Swiss Ramble Article on our finances

arunspurs said:

Nike pay United for the association with their brand & not for the number of shirts sold by Nike showrooms. For a sponsor, shirts sold is just a add-on benefit - their main purpose of giving money is to get exposure.

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I know. Im talking about merchandising sales. Not sponsorship numbers.

Edit: my main point is, merch sales have little to no effect on commercial numbers, so you really dont know if we're getting more fans or not.

lis spur said:

Looking at that table we sit neatly between Dortmund and Atletico Madrid; both fairly successful in both domestic and European football recently.
So is lack of money a reason for not achieving ?

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In that top 30, we have 5 teams ahead of us from the same league, Atletico Madrid have 2, Dortmund have 1. In the top 30, 14 are from our league (inc us), only 3 are from the Spanish league and 4 from the German league.

This should put it into perspective:

Spurs 6th richest club in England. In the last 5 years:
Finished top 5 (overachieved) = 5 times,
Below top 5 (underachieved)= 0 times.

Atletico Madrid 3rd richest in Spain.In the last 5 years:
Finished top 2(overachieved) = 1 time,
Below top 3 (underachieved) = 3 times.

Dortmund 2nd richest in Germany.In the last 5 years:
Finished top (overachieved) = 2 times,
Below top 3 (underachieved) = 1 time.

yankspurs said:

I know. Im talking about merchandising sales. Not sponsorship numbers.

Edit: my main point is, merch sales have little to no effect on commercial numbers, so you really dont know if we're getting more fans or not.

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£11m is not to be sniffed at.

spurs-r-us said:

Losing CL to Chelsea was huge in us not becoming regular top 4 contenders. The money Baldini wasted was huge in us falling behind what was a very even top six. If we don't buy and sell the right players and back a manager for once, it's hard to see us going anywhere but down.

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This is brushed over far too easily. I was utterly disgusted. The ruling in the first place was wholly arbitrary - it was put in place with immediate effect just to accommodate one of the 'favourites' (1998, I think), it was altered with immediate effect to accommodate another one of the 'favourites' (Liverpool allowed into CL next season, but Everton allowed in too) and then altered to ensure that in future years Everton would have been excluded. Whenever rulings like this are made, such as the one to allow the Europa winner into CL the following season, there is always a gap between the decision and when it is put into effect. But not in these two instances, oh no, because they favourite little pet clubs were the ones who benefited/would have missed out!

Then when we are the first and only club to suffer, the President of UEFA cracks a fecking joke that if it was one of their lickle favourite clubs they might have made an exception. And then they change their ruling again. There was no attempt to compensate us even though we suffered in ways that cannot even be guessed at - and, no, I don't that the ruling stood at the start of the season - UEFA showed willing enough to change the ruling that had stood at the start of the season when it was their favoured clubs who were benefiting/potentially losing out. If they hadn't properly considered the possibility that the winners might not finish in a CL place, putting their 'solution' into immediate effect, they could easily have said they hadn't considered sufficiently the financial consequences of the possibility of a club finishing in a CL place and a team from outside the places winning it, and given us compensation with immediate effect. They changed their original ruling at the drop of a hat, with immediate effect, when it suited them.

What was worse was the scumbags on ITV whopping and jumping about, saying once "Spurs fans we haven't forgotten the effect on your club in all of this" before never mentioning it again and getting back to jumping and whooping. It was a disgrace! And as far as I am concerned their should have been an inquiry because there was something decidedly dodgy about the way a Chelsea team who had been awful all season and knew they would be finishing outside the top four all of a sudden won the CL for the first time despite being easily the inferior team in the three remaining games of the competition (after the knowledge of not finishing in top four had become virtually a certainty). It made me sick to the core and if ever there was a time I felt like giving up on football it was then. Bayern Munich, alone, should have scored into double figures. Dodgy as hell!

And UEFA have never acknowledged the massively negative impact this has had on a team that has actually tried to do it all properly, by the book - FFP, my arse!

HotspurFC1950 said:

A 56k stadium will stop us competing. If that is the capacity limit then we are destined never to catch up to those above.

Where did it all go wrong from when we were the top and most wealthy club with the largest attendances ?

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56K...I thought it was 58K?

