The quality of thought invested into most football coverage these days is abysmal. That’s the polite version. Quite why so many have opted to infantilise their content is beyond me. That said, back in the day, if one had asked Brian Lester Glanville to produce tens of thousands of words a week, he would have probably snapped and been found in just his underpants, eating typewriter ribbons.
The news that Tottenham Hotspur has shuffled the pack in order to rustle up a cash injection of some £150million has in the main been presented with all the decorum of a scratch card win in a Glasgow off-license.
This isn’t a new thing, of course. Some of us will recall much of the fanbase reacted to HSBC granting the club a £350million facility in 2017. Perhaps the deterioration in football content stemmed from unscrupulous editors realising that there was plenty of traffic available for news that was presented in a facile fashion.
The devil is in the detail with Levy, and we are told, “The equity injection provides the Premier League club with greater financial flexibility and the ability to further invest on and off the pitch.”
ENIC must be hitting Colombian drug cartel territory with off-the-pitch investment. What else is needed, gold toilet seats and mother-of-pearl embellished training cones?
The maths are straightforward enough, £150million minus whatever missing pieces of the infrastructure puzzle, minus the wrong end of £50million for Cuti Romero, divided by the 6 (the transfer deals the previously mentioned journalists told us about), leaves a war chest, really?
Have a day off mate. This is positive news. Something that’s never happened since enic came in. World class manager, world class stadium, world class spine of our team. I haven’t been ENICs biggest fans but if you don’t see this as a positive then I don’t think you’ll ever find joy in football
spot on.
thought it was the Goons or one of those Radio 2 shows like Round the Horn ..it was actually Benny Hill..
Bore off 🙄
“Put out your pudding for custard” he heard the warder say so he put out his pudding for custard and the warder took it away… such a great line, Goon Show?
I agree with all of this. We’ve long demanded that ENIC make additional funds available, and they have now, finally, done that. Sure, we need to see what, if anything, is done with the money, but this feels like it could be a real step change.
You’re right there is Dr Strangelove , the Kappelmeister,
Egobald Haslanded …bet their all on a decent wage..
Speaking of which player bonuses ..increased CL wages ..agents will be looking for big wages for anyone decent coming to a CL club with such amazing facilities.
“Put out your pudding for custard” he heard the warder say so he put out his pudding for custard and the warder took it away..
Spurs were in the Champions League when no signings were made for 18 months. I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one.
Funny that this article berates infantile reporting, then does exactly that! This £150m is new money, raised from a rights issue, and is in addition to existing budgeted spend and projected sale proceeds for several players. Being in the top 4 and the CL makes a difference too, with more TV rights income, and CL prize money for each win. (Someone worked out that there could be as much as £300m in the end, with all the other sources of funding.) Conte and Paratici are meeting soon to discuss new players without Levy, indicating that they are in charge of selection, and let’s hope it also signals a radical change from how past deals were conducted, where Levy so often nit-picked and delayed, and then lost the target. Football finance is complex. You don’t pay everything upfront, and you juggle your funds to secure deals for as many of the players you want as possible, and structure your payments in affordable instalments e.g. Kulusevski will remain on loan till 2023-24, postponing the big spend on him, and freeing up more funds for this coming season. Paratici is a master of the free transfer, and Conte does not splash the cash for the sake of it; instead he chooses well (as with the two Juve signings). This announcement is an important gesture of good faith by ENIC for Conte and for Kane, who has a new contract in prospect and said he wanted to see proof of the club’s ambition, and commitment to Conte, before he would consider it. It’s sensible of course not to count our chickens after years of disappointment, so let’s see how it pans out, but it makes a statement which was needed to take the club into a more hopeful future.
I am not so naive to believe that enic suddenly became ambitious and want to challenge for the title or cl. But i am sure they are pretty good at counting numbers, and investing into being stable CL team will more than return all the investments. Especially with Newcastle on the rise and Chelsea potentially being a mess for the next season. I see this as a massive positive news, lets see the next weeks
i suspect the hyperbole over this announcement in the media and sections of the fan base will die down. Especially when we fail to get an “important” player over the line like Diaz or some other fu*kwittery. I expect to be fully underwhelmed by this summer’s transfer window, as usual. I’ll be more than happy to be proved wrong…
Can we at least assume there was some sort of transfer kitty available already and hat some of this £150m is going in to boost it?
