Zero Debt

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Are you happy with the transfer strategy of ENIC?

  • Yes

    Votes: 48 53.9%
  • No

    Votes: 28 31.5%
  • I don't know and I don't care. This is a stupid poll.

    Votes: 13 14.6%

  • Total voters
    89
I don't think we should feel that sorry for the players being stuck in scenarios like this - the reason they want to sign long fixed term contracts in the first place is the security of the income.

I doubt Soldado will want to go back to Spain for a few more years when the salary he'll command will be far less than staying at Spurs until the end of his deal.

Depends on the player there are some in it for the money but I do think alot genuinely want to play football and may see moving to England as a great opportunity beyond simply getting cash. Football is a short career and and if I was good enough to play at a high level I would want to make the most of it personally. Hard to generalise as I am sure there are players happy to warm the bench.
 
It's also unfair on the player, stock pilling players and not letting them play football must drive alot of them nuts, let Soldado go back to Spain and have a few more years of football and take whatever we can get for him.
The amount of money in the Prem and the wages paid over here make it hard for clubs in different countires to pay the wages of our flops.
 
Yeah agree. As we have seen the academy can do just as well, if not better than these cheaper buys. Something like the below in my opinion could allow us to compete better.

Wimmer £5mil
Alderwield £10mil
Ings £5mil

+ 2 £20-25mil players. CM / AM

£50-60mil spent.

Ali / Fredericks / Yedlin / Pritchard etc to come in also.

If we followed this policy and the bigger signings had a few boxes ticked to lessen the gamble then I'd be well chuffed, if the transfers still flopped then that would just be tough, crappy luck.

We sort of did it once yet didn't tick enough boxes to lessen the risk. Went for all foreign players/zero Prem experience, punting tens of millions on just potential ability was a car crash.

As much as I thought he'd be much better than he has, Soldado at £26m at 29 seemed excessive. Negredo came up the year before, far cheaper before City got him and would've ADDED to Bale being there and maybe helped push top 4 but, as usual it was no to such a push. Up to £30m on a kid other than Ronaldo, Messi or Neymar was nothing short of ludicrous, one of the biggest gambles ever and we made it.
 
I doubt selling that dump of a stadium and the ground around could amount to a 100 million but I'm not an expert on London real-estate, anyone got trustworthy data on that?

Depends how many flats/apartments can be built on it and what 'back-handers' would ensure a developer had some sort of guarantee on a return. X amount usually has to go to Affordable and/or Social housing so you get some sales (lower than market rate) almost guaranteed. New build 2bed places could be £250-275k each easily I would think.

Not sure about £100m but land is expensive anywhere in London.
 
I don't think we should feel that sorry for the players being stuck in scenarios like this - the reason they want to sign long fixed term contracts in the first place is the security of the income.

I doubt Soldado will want to go back to Spain for a few more years when the salary he'll command will be far less than staying at Spurs until the end of his deal.
if thats how a player feels i dont see how we can have any sympathy for them. if they would rather not play because they get a bigger salary, then thats even more of a reason to get them out the club.
 
It's not 'my system' - merely an example of why Levy doesn't cut his losses easily and that the "sunk cost fallacy" doesn't fit in with football as well as it does in other businesses.
well i dont think levys system is working well in football either
 
I disagree strongly with letting the "economics" of transactions be the only question.

How the club chooses to handle its players and transfers is hugely important for other reasons:

- I think it is important for motivation and the whole atmosphere of the club to show the playing staff that every player in the squad gets multiple chances and that they are not simply cattle (for the same reason I am strongly opposed to freezing players out, critisising individual players and demoting players to train with the youth team)
- And just maybe the team can get better as a team by traing together for thousands of hours rather than hundreds of hours

Besides on the "economics" model:

- Some formcurves can be long. A worst case scenario is buying players for good money and then systematically keep selling them at exactly the moment they are playing the worst and their values are lowest.
- The club decides to swap manager or the current manager decides to change the system - and voila, the out of favour player is up for the job (Fellaini..)
The problem with that is that a player isn't just shit and that's them forever - Adebayor playing for AVB isn't the same as Adebayor playing for Sherwood (or to prove AVB wrong).

There is potential embarrassment in letting Soldado leave for what would be a fair fee - he might go somewhere else and rediscover his scoring touch.
I agree with both of you. When we're evaluating whether to keep a player or sell, we have to consider all kinds of factors beyond how good they are playing at this minute. Team chemistry, belief they will come good, and lots of other things all have to be part of the equation. But recouping the fee we paid to get someone should not be a consideration.
 
I agree with both of you. When we're evaluating whether to keep a player or sell, we have to consider all kinds of factors beyond how good they are playing at this minute. Team chemistry, belief they will come good, and lots of other things all have to be part of the equation. But recouping the fee we paid to get someone should not be a consideration.
To us, football is emotional. To the owners, it's a business. That's not to say that they don't have an emotional investment in the success of the club, but your mindset is significantly different when you are at the helm.

The idea that you don't need or should recoup part of your investments just doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense, considering that we're not dealing with Monopoly money. Sometimes you cannot recoup the money you invested, but to not try or to accept less than what is market value for the person if they aren't detrimental to the team is silly.
 
To us, football is emotional. To the owners, it's a business. That's not to say that they don't have an emotional investment in the success of the club, but your mindset is significantly different when you are at the helm.