What is important is how fit-for-purpose it is and not an exact top capacity. WHL as designed to specifically have a disproportionate number of directors boxes. At the time it was not a bad move, what with falling attendances due to the Hoolie problem and all. It was only in hindsight that this was seen to leave us massively behind the likes of United. At the time, it gave the revenues of a ground a few K bigger. Only United truly dwarfed that, and if the Hoolie problem had continued unabated, they may well have been left with a half-empty stadium. So, how it is designed to take all factors, and not just a flat top line in attendances, will determine how competitive it is.

Secondly, really, only OT will dwarf it. It will be similar in size to the Scumerates. Then there are the likes of Newcastle, who fill the stadium but are insufficient in other ways, to carry their threat through; or Sunderland who have 55K (I believe) but just can't fill it. What is more important, to me, is if our youth set-up bears fruit (in the medium to long term). ArseAnal managed to compete with United, on not quite equal terms, with a much smaller stadium, via their youth product. That has dried off now, and even though they have a 60K stadium they have struggled to maintain a challenge. So an effective youth set-up can produce a challenge, and a 56 - 58K stadium should be able to generate funds to make the wages pretty competitive - especially if the majority of the players are home-produced. And even more so if the stadium is designed to punch above its weight in terms of revenue generation.

StartingPrice said:

56K...I thought it was 58K?

What is important is how fit-for-purpose it is and not an exact top capacity. WHL as designed to specifically have a disproportionate number of directors boxes. At the time it was not a bad move, what with falling attendances due to the Hoolie problem and all. It was only in hindsight that this was seen to leave us massively behind the likes of United. At the time, it gave the revenues of a ground a few K bigger. Only United truly dwarfed that, and if the Hoolie problem had continued unabated, they may well have been left with a half-empty stadium. So, how it is designed to take all factors, and not just a flat top line in attendances, will determine how competitive it is.

Secondly, really, only OT will dwarf it. It will be similar in size to the Scumerates. Then there are the likes of Newcastle, who fill the stadium but are insufficient in other ways, to carry their threat through; or Sunderland who have 55K (I believe) but just can't fill it. What is more important, to me, is if our youth set-up bears fruit (in the medium to long term). ArseAnal managed to compete with United, on not quite equal terms, with a much smaller stadium, via their youth product. That has dried off now, and even though they have a 60K stadium they have struggled to maintain a challenge. So an effective youth set-up can produce a challenge, and a 56 - 58K stadium should be able to generate funds to make the wages pretty competitive - especially if the majority of the players are home-produced. And even more so if the stadium is designed to punch above its weight in terms of revenue generation.

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Our matchday revenue will be boosted to just less than Arsenal. Even if we do get a bigger capacity we will receive less due to no Champions League (unless we do get in). We are currently planned for 56k. But very strong rumors that it might be over 60k.
Liverpool and West Ham will both have theirs boosted by then but would still be less that probably Chelsea. This due to lack of additional corporate.

Chelsea CL thing is irrelevant. We wouldnt have solidified CL because our revenues are half of other top teams.

The spurs financials have been the same for the last 10 years. Better than the rest, but nowhere near enough to compete with the big boys.

Lilbaz said:

Our matchday revenue will be boosted to just less than Arsenal. Even if we do get a bigger capacity we will receive less due to no Champions League (unless we do get in). We are currently planned for 56k. But very strong rumors that it might be over 60k.
Liverpool and West Ham will both have theirs boosted by then but would still be less that probably Chelsea. This due to lack of additional corporate.

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We need to improve our commercial and sposnorship performance. New stadium will take care of matchday

Hoops said:

We need to improve our commercial and sposnorship performance. New stadium will take care of matchday

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The only real way of doing that is by being successful on the pitch.

spurs9 said:

In that top 30, we have 5 teams ahead of us from the same league, Atletico Madrid have 2, Dortmund have 1. In the top 30, 14 are from our league (inc us), only 3 are from the Spanish league and 4 from the German league.

This should put it into perspective:

Spurs 6th richest club in England. In the last 5 years:
Finished top 5 (overachieved) = 5 times,
Below top 5 (underachieved)= 0 times.

Atletico Madrid 3rd richest in Spain.In the last 5 years:
Finished top 2(overachieved) = 1 time,
Below top 3 (underachieved) = 3 times.

Dortmund 2nd richest in Germany.In the last 5 years:
Finished top (overachieved) = 2 times,
Below top 3 (underachieved) = 1 time.

