Chairman's message

[slartibartfast]

Yep. FFP to be 'relaxed'. Goes nicely with Chairman's 'massage'.

So with this in mind I'm putting up shirt, membership and ticket prices.
Well some fkers got to pay for my wage rise

 

[greaves]

So with this in mind I'm putting up shirt, membership and ticket prices.
Well some fkers got to pay for my wage rise

And the colonic irrigation...

 

[Jonesey]

Levy has made his fair share of mistakes at the club, but I don't think its ever been because of a lack of ambition or desire for the club to do well. He could have been like the Doug Ellis' or Franny Lee's of this world; worser still he could have been another Mike Ashley. These are the worst of the worst: people who gave nothing back to their respective clubs & only ensured their descent into a malaise of ambivalence & mediocrity. I am still very pleased that he is our chairman, but I do wish he would just get the due-diligence correct regarding recruitment set-up now the hoopla over the stadium has been sorted.

Talking of recruitment, the stock in trade response from fans for improvement is always along the lines of 'spend, spend, spend', however instead of throwing money at the situation how about we throw some intelligent research & wisdom instead? We've spent the 'Bale transfer money' on a group of players that will largely, barring Eriksen & Chadli, be turfed out come season's end. I don't want expensive paper-names being drafted in on the say-so of an agent who claims to be representing the 'Brazil's answer to Frank Lampard'. I want players who have actually been well researched & scouted that have the aptitude & attitude to come in & actually be able to do what the manager asks of them.

This has been 'gimme-season' for the Poch because he has needed the time to fully assess the capabilities of the squad, so that he can root out the panderers and pretenders. He has made his mistakes, but no manager is perfect & I would rather he make them now in a season that has basically been a trial effort. I believe that we will get it right, but its going some serious work. Let the cleansing begin.

It's a good point. The long term future of the club is critical.

Nothing can excuse the largely poor investments on players over the past four transfer windows though.

Wasting much of the Bale and other player-sales money - or rather the portion of it that was spent on the squad - was down to the people employed to buy those players in the first place and their performance was underwhelming to say the least.

We could be in a better place in footballing terms as well as having the excitement of a new stadium, but we're not and that's a real shame.

 

[Lilbaz]

It's a good point. The long term future of the club is critical.

Nothing can excuse the largely poor investments on players over the past four transfer windows though.

Wasting much of the Bale and other player-sales money - or rather the portion of it that was spent on the squad - was down to the people employed to buy those players in the first place and their performance was underwhelming to say the least.

We could be in a better place in footballing terms as well as having the excitement of a new stadium, but we're not and that's a real shame.

We see the last 4 transfer windows as bad. But we have a net spend of zero over them and if we finish 5th would be no worse off position wise
I agree that the players haven't been as good as we would have wanted but maybe they are not as bad as everyone thinks?

 

[JoeT]

FFP was utter bolloxs and Platini has today announced it will be 'loosening its rules' or something like that. Details to be announced in June.
Someone on TS this afternoon, expert, said UEFA have about 11 pending court cases regarding FFP and its hoped this step backwards will go some way to pacify those.
Was never workable and imo just a shit hair brained idea to stop any billionaires taking over a club and pissing on the existing big clubs monopoly. You cant stop business men innvesting their money and uefa sure as shit cant compete with their lawyers.
Had absolutely fk all to do with fair play. The idea lol.

Interesting that if this understanding of the FFP is out there, and it is so obviously a poorly conceived idea, why did Levy refer to it as a reason to take Spurs' in the direction of less spendin

Because you are talking about spending the money on players. These have no guarantee of success (Bale money) and are short term in nature. If they are established players their value drops as soon as you have bought them.
Building an excellent academy and producing your own players takes longer. But is a better investment in the long term. It cost us £60m to build. We have recently produced, Livermore, Rose, Kane, Bentaleb, Mason, Caulker, Pritchard, Carroll and Townsend. How much would they have cost? So we are already seeing a return on that investment.
We have already spent over £100M on the stadium. If we had spent that on players we might have got in the CL once or twice. Do you really think the lies of City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Utd would not have outspent that though? Do you think we could have maintained CL? If we didn't where would the wages for those players come from? The fact is as soon as we dropped out we would have had to sell or put the club at financial risk.
Building the stadium is the same extra money we would get from being in the CL but is guaranteed. We can then buy players knowing we can afford their wages with or without CL.

