ENIC...

[daryl hannah]

this, I really don't see how at the time most people said we had arguably the best starting 11 in the PL but then turn around and say Poch didn't have the tools, its absolute horseshit.

Huh, Poch himself was "the one turning round saying he didn't have the tools."

You sound really young, Donki.

 

[Donki]

Huh, Poch himself was "the one turning round saying he didn't have the tools."

You sound really young, Donki.

Young? How can someone sound young? What does that even mean, daryl hannah? So every word of what Poch said should be taken as golden?

Did he have a good enough squad over at least 2 seasons to win something, yes or no?

 

[dudu]

Huh, Poch himself was "the one turning round saying he didn't have the tools."

You sound really young, Donki.

Mate, he said that in 2019.

He was our manager for a long time before then.

 

[Hakkz]

Mate, he said that in 2019.

He was our manager for a long time before then.

Don't bother. Sounds like he thinks Poch is some kind of deity with his own book.

 

[daryl hannah]

Young? How can someone sound young? What does that even mean, daryl hannah? So every word of what Poch said should be taken as golden?

Did he have a good enough squad over at least 2 seasons to win something, yes or no?

No. Absolutlely not. What he achieved was down to his philosophy.

But I do also recognise that some people think Dier, Davies, Dele, Trippier, Sissoko, Winks, KWP & Llorente have been good enough for us. I don't agree. Some of the football they serve up is horrible to watch.

My problem is 100% our transfer strategy. We buy 'opportunity' players to flip them and make a profit. (And I'd include in that the academy graduates being flipped - Mason, Bentaleb, Onomah, Townsend etc.) - it's not about building a coherent/competent football team. I can see the objective - The objective is to eventually add enough value to the squad to compete on a level playing field with the bigger clubs. Sadly Eriksen could see this won't be realised in his lifetime. Rose, for all his faults knows it too.

People level this lack of ambition at the owners precisely because they've only ever spent the fans money and not their own. What's wrong with that? Well you have to look at the name of the game in the market you're in. Football club ownership in the top 6 means you're in it to win it. Otherwise, what's the point? We now know from Donna Cullen's post here last summer that Levy did not want to concede his share of the club and that is why there has never been any investment from uncle joe, right? Well that's a very anti-competitive stance from the owners. Their plan to get there by undertaking "a different project" is all well and good, but it's 25 year+ timeframe to come to fruition means some of us might not be here to see it bear fruit.

We lucked out with Poch which is why he is coveted.

This summer will be fascinating transfer wise - I await with bated breath.

 

[SugarRay]

Now argue that in context...if you knew Wanyama was gonna be a complete permacrock, Rose would lose his pace and agility and Eriksen would aim run his contract down to leave on a free then you'd probably look at the situation and understand the fees.

Chelsea wanted Rose for £40m in 2017, if he would have sold him the same year he sold Walker you would never had forgiven him.

Eriksen thing has been done to death, refused to sign neumorous contracts unlike virtually every other player so let his contract run down, again if he had sold him any earlier you wouldn't have forgiven him AND he has to WANT to leave, he didn't and clearly had his mind set on only a couple of clubs.

Wanyama I will give you.

Not sure on the 'probably bullshit deals' don't think it's worth debating about your unecessary negative speculation, do you?

Ironically Levy is famed for doing what you said, buying low and selling high and has been doing that for years much to the frustrations of Spurs fans but since his alleged 'bad business' is in the minority he suddenly isn't able to negotiate transfers...okay.

Hindsight is wonderful of course but, Eriksen, especially, as soon as it’s clear he isn’t signing the extension, get rid. Make it public he’s not interested and fuck him off when he has two years to run.

It seems like he tried punting Rose and Wanyama on much earlier than he managed to get them shifted. Perhaps he was asking too much money, unrealistic amounts.

I don’t think he’s always been poor in the market, quite the opposite but I think he’s absolutely lost his touch. Bad business can also mean no business. Shocking approach over the last couple of years which is the reason why we are in the situation we are in.

 

[nailsy]

Poch worked miracles.

It's incredible how satisfied with mediocrity some people are.