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I accept your point ,but we overacheiving in what in European terms is looking increasingly like a poor technical league.Our Europa league exploits have proven this recently ,by repeatedly losing in the knock out stages to so called 2nd tier European teams.

I still believe the team we have is good enough to compete for the league

StartingPrice said:

What is more important, to me, is if our youth set-up bears fruit (in the medium to long term). ArseAnal managed to compete with United, on not quite equal terms, with a much smaller stadium, via their youth product. That has dried off now, and even though they have a 60K stadium they have struggled to maintain a challenge. So an effective youth set-up can produce a challenge, and a 56 - 58K stadium should be able to generate funds to make the wages pretty competitive - especially if the majority of the players are home-produced. And even more so if the stadium is designed to punch above its weight in terms of revenue generation.

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I can only think of Cole, Keown, Parlour and Adams.
Winterburn, Bould and Dixon were all bought, and the team was made up of the rest of their lucky signings, such as Bergkamp, Overmars, Petit, Ljungberg etc.

In fact, "The Invincibles" were in 03/04 before ground was broken on their new stadium, and their most frequent line-up was: Lehmann; Lauren, Campbell (Judas), Touré, Cole; Viera, Gilberto, Ljungberg, Pirés; Bergkamp, Henry.

Your right that since then they've bought in their young players, with Wilshere being the only true youth product in their first team these days and Wallc**t, Oxlaide-Chamberlain, Gibbs, Chambers, Ramsay, Sneezy, Gnabry, Coquelin, Bielik and more being all signed/bought by the club between 15-19 years old. Pretty much the same as what we did with Bentaleb.


I don't think their failure to challenge has been due to the lack of youth system, it's more to do with Arsenal's dry period of spending between 2004 and say 2011 or so, rough estimates of when the stadium affected their transfers. They also sold off all the decent players they had to City and Barca, which had a big impact.

Everlasting Seconds said:

Yes we should. And we did. We should have done everything we could to secure a striker that summer, and I believe everything possible was done. It didn't work out, correct. But we should have given it our all, and abandon reason if needed, and in that regard, I can't fault Levy the decision.

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We're not a club that can afford to abandon reason we don't have money to burn. Even if Soldado scored goals to spend so much money on someone with no resale value was not a good option. Bony and Benteke had resale value, we could have gone for them.

Bus-Conductor said:

Exactly this.

Transfers will always be a gamble. Even when you pay top dollar for established players with WC reputations. Veron, Shevchenko, Torres, etc etc. DeMaria, Falcao and Shaw can't get in the ManU team now. ManC have spent vast sums on players who can't get a regular game.

It's piss easy looking at transfers in hindsight and saying they were terrible business but that is bogus. You can only judge the deals at the time they were made. Did they make sense in terms of the what the player had achieved and his potential to achieve, did they represent value in those circumstances, did they represent value in relation to the clubs fiscal model etc.

There will be various of us that are vehemently opposed to given transfers, sometimes we can see they are poor fits or poor value or both. But to be fair, that doesn't happen very often, and what the figures prove, and the consistent performance we've had suggest we aren't getting it too wrong.

Most of the time in the last few years we can see the logic (or at least some) in most of the deals we are making - in terms of the overall package.

Soldado was a proven goalscorer over a long duration, in a top league for a good team. Lamela had just scored 15 goals for the second team in SerieA aged 21 and seemed like an almost perfect replacement for the outgoing 85m auxiliary wide forward. Paulinho had just won the equivalent of the South American CL, been voted 3rd best player as Brazil won the Confed Cup. Eriksen was great business at 8m. Chadli had just scored 19 goals playing as a wide forward in the dutch league. You can see Chiriches has talent as a footballer, how the fuck anyone thought he'd be a good CB fit for the EPL is a bit baffling though.

So, we may have had the odd reservation, but by and large most could see some logic in all those deals. That's all we can ask of those that make the decisions to buy players. That there is some understandable logic.

The signings that are most questionable for me are decent but average players with limited scope for improvement who will block the integration of a development player who at the very least will equal that averageness, but may have the potential to exceed it.

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You know who was voted 3rd best player in the 2009 confed cup? Clint Dempsey.
We shouldn't buy players based on what they did in one international tournament, whether its a second rate competition like the confed cup or the world cup. They should be scouted over a longer period of time to see if they will be a suitable fit.

