If Spurs want success we need to compete with the big spenders and buy quality players. As pointed out, in the 80s it was difficult to break the Liverpool hold on things because they had all the money. Same with Utd in the 90s and Chelsea/Utd/Arsenal in the 00s. Since 2010 it has been City’s turn. The cups were important in the 80s, but then along came the PL, and with it CH Lg. Even the FA Cup is a shadow of what it was, but what is the point of pining back to the good old days? Blackburn Rovers had Jack Walker’s £500m to help boost them to the top. Today, an owner needs Abramovich’s money and the ability to spend it, which Joe Lewis simply won’t do.
Spurs have had a softness, but not because of a culture because the winners in this world cost top dollar, and we can only afford ‘fiddy cent’. Same with Everton and even West Ham this season, already pundits are talking about Calvert-Lewin, Soucek, and Rice going to bigger clubs. Whenever teams like this produce a world beater the big teams snap them up (Carrick, Berbatov, Modric, Bale…..Kane).
Look at the cost of Utd’s team in comparison to ours from Sunday and they are still short of 3-4 players of being anywhere near City. How in the world are we expected to compete on a level playing field? Roy Keane was an amazing footballer and I love him as a pundit, and he would have been brilliant for whomever he played for. But he played for Utd for a reason, having turned his back on an agreed Blackburn deal. Both those teams offered British record fees whilst we were signing the likes of Kevin Scott! We were duped into thinking Spurs needed one marquee signing every now and again when Liverpool, Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and now City had a team full of them. Seriously, we don’t stand a chance. City has a second XI that would finish in the top 4, and we have to be ‘wowed’ that they can win the quadruple. It’s embarrassing they haven’t already done it in my opinion.
To level the playing field FFP needs to be scrapped. All it did was keep the big teams at the top without fear of competition. Teams have always gone under (Accrington Stanley, Bradford Park Avenue) so doing a Leeds was never new. Even with FFP Bury couldn’t manage and teams like Sheff Wed have flown too close to the sun in hiding financial irregularities. City also dodged a firing squad and they were guilty! Scholar nearly sold us down the river and at a time when we needed to be part of that old big 5, more than ever. He dreamed big, but the Premier League money wasn’t there to save him.
Redknapp needs to wind his neck in, but success is relative. Fans of Barnsley, Shrewsbury, Wrexham, Darlington do not support their professional teams for trophies. This is why a certain number of Spurs fans despise Mourinho’s tactics, it has little to do with why ‘some’ Spurs fans support Spurs. If we are to win trophies I’d prefer doing it like Klopp or Guardiola. To be dismissed as delusional because we didn’t like Mourinho’s ways was absurd. We had our noses rubbed in it, with all the trophies he’d won for other clubs, instead of waiting while he won us trophy after trophy. I think on the whole, the naysayers have been proved right because most of us knew that [redacted abuse ☺️] Mr. Levy wasn’t going to let Jose win anything of note.
A team can have expectations and dreams, but in the end, a team finishes where their financial standing is. We have had the 6th highest wage bill and spend in the Prem for years (I bet our spend is lower now). We punched above our weight as other teams struggled or were in transition. All we are seeing is another readjustment. We fell away because it is very difficult to keep punching against heavyweights when you only have 14st to hit them with. We’ve dodged, ducked, bobbed, weaved, and now we’ve finally been hit with a haymaker. And having Burgess Meredith in our corner calling the players ‘bums’ isn’t going to help.
Keane is right, but he, nor Jose could fix this. We have had some great teams, but when did we have a truly great squad? We signed Linker and sold Waddle, but we had Gazza. But we also had Justin Edinburgh! We were never going to win the league, but a Cup was had. The last player in the world-class bracket that we signed, and I have stated this before was Klinsmann. Compare that to any top team.
Very surprised that we spend more on wages than Liverpool. They are not paupers but their owners are not as free spending as everyone thinks. Since winning the Ch Lg they have invested very little in to the team.
No fans are truly happy, apart from City, but even they were moaning last season. We all have it bad, some worse than others. Making it count when it’s good is the key. We didn’t, Liverpool did.
Forgot about the saved money from penny pinching and champions league qualification ,the awfulness doesn’t stop…
Yep.
Sugar sold to ENIC mainly because they shared the same outlook on football. Carlos Kickaball and all that bo**ocks.
These people should be nowhere near the sports industry, and especially our football club…
Levy has made us asset rich and cash poor, a bit like the Royals!
Total carnts…
It was a wonderful moment, pure class in an old VW Beetle. Absolutely loved him…
Plus interest mate!
Can’t put it better cheers
😆 plan ‘C’…. This time next year we’ll be millionaires!