If you look at the bulk of our transfers in the last 5 years it's all about flipping players. Buy low sell high. However, some haven't worked out (Fazio, Stambouli, Njie, Nkoudou etc.) Some have e.g., Wimmer, Trippier.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Can you name three players that we've done that with?

Before moving into the stadium we were buying players with potential. Some worked out, some don't. If it was just about flipping players we'd have sold Dele & Dier and got rid of Eriksen years ago rather than trying to convince him to stay and risk losing him on a free.

 

[daryl hannah]

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Can you name three players that we've done that with?

Before moving into the stadium we were buying players with potential. Some worked out, some don't. If it was just about flipping players we'd have sold Dele & Dier and got rid of Eriksen years ago rather than trying to convince him to stay and risk losing him on a free.

Sorry nailsy, I respect you, but come on.

Examples:
Wimmer, bought for £4m, sold for £17m
Trippier, bought for £3.5m, sold for £20m
Walker, bought for £5m, sold for £47m

I'm not meaning we hang on to them for a season and sell them at increased value, I'm more suggesting that we buy low with the aim of selling high.

 

[dontcallme]

Hindsight is wonderful of course but, Eriksen, especially, as soon as it’s clear he isn’t signing the extension, get rid. Make it public he’s not interested and fuck him off when he has two years to run.

It seems like he tried punting Rose and Wanyama on much earlier than he managed to get them shifted. Perhaps he was asking too much money, unrealistic amounts.

I don’t think he’s always been poor in the market, quite the opposite but I think he’s absolutely lost his touch. Bad business can also mean no business. Shocking approach over the last couple of years which is the reason why we are in the situation we are in.

Decent enough points.

As fans I think we are always trying to piece together information and those pretending to know exactly what the situations are, not referring to yourself or itk, just can't know.

I think the Eriksen selling earlier talk is with the benefit of hindsight. He performed extremely well up to 2018 but arguably wasn't at the elite level. He wanted to join a top side, not simply leave us. When Coutinho went to Barcelona I don't remember much talk of interest in Eriksen. I can't remember any solid talk of the elite clubs wanting Eriksen. I certainly can't remember many advocating for us selling him at the time.

It seemed he needed an extra season to get the top clubs interested. Then he got the stomach injury and had a poor season. Even with 1 year left on his contract so chance of a cheaper fee there was little interest from clubs last summer. It got to Jan and he moved to Inter. A good club of course but if he had a chance to go to an elite club he'd surely have stayed an extra 6 months. I believe he left because he realised that Inter was about the best side who would want him as a first team player.

The best time cash in on Rose was 2017/18, same season as Walker left. his stock at the time was at its highest. But can you imagine the uproar if we'd sold both our wing backs in the same summer? Many fans on here were crying that we were a selling club despite the fact that Walker had apparently fallen out with Poch and City was a step up. Selling both and Levy would have been destroyed.

As our wage bill has gone up so has our ability to sell. Players taking a step down have less clubs they will be interested in joining as most players will have to take a pay cut.

The transfer market has got more difficult. Huge TV money has created huge transfer fees for average talents.

Part of the reason I believe Poch had to leave was his vision for transfers with Levy was not shared. Not sure of that of course, but it was the impression I got that Poch saw himself as a DOF style manager, whereas Levy saw him as head coach.

 

[Donki]

No. Absolutlely not. What he achieved was down to his philosophy.

But I do also recognise that some people think Dier, Davies, Dele, Trippier, Sissoko, Winks, KWP & Llorente have been good enough for us. I don't agree. Some of the football they serve up is horrible to watch.

My problem is 100% our transfer strategy. We buy 'opportunity' players to flip them and make a profit. (And I'd include in that the academy graduates being flipped - Mason, Bentaleb, Onomah, Townsend etc.) - it's not about building a coherent/competent football team. I can see the objective - The objective is to eventually add enough value to the squad to compete on a level playing field with the bigger clubs. Sadly Eriksen could see this won't be realised in his lifetime. Rose, for all his faults knows it too.

