubstantiated, right? Correct me otherwise.
What we do know is that Levy had to get involved to turn slow fumbling for Porro into a done deal. Flew to Prague to get the Kinsky deal done due to pre-existing connections with his club.
Why criticise the club for the fantasy deals that didn't turn out, but ignore all the ones that did - we've had a ton of good players over the years and have plenty in the squad right now.
I mean, never ever is a bit far
Davinson Sanchez, Ndombele (200k a week as well as record transfer fee) , GLC, all pretty expensive players that were the wrong players that whoever was making the decisions to buy them was seduced by someone or something to invest.
Money was wasted so you cant say money isn't wasted because it was - in fact it has been many times.
That's not to say he also isn't risk-averse - people can be more than one thing.
But had we invested what we did in Ndombele on the right player, then that would have been a lot of money invested in one player - more than a club like Liverpool was signing anyone for at the time
The reason I put up VDV was because he did the deal last knockings and he was about half of what we should have got him for . Bergvall was a great buy , but he wasn't a fully established "walk into the team" player , he's just matured very quickly last season . Luka Vuskovic will hopefully do the same and turn into a steal of a buy at such a young age . I think you have the wrong impression of me - I'm not saying Levy messes up every deal , just some of the really big ones that really matter . I wouldn't have paid £65mil for Solanke - never in a million years was he worth that , yet a few seasons or so before he low-balls the deal for Vlahovic . A far superior striker for less money . He gets it wrong when it really matters most .
I would say that even if it is true that he "low balled" for Vlahovic (which I think it's pure internet fiction), I think we've actually been proven correct. He's not at all looked like a £70m+ striker.
Solanke just scored 16 goals in a very shit Ange team for us. That's 1 more than Vlahovic had this season gone, and just two less than Vlahovic's best Juventus haul.
You're right. Levy has messed up a lot of deals. He skimps on pay, misses his man, and then ends up buying a second tier player for lots of cash.
With that said, I do think our recruitment over the 2 Ange years was better than in the 3 or 4 years prior to that.