Spurs fans will have to take their medicine if they want to stay among the big boys

This caught my eye today and for me is spot on.

Read the full article at Huffpost Sports

Yep, about right.

Bang on, no?

That's just the obvious truth. I genuinely struggle to understand how anyone could have any other view on things without being in the utmost denial

I think the problem is we've all known this for 4 years.

We got planning permission for ourr stadium FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO.

4 years ago we got Champions league football

4 years ago we got planning permission for a new ground

4 years ago we had 4 world class outfield players

What do we have now?

A world class goalie, a big hole and a Sainsburies.

Fuck off ENIC.

guiltyparty said:

Bang on, no?

That's just the obvious truth. I genuinely struggle to understand how anyone could have any other view on things without being in the utmost denial

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e.g. see above

bang on. we are punching above our weight because our stadium is small. no way would we want to be offering 3 players £100k a week, let alone on player £300k+ a week. Thats why we have to be smarter.

We just have to hope that the profits of each window are going towards the stadium.

parj said:

bang on. we are punching above our weight because our stadium is small. no way would we want to be offering 3 players £100k a week, let alone on player £300k+ a week. Thats why we have to be smarter.

We just have to hope that the profits of each window are going towards the stadium.

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Have a look in the stadium thread some posts discussing this over the last 2 days.

In reality if we can move into a new stadium with little or no debt that will be pretty fucking super.

The concern is that in the meantime we could find ourselves in the market for players of the calibre of Danny Welbeck.

I think the major factor in this perception problem is the performance of Arsenal (with the financial constraints on them mentioned in the article) and to a much lesser extent Chelsea. If West Ham and QPR were the only other clubs in London, we'd be rather pleased with 4,5,4,5,6 etc

I having read it, but if there is a part about being debt free, I'm scepticle. Do we have 400-500m of cash reserves? Definitely not?

Will it all be funded by sponsorship? Not on you nelly.

Maske2g said:

I think the problem is we've all known this for 4 years.

We got planning permission for ourr stadium FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO.

4 years ago we got Champions league football

4 years ago we got planning permission for a new ground

4 years ago we had 4 world class outfield players

What do we have now?

A world class goalie, a big hole and a Sainsburies.

Fuck off ENIC.

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just wondered..you mean Bale, Modric, VDV and King right?

Written by a Levy scribe?

I don't think a new stadium will make that much difference to our wage structure/spending. Most club revenue comes from tv money now which is huge compared with the profits from gate receipts. Sponsorship and marketing is probably second to this.

I think this is why levy has been so active in developing a worldwide fan base rather than focussing all efforts on a new stadium (which is probably to attract buyers).

Football is a business and we are not in the top tier and will struggle to ever get there IMO as a bit like apple/google, the top guys will monopolise this revenue and prevent all others from getting a share. For instance IMO Falcao while expensive is worth it in terms of the attention it attracts to the club and eventual revenue this will bring.

ataggy said:

just wondered..you mean Bale, Modric, VDV and King right?

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Indeed he most certainly does.

I think there is a warped pattern at work here; Spur's fans while being made "TO HAVE to take their medicine" remember are also consumers in this financial enterprise. The fundamentals of Capitalism are that a business will only be successful if it's customers feel they are getting value for their money in the product, otherwise they will not continue to purchase that product.
The amount of interest (many, many reply's to posts) over the recent Club transfer activity I think, might be an indication of a groundswell of discontent at worst, or questioning the whole Club direction at best.
Being a 'fan' - and all that goes with it - might be close to being overstretched here. As England's National team showed last night with only a half-filled stadium.

The argument that Levy has us punching above our weight because our league position is higher than our revenue position is a syllogism. It would suggest that Levy is not responsible for that revenue position; when in fact growing the revenue (and profit with it) is exactly his job.

I am not criticising him for that, but nor am I going to praise him because our performance on the pitch outstrips our performance commercially - as if that was somehow outside of his control.

Personally I think Levy is, again, facing some pretty tough questions - as he did 5 years ago, when he brought Harry in to clean up the Ramos mess. At the AGM that year he took the opportunity to highlight all of the things that were indicative of progress: including the imminent building of a new ground which would allow us to compete at the highest level. At the time it smacked of a desperate claim to try and stave off the heated criticism that was building.

5 years and 4 managers later we are no closer to that stadium (cf West Ham) and have been overtaken by the likes of Everton and, of course, Liverpool while utterly failing to close the gap on Arsenal.

That doesn't make Levy a failure - but it does indicate that his policy of not reinvesting in the squad year after year is in fact hurting us on and off the pitch.

Shirtfront said:

The argument that Levy has us punching above our weight because our league position is higher than our revenue position is a syllogism. It would suggest that Levy is not responsible for that revenue position; when in fact growing the revenue (and profit with it) is exactly his job.