People level this lack of ambition at the owners precisely because they've only ever spent the fans money and not their own. What's wrong with that? Well you have to look at the name of the game in the market you're in. Football club ownership in the top 6 means you're in it to win it. Otherwise, what's the point? We now know from Donna Cullen's post here last summer that Levy did not want to concede his share of the club and that is why there has never been any investment from uncle joe, right? Well that's a very anti-competitive stance from the owners. Their plan to get there by undertaking "a different project" is all well and good, but it's 25 year+ timeframe to come to fruition means some of us might not be here to see it bear fruit.

We lucked out with Poch which is why he is coveted.

This summer will be fascinating transfer wise - I await with bated breath.

So he didn't have a good enough squad to win a cup or the league, even when Leicester did it for less?

Dier in his first season was quality, Dele also and Davies, Dele, Trippier, Sissoko, are fine squad players.
You list Mason, Bentaleb, Onomah, Townsend ok, Mason had a sivere head injury which ultimately ended his career, Bentaleb (confessed by himself to being an arsehole), Onomah wasn't good enough and either was Townsend. I mean where are these players now?

Levy only wanting to make a profit? Hmmmmm didn't want to sell Berbatov, didn't want to sell Modric, didn't want to sell Bale and hasn't sold Kane. Your narrative is blurred by what other fans tell you and also what is written in the papers.

Lets talk about ambition shall we? We have never had the financial ability up till lately to buy world class players and more importantly pay world class players. We didn't have the revenue streams on match day or commercially over the last 20 odd years ENIC has build these revenue streams, they have built the training ground they have went to the extra expense of building the stadium on the old location and keeping us "at home" when they could simply do what Arsenal done.

You say the top 6 are "in it to win it" win what? The European Cup? The League? The FA Cup? The League Cup? The truth is we need to realise we are competing with clubs who have either more money, more pull, more history or more recent success. We didn't luck out with Poch, we gave him a pretty pressure free environment and free run of the club something he will not get many other places, not to mention since Jol the club has been generally on an upward spiral.

I am not even going to go into the details of where we were during Sugar and the fucking laughing stock we were to where we are now.... surely I am too "young" to educate you on that.

Again I do not blindly follow Levy, he has made mistakes and done things that I haven't been in favour of or do not fully back, what I can do is make a balanced argument, something which the likes of you and your ilk cant seem to do for whatever reason.

 

[Donki]

Sorry nailsy, I respect you, but come on.

Examples:
Wimmer, bought for £4m, sold for £17m
Trippier, bought for £3.5m, sold for £20m
Walker, bought for £5m, sold for £47m

I'm not meaning we hang on to them for a season and sell them at increased value, I'm more suggesting that we buy low with the aim of selling high.

Wimmer was shite, Trippier & Walker wanted to leave so were sold or should Levy have let them run their contracts down like Erikson did so you can have another reason to batter him. Your levels of hypocritical argument seems to know no bounds. Name a good player Levy sold that didn't want to go?

By the way we had all those players longer than a season, I am sure you knew that.

 

[dontcallme]

In the last 3 seasons West Ham's net spend has been just over £100m. I swear there are fans on here thinking that is better than what we are doing.

 

[felmani26]

Sorry nailsy, I respect you, but come on.

Examples:
Wimmer, bought for £4m, sold for £17m
Trippier, bought for £3.5m, sold for £20m
Walker, bought for £5m, sold for £47m

I'm not meaning we hang on to them for a season and sell them at increased value, I'm more suggesting that we buy low with the aim of selling high.

You could pick examples from any club whereby they've been bought and subsequently sold at a profit - it's certainly not our transfer policy modus operandi to 'flip'.

 

[HedgieSpur]

Overall, I would give ENIC 6/10. I'd split that score two ways: 4/5 for commercial development 2/5 for football operations. What is the persistent issue is for me, is a lack of coherent and aligned footballing strategy. Until we have this, our growth will always be sub-optimal and we will be overly reliant on inelastic demand for revenue...rarely a good long term commercial strategy.

 

[mkkid]

So we were outplayed because of ENIC?

We were tactically outplayed vs Man U in '18, not because they had better players than us on the pitch. We had lost 1 game in 15 domestically when we lost that semi-final, beating Man U in that streak. Guess what ENIC went out and got the guy who did that to us.

