ENIC...

buckley said:

With the ENIC / Levy situation think because of his relative failure in the transfer market Levy did not believe in Poch enough to give him the backing he has now given Jose . It seems as tho the money is and was there but now was the right moment to invest with a man he has a proper belief in.

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I am so confused by these types of posts. You'd think Mourinho had gone out and spent hundreds of millions whilst Poch was given 50p and a Next voucher.

We brought in some targeted bargains and a couple of loans this window, and spent a somewhat 'normal' amount. Certainly less than last summer?

sausage said:

I am so confused by these types of posts. You'd think Mourinho had gone out and spent hundreds of millions whilst Poch was given 50p and a Next voucher.

We brought in some targeted bargains and a couple of loans this window, and spent a somewhat 'normal' amount. Certainly less than last summer?

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I'd be very interested to see a comparison of what we spent on whom in the seasons Poch was in charge versus Mourinho so far. I would imagine it will allow us to conclude one way or the other the theory that Poch wasn't backed.

SirHarryHotspur said:

Unless some of the squad can still go out on loan to Championship clubs e.g CCV , Jack Clarke, the size of the wage bill for the current squad is going to make interesting reading when the figures are announced.

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We’ve got loads of wiggle room in that compared to the other top 6 teams. True, no fans in the ground to help pay the wages, but that’s what the £170m loan was for; to keep us operating as normal, and we did this summer. Without that loan I suspect things may well of been different on the transfer front.

ENIC will be very creative this year/season finance wise, that’s for sure.

SirHarryHotspur said:

Unless some of the squad can still go out on loan to Championship clubs e.g CCV , Jack Clarke, the size of the wage bill for the current squad is going to make interesting reading when the figures are announced.

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I think it'll show we're still in balance - Eriksen (£70k), Vertonghen (£100k), Wanyama (£70k), Vorm (£40k) and possibly Rose (70k) off the wage bill. Clarke and CCV won't be on very much.

Bale, yes, £230k/week but Hart only £27k or something so it'll all balance.

floydiohead said:

I'd be very interested to see a comparison of what we spent on whom in the seasons Poch was in charge versus Mourinho so far. I would imagine it will allow us to conclude one way or the other the theory that Poch wasn't backed.

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Not just Poch, I put the whole ENIC reign 3 pages ago here: https://spurscommunity.co.uk/index.php?threads/enic.131362/page-246#post-7005610

This summer is a bit inconclusive as we won't have details about any inevitable loan fees for Foyth, Sess, or Skipp.

That aside, the details are here (https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/tottenham-hotspur/transfers/verein/148) and are roughly £76m net without the above loans taken into account, or indeed anything between the EFL and us that could still happen.

daryl hannah said:

I think it'll show we're still in balance - Eriksen (£70k), Vertonghen (£100k), Wanyama (£70k), Vorm (£40k) and possibly Rose (70k) off the wage bill. Clarke and CCV won't be on very much.

Bale, yes, £230k/week but Hart only £27k or something so it'll all balance.

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Very true but don't think I can remember ever having such a full squad with cover for virtually every position , at the moment we could field two complete teams ( barring injuries) without Gazza , Whiteman, Sissoko, CCV, Gedson , Clarke & Rose

SirHarryHotspur said:

Very true but don't think I can remember ever having such a full squad with cover for virtually every position , at the moment we could field two complete teams ( barring injuries) without Gazza , Whiteman, Sissoko, CCV, Gedson , Clarke & Rose

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Yeah I’m really happy with the balance of the squad this year it gives a a real chance of competing

Net spend of 50m this window and we have improved our first team significantly

SirHarryHotspur said:

Very true but don't think I can remember ever having such a full squad with cover for virtually every position , at the moment we could field two complete teams ( barring injuries) without Gazza , Whiteman, Sissoko, CCV, Gedson , Clarke & Rose

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We used to have 2.5 'complete' teams with Redknapp. I think AVB and Poch were openly against having a squad of that size for some reason. Not sure why, but I recall it being openly mentioned by them.