Does Levy care enough to spend the money it will take to see us challenge City and Liverpool? No – not even possible in one window. But I would argue that the worst case scenario for ENIC is running a club outside of the CL so maybe he is injecting some cash to help us stay a few points ahead of Arsenal and Man U?
And what with Newcastle on the horizon it doesn’t take a genius to see that you have to take advantage of landing on our feet with Conte and getting CL and bring in some quality.
I don’t see this as and amazing shot for the stars, more of a bare minimum to prevent a decade of mid table mediocrity which Levy and ENIC just could not endure, both in terms of publicity AND the financial worth of their investment.
Agree
There should be net operating profits from the stadium of £50-60m. Put aside £30-40m for the mortgage, that gives you £20m odd available cash for investment. Add on £7-8m in excess EPL prize money for being 3 places higher, that gets you nearer to £30m.
Assume the EPL media money covers the players’ wages. That leaves all the sponsorship moneys/commercial income to finish paying staff+ bonuses for finishing in 4th, with the rest as cash available for future investment.
You’re talking a significant wadge of cash surplus in 2021/22 available for investment.
How much no doubt Mr Levy keeps close to his chest, but the figure is likely to be significantly larger than £30m.
If a stadium naming rights deal ever emerges, that should add another £15-25m a year into the pot.
Rodon to Forest might not be a bad option if they get promoted. Cooper coached Rodon at Swansea and they’d probably give him football every week.
Delete this one, should have been reply to ForzaSpurs below but SKCW has answered very well anyway.
As an accountant, would you prefer paying bills when you have sales booming or when lockdown deprives you of £100m a year in stadium revenues alone?
Maybe they’ve learned from Liverpool 2018, who after losing the UCL final invested £150m in the team. They didn’t do anything like the same in subsequent years, being between £30-50m a year net spend. And they sold Coutinho in the January after making the big investment.
Another thing to factor in is the obligations THFC have based on planning permission being granted for the stadium – what still remains to be completed with regard to the Northumberland Park Development. Housing? Hotel?? If they’ve got any sense, they will partner up with professionals to complete those jobs, but they may need to cover their backsides in that arena too.
We paid 28 million for Reggy in Feb 2020, on a 5 year contract, with a possible 32 million in future add ons.. Madrid have a 2 year buy back clause for 48 million which ends this summer… They won’t be triggering that.
“Depending on who we can shift”… Insinuates that I’m well aware it’s one window.. They are all expendable… I like Jelly, unless offered a good deal I’d keep him. He has the right mentality and I can see him developing in to a David Alaba esq marauder…. Any ‘ins’ would be a step forward because the players above are fringe. Deadwood. They are not first choice so you don’t have to worry about ‘cover’ for the likes of Winks and Ndom. Cover for what? They do nothing.
Yes the squad does lack strength in depth, hence why I stated we could with another 100 or 200 million for ON the pitch!
Were you drunk when reading my post Paddy?
No I don’t think Sarr or Gil will be ready for next season. Though you never know with some lads, they can suddenly grow or develop and shock you over a summer. If one them suddenly becomes a beast in pre season then they’d be in. The odds are unlikely though.
Capital Gains in the UK is 28%.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have won trophies, we’ve won one in 23 years and that wasn’t an important one either. I guess it’s better than nothing at all…
What I really think is that Lewis initially created Enic as an international holding company to (a) acquire football teams that (b) provide a vehicle to mask/wash his currency trading. Then he lost a lot of money in 2008 betting on Bear Stearns, so he turned Enic’s attention to property management, but still using the vehicle for currency trading.
Fast forward, there are too many eyes on football clubs to use it as a currency vehicle and valuations have skyrocketed as a consequence of all of the global money printing since the GFC. So now is the time to sell. But the only problem is a sale will trigger a massive tax bill since the THFC valuation is many multiples what Lewis paid for it. He doesn’t have the cash or doesn’t want to pay the taxes, so they come up with this scheme to reset the tax basis much higher.
I’m a finance guy, I know nothing about taxes and English law, but to me this seems really fishy that all of a sudden Enic/Levy would start injecting money into the team when they’ve had ample opportunity to do this for 20+ years.