I am not criticising him for that, but nor am I going to praise him because our performance on the pitch outstrips our performance commercially - as if that was somehow outside of his control.

Personally I think Levy is, again, facing some pretty tough questions - as he did 5 years ago, when he brought Harry in to clean up the Ramos mess. At the AGM that year he took the opportunity to highlight all of the things that were indicative of progress: including the imminent building of a new ground which would allow us to compete at the highest level. At the time it smacked of a desperate claim to try and stave off the heated criticism that was building.

5 years and 4 managers later we are no closer to that stadium (cf West Ham) and have been overtaken by the likes of Everton and, of course, Liverpool while utterly failing to close the gap on Arsenal.

That doesn't make Levy a failure - but it does indicate that his policy of not reinvesting in the squad year after year is in fact hurting us on and off the pitch.

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"overtaken by the likes of Everton"..

you're having a laugh, aren't you?

Yearly gate revenue is of course, not as big as the tv funds we would receive. But with FFP coming into the fold we are at a disadvantage with the likes of united and arsenal when you compare Old Trafford and emirates to the lane.. I actually think a 56k capacity is still a bit low and should prolly be closer to 70.
We are always going to be looking to make a profit during the transfer windows. . Look at the players we young, under value that we plan to develop and sell on

avonspurs said:

"overtaken by the likes of Everton"..

you're having a laugh, aren't you?

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The full line was:
"overtaken by the likes of Everton and, of course, Liverpool while utterly failing to close the gap on Arsenal."

There's nothing factually wrong there given that Everton overtook us last season. It's not stretching the imagination to think they wont achieve that again this year, while Liverpool, Arsenal et al widen their gap from us.

I think overall there's far too much focus on expenditure and Levy. I don't know any Spurs fans who are upset because we don't partake in the squillion pound deals that pay obsene wages per week - we already spend enough on wages. If there's any complaints about transfer policy, it's the idea that we don't need more and better options up front. Where are the Dier or Stambouli-esque signings of forwards?

The real disappointment and malaise that has emerged is rooted in the type of footy we play and the lack of aggression and urgency in our team as a whole. We appear to have mismanaged the team's turnover since Harry left and look like a bunch of strangers bereft of team spirit and leadership. We get blown away by better sides because of this. And I suspect the lesser sides are going to suss us out even more unless Poch addresses this aspect pretty quickly.

I think the high water mark of Harry's time will be tough to return to, and shedding AVB's legacy and re-building some winning mentality and real fighters for the cause is high on Poch's to-do list. He seems like a manager with a good reputation for dealing with it, so hopefully he can improve this aspect and get us playing more urgent attacking footy in the coming weeks.

If not, I think 6th is beyond us, let alone 4th.

Maske2g said:

I think the problem is we've all known this for 4 years.

We got planning permission for ourr stadium FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO.

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But we didn't own all the land and couldn't afford to build even if we did without massive cash injections from both the government and a stadium sponsor. None of these were forthcoming. These things take ages. You ever watched Grand Designs? And they're just bloody one-off private houses, not area redevelopment plans.

Maske2g said:

4 years ago we got Champions league football

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Once. Then failed to get it again with pretty much the same team + Sandro, Van der Vaart, Gallas and Pienaar. And indeed it's the one season in recent memory we didn't make a profit, I think we made a loss of £17m in that window (apologies if wrong), so there was money spent, too - a fair bit considering, as you say, we'd just got planning permission for the stadium, rate of inflation and how much we've tried to make a profit since. You could argue that it was this failure to captialise on that money spent that made Levy more wary of doing it again in future.

Maske2g said:

4 years ago we got planning permission for a new ground

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See first answer

Maske2g said:

4 years ago we had 4 world class outfield players

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"World class" is such a subjective term. I'm guessing you mean King, VDV, Modric and Bale. Hmm. Just because all the players on a teamsheet have at one time been great doesn't mean they all were at the same time. Seems a bit revisionist to me.

I don't think Bale was yet world class when we got Champions League, that was to come; he had potential and had scored a couple of amazing goals after a long period of being average but was still waify and was yet to turn into a racehorse - a bit like Lamela now, in fact, but with less averageness. VDV gave us a great season and was a true matchwinner, but he was on the way out when we sold him, injury prone and increasingly peripheral (and another factor in why we've tried not to buy older players I would guess). King's injuries, for me, prevented him ever being world class for a sustained period of time, though obviously on his day he was one of the finest around - but few top clubs are based on players who can't see out a full season. Modric, yeah, I'll give you that.

Maske2g said:

What do we have now?
A world class goalie, a big hole and a Sainsburies.
Fuck off ENIC.

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I don't know what we have now, they've only all just started playing together. I'll let you know when I find out but it's way, way too early to judge.