I thought that it was pretty much accepted that Poch was very particular about his player targets? That’s not to say for a minute that he was wrong to have that philosophy; however budget constraints meant that the club struggled at times to meet his requirements. I’m not wanting to get into the rights and wrongs of the way that ENIC do business; however as Jose applies a more liberal approach to player targets, this is clearly going to work better in terms of who we bring in (although there are other elements in play such as Mendes and also the fact that Jose does retain pulling power when it comes to attracting players).

floydiohead said:

I'd be very interested to see a comparison of what we spent on whom in the seasons Poch was in charge versus Mourinho so far. I would imagine it will allow us to conclude one way or the other the theory that Poch wasn't backed.

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I doubt it would lead to any conclusion at all.

Our revenue potential right now (Covid aside) is far greater than it ever was under Poch so it would be inaccurate to compare the two settings. Poch was given a task of managing the team on a budget whilst the stadium was built, Mourinho has been given the task of winning trophies. They were at the club within a day of each other yet they are working in very different eras.

Unfortunately many fans will view "backing" as net spend and nothing more. No consideration for wages, no consideration for revenue, no consideration for operating costs. It's easy to see why people get angry when reading headlines about "8th richest club" and "£6m for Levy" but viewing the financial machinery of the club in such simplistic terms will never lead to a proper idea about what is going on.

I think Poch was a victim of his own success. He got the team playing to such a high standard that the only way to improve it was to buy players that we couldn't really afford at that time. That seemed to cause enough friction within the club which combined with the media barrage of "still not won a trophy" lead to something becoming very rotten in Denmark.

Personally I hope that Mourinho can knock out a few trophies with us and Poch can break his cherry somewhere in Europe, before coming back home to WHL with a better starting platform than before, a much bigger bank balance and a simple objective; to win.

sausage said:

We used to have 2.5 'complete' teams with Redknapp. I think AVB and Poch were openly against having a squad of that size for some reason. Not sure why, but I recall it being openly mentioned by them.

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Would have to delve in the archives to check out the squad back then, I remember ENIC & Levy getting slaughtered over the signing of Louis Saha & Ryan Nelsen in those days.

vegassd said:

I doubt it would lead to any conclusion at all.

Our revenue potential right now (Covid aside) is far greater than it ever was under Poch so it would be inaccurate to compare the two settings. Poch was given a task of managing the team on a budget whilst the stadium was built, Mourinho has been given the task of winning trophies. They were at the club within a day of each other yet they are working in very different eras.

Unfortunately many fans will view "backing" as net spend and nothing more. No consideration for wages, no consideration for revenue, no consideration for operating costs. It's easy to see why people get angry when reading headlines about "8th richest club" and "£6m for Levy" but viewing the financial machinery of the club in such simplistic terms will never lead to a proper idea about what is going on.

I think Poch was a victim of his own success. He got the team playing to such a high standard that the only way to improve it was to buy players that we couldn't really afford at that time. That seemed to cause enough friction within the club which combined with the media barrage of "still not won a trophy" lead to something becoming very rotten in Denmark.

Personally I hope that Mourinho can knock out a few trophies with us and Poch can break his cherry somewhere in Europe, before coming back home to WHL with a better starting platform than before, a much bigger bank balance and a simple objective; to win.

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That's very interesting, and yes - I can see that it would be comparing apples with oranges! I suppose as well what we will never know the answer to is whether or not Poch got the players he wanted on his 'list'. There seems to be an indication that Mourinho has a long list of players he wants, in a certain order, meaning that if we cannot get player A, we move to player B. Whereas, I had understood the position re: Poch to be that he had a very short list of a very select number of players and if we couldn't get them, then there was no alternative. I can see that if we end up with no one it would give the impression that Poch wasn't backed, but it might be that he didn't actually want anybody else...

SirHarryHotspur said:

Would have to delve in the archives to check out the squad back then, I remember ENIC & Levy getting slaughtered over the signing of Louis Saha & Ryan Nelsen in those days.

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this was Redknapp's final season. Januarys ins are in bold, and outs are in brackets.

