Spurs and PSV have agreed a fee of £25 million for Bergwijn so it looks like this one is just about done - maybe Levy can fly Poch in to do one of those "arm around the shoulder" pics for old time's sake...
I’m curious if Jose is more persuasive than Pochettino, if Pochettino and Levy simply didn’t see eye-to-eye on transfers* or if Levy is really worried about a Champions’ League spot. * as in perhaps there has been money to spend, but Levy’s options were vetoed by Pochettino and vice-versa. Maybe the "be brave" was less about money and more about going against the status quo. It would be really interesting to see just who’s idea the transfers during Mauricio’s tenure were. Whomever was in charge didn’t do a great job.
No doubt Eriksen should have been sold in summer of 2018, and hopefully that lesson has been learned, but I don't remember any other teams coming in to try to sign the guy. The real disaster was not bringing anybody in that window. I suppose the uncertainty about the stadium played a