The idea that you don't need or should recoup part of your investments just doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense, considering that we're not dealing with Monopoly money. Sometimes you cannot recoup the money you invested, but to not try or to accept less than what is market value for the person if they aren't detrimental to the team is silly.
Where did I say don't accept market value? I'm complaining because I believe Levy sometimes won't sell because market value is a lot lower than what we paid for a player. If a player should be sold, fucking sell him for what you can get. (AKA market value.) Not what he "should" be worth based on what you paid. We can't let our ego get in the way of doing what makes sense. And while I am generally more supportive of Levy and ENIC than a lot of people, I think we sometimes are afraid to sell players that turned out to be shit for a loss because there is a perception it reflects poorly on the club or something. The truth is not selling for what we can get (market value) and getting out of a bad situation is the right thing to do frequently.
 
Where did I say don't accept market value? I'm complaining because I believe Levy sometimes won't sell because market value is a lot lower than what we paid for a player. If a player should be sold, fucking sell him for what you can get. (AKA market value.) Not what he "should" be worth based on what you paid. We can't let our ego get in the way of doing what makes sense.
My comment was only partially directed at you, but more to the general attitude of people who want us to sell players for peanuts because they are doing shit for us. The point is that the market value for some of these players IS higher than we sometimes think. We often have a short-sighted outlook on the player, the perfect example is the one mentioned before, Soldado. He has the talent and ability to still be a prolific goalscorer, just not for us. Is his value the full-value we paid for him, most likely no, but his market value surely isn't as low as some other people think because of the reason that he could go onto somewhere else and light things up again. It's the same thing with Ade.

And while I am generally more supportive of Levy and ENIC than a lot of people, I think we sometimes are afraid to sell players that turned out to be shit for a loss because there is a perception it reflects poorly on the club or something. The truth is not selling for what we can get (market value) and getting out of a bad situation is the right thing to do frequently.
What Levy does, sometimes to an irritating level for us, is stick by what he interprets as a fair market price for a player. The frustrating thing for many people who often slate him for this is that we often get a very good price for many of the players we have offloaded in years past. The difference between what we think a player is worth and what he has been able to sell them for is incredible at times. Just look at some of the sales we completed in the past few years.

Livermore 8 million
Falque 5 million??
Sandro 6 million
Naughton 5 million?????
Dempsey 5.8 million
Pienaar 4.5 million
Bassong 4 million
Palacios 8 million
Pavlyuchenko 8 million
Zokora 7.75 million
Bent 16.5 million


Granted, aside from Bent, none of these are huge transfers, but we thought that we might have to pay people to take some of these players. Hell, we bought Pienaar for 3MM and sold him back for 4.5.

I get what you and others are saying, but it's really hard for me to be too critical of Levy for not just dumping players for whatever we can get. If you were to even reduce the selling price of each of those players listed above by 1MM, that's 11MM just given up on.
 
The problem with that is that a player isn't just shit and that's them forever - Adebayor playing for AVB isn't the same as Adebayor playing for Sherwood (or to prove AVB wrong).

There is potential embarrassment in letting Soldado leave for what would be a fair fee - he might go somewhere else and rediscover his scoring touch.
He might do. I think he never will at Spurs, and that's something we fans (and he) needs to accept. I think his playing style really was not suited to our team, and he hit the downward slope on the age curve abnormally quickly.

I think the sunk cost analogy is a fair one, but it's not a straightline number thing. Transfers are amortized over time, and all sorts of playing with numbers gets done. On the actual playing side you have a similar mess. Players and systems are not lego, and people need to make adjustments. At some point though, you can't adjust enough and at that point, decisions need to be made.

The number of clubs who get all of this right, consistently in vanishingly small. Bigger clubs can cover up mistakes with their extra financial firepower. Smaller clubs fade away down the table with their broken dreams. You need really smart non-playing staff to make things work. I remember someone knowledgeable saying there are very few competent Directors of Football in Europe. There are plenty of mediocre ones, but really good ones are hard to find. I think we've seen a couple of mediocre DoFs at Spurs, which held us back in the last decade or so, along with other things.
 
well i dont think levys system is working well in football either
Other than Soton, nobody's arguably done a better job than us, with the resources they had, in the last 10 years.

Levy isn't perfect, and we've had a very frustrating ride, but compared to the rest of the Premier League, we've been very well run.
 
Levy is going to have to be more flexible in getting rid of some players
Given our wage structure, we might not be as badly off as some, but yes, he will. I think it'll be a much broader problem than that though. When the 16th placed team in the Premier League can outspend AC Milan, you're going to be looking at a whole new mess, since the money isn't being backed up by well-run clubs. Right now, a lot of teams are using the money to buy their way out of idiocy. Unless everyone wises up really fast, I think the league will get less competitive over time, as the smarter teams and the larger teams build themselves up, and the weaker guys flail around, occasionally going bankrupt when they get relegated.
 
if thats how a player feels i dont see how we can have any sympathy for them. if they would rather not play because they get a bigger salary, then thats even more of a reason to get them out the club.


A club can of course refuse to give any player a long term contract - but then the best ones would leave on free transfers frequently.

Both parties look to protect their positions.
 
Given our wage structure, we might not be as badly off as some, but yes, he will. I think it'll be a much broader problem than that though. When the 16th placed team in the Premier League can outspend AC Milan, you're going to be looking at a whole new mess, since the money isn't being backed up by well-run clubs. Right now, a lot of teams are using the money to buy their way out of idiocy. Unless everyone wises up really fast, I think the league will get less competitive over time, as the smarter teams and the larger teams build themselves up, and the weaker guys flail around, occasionally going bankrupt when they get relegated.
They say more money means less inovation as teams will just try and spend to solve their problems rather than thinking up new ideas.
 
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