I’m no financial expert, but I agree. ENIC as a company – nor its component owners – have invested in THFS since they acquired it. This sudden cash injection will have been mulled over and carefully calculated not to win trophies, but rather to generate profit in the long run. In the words of Balrick “I have a cunning plan…”
If we buy smart we can improve the squad for sure, the top three plus Man U will fight for the same expensive targets, whilst we can look elsewhere but still pick up decent players.
Tell the Roma fans that …no trophies are worth winning that’s why we haven’t won any eh Ffs ..The reality is many of the match going fan base havent seen us win a trophy so they have no idea what it’s like. We should try it and see if people enjoy it.
So this logic that this announcement has any significant bearing on Conte staying is utter tripe…
That made no sense, whatever how good or bad a match Jose was for Spurs. To save on a win bonus is the rumour. Well Roma have outspent every club in Italy let alone the Ropey Conference this season. Credit to Jose though, he still gets the odd pot over the line, even if they are no longer important ones…
I’m not really sure what expectations this post is based on. We are 20 odd points behind both Citeh & Liverpool. There is no way on earth that any club owner would give the necessary funds needed to catch those two. Even to Conte.
We are too far behind them. In my opinion it would take at least 5 transfer windows to get close, assuming they stay still.
There will be transfer activity and Paratici & Levy will leverage the free transfer and loan market to get the most of what money is available.
Im no Levy apologist and I would love to see him leave the club. But I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. If Levy doesn’t back Conte, he will leave. It’s that simple.
We are where we are. The blame fully lies at Levy’s door but I don’t see the point in bleating on about it anymore. It won’t help anyone, least of all our team.
My hope is that we maximise whatever funds are available to strengthen the squad and allow Conte to work his magic. I’m really happy with the job he’s done so far and you can’t deny there is improvement in that squad.
Im getting behind the team and looking forward to CL nights next season.
Jose wins another European cup final. That’s the CL EL and now the Conference. We sack him the week before a cup final…. Go figure 🤷🏻♂️
What is clear is just how complicated transfer deals have become with contract clauses, instalments delayed payments and what not, it’s a mess.
“On and off the pitch” They still haven’t built the luxury hotel yet… 😂
It’s the attitude of fans like yourself who have helped prop up 23 years of failure. Looks like you’ve been binned…
Four in four out will be the kind of territory I reckon…
You could be onto something here Large. It could be that had the Super League been coming down the tracks in a few years then perhaps ENIC would have waited until after that. As it is, they might feel now is a time to get out as the pressure to spend on the team has been exacerbated because of the extra expectation the new stadium brings with it.
It’s inevitable.
It’s on the cards that it plays out like that mate…
You’re right, there will be zero seismic shifts and in real terms possibly a subtle readjustment to the ENIC MO at Spurs…if that.
It’s largely pie in the sky, any concept of a ‘war chest.
We need some of that money to even tread water going into the Champions League. So I’m still not convinced that Conte will stay on, either beyond this summer or next or that this is anything other than pretence, to quieten the Levy naysayers. Of which there are many. 150m in today’s transfer market really won’t go that far, that’s assuming the whole 150 will be for players and contracts.
None of us should be fooled by this, actions will speak far louder than flakey club announcements…
‘infantilise’ Good one. Debt needs to be serviced first.
Our ability to score goals IS a problem when teams sit in against us, have you not noticed?
A genius at smoke and mirrors! Let’s wait and see what actually transpires.
Levy genius???????!!!!!!!
The flip side to the comment that not all of the £150m will necessarily go to bringing in new players is an assumption that there are not already funds available independent of this amount. Also, there are reports that the Romero transfer fee will be paid in installments, although, as you have pointed out in at least one of your videos, none of us knows exactly how these deals are structured.
No buying 2% at a valuation of 7.5b establishes a high basis for taxes.
You cant make the club pay for evaluation to be sold. The holding company or shareholders pay. The same way the potential buyer will do an evaluation and feasibility study with their own money
I would prefer a world class CB, spend 70 mill on them. Still want koulibaly from Napoli, he has only 1 year left on his contract.we need to solidify the back. Our goals scored is not an issue,goals allowed is the problem. I still remember the trashing we were getting in champs league under Poch and then Jose.