Well said Cow.. I’m 38 yrs and we have never had a great squad in my lifetime. Great players and good teams, but never a great squad… The stadium was supposed to be the game changer. Our wages are now 5th, we pay our players more than Liverpool now.. If it wasn’t for covid and the debt then I would have been expecting more club record signings. The sad truth is the likes of Tanguy, Gio and Sanchez haven’t been worth their tags.
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Ludicrous to expect us to spend £300m on players to improve the football team. Not ludicrous to bury £1.2bn in a shopping center. Go figure.
Oh yes, I like your second paragraph above, MT.
I know, MT! This is what I am at a loss to understand. According to Forbes, we’re supposedly this mega rich club, and yet, in reality, we have so much debt that we can’t buy any decent players, you know the kind that mega rich clubs usually buy!
So true. With Klinsmann we had the likes of Dean Austin, Colin Calderwood. With Ginola we had Chris Armstrong and Ruel Fox. No wonder Jurgen left after one season.
Sounds a good plan….or it would have been!
Quite! I seem to remember in 2016 the cost of the stadium was going to be 400 million which worried me because, the way these things go, I thought it would probably turn out to be more like 700 million and then a year or two later it was 700 million and in the end it was 1.3 billion!
Meanwhile, due to the ridiculous amounts spent on this white elephant which will look increasingly a ludicrous luxury and vanity project as we travel through most years trophyless with just the occasional league cup or europa (though we could find our own level with the new Europa Conference. Perhaps Levy should brand the stadium as home of the European Conference), we squandered the wonderful opportunities for a meaningful trophy or two with Poch’s team.
How about there being a ‘Plan C’ Rodders?
We kept the stadium, perhaps even expanded it sensibly and in a manner that didn’t depth charge our future or the surrounding area so we prostrate ourselves to NFL and become an ‘Anchor Tenant’. Then we didn’t sign utter sh*te like NoClueDu, ClintonCards, etc. etc. but actually bought top class players as our manager requested. “Be Brave”
But cheap, buy twice (from Ligue 1)
Proof again that Levy knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing
How do we keep turning up in these rich lists? What sort of company are Forbes et al who decide to throw us in there when WE OWE a billion!!!!
Try that with your local friendly HSBC branch “Yes please do ignore my mortgage, overdraft and loans and you’ll find I’m in your top customer list”. All utter claptrap that feeds the lunacy behind the bald madman who can’t see that a cheese room and 3 NFL matches still don’t compare to a Milk Cup, let alone a proper pot.
So true. I remember ringing my Dad at work to tell him we’d signed Klinsmann. A man of few words and little hyperbole, his response was “You’re bloody joking me. Really?”
That was the response the was heard round the world, as far as i’m concerned. When was the last time we made a signing you rang yer dad for
World class, Ginola. Problem with signings of Klinsmann and Ginola was they were vanity signings, marquee players as the Yanks call them.
Signed to drum up some razzmatazz and feel good factor but not part of any serious strategy to build around them with other quality to make Spurs serious contenders.
Great players though and glad they were part of the club’s history.
Terrible overspend on the albeit superb new stadium and I loved the old WHL as much as anyone, but were we ever going to compete whilst keeping a 36k capacity ground (don’t think realistically it could have been extended much more?) and I was desperate not to go to Stratford if that was the alternative.
I’m all for bringing in a caretaker now who ‘gets’ Tottenham and have already posted. I don’t believe we can win the League Cup with Mourinho in charge but I am desperate to be proved wrong. I think he is all over the place tactically and has no idea what his best team is especially in defence. I’m struggling to see what he is doing on the coaching side. He has had enough time to coach/train/sort out/organise the defence but it is getting worse every game. I’m still to be convinced of the roles of Ndombele and Lo Celso who are clearly talented players. I’m not certain they know what their role is either. Getting Glenn or Jurgen for the rest of the season makes perfect sense to me. I assume the only reason Mourinho has gone is that a suitable package is yet to be agreed. Winning the League Cup won’t make much difference but it will certainly feel good.
Worst thing is under Redknapp and Poch we were competing with Chelski and City etc, at WHL….it didn’t need half the financial input that the “world class facilities” have had to make the difference….but this bunch running things don’t care about football. It’s an afterthought. If that.
Bring Klinsman in as a caretaker and see if he can create a bounce and good feel effect for the final games and even the League Cup Final. Crazy idea but we need Son smiling again.
And then we shoved £340million of saved money into a stadium build that nobody asked for, and ran up an additional billion’s worth of debt.
And people tell us that we can’t compete with other top sides. They do this whilst keeping a straight face.