Can’t compete or won’t compete?
The pity me routine from Spurs has always galled me. Spurs have money, plenty of of it. The issues for me are twofold. One, is that they handicap themselves but consistently failing to spend wisely. Two is that the transfer policy revolves around a spreadsheet, opposed to a manager’s strategy.
Nick Harris from Sporting Intelligence provides us with some perspective when it comes to the recent Danny Rose nonsense. Spurs isn’t a bad bet as an employer. THFC pumps plenty of cash out to its players.
The problem with Nick’s analysis is that it doesn’t tell us the whole story.
Additionally, the ‘financially dangerous’ wage bill at Everton is assessed as such by who?
Everton’s owners, or some lad who’s using a percentage from nearly three years ago to prop up a non-argument?
For a Premier League club do ‘do a Leeds’ these days they would need to ferry piles of cash from their bank by wheelbarrow to the centre circle of their pitch and set fire to it around the clock until the bank repossessed the wheelbarrow.
The thorny issue of being ‘a well run club’ is raised here and it’s useful, shall we say for people to comprehend the difference between being well run and not going into a receivership. Even really sh*t sides that get relegated with some degree of reliability make money. Did you know that?
But I digressed from the Wall-chart Of Worry, I dragged a footballing term ‘relegation’ into a discussion that prefers to avoid them,
Winning, losing, relegation. Words that bedwetters don’t like because they are not vague or easy to manipulate. Whereas ‘Financially dangerous’ sounds brilliant. To Flat Earthers, this is James Bond leaping from one moving train to another. In reality it’s a club temporally spending a few more quid than they usually do, and quite dull.
The revenues of football clubs are drastically effected by what they win.
At this point I can sense a slow industrial draining noise like an enormous turbine coming to a halt as some of you lose the will to live.
But it’s true. ‘Fan engagement’ that holy grail pursued by marketeers across the globe is easy when you’re lifting trophies.
When you’re winning you don’t need impossibly camp #WatchUsRise and #StayRelentless hashtags. When you’re winning – lots of people wake up in the morning wanting to buy your merchandise of their own volition.
When you’re winning your sponsors pay you a different class of money. Hence our Nike deal being worth a fraction of the Chelsea Nike deal.
Sure if you want to dance on the head of a pin hammering on and on about wage bill percentage etc etc then Spurs fall into line. However if you want a bigger and more accurate picture, shouting ‘you’d have to play for Barca to earn more money!’ is quite frankly a bit pathetic.
Tottenham have painted themselves into corner whereby retaining the services of players who are really really good, but don’t win anything and that’s an impossible situation. Unsustainable, one might say!
The truth is, unless you’ve got a Harry Kane on your books who would in another existence pay Spurs to play for them, clubs that achieve naff all have no means of retaining their talent.
Flat Earthers and other assorted virgins may get quite excited about glacial improvement in final league positions and the threat of a cheese room jam tomorrow, but Kyle Walker and Danny Rose are excellent points in case. Neither of them give a flying flipflop about what’s in the brochure.
Your career flatlines at a certain age and the guy across the street is taking home twice what you are.
A number of you referred to Danny Rose’s back page bombshell as a wake up call for Levy. No, it is a final call for you dummies who have been watching the way Levy operates and been too thick to work out where he was going wrong for 16 years.
The wake up call before Rose was Bonzo and before that the list is extensive. Robbie Keane who many of you adored nearly gave himself whiplash with the undignified haste in which he got the hell out of Spurs when Liverpool wanted him.
The tragic thing here is that this ‘doing things the Tottenham way’ is worse than a myth. It’s a nauseating lie put up by scared, thick people.
A Chelsea blogger I met told me the most brilliant thing. ‘We’re amoral’.
Newsflash: ALL football clubs are now. You think Spurs are the nice guys, what gave you that impression aside from the voices in your head? King only stayed because he only had one knee. Those blessed with two good knees were all gone like scolded cats.
The bottom line is that Spurs don’t pay too badly at all, but it’s a bit of a dead end employer. If you’re good, then your wages aren’t market rate.
If you’re good, then you ought to be in a side that wins stuff and can therefore offer you market rate.
Spurs pay the best salaries out there, of the clubs that don’t achieve anything.
This could all be changed for the better, but it isn’t the way the ‘business model’ at THFC has been set up.
You only have to look at the extraordinary efforts and commitments pour into the New Destination™ to see where ENICs priorities truly lie. The football side of the business has never and will never see such devotion under this mob.
That said, you’ll have hopefully noted the lack of compassion in my tone when referring to what these charlatans take home.
See how your wretched existence compares to Harry Kane’s…