Nah, this is some kind of transaction to establish a valuation to avoid taxes. I’m starting to think the real reason Conte signed for 17 months is because he doesn’t want to commit until he meets the new owners.
I think you are nearly there but I still expect one ‘big signing’ other than the CB…I’m hoping it will be a top quality central mid
It can be PR in its own right, no monies could be released,
Yeah but its its its 150 millllliiiiooooonnnnn
The number that gets rolled out every year,
I’m sure some of us mentioned that this number would come up in the summer months ago.
Unfortunately there is no musts in any of this,
Enic don’t have to raise all of this money, and it doens”t have to be in one go.
The ManU home game was key, I hope it is still motivating Levy, and I hope he believes the wrath of the fans if 150mill isn’t spent this summer will come.
Surely we still will spend what we generate from sales plus Kulu’s loan can be kicked down the road again…Reggie might be sold? I think there will be over £100 mill to spend as £30 mill plus will be generated from sales.
We haven’t all that much unsellable junk now – Bergwijn and Lo Celso can be sold, Sanchez if he is put up for sale will go and that’s if he’s not kept as a reserve. Reggie will go no fuss too. Gollini is half way out the door.
So who will prove stubborn? Winks, Royal/Doherty (whoever is for the boot) and Ndomble. The first two are neither here nor there, bit of a hit but no massive drama. Ndombele is the difficult one…but he’s one player, one man. He won’t change all that much this summer.
So players with no future equals about 8 or 9 of the first team squad and 4 or 5 should be reasonably easy to wave goodbye too, and generate maybe £30 mill or so.
The six in won’t all be big fee marquee types, reserve gk on a free no doubt, as too maybe another, one or two might be loans again…then suddenly dividing £100 mill approx (maybe more?) among 2-3 players suddenly gets interesting. That means three players straight in the first 11, prob 2 defenders and one mid, then hopefully a rotation attacker in there too.
I really think this is part of Enic’s pump and dump endgame to sell the club, so I’m happy about that. How the money is spent is more important I agree. And I’m sure Levy knows how to use zoom so it really doesn’t matter if he goes to Italy or not.
Here is the really fun part IF the entire 150 was for player purchases we would actually only have 50 to spend on new players. We have to buy three of the current squad this summer for 100m. Regillons payment is due and we are taking up the option to buy on the swede and the cb.
So even if that 50 plus sales were ring-fence for purchases with no regards to salaries and signing on fees we aren’t going to get 6 decent players over the line. Even free transfers have to be costed over the contract period plus the signing on bonuses. Extremely unlikely to impossible we can bring in experienced expensive players in all the positions we need them.
Maybe 1 to 2 40m players plus the rest loans and free transfers if we sell all the dross but a couple of squad players that are actually half decent like bergen and or maura and or regeillon. And we will be competing on two fronts next year so demands on the squad will be much higher.
Wow that is a lot out of the door.
You are aware it is one window.
If we get 6 out that will be an amazing job done (Gollini is a loan so doesn’t count).
Plus you are keeping Royal, brave indeed.
though how would you get enough in to cover those outs?
The squad was left numerically short in January, only a lack of cup runs didn’t over expose us.
Do you think Sarr and Gill aren’t going to be ready next season?
There is no real downside for Enic,
If they sell they make money on this as you mentioned.
They have the PR they are spending, may that help get stadium sponsorship and other deals over the line, quite possible.
They have called Conte’s bluff it it was ever needed as it isn’t chump change and they can always say ‘well it was for player if it was wanted’, which is a sort of line Levy has used before.
Key isn’t what we get to spend, its who calls the shots.
If the rumblings is that Levy isn’t going to Italy and leaving Conte and Paratici alone are true.
That maybe the bigger and more important story if he continues along this line and empowers Paratici to do his job and stays out of it. We then may have an upturn at the club
You mean the fee we pay them to take him off our wage bill?
The only true evidence of any “seismic shift” WRT transfers will be who is in, in time for at least some preseason training, the notorious bugbear that EVERY THFC manager/coach complains about. If Levy and ENIC are serious about keeping Conet it will all be done 2-3 weeks before the season starts instead of Last-Minute Levy bringing them in after 4 weeks of the season. My interest is in whether we obtain good young players or over the hill would be retirees, for their “experience” which has usually proven a disaster (yes, there are exceptions, both of them).