Mullers said:

We're not a club that can afford to abandon reason we don't have money to burn. Even if Soldado scored goals to spend so much money on someone with no resale value was not a good option. Bony and Benteke had resale value, we could have gone for them.

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It's not reasonable to say we should have moved for Bony. That's all hindsight and all that. He was a young, unproven player for Vitesse at the time (Vitesse, where the fuck is that?, right?). Stroke of genius for Swansea? Yes. A reasonable expectation that Spurs would estimate him accurately. Not really. (All though, I of course would WISH that we had taken a closer look at him).

Yeah, we could have moved for Benteke. And by all accounts, we progressed that idea really far. However, I think his present fair market value is somewhat below the prices quoted for him at the time. Which negates your point about resale value. I completely understand the urge to look else where once his price tag hit 25M pounds or whatever it was. He has maybe recouped some market value over the last 4 games, maybe, but he hasn't been all that amazing generally speaking during the time since we didn't buy him.

Mullers said:

You know who was voted 3rd best player in the 2009 confed cup? Clint Dempsey.
We shouldn't buy players based on what they did in one international tournament, whether its a second rate competition like the confed cup or the world cup. They should be scouted over a longer period of time to see if they will be a suitable fit.

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Once again, hindsight is your only witness. I completely understand signing Dempsey at the time. And remember, he had a really good season for Fulham before signing for us. If signing players by historic achievements largely or only, you can't expect much better signings.

Dempsey is a great example contradicting another paradigm. We keep saying that we MUST sign players with PL experience. Well, that doesn't generally work out much better than any other paradigm. I think we should focus, if anything, on CL-experience.

Everlasting Seconds said:

It's not reasonable to say we should have moved for Bony. That's all hindsight and all that. He was a young, unproven player for Vitesse at the time (Vitesse, where the fuck is that?, right?). Stroke of genius for Swansea? Yes. A reasonable expectation that Spurs would estimate him accurately. Not really. (All though, I of course would WISH that we had taken a closer look at him).

Yeah, we could have moved for Benteke. And by all accounts, we progressed that idea really far. However, I think his present fair market value is somewhat below the prices quoted for him at the time. Which negates your point about resale value. I completely understand the urge to look else where once his price tag hit 25M pounds or whatever it was. He has maybe recouped some market value over the last 4 games, maybe, but he hasn't been all that amazing generally speaking during the time since we didn't buy him.

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In regards to Bony, I was talking about buying him when he was at Swansea but yes certainly we should have taken a chance on him while he was at Vitesse. Without Bale money we either have to look at proven talent coming to the end of their contract, or scout and take a chance on unproven player for 11 million at worst if it doesn't work out, he's still young enough that we'll get half the money back.

With Benteke I understand the urge to look elsewhere as well but not at a 28 year old striker for 28 or 16 million pounds.

Everlasting Seconds said:

Once again, hindsight is your only witness. I completely understand signing Dempsey at the time. And remember, he had a really good season for Fulham before signing for us. If signing players by historic achievements largely or only, you can't expect much better signings.

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I didn't want him at the time and was completely underwhelmed when we signed him. He was a cheap option so we bought him, AVB didn't really want him and he was gone after one season. A bit of a raw deal for Dempsey as he scored 7 goals, i think it was.

Everlasting Seconds said:

Dempsey is a great example contradicting another paradigm. We keep saying that we MUST sign players with PL experience. Well, that doesn't generally work out much better than any other paradigm. I think we should focus, if anything, on CL-experience.

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Who keeps saying that? Not me, the majority of Southampton's signings don't have any premiership experience.

Mullers said:

I didn't want him at the time and was completely underwhelmed when we signed him. He was a cheap option so we bought him, AVB didn't really want him and he was gone after one season. A bit of a raw deal for Dempsey as he scored 7 goals, i think it was.

Who keeps saying that? Not me, the majority of Southampton's signings don't have any premiership experience.

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Wasn't really pointing to you, no. "We is us, all of us. We is us".

Mullers said:

You know who was voted 3rd best player in the 2009 confed cup? Clint Dempsey.
We shouldn't buy players based on what they did in one international tournament, whether its a second rate competition like the confed cup or the world cup. They should be scouted over a longer period of time to see if they will be a suitable fit.

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Like watching him play for his club as they win their equivalent of the South American champions league ?

I wholeheartedly agree Mullers, but I don't think Paulinho was bought purely on the back of the confed cup. We were being linked with him before that.