We'd also spent 100+ million on players that year in Sanchez, Aurier, Llorente, Moura


What about vs Chelsea in '17, where we had lost 1 in 16 games domestically before that, again, beating them in that streak 2-0.

Could we have strengthened more the summer previous, sure, but its not like we didn't strengthen at all and clearly, we assembled a pretty decent team considering we went unbeaten for our entire season at home and only lost 4 times in the league all year.

But I guess when we do well, it has nothing to do with ENIC.

Your cherry picking, good teams win trophies, losers talk about, what they could of won.
Those we were never top in both of poch so called good seasons ,unless you count the 17 minutes against Arsenal.
we drew too many games in a 3 point win for a league.
Talk to quite a few spurs fans , none of them rate the above signing.
Are you happy we didn’t make ant signing for two windows and let our best midfielder walk away because , we screwed him over on his pay.

 

[Donki]

In the last 3 seasons West Ham's net spend has been just over £100m. I swear there are fans on here thinking that is better than what we are doing.

I think it come with being a fan of your club and being a fan of football or the PL I watch

Your cherry picking, good teams win trophies, losers talk about, what they could of won.
Those we were never top in both of poch so called good seasons ,unless you count the 17 minutes against Arsenal.
we drew too many games in a 3 point win for a league.
Talk to quite a few spurs fans , none of them rate the above signing.
Are you happy we didn’t make ant signing for two windows and let our best midfielder walk away because , we screwed him over on his pay.

Are you happy with the new stadium? We screwed Eriksen on his pay? Really? Explain how so, I would be very surprised if he wasn't offered £200K a week or more.

 

[dontcallme]

Overall, I would give ENIC 6/10. I'd split that score two ways: 4/5 for commercial development 2/5 for football operations. What is the persistent issue is for me, is a lack of coherent and aligned footballing strategy. Until we have this, our growth will always be sub-optimal and we will be overly reliant on inelastic demand for revenue...rarely a good long term commercial strategy.

I definitely agree that the footballing strategy has been the difficulty.

Levy's first real action was to fire Graham and hire Hoddle. On seeing a popular manager who up to then had a decent managerial record fail exactly the same as the other managers throughout the 90s Levy decided to go deeper than just blaming the manager.

Since then we have hired Arnesen as a DOF with a head coach then he left and we replaced him with Commoli. Then he was fired and Redknapp took over. Then we had Baldini then back to Poch.

So the strategy has been all over the place. Not all Levy's fault of course, no way of knowing Arnesen would walk out so quickly for example.

But the stadium is completed now and focus is back on the first team squad. Levy needs to put a system in place that works for the current manager and has continuity if the manager leaves.

 

[nailsy]

Sorry nailsy, I respect you, but come on.

Examples:
Wimmer, bought for £4m, sold for £17m
Trippier, bought for £3.5m, sold for £20m
Walker, bought for £5m, sold for £47m

I'm not meaning we hang on to them for a season and sell them at increased value, I'm more suggesting that we buy low with the aim of selling high.

Walker was here for eight years. Trippier was here for four. That's not flipping a player for a profit, that's bringing a player in, playing them and then selling them either when they want to leave, or when you want to improve upon them.

And I really don't see a downside to buying low and selling high. No-one wants to sell at a loss.

 

[daryl hannah]

Walker was here for eight years. Trippier was here for four. That's not flipping a player for a profit, that's bringing a player in, playing them and then selling them either when they want to leave, or when you want to improve upon them.

And I really don't see a downside to buying low and selling high. No-one wants to sell at a loss.

I guess that's the actual difference in our points of view.

Buying low can land you with a bunch of players who aren't up to it.

Buying high can possibly have the same effect - if you're not that clever in the market (the £30m opportunity that was Sissoko, for example)

It's a moneyball strategy.

 

[daryl hannah]

What has been promising about our recent transfer activity is the creative accounting that we've employed on the Lo Celso and Gedson acquisitions.

The only loan business we'd done in recent times (for years and years) was Pau Lopez. If Lo Celso and Gedson are anything to go by this is a good move by the club I'd like to see more of it.