I am an optimist usually, but WRT ENIC’s Tottenham that faded there over a decade ago.
Ndoms price is about right. He’s devalued by nearly half. He will be hardest to shift because I can’t see anyone paying him anything close to 200k a week… I like Jelly and believe we should get rid of others before him. He’ll still be with us next season, though I do hope we sign a new wing back for both sides… Davies is expendable too, but I think he’ll stay…. I’d love Ward Prowse. We need a proper dead ball specialist like him.
Do we presume the amount doesn’t include the 30 Bob we’ll get for N’Dombele et al ?
Nice to see you have taken ENIC’s ‘largesse’ with a healthy dose of cynicism H! Here is my slightly less cynical take on the matter! There is no doubt this is intended as a highly visible PR exercise by Levy, to assuage both Conte and the fan base. For the extremely pertinent reason that Levy NEVER advertises the fact that we are flush with money for player acquisitions and in fact goes out of his way to disingenuously fabricate his by now notorious ‘poverty pleading’ charade. Hence this announcement is completely out of character.
So what does it all mean? Simply this in my view. It means we have up to an £150 million extra to spend on player acquisitions! That’s it. Taken at face value, this is a good thing. However, as you alluded to, it’s impossible to know how much of the £150million will actually be spent on players, although one suspects most of it. Similarly how much of the advertised £148 million EPL revenue has been earmarked for player acquisitions and ditto with the projected CL revenues. There is a further unknown as to how much money will be generated by player sales.
As an outsider the first three are unknowable and the last will not be known until the players that can be sold have been sold. Clearly the amount could be quite a substantial war chest, with the proviso that Paratici and Conte invest it wisely, there is every reason to be at least ‘cautiously’ optimistic. Manifestly Lewis and Levy knew Conte had to be backed and to be fair they appear to be doing so in pretty forthright fashion. This is a critical transfer window and so we wait with baited breath for the meaningful action to unfold.
This guy wants to sell Reguilon who has a buy-back clause of £27.5m for £15m
This guy wants to sell Ndombele who cost us £55.45 for £15m.
Daniel Levy wouldn’t let you mop out his latrine.
Bye-bye blackbird
He doesn’t know.
Sean, with the greatest respect, only a child, starts adding up the revenues from hot dog sales and shirt sponsorships to invent a transfer budget.
See you when the window shuts, and we’ll see was right and who has unforgivably embarrassed themselves.
I learned a long time ago, one cannot debate with infants.
What are the short term player trade liabilities?
I agree that we can raise a lot of capital by selling, but Ndom at £10m would be hard to shift never mind 31.5 (the 0.5 made me laugh). The clever business comes from not buying English, although I would love Ward-Prowse, and getting some loans in. Of the 10 to get rid of what is the worst case scenario in keeping them, how many need ejecting straight away (Gollini, was a loan I think, Rodon has no future with us, Winks, Burgervan, Sanchez, Ndom. Amazed Emerson is not on the list. He’s one of my first to go.
How many times has levy n enic promised this n that we’re doing this n that every year how many times has mangers been lied to how many times has players n fans been lied to loads don’t forget this it’s levy n enic until the signing we need come in chill about all this money invested it’s all bull crap till we see the results I doubt we have a good summer n I doubt we get our 1st 2nd or 3rd picks it will be 4th or 5 th choice near end of window panic buying the spurs way we always get 1 gem every few years but we had that with Romero so be a good few years till nxt one
From what I’ve read, ENIC has borrowed 150m (at “favourable terms” whatever that means) to purchase shares and warrants in THFC, upping their ownership to 87.5% from 85.6%. So they buy 2% more of the club for 150m, which places a value of the club at 150m/2% or 7.5B unless I’m missing something. This way if, or more likely, when, ENIC sells the club in the next few years they can probably avoid some kind of massive capital gains tax. So I think this is all just a way to avoid taxes in advance of the club sale and improving the team is of secondary importance.