I can't remember fully where people were playing around then, but vaguely in 'groups' of positions/cover

Friedel / Gomes / Cudicini
Gallas / Kaboul / Dawson / King / Nelson / Uvini
Walker / BAE / Rose? / Corluka* / Bassong*
Lennon / Kranjcar / Bale / Bentley / Falque / Townsend*
Thudd / Parker / Modric / Livermore / Sandro / Pienaar*
VDV / Defoe / Jonny Two Saints / Adebayor / Saha (Pavlyuchenko)

Season before (2010/11):

Gomes / Cudicini / Pletikosa
Naughton* / BAE / Hutton / Bassong / Corluka
Gallas / Kaboul / Dawson / King / Woodgate
Lennon / Kranjcar / Bentley* / Bale /
Thudd / Jenas / Modric / Livermore / Sandro / Pienaar / O'Hara*
VDV / Defoe / Jonny Two Saints* / Pavlyuchenko / Crouch / Keane*

(*loaned out in January)

sausage said:

this was Redknapp's final season. Januarys ins are in bold, and outs are in brackets.

I can't remember fully where people were playing around then, but vaguely in 'groups' of positions/cover

Friedel / Gomes / Cudicini
Gallas / Kaboul / Dawson / King / Nelson / Uvini
Walker / BAE / Rose? / Corluka* / Bassong*
Lennon / Kranjcar / Bale / Bentley / Falque / Townsend*
Thudd / Parker / Modric / Livermore / Sandro / Pienaar*
VDV / Defoe / Jonny Two Saints / Adebayor / Saha (Pavlyuchenko)

Season before (2010/11):

Gomes / Cudicini / Pletikosa
Naughton* / BAE / Hutton / Bassong / Corluka
Gallas / Kaboul / Dawson / King / Woodgate
Lennon / Kranjcar / Bentley* / Bale /
Thudd / Jenas / Modric / Livermore / Sandro / Pienaar / O'Hara*
VDV / Defoe / Jonny Two Saints* / Pavlyuchenko / Crouch / Keane*

(*loaned out in January)

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Certainly very large squads , depends really on how you rate the quality of players and manager compared to today. From those squads you could say that Walker, Bale and Modric all moved on to better things so were perceived by other clubs to be high class , Man City & R Madrid had better quality teams there is no doubt about that. VDV had great times with us before going back to Germany , Ledley was plagued by his knees . Those two squads never had anyone in the forward class of Harry or Sonny apart from Bale so we need to do something quick as both are in their prime. Redknapp v Mourhino is no contest , Jose has proved it up to now with trophies just hope he does it for us.

SirHarryHotspur said:

Certainly very large squads , depends really on how you rate the quality of players and manager compared to today. From those squads you could say that Walker, Bale and Modric all moved on to better things so were perceived by other clubs to be high class , Man City & R Madrid had better quality teams there is no doubt about that. VDV had great times with us before going back to Germany , Ledley was plagued by his knees . Those two squads never had anyone in the forward class of Harry or Sonny apart from Bale so we need to do something quick as both are in their prime. Redknapp v Mourhino is no contest , Jose has proved it up to now with trophies just hope he does it for us.

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You could spend all day speculating each player's strengths and weaknesses, but we were a different club back then. The key idea being that we could and did often field an entirely separate XI in different matches/competitions that was equally as strong as the 'starting' XI. I recall pundits saying that at the time.

I don't think Poch liked 'not playing' players, as he was just as phobic about dropping or substituting players as he was about having a good squad depth. Mourinho, as we've seen, is not too fixated on or bothered by such things. I think he's too 'Alpha' to be worried about upsetting a player in that way.

vegassd said:

I doubt it would lead to any conclusion at all.

Our revenue potential right now (Covid aside) is far greater than it ever was under Poch so it would be inaccurate to compare the two settings. Poch was given a task of managing the team on a budget whilst the stadium was built, Mourinho has been given the task of winning trophies. They were at the club within a day of each other yet they are working in very different eras.

Unfortunately many fans will view "backing" as net spend and nothing more. No consideration for wages, no consideration for revenue, no consideration for operating costs. It's easy to see why people get angry when reading headlines about "8th richest club" and "£6m for Levy" but viewing the financial machinery of the club in such simplistic terms will never lead to a proper idea about what is going on.

I think Poch was a victim of his own success. He got the team playing to such a high standard that the only way to improve it was to buy players that we couldn't really afford at that time. That seemed to cause enough friction within the club which combined with the media barrage of "still not won a trophy" lead to something becoming very rotten in Denmark.

