Managing Director Football: Fabio Paratici

whitesocks said:

I have my doubts about paratici's judgement when we are told he thought traore could be a backup striker this season. And presumably next summer when kane gets his move, Traore would have been the main striker.

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spids said:

Levy's role needs ot be agreeing an overall wage bill and transfer budget each season and leaving Paratici to get on with it. Levy did need to get involved this summer with the Kane situation - an extraordinary situation involving a crown jewel asset - and handled it with aplomb. If the proposed signing of Traore was within the overall pre-determined budget and Levy blocked it then Paratici should walk away now.

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Keeping Kane, bagging young talent and shipping out the old guard - Paratici off to a promising start at Spurs

Tottenham's new transfers chief has had a busy first summer, accelerating their overdue rebuild in a short space of time

theathletic.com

Harry Kane dominated the headlines this summer but keeping him at Tottenham was the simple part for Fabio Paratici. The real work was trying to rejuvenate their squad on a budget — and that is how Paratici’s first window will be judged.

The first job for Tottenham’s new managing director of football was to clear out some of the players who had been at the club for many years. Spurs have not been good sellers in recent times and too many squad members had stuck around for too long.
Mauricio Pochettino had been desperate for a clearout years ago. This summer, it finally happened.

Out went Erik Lamela (257 Tottenham appearances), Toby Alderweireld (236), Danny Rose (214) and Moussa Sissoko (202). More than 900 games of Spurs experience left the football club in one window between those four men alone; but not before time.

With Joe Hart also being sold and the season-long loans of Gareth Bale and Carlos Vinicius ending, there was an opportunity for Paratici to finally refresh the squad with some youth and energy. The club’s recent lack of transfer activity meant that too often last season, they would put out a team including Hugo Lloris, Ben Davies, Alderweireld, Eric Dier, Harry Winks, Dele Alli, Lamela, Son Heung-min and Kane — almost all of whom had been in the Tottenham first team since Pochettino’s second season in 2015-16. There is value in stability but there is also such a thing as too much of it.

So Spurs have accelerated their gradual rebuild and refresh of their squad, bringing in a cohort of young players to start dragging their average age down: Cristian Romero (23), Emerson Royal (22), Bryan Gil (20), and Pape Matar Sarr (18). Pierluigi Gollini is 26, but that’s nothing for a goalkeeper. The average age of this summer’s departures is in the early thirties, the average age of its arrivals 10 years younger.

Throw in homegrown young players who are likely to play more this season — Japhet Tanganga (22), Oliver Skipp (20) and Ryan Sessegnon (21) — and Spurs will have their most youthful feel since that first season under Pochettino seven years ago.
The way that Paratici has overseen this window of incomings, delivering a long-overdue rejuvenation of the squad, has shown how impressively and quickly he has adjusted to his new role. Paratici has only been officially working as Spurs’ managing director of football since July 1 (although in truth, he was preparing for the role for most of June). But after completing his first job of appointing a new head coach — eventually going for recently-departed Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo — Paratici has now gone about revamping the playing staff.

The key fact in helping Paratici achieve that revamp was this: Spurs’ financial situation this summer has proven to be healthier than some might have feared.

There is no getting past the damage that the pandemic has done to their finances, with the club estimated to have lost up to £200 million, but the return of capacity crowds to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this season will be transformative. Spurs bring in between £5 million and £6 million per full home game at their new ground — and only Manchester United make more than that.

When White Hart Lane’s successor opened in April 2019, the plan was that this match-day revenue would take Tottenham to the next level financially, although of course, the pandemic meant that it did not host a full crowd from March 2020 until this August.

Now Spurs are filling their stadium again, and have the added revenue stream of playing in Europe too, the money will keep flowing in. The club are set to bank a seven-figure profit every time they play at home, and are now finally able to book more money-spinning events at the stadium: there’s an Anthony Joshua world-title fight there in three weeks’ time, two NFL games in the October international break, back-to-back nights of Guns N’ Roses concerts next July, and so on.

On top of this, Spurs have carefully managed their finances to help reduce the pressure from their recent borrowing.

At the start of the pandemic, the club borrowed £175 million as part of the Bank of England’s COVID-19 Corporate Financing Facility but in June this year, they paid that money back. Tottenham had raised £250 million — £75 million more than the Bank of England loan — through a private placement scheme. This was a form of long-term debt refinancing similar to the deal they did with their stadium debt in 2019, also conducted by Bank of America, helping to stabilise the financial future of the club.

Between the stadium revenue, then, and the long-term debt refinancing, Tottenham entered this summer’s transfer window in a strong financial position.

Chairman Daniel Levy sensed that most other European clubs were in a very difficult state, given the financial crises in the French, Spanish and Italian leagues. This was a buyers’ market, not a sellers’ market, which is one of the reasons why Levy was so reluctant to part with Kane, because he knew how hard it would be to get a proper fee for him. This was not a good market to sell your assets.

The theory was that, in these circumstances, Spurs might be able to throw their weight around and sign players from clubs who were not in a position to say no to them — and so they went to work targeting players they could get for cheaper than would normally be the case.
Atalanta are a very well-run club, but the money Spurs offered them to buy Romero next summer — £42.5 million, following an initial season-long loan — was too good to turn down. Elsewhere in Italy, Inter Milan were desperate to offload players when they agreed to sell Lautaro Martinez to Tottenham for £60 million, even if they then pulled out of the deal once they had sold his strike partner Romelu Lukaku to Chelsea.