We are due to pay for Reg now. Apparently we have not paid 1 cent towards the fee agreed with madrid. The deal was a deferred 2 year payment deal. Essentially Levy the fuck head is laybaying footballers. You could not make this shit up.living of credit month to month and when the paycheck comes in there is debit orders galore. I dont know to laugh or cry, this from an accountant
Yeah you have to go all the way to the final for that big CL money, the rewards are an upside down pyramid.. So obviously we wouldn’t see any of that money until the end of next season… We’re talking about this summer transfer window. Lazy post Sean… If you know so much about the club finances and how big the ‘war chest’ is exactly, then do please elaborate.
If we pay for kulu,reg and Romero now we will seriously drain alot of the incoming funds already over 100 mill euros between them 3. I dont think we will see much new players in maybe a good CB , 2 young undeveloped wingbacks and an old exp cheap striker. Ericksen on a free might join as well.
“Flexibility on and off the pitch”
Within this carefully crafted phrase lies a trick that would make a snake oil salesman proud in announcing the £150million investment of ENIC.Harry H alerts us to the potential paucity of this sum with good reason. If there was an ounce of sincerity in the proud announcement which would enhance Conte’s chances of competing with the elite clubs of England and Europe next season the drafting would be totally different.Why not-“We are providing Mr Conte with £150 million which is specifically ring fenced to purchase players for our first team squad to enhance its competitiveness in the Champions League/Premiership Competition.”How about adding for good measure-“This sum will be added to by the sale of current players and will not be diminished by current purchase options that we are activating in respect of the previous transfer window” ?
If any sensible advisor did not insist on an additional statement to qualify the current edition of the ENIC smoke and mirrors like waffle they would be failing in their duty .
ENIC’s current position will not secure players of the values attributed to the likes of Jesus,Sterling,Torres and the like.On the contrary expect free transfers and loans instead.
If the finances are stable, like the Bald one says, then why is this injection needed… Apparently we triggered Romeros deal yesterday, so thats 46million gone. Another 30 million on Koolio only leaves 70 million. That’s a war chest for one more top player. We need a lot more…. There is some money in the squad when you look at selling players. Here are players I believe are expendable. The numbers are from transfermarkt rounded off to the nearest million so are as accurate as possible….
Gollini 9m or is he just a loan? Not sure.
Sanchez 27m
Rodon 7m
Reggy 25m
Doherty 10m
Winky 15m
Stevie Burgers 16m
Lucas 18m (though I would keep for super sub if he wanted)
Ndombele 31.5m
Lo Celso 20m
Depending on who we can shift there’s 172 millions worth there… Some clever transfer business needed. We could have done with an extra 100 or 200 million for ON the pitch.
Talk about lazy journalism. You’ve failed to mention the net £40m that is owed as short-term player trade liabilities due in the Summer. You also failed to recognize that there will have been other money available from the prize money of finishing 4th in the league, the inevitable prize money for CL qualification – £17m of which is immediate and guaranteed raising to a maximum £83m depending on the success within the tournament. Or how about the up to £70m from CL media money, or the additional sponsorship money from AIA and GetIr for additional CL exposure. Of course, you also neglect revenues raised from player sales of which there should be many. There is a far bigger war chest than you suggest there is. Rather than criticize other content creators with arrogance and disdain how about focusing on your own – it leaves a lot to be desired.
Levy could spend 300m win the league and you will still utter this negative naive tripe. Is anything positive to you?? You could easily take a positive spin on this but you go completely thr other way as always.
No one with half a brain ever thought 350m was going on players and was clearly there for Stadium build/infrastructure.
Reality is 150m, plus champs league qualification/tv money is a substantial amount. Even if conservatively u say 15m each for lo cello, ndombele, sanchez, rodon, reguilon that’s enough to cover cutie and dejan. There are also many quality free transfers available that fit the conte type of player.
People either have a positive mind set or constant negativity and misery.
I understand how transfer payments work ☺️ however, the price is the price if you pay it over 6 weeks or 6 decades!
Come on HH, I don’t believe we will be paying the 50M for Cuti in one go, and of the 6 new transfers a couple will be on frees. Plus there are player sales, the tv and CL income to factor in. So I am quietly confident that 150M is enough for Daniel to build his hotel – I bet he calls it The Conte
InnOut.Come on HH, I don’t believe we will be paying the 50M for Cuti in one go, and of the 6 new transfers a couple will be on frees. Plus there are player sales, the tv and CL income to factor in. So I am quietly confident that 150M is enough for Daniel to build his hotel – I bet he calls it The Conte!