Knives out for Damo?

[SpurSince57]

Damien Comolli is fighting to save his position as Tottenham Hotspur sporting director. The Frenchman has this summer's transfer window to recoup some of the substantial amount of money that the club have spent, under his direction, on players in recent seasons or risk being sacked in the autumn after three years in his post.
Comolli's tenure has come under scrutiny in part because of the estimated fall in the value of some of his expensive acquisitions and some disagreements with Juande Ramos, the Tottenham head coach. Darren Bent, Younès Kaboul, Ricardo Rocha and Kevin-Prince Boateng cost a combined fee of about £32million in the past 18 months, but they are now arguably worth half that sum. This has led to questions about whether Comolli is delivering value for money.
Tottenham would not want to disrupt their transfer strategy this summer by dismissing Comolli now. Daniel Levy, the chairman, has shown that he is willing to give his staff an opportunity to turn things around. He backed Glenn Hoddle when the board voted on his managerial future five years ago and supported Martin Jol, the manager last summer, when one director at the club wanted to replace the Dutchman with Harry Redknapp, the Portsmouth manager.
Some fans have questioned Comolli's ability to spot a good player, but that does not appear to be a concern inside the club. However, there is some disquiet at White Hart Lane at the money - and hence profit - that could be raised by the sale of the players who have arrived under Comolli.



There are also questions over the fees paid for some players. Gilberto, a 31-year-old Brazil left back, cost £1.8million in January, when he had six months remaining on his contract at Hertha Berlin. He arrived overweight and unfit. Boateng was bought for nearly £5million last summer, also from Hertha, despite Seville, the other suitor, offering half as much. Before that, eyebrows were raised at the arrivals of Danny Murphy and Mido for a combined fee of £6.5million.
Comolli will have a chance to realign his transfer balance sheet, with Dimitar Berbatov expected to realise a profit of about £17million on the £10.9million paid to Bayer Leverkusen in 2006, if the Bulgaria forward leaves.
Signings are not only the responsibility of Comolli. Every member of Tottenham's management group, comprising Levy, Comolli, Ramos and John Alexander, the club secretary, are supposed to agree about a particular player. However, Jol has since complained that he did not want some of the acquisitions, while Ramos rejected eight players offered to him in January.
The club backed Comolli during his disagreements with Jol, but it is not certain that they will do so with Ramos, who holds a stronger bargaining position. There is no suggestion that the club will discard their continental structure, brought in by Levy. Ramos enjoyed success working under the system at Seville, where Ramón Rodríguez Monchi, the sporting director with whom he had an uncomfortable relationship, was credited with discovering the best players.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/tottenham/article3950212.ece

 

[C0YS]

...didnt they nick this from some ITK a while ago!!???, or is this just conferming the ITK.....or is this just bullsh*t

 

[SelbYido]

So basically a combination of the author's opinions, his rough estimates of players' values & rehashes of old stories...

If it weren't 3am I might bother taking this shite apart but as it is...:shrug:

 

[Hoowl]

1) The article seems to be mainly focusing on the cost of the players. Surely this is beyond Comolli's remit and is arranged by Levy?

2) If Gilberto was signed in the summer rather than immediately we would have got stick too. The fact he was unfit was down to the fact he was injured and the winter break in Germany.

3) Ramos rejected 8 players Comolli suggested. This means nothing if we a) don't know how many players he recommended in total and b) how this system is meant to work. I would be more surprise if Ramos blindly accepted everyone who was recommended.

4) I do like the way they are almost suggesting Comolli wants to sell Berbatov to balance the books.

I'm not particularly pro-Comolli but they does seem to be a 'witch hunt' article telling a portion of the fans what they want to hear.

 

[Montasura]

"Darren Bent, Younès Kaboul, Ricardo Rocha and Kevin-Prince Boateng cost a combined fee of about £32million in the past 18 months, but they are now arguably worth half that sum."

They may arguably be worth half their purchase value but, with the exception of Rocha, they have bags of potential to significantly increase their value. These players were bought young with long term investment in mind. IMO, Bent, Kaboul, and Boateng all have the ability to become very good players capable of turning a game around.

Yes, I would argue that Comolli has made some questionable decisions and paid some questionable prices for players BUT as the original article states all these deals are agreed by the entire management team including Levy. So why would Comolli be in the firing line for deals that Levy himself had signed off on??

IMO Comolli's job may well be insecure at present but not because of the deals he has made. I would argue that the only thing that could put his job on the line at present is if he and Ramos are not getting on. At the moment Ramos has more power than Commoli at the club and if he can take the club forward to a new level then Commolli may well be replaced by a more powerful sporting director from the continent.

Just my tuppence worth:grin:

 

[nicdic]

It's rubbish. BEN and some of the other ITK's will love this. But it's rubbish.

 

[am_yisrael_chai]

Do you think they read this thread on SC ? :wink:

http://www.spurscommunity.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=29914

 

[Rocksuperstar]

aside from what it says, that's a really horribly written article - it's as if whoever did it just cobbled together a load of articles to reinforce the point and just cut n paste them into that piece... No structure, stuttering sentences - horrible to read. Makes baby Jebus cry, shit like that :|

On topic though, it's the usual overdramatisation of a situation that the papers and media tend to do now - they're looking to make this as sensational as possible when, really, it's just an observation. It was obvious from the way the club bent over backwards to make sure Ramos was on board that everyone else was going to drop down a step on the food chain.

