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Power wanted Town to be Spurs feeder club

mawspurs

Staff
Jun 29, 2003
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Swindon Town was to become a feeder club for Premier League giants Tottenham Hotspur when Lee Power took over as director of football, a High Court judge heard yesterday.

Read the full article at Swindon Advertiser
 

Danners9

Available on a Free Transfer
Mar 30, 2004
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'Speaking from the witness box at the High Court, McCrory said Power had come to Town’s attention as somebody who could facilitate transfers, especially loan deals through Spurs owing to his close friendship with Tim Sherwood, technical director at the time.'

“Tim was looking for a club which he could have his players sent out to in a package, have them watched and played in a certain style.”

- Not a bad idea, and not really news either. We all suspected when a handful of u21s went off to Swindon.
 

Reece

Shutterbug
May 27, 2005
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A good idea for us really. Not sure how Swindon felt about it though.. Surely we'd then be having a say on the coaching staff too?
 

eddiebailey

Well-Known Member
Oct 12, 2004
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The Robins would have been relegated last season without Spurs shoring up their playing staff.

Sad if this relationship has come to an end; it was beneficial to both clubs, and above all to the players.

There is really not a lot of point us sending players on loan to clubs where they are going to be taught the wrong things and we are unable to monitor their progress.
 

fatpiranha

dismember
Jun 9, 2003
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The Robins would have been relegated last season without Spurs shoring up their playing staff.

I'd like that to be true but it just doesn't correspond with the facts.

Swindon finished 8th, a full 19 pts clear of relegation. They bought Luongo off us for a fee that was no way cheap by League 1 standards so I hardly think we could claim he was 'our player'.

Of the others Hall and Mason were injured for much of the season. Mason only played 18 of the 46 league matches while Hall managed 26. Pritchard was the only one who could be described as an unqualified success starting 33 league matches.

There were times when none of the Spurs players were available. Somewhat surprising Swindon did better without them than they did with them in the team.

Another problem was as their manager publicly stated, that as part of the deal with Spurs they were expected to play in a certain style. It was not a style that particularly suited the demands of League 1 and it was only when it became obvious that Timmee was a 'dead man walking' that they abandoned it and saw a corresponding improvement in their results.

We certainly benefited from the arrangement. We got a good fee for Luongo and found out that Pritchard had a future with us and Hall and Mason do not. I'm not sure Swindon will be keen to repeat the experiment.
 

eddiebailey

Well-Known Member
Oct 12, 2004
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I'd like that to be true but it just doesn't correspond with the facts.

Swindon finished 8th, a full 19 pts clear of relegation. They bought Luongo off us for a fee that was no way cheap by League 1 standards so I hardly think we could claim he was 'our player'.

Of the others Hall and Mason were injured for much of the season. Mason only played 18 of the 46 league matches while Hall managed 26. Pritchard was the only one who could be described as an unqualified success starting 33 league matches.

There were times when none of the Spurs players were available. Somewhat surprising Swindon did better without them than they did with them in the team.

Another problem was as their manager publicly stated, that as part of the deal with Spurs they were expected to play in a certain style. It was not a style that particularly suited the demands of League 1 and it was only when it became obvious that Timmee was a 'dead man walking' that they abandoned it and saw a corresponding improvement in their results.

We certainly benefited from the arrangement. We got a good fee for Luongo and found out that Pritchard had a future with us and Hall and Mason do not. I'm not sure Swindon will be keen to repeat the experiment.

Swindon were flat broke and needed to cut the wage bill by two thirds. They needed to shed a load of players and bring in cheap alternatives: Spurs helped them with that, not just through loans, but through bargain sales and putting them onto released players. About a third of the squad had been on Spurs books, and used to playing the Spurs way. Luongo was an investment too good to miss and he and Byrne were presumably sold with buy back/sell on options; I am pretty sure they were still on Spurs radar. Mason was highly influential at the outset, as were Luongo and Kasim, playing in 'the Spurs style', which worked pretty well; Swindon succeeded in punching above their financial weight and they certainly impressed opposing fans with the quality of their play. If anything the more talented players struggled the more the system was compromised. Swindon's problems were up front, with the Ranger situation, and at the back, where Ward was knackered and Hall disappointed (lord knows how he got the Birmingham loan). They were never in any danger of relegation, and what boosted performances at the end of the season more than anything was shoring up the defence by bringing back Archibald-Henville, one of the best (and most expensive) centrebacks in the division.
 

fatpiranha

dismember
Jun 9, 2003
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What's contradictory about those two statements? They would have bee in danger if Spurs had not shored them up, but because we did they weren't.

Thanks for the clarification. We obviously have a different interpretation of the word 'never'.
 

eddiebailey

Well-Known Member
Oct 12, 2004
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Never can be qualified. I think the sense in which I was using the word was clear from the context.
 
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