You might not like it and think we should have concentrated on buying players for the first team. Who knows by some miracle we might have cemented a cl place and built that way. But it is the risky route. This way we have less chance of doing a Leeds (yes I said it). You can't blame Levy for the choice though.

 

[JoeT]

Because you are talking about spending the money on players. These have no guarantee of success (Bale money) and are short term in nature. If they are established players their value drops as soon as you have bought them.
Building an excellent academy and producing your own players takes longer. But is a better investment in the long term. It cost us £60m to build. We have recently produced, Livermore, Rose, Kane, Bentaleb, Mason, Caulker, Pritchard, Carroll and Townsend. How much would they have cost? So we are already seeing a return on that investment.
We have already spent over £100M on the stadium. If we had spent that on players we might have got in the CL once or twice. Do you really think the lies of City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Utd would not have outspent that though? Do you think we could have maintained CL? If we didn't where would the wages for those players come from? The fact is as soon as we dropped out we would have had to sell or put the club at financial risk.
Building the stadium is the same extra money we would get from being in the CL but is guaranteed. We can then buy players knowing we can afford their wages with or without CL.

You might not like it and think we should have concentrated on buying players for the first team. Who knows by some miracle we might have cemented a cl place and built that way. But it is the risky route. This way we have less chance of doing a Leeds (yes I said it). You can't blame Levy for the choice though.

Hi (again)Lilbaz. My original post suggested that the Chairman should have spent more in recent times on the quality of the Spurs' playing squad and my point was that a football team's playing squad IS what it is SELLING. Also I said no matter how much he dresses it up with a new Stadium etc.,the fact remains that Spurs' squad today is really just a shadow of the team just a few short years ago. Maybe that team could have remained competing in the C.L....maybe not. As others have pointed out just about zero was spent in recent jan. transfer windows, when all that was needed was one or two fresh, key players. Also what you failed to include in your 'accounting figures' is revenue from C.L. games and the amount of money awarded to clubs that qualify.
Also I still think that for the Chairman to declare that Spurs' spending is being hampered by F.F.P.rules is a bit of a cop-out.
So, did I say Spurs should throw all of their financial resources into player purchases? I don't think so; but that is what you are suggesting; and your "doing a Leeds" comment was so laboured and cliche-sounding,(I liken such a comment to Disco-music....no longer relevant.)
Your other points re: Spurs' Academy products are of course, extremely valid...and maybe they will form the core of Spurs' future but whether the Livermores, Caulkers, and yes Kanes can do it alone without the help of the odd Berbatov remains to be seen. Levy will hope so, because, as you said they are relatively cheap.

 

[slartibartfast]

Interesting that if this understanding of the FFP is out there, and it is so obviously a poorly conceived idea, why did Levy refer to it as a reason to take Spurs' in the direction of less spendin

I think the announcement came after he'd written his masterpiece.
I also think he's using it as an excuse to tighten the purse strings.
Doesn't matter really. Our expensive top buys are shit 9 times out of 10.

 

[Block D Spurs]

The comments on here are numerous in saying.. our money spent on player signings over two years have been wasted.. I agree and ask WTF is Baldini doing at THFC ???AVB got sacked / walked out, for bad results, player unrest... Baldini should have gone as well, for his errors....

 

[parklaneprince]

levy is a top class business man no doubt. but since january 2012 when we sold pavlechenko and brought in louis saha instead of louis suarez,
the club has gone backwards. bale, modric, van der vaart not replaced,
and replacing redknapp with avb, levy needs to forget about the team and sort out the stadium. let someone else have a go.
from baldini to bonghani khumalo all this is fuckin embarrassing

 

[Jonesey]

We see the last 4 transfer windows as bad. But we have a net spend of zero over them and if we finish 5th would be no worse off position wise
I agree that the players haven't been as good as we would have wanted but maybe they are not as bad as everyone thinks?

The players - on the whole - definitely have been that bad (Eriksen, Chadli perhaps aside although both have been disappointingly inconsistent), the main reason we might finish 5th is down to Kane's goals and Lloris bailing out our woeful defense time and time again.

And as I say, imagine how much better we could have been if they'd done their jobs better ...

 

[Always Offside]

The term papering over the cracks has never been more relevant than this season. With Kane & Lloris papering over our cracks (more like chasms). If Kane is more heavily marked next season & Lloris moves on, I can't see us being anywhere near the top 5 clubs next season.

Just get the stadium built DL, sack Baldini & let Poch, Mitchell etc get on with the football side of things.