Comolli, from my perspective, has undeniably overpayed for some really mediocre talent but, as pointed out, he's also written cheques for some very promising young players - Kaboul and KPB both have lots of potential, both aggressive and sometimes just too eager to make an impression so if Ramos can reign that in then i don't think Comolli can be frowned at too much. Rocha was bought as desperate cover - we had so many injuries in our back line we got in a player who turned out to be average enough to provide cover and looked a lot like Figo, but was never going to be more than a reserve. Just the ticket, to be honest - we weren't going to go splashing out any more than we did, or any less and he did the job asked of him.

Generally, as i felt with Martin's position, if the board are prepared to bite their lip and stick to the five year plan (that they seem to draw up every two years) then we may well see that Comolli's buying isn't as madcap as it first appears.

still looks a bit like smithers though

 

[Kyras]

Stupid article, agree with Montasura's comment about the potential value compared with the current value, Journos must be so bored at the moment.

 

[TheChosenOne]

This is part of the article in The Times
but it didn't appear in the online version...

I've scanned it and thats the best I can do, you might have to enlarge the page to read it all.

 

[si_yidarmy]

he was an ex-arsenal director. We have to ask, why did they let him go?

 

[Kendall]

Verdicts lifted straight from SC :up:

 

[si_yidarmy]

what would be really funny is if we did an arnesen and got Nani from spammers

 

[Kendall]

he was an ex-arsenal director. We have to ask, why did they let him go?

he was a cheif scout at Arsenal - he left because he was offered a better job with more responsibility and more money.

 

[si_yidarmy]

he was a cheif scout at Arsenal - he left because he was offered a better job with more responsibility and more money.

DOF and Chief Scout, pritty much same thing!

I thought he left a while before he joined us?

We should raid hammers and get nani

 

[Caboose]

This is part of the article in The Times
but it didn't appear in the online version...

I've scanned it and thats the best I can do, you might have to enlarge the page to read it all.

To me that shows that out of all the player's that Comolli has bought we have sold one and made a profit on him. Mido. The journalist even has to point this out to us with the total at the bottom 'Total: £88.5m (£6m of which recouped from Mido transfer)". That to me just reads, it would be lower IF Spurs hadn't actually sold someone and I could have put my own value on them. The rest, as I said, is just the journalists opinion on what he interprets the value as.

As a guide to how accurate his values are lets look at one where we can definitely argue with him. Ghaly, he's put down value transfer value of £500,000.. now hang on a minute, if it wasn't for the fact that he didn't fancy doing a bit of running at training we would have received TEN times that amount for him from Birmingham.

Everyone know's that we have paid quite a bit for these players but the Premier League has a bit of a Chelsea factor about it now. When Abramavic took over at Chelsea they'd go in for a player who the team would normally sell for £10million but they'd charge Chelsea £15-18 million because they have the money. As the PL has now got all this extra wealth with TV revenue and high merchandise sales continental clubs apply this strategy to us.

Was Kabould worth £8m? The french U21 captain, big powerful athlete he was probably worth around £4-5m. If Spurs sell him this summer will we sell him for less than £8m? Will we fuck!

 

[si_yidarmy]

To me that shows that out of all the player's that Comolli has bought we have sold one and made a profit on him. Mido. The journalist even has to point this out to us with the total at the bottom 'Total: £88.5m (£6m of which recouped from Mido transfer)". That to me just reads, it would be lower IF Spurs hadn't actually sold someone and I could have put my own value on them. The rest, as I said, is just the journalists opinion on what he interprets the value as.

As a guide to how accurate his values are lets look at one where we can definitely argue with him. Ghaly, he's put down value transfer value of £500,000.. now hang on a minute, if it wasn't for the fact that he didn't fancy doing a bit of running at training we would have received TEN times that amount for him from Birmingham.

Everyone know's that we have paid quite a bit for these players but the Premier League has a bit of a Chelsea factor about it now. When Abramavic took over at Chelsea they'd go in for a player who the team would normally sell for £10million but they'd charge Chelsea £15-18 million because they have the money. As the PL has now got all this extra wealth with TV revenue and high merchandise sales continental clubs apply this strategy to us.

Was Kabould worth £8m? The french U21 captain, big powerful athlete he was probably worth around £4-5m. If Spurs sell him this summer will we sell him for less than £8m? Will we fuck!

:bowdown:

 

[ackie]

Commolli SIGN BENZEMA AND SHOW THEM!!!!!!!!
BENZEMA imo is the ideal signing to soften Berba blow!!!

 

[rez9000]

You see, I'm on the fence about this article. On the one hand, I would agree that it does seem to be a space-filler with little attribution.

On the other hand, I'm an outspoken critic of Damien Comolli specifically and the DOF structure at Spurs, generally. I would be less hostile to the DOF setup if we had someone of the stature of Arnesen in the position instead an ingenu like Comolli. That, and the way he came out of the Jol affair smelling of roses.

So, on the one hand, I think the article is a bit shit, but, on the other hand, I hope it's true.

 

[joey55]

he was a cheif scout at Arsenal - he left because he was offered a better job with more responsibility and more money.

He wasn't a chief scout, he was just a European scout. Also, he didn't leave to go to be Director of Football and St Ettiene. He originally went to work with their academy and only became Director of Football at the end of the summer of 2004, when the previous guy walked out becasue the club President appointed Baup without consulting him.

As for the article, it's total shit. The money isn't the issue, it's the suitbality of the players for what our squad needed at the time of their purchases, that is the issue. As others have suggested they all have potential, but as the league table has shown, potential isn't what we needed.