Every time I see spurs financial results come out I thank my lucky stars we had Alan Sugar as chairman for many years. Yes he was hated by many spurs fans for many reasons but he kept the purse strings tight dispite a lot of pressure to spend big when clubs like Leeds were risking everything to get to the top.

In essence we are now one of the top 20 richest clubs in the WORLD and have the best infastructure of any club in europe.

Oh and not a bad side as well (we'll come in the top 5 again easily if we sort the away form out)

we might be one of the 20 richest clubs and we spend like one only instead of buying a star for £20 million we get 10 players for £2 million each and more than half of those turn out to be dog shit, and u are right to say were not a bad side were an AVERAGE side, great at home and one of the worst away from home, i like ur positive outlook saying if we sort the away form, worryingly if the home form slips we would be looking at a relegation fight, i gotta say i dont really care about the money side of things thats levys job, but i know i wont be happy if were not in the top 6 every season and some muppett is telling me that we have a great bank balance, i support tottenham hotspur football club, i dont want to support a bank.

He got a bit of a bad press when he first took over, but for me he has proved himself to be a proper Spurs fan and a really good chairman!

Glass half empty, Longdistancespursfan?

good point mate, must admit i am more half empty person than half full but i was just playing devils advocate and giving things a lil balance, things arent all doom and gloom but somewhere along the line this season we have to take massive steps in the right direction, so far hasnt been good enough, i think we got a fantastic squad and they are letting themselves down by been in 10th place, were not the only ones tho, arse and liverpool are already out the title race so they have underachieved too but i only care about spurs, we acraped a late win agasint a poor boro team and nothin less than a win will do today then we gotta go away from home and get a win, if we can do that then my glass will be half full.

still bitter and twisted

ok so supposedly the woolwich had nothing to do with lasagnegate, but shouldn't someone be investigating possible polonium poisoning last saturday. Might explain a lot.

Spending £20 million on one star isn't going to sort things out either though is it? Lets be realistic. What, we should have one star player and 10 bad to average players? We all know Arsenal are not much without Henry. He's injured, they're average. And was Shevchenko worth £30 million? Tevez could have been sold for that much a few months ago, now look at him. Our policy is the right one for the long-term, and we are improving. I have faith we will get there in the end.

so i take it that you're not happy with the £1m spent on Lennon, the £1.5m on Robinson, the £4m on Dawson, the £2.5m on Huddlestone. Would you prefer £7m on Pennant (or £21m on SWP), £4.5m on a then 34yr old Van der Saar, £6m on Agger or £18m on Carrick (who we signed for £2.5m)?

And are the £7m signings of Jenas, Defoe and Keane, not to mention the £8m on Zokora (who i don't really like) and £10.8m on Berbatov not big signings?

no we shouldnt have 1 star player and 10 average ones, we already have LOTS of quality players and a few average ones so only quality can come to the team now, but now where at a stage where the success has to come, if we keep building for the future then when that time comes, king, berbatov, zokora will be past their peak and we will have to start building again, never ending cycle, we have done the right thing so far developing players and giving ourselves a good foundation but now we need to go on to the next step, dont think arse are average without henry, they thrashed us like no one else has under jol's reign. i mentioned earlier i would like us to sign the like of riquelme, vander vart or quaresmo, these guys are all proven at top EUROPEAN level tevez was always a massive gamble coming from s america, chelski paid way over the top for shevchenko cos its chelsea but i am surprised he hasnt done better, but he wasnt at his peak when they signed him , thats what i want us to sign guys at there peak.

jesus am having to explain myself a lot today, no the above u mention are all brilliant signings but maybe we have exhausted that well from the championship, those players were fairly cheap and with some of them it has taken them 18 months to break into the 1st team, i think what we need is a real quality player who can unlock defences and dominate the game and i dont know of a cheap one out there who could come in and do that for us this season do you?

Well, it was a bit contentious, what you posted.

I don't see that there's a genuine disagreement here. Now that we have assembled a deep, solid squad, of course we need those 1 or 2 players who will make the difference between "good, challenging for Europe" and "excellent, winning things".

But that doesn't make our buy-youth-cheap policy of the past 3 years wrong, nor does it mean that we should abandon it. It works. It builds a good squad. The key point you have missed is that the roughly 50% of those players who turn out not to be good enough for the first team get sold off, usually for a profit. I have no problem whatsoever with a policy of buying promising youth in quantity and having a 40%-50% hit rate, because it pays for itself - even if you don't count the outrageous bargains that are Lennon, Robinson and even Dawson.

I don't know about "exhausting" the well of the Championship, but it is conspicuous that, since Comolli arrived, he has been drawing more often from the well that is Ligue 1.

The youth policy is just fine, provided we are ambitious enough also to go for the 1 or 2 major players who can take us up a level. At present, I am hoping that Dimitar Berbatov can turn out to be one of those players. In the past 2-3 games, he is showing signs of adjusting to the Premiership. And he certainly has all the tools he needs to be exceptional - if he has the mentality.

some fair points u raised david i agree we have got some money back on a lot of our 'failures' ,

the original article was implying that it was a good thing that spurs were the most active club in the transfer market and i guess what it is im saying is that sometimes less is more i think we would be better if say we hadnt bought routledge, stalteri, tainio, murphy, defendi, and used the money for them and saving on their wages to buy van der vaart. this is of course with hindsight

the comment about the well drying, there is still talent there but the cheap bargains of lennon and thud seem to have gone now clubs want massive amounts like saints wantin 7 million for bale, you could get a player proven at the highest level for that elsewhere who is already the finished article.

There are approximately 100 professional football clubs in England and many more decent semi-pro teams as well. For me - we are doing better than 95% of those pro teams and obviously all the semi-pros too

Only the 'top four' are doing better than us at the moment - yes Bolton Villa etc are above us in the league- but are they in Europe - no - in Carling Cup -no-therefore I would say we are way above average- in fact very good when it comes to pro teams and above average when it comes to Prem teams

But that's the point, you don't make these signings with hindsight on your side. I was much happier when we signed Routledge to Lennon but look what happened. If you buy the best young players available, some will emerge as real talents (Dawson, Lennon, Huddlestone) while some may disappoint (Reid, Routledge). Having a large competitive squad is a major reason in our improvements in the last 2 seasons but with that large squad there will unfortunately be some disappointments as well as some talented players not getting a fair chance.

We have money and when the right player comes along (Zokora, Berbatov, Jenas) we'll splash the cash, but i don't believe for a second the reason we haven't signed Van Der Vaart is because we signed Lennon and a couple of other cheap players.

I think what longdistance is trying so say is that we acquired a lot of young talent but then signed a lot of older players as well that weren't really needed, i think we do have too many players at our club, the younger players in the reserves must think they will never get a chance to step up to the plate.

I feel that the time is right for us to speculate and bring in a top name and i agree with longdistance that maybe now we should buy players at thier peake, i am a big fan of lee cook but would like to see ricardo qaresmo of porto i watched him against the scum and he is an amazing Player brought in as well.