It’s like choosing between a big ball of cotton wool, or a q-tip to play central midfield
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It’s like choosing between a big ball of cotton wool, or a q-tip to play central midfield
Normally the manager and fans will defend big players who are struggling but unfortunately ours likes to ferment agendas and hold grudges it's why what should have been a very exciting big signing has been reduced to looking for any way out.
That summer, considered as a whole, was a pretty dramatic departure from previous seasons dating back to pre-Poch in terms of net investment in the squad. An especially dramatic departure from the previous couple of summers.
It's not rocket science. The stadium project, especially its unforeseen problems, sent the short term cash flow of the club haywire, and the football operation was starved as a result (it didn't HAVE to be that way, but it WAS that way). Once the revenue behemoth of the stadium was online, the club was capable of making those kinds of investments.
Maybe Poch would have wasted the backing he got. The relationship between he and the club was clearly in a bad place by the time he was sacked, maybe terminally so.
Would the backing have been wasted if it arrived on time in 2016, 17, 18? Maybe. Maybe it upsets the chemistry rather that stepping things up a level. It's tough to know.
But what I wouldn't give for the opportunity to go back in time and give us that chance.
So Poch wasn’t backed with Toby, Wanyama, Son, Dele, Sanchez, Aurier, Sissoko, Llorente, Sessegnon among others....?
Despite some of them saying he called them personally and convinced them to sign?
Failing with a top squad doesn’t mean you didn’t buy enough...
Yet your incredible solidarity with players who are unfairly criticized only stretched as far as this walking foie gras, why are you not defending Sissoko, Winks & co with the same fervour?
You’re practically arguing with Levy’s son - good luck
Define failing - he made Top 4 with a Top 4 squad in all seasons bar the first
A 100m booster between 17 & 19 would have been lovely no doubt.... Simply wasn't on the cards or in the kitty during that time frame due to the factors you acknowledge. As you've noted, as soon as we came out of that period we loosened the purse-strings and if not for this fucking virus I'm sure we'd have continued in a similar vein.
As it is the stadium is a short-term albatross rather than the cash cow it was engineered to be.
Our grand total net spend from Summer 2011 through January 2019 was negative 12 million pounds. The level of care given to keeping the squad competitive waxed and waned over that period, but it cannot reasonably be said that the finances of the club were extended in support of any manager's project during that period, which spans Harry, AVB and Poch. It wasn't something the club were willing to do.
Our net spend between this Summer and January was somewhere in the region of positive 100 million pounds (exact precision being tricky due to whatever the Lo Celso deal was).
The stadium project was conceived and designed from its inception to transform the club financially. Leaving any question of Covid to one side, it has done that. Dramatically so, and again leaving Covid aside would set the club up to do so for the foreseeable future.
The club chose not to have Poch be the centerpiece of that project.
So fuck off with parsing of the term "backed". It is clear as day that this summer was a big departure in the way Spurs do business, and at 12 games one cannot reasonably dispute that Poch was denied an opportunity to exploit that. Maybe justifiably, but that doesn't change the answer.
Our books must look like absolute shit right now. You just pray any debt incurred to get us through doesn't present long-term problems.
If we'd have just paid the asking price we'd have dropped about 40m on Berahino and he'd be walking this summer on a free after having hardly kicked a ball for us.
And we wouldn't have signed Son, instead.
I think we'll be ok.... The fact we've been so well-run off the pitch should see to that.
Can't remember the new annual repayment amount now, but the recent re-financing of the stadium loan will prove a godsend. We also got the £176m supa-low interest loan to bridge operational costs, so unless the fans are kept away from the stadium for years on end then it could just be a year or two or lean trf net spend not unlike what we've just seen.....
Will Chavs & City (Oil) + Utd (cash to burn) gallop off into the distance in the interim? ....I guess we and the rest of the league ought to hope for the best but fear the worst.
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Everyone is entitled to an opinion.
It is very clear to me and many on here that Ndombele has an attitude problem. He is a professional athlete who for whatever reason cannot get himself in to the required physical shape to play.
His body language is lazy.
He seems to be happy to pick up his 200k and not play.
We don't need that in the squad, we needed our record signing to shine and barring a handful of glimmers he hasn't delivered.
It's not personal, I'd love it if he turned it round, but I'm through with giving the man chances.
With our financial predicament we simply cannot gamble on him spending another season in and out of the team, unfit picking up his huge salary.
It's too risky.
This is obvious to everyone who is being objective. Unfortunately some fans are unable to set aside their personal love for the 'idea' of this great playmaker who will elevate us back to a top side... and will disregard the reality that he has flopped hard because they can't yet cope with it.
Anyone who has studied crisis theory in social work will know that this is just one of many steps of denial and coping/defence before acceptance and change.
Losing semi finals to teams we comfortably smashed in the league and losing to Leicester despite finishing above all of City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Utd.
And the short answer is ......
He inherited a world class keeper, a world
class CB, two of the best full backs in Europe for a period, the best striker in the world for a few seasons, one of the best central midfielders in the PL.
Ever stopped to think that we didn’t need to invest massive amounts due to the above.
“One tricky winger to make us immense”
Surely that suggests people were 99% satisfied with the squad..
Yes he could have been backed more. So could Klopp. So could Arteta.
But they still won stuff.
Leicester.
The eternal come back.
The team we needed to outspend was Leicester......oh.....wait
A perfectly fine argument, and one that was made at the time, it's not like it was just made up after the fact.
One can have differing views on Poch's performance, but still, the objective financial facts are what they are.
Speaking of
Speaking of Leicester, did we ever go after Kante when he was looking for a move in the summer of 2016. Surely we would have had an edge over a Chavs side who finished 10th in been able to offer European Cup football. Chavs spent more or less the same amount that summer on Kante, that we spend on Sissoko. Four years in from that missed opportunity, we still haven’t sourced a defensive midfielder up to the job.
Speaking of Leicester, did we ever go after Kante when he was looking for a move in the summer of 2016. Surely we would have had an edge over a Chavs side who finished 10th in been able to offer European Cup football. Chavs spent more or less the same amount that summer on Kante, that we spend on Sissoko. Four years in from that missed opportunity, we still haven’t sourced a defensive midfielder up to the job.
we don't operate smart.
We signed Wanyama instead