Looking across to Spain, Spurs knew Sevilla needed to raise funds, given that their usual trick of selling their best players to Barcelona or Real Madrid was impossible this summer, so they landed the very gifted Gil for just £21 million plus Lamela, who they were keen to move on anyway.

Barcelona’s financial crisis is well known — they had to let Lionel Messi leave on a free — and so, on deadline day, they sold Brazil international right-back Royal to Tottenham for £25.8 million. And then from France, Spurs signed Metz teenager Sarr, one of the most exciting young talents in Ligue 1, for just £15 million. The 18-year-old midfielder will be loaned back to Metz for this season.

Spurs have needed an injection of young talent for years, and in Romero, Gil, Royal and Sarr, they have finally got it — and they have moved on a group of veterans to make room for them. Tottenham have done this knowing that while they did not have huge amounts to spend this summer, they did have more than some other clubs, and could take advantage of a market with not many buyers.

Paratici and Levy have tried to get the best possible value at a crucial moment, although whether they have been successful or not will take years to become clear.

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Gassin's finest said:

Keeping Kane, bagging young talent and shipping out the old guard - Paratici off to a promising start at Spurs

Tottenham's new transfers chief has had a busy first summer, accelerating their overdue rebuild in a short space of time

theathletic.com

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onthetwo said:

would love to know what the net effect to the total wage bill is from the departures of Bale, Toby, Moussa, Rose, Aurier, Hart and Lamela?
Im going to guess that its down 15-20% as most have been replaced by younger recruits on lower wages but its just a guess at this point.

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EPL 2020 Payroll Wages Tracker

A real-time look at the payroll totals for each 2020-2021 EPL team, including breakdowns by position.

www.spotrac.com

Marty said:

EPL 2020 Payroll Wages Tracker

A real-time look at the payroll totals for each 2020-2021 EPL team, including breakdowns by position.

www.spotrac.com

According to this site (I don't know exactly how they come about these figures and they are estimates)
Estimated total salary:
20/21: £129,175,200
21/22: £78,735,200

That is an almost 40% total wage drop, which sounds a bit excessive.

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wrd said:

That's fantastic. This season is about setting the base in my opinion. We've rid of some players with little sell-on value and high wages and replaced with Young players whose value can only go up on relatively low wages. With revenue streams hopefully coming roaring back over the next 12 months, hopefully we're in a healthy spot next summer to build on the work done this year.

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Delboy75 said:

I’ll be surprised if he’s still here for another summer. The guy is a workaholic and ambitious. If anyone in any job is working their arse to achieve a goal, and at the final hurdle told no can do mate. Personally I wouldn’t hang around especially as Paratici could pretty much get a job at any big club in Europe. I dread to think the almighty meltdown if he did leave before next summer.

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robertgoulet said:

Even with all of the supposed drama inside the club, the media at-large outside is praising Paratici for our window.

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DJS said:

Wonder if he’ll look to do any business in January?

We don’t tend to usually do much mid-season aside from when ‘Arry took over and we were woefully short up top so was allowed to splash on Defoe and then Keane.

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freeeki said:

If the club are concerned about having no striker, it seems weird to me that we haven't signed one.

Plenty of proven strikers out there available on free transfers who could deputise in an emergency.

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Chimbo! said:

The seemingly contradictory ITK seems actually pretty consistent if the following happened:

Levy was sceptical about paying a huge fee for Traore, whose goal and assist record is average. At the committee to discuss the transfer, Nuno, Paratici and Hitchen either didn’t push the potential benefits enough of the transfer because they didn’t have a good enough argument. Or they didn’t push the transfer enough because doing so put their judgment and reputation too much at risk. So the committee decided not to pursue.

We’ve all been here. A manager fails to see it your way, finds holes in your view and you either don’t want to argue or can’t argue. So everyone agrees on a course of action. But you’re secretly annoyed because you didn’t get your own way and complain to colleagues. And now you have different interpretations of the same meeting.

the fact Levy interfered in a transfer decision might be concerning but he is basically the CEO and 40 million is a lot of money.

I for one was hugely in favour of signing Traore but I have zero understanding of how buying him affects the club’s finances.

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Chimbo! said:

The seemingly contradictory ITK seems actually pretty consistent if the following happened:

Levy was sceptical about paying a huge fee for Traore, whose goal and assist record is average. At the committee to discuss the transfer, Nuno, Paratici and Hitchen either didn’t push the potential benefits enough of the transfer because they didn’t have a good enough argument. Or they didn’t push the transfer enough because doing so put their judgment and reputation too much at risk. So the committee decided not to pursue.

We’ve all been here. A manager fails to see it your way, finds holes in your view and you either don’t want to argue or can’t argue. So everyone agrees on a course of action. But you’re secretly annoyed because you didn’t get your own way and complain to colleagues. And now you have different interpretations of the same meeting.

the fact Levy interfered in a transfer decision might be concerning but he is basically the CEO and 40 million is a lot of money.

I for one was hugely in favour of signing Traore but I have zero understanding of how buying him affects the club’s finances.

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