Personally I hope that Mourinho can knock out a few trophies with us and Poch can break his cherry somewhere in Europe, before coming back home to WHL with a better starting platform than before, a much bigger bank balance and a simple objective; to win.

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I agree with most of this - when Levy appointed Poch, at a time when we were developing the stadium, he had probably hoped that he would have the club pushing in and around the top four, bringing through young players, playing good football and keeping the club sustainable to then be taken onto the next level when the stadium move happened. Nobody could have predicted the 2015-16 season. Then all of a sudden at time when all of our spare cash was being siphoned off to pay for the stadium then suddenly the team is in the thick of title races and being expected to spend big to compete with Chelsea and Man City. It's always easy with hindsight to say that if only we signed X and Y player then we'd have won all these trophies, but my guess is that everyone was surprised to see a club that was getting slapped about by anyone half-decent under Tim Sherwood challenging for the title within just a couple of years and the funds just weren't there build the stadium and invest heavily in new players at the same time.

For sure there are individual targets like Grealish and Fernandes that we could have had but missed out on through penny pinching, but for the most part I think what we are seeing has always been ENIC's strategy - to sort the long term infrastructure with the training ground and stadium first, then build a top side to match it. I also think that if last summer's transfers (Ndombele, Clarke, Sessegnon and even Lo Celso) had made a more immediate impact, and if Poch hadn't supposedly lost the dressing room, he would most likely have been able to invest again this summer.

However - let's also not get things mixed up. We've signed six players this summer, but other than Bale's wages none were examples of Levy suddenly throwing money around that Poch was never given. Poch added six players to the squad in summer 2014, six players in summer 2015, five players in the summer of 2017 plus a sixth (Lucas) in the January transfer window. The biggest transfer fee we paid was £28m for Reguilon - which was in a window we saw Arsenal spending £45m on Partey, Chelsea spending £70m on Havertz plus others, City spending £100m on two centre-backs, Man Utd spending £40m on a reserve midfielder and Liverpool spending £45m on a backup striker. What appears different is that we are identifying players for positions we need and getting them in at the right time - I'll put that down to Mourinho and Hitchen figuring things out as opposed to a major change in tactics from Levy/ENIC.

SirHarryHotspur said:

Very true but don't think I can remember ever having such a full squad with cover for virtually every position , at the moment we could field two complete teams ( barring injuries) without Gazza , Whiteman, Sissoko, CCV, Gedson , Clarke & Rose

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Name me one top class centreback in his prime that we have, please? Nevermind two teams, name me just one player?

Marauder said:

Name me one top class centreback in his prime that we have, please? Nevermind two teams, name me just one player?

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It's normally about partnerships and in their prime Toby & Jan formed a very good partnership didn't we have the best defensive record about about 4 seasons ago in the PL but Toby is now past his prime and Jan has gone. Two of the worlds most expensive CB's conceded 7 & 6 goals at the weekend and probably the best CB's are at prices we can't afford with clubs they don't want to leave.

If only in 2005 we had paid Fiorentina £7 million we could have signed Giorgio Chiellini but at 36 now I think he may be past his best as well.

Harry Maguire is the world's most expensive CB does that make him the best , Matthijs de Ligt has been heavily criticised at Juve for costly errors and he wasn't cheap , who is a top class CB, as Jose has said it's about the defensive process he needs to blend a partnership at the back that is sound with all the team playing their part .


PS had a look back , it was 2016/17 season just 26 goals conceded, lowest in PL. Back four was normally Walker, Toby, Jan Rose/Davies , when either Toby or Jan were out then Dier played in a back four, sometimes Poch played a back three with Toby , Jan & Dier. The main reason defensively we were so good is when you look at the two in front of the back four it was Dembele & Wanyama with Dier stepping in when either was rested/injured.

https://www.football.london/tottenh...nside-tottenham-transfer-window-levy-19058497

"In a further show of Levy's negotiating, when it was discovered that Bale would be out for a month after signing with a knee injury, it is understood that the Spurs chairman got Real to cover the north London club's portion of his wages during that recovery time."

From the article above by Alasdair Gold..... never change Levy