- Jun 4, 2005
- 28,471
- 168,306
We’ve been doing outstandingly well over the last 2 seasons or so, and obviously in terms of wages and stature we’ve been punching above our weight. This season was always going to be a struggle at Wembley, plus the other top clubs have spent hundreds of millions on reinforcements, so my hope is (and always has been this season) that we get in the top 4 so we can have CL football at the ‘Lane’ next season. For the record, I genuinely believe we’d have won the league if we’d been at the Lane this season.
Money talks and I expect bids in for a handful of our players at the end of the season whether we finish top 4 or not. All our top players could genuinely double or maybe even triple their wages with a move and I reckon at least a couple of our top players will move on. More may want to but we can’t sell all of them. I have no doubt that almost all of our top players love the club and feel an affinity with it but the chance to double their wages will win over most times. We may get lucky again with another Dele but while our spending & wage structure remains as it is, we’ll always struggle to maintain our brilliant form of the last few seasons because the big spenders will just do what do and buy up all the great players.
Maybe the lure of playing in a brand new 61k stadium will help keep some of our stars happy for next season. But when they see what’s happened with Walker, it makes it a bit more difficult for us to keep them. At the time lots of us thought £50m was a great bit of business, and it might’ve been if he’d gone abroad, but he’s probably going to win the league (at least) on double the wages he was on here and that will only make some of our players envious. In an ideal world they’d want to fight for Spurs even more so we win something to show him he made a mistake moving, but it’s not an ideal world....
I think we have to expect a few changes in the summer but hopefully Poch will work his magic and we can maintain our status as contenders. I can’t lie though, I’m not overly optimistic. Always hopeful though....
Money talks and I expect bids in for a handful of our players at the end of the season whether we finish top 4 or not. All our top players could genuinely double or maybe even triple their wages with a move and I reckon at least a couple of our top players will move on. More may want to but we can’t sell all of them. I have no doubt that almost all of our top players love the club and feel an affinity with it but the chance to double their wages will win over most times. We may get lucky again with another Dele but while our spending & wage structure remains as it is, we’ll always struggle to maintain our brilliant form of the last few seasons because the big spenders will just do what do and buy up all the great players.
Maybe the lure of playing in a brand new 61k stadium will help keep some of our stars happy for next season. But when they see what’s happened with Walker, it makes it a bit more difficult for us to keep them. At the time lots of us thought £50m was a great bit of business, and it might’ve been if he’d gone abroad, but he’s probably going to win the league (at least) on double the wages he was on here and that will only make some of our players envious. In an ideal world they’d want to fight for Spurs even more so we win something to show him he made a mistake moving, but it’s not an ideal world....
I think we have to expect a few changes in the summer but hopefully Poch will work his magic and we can maintain our status as contenders. I can’t lie though, I’m not overly optimistic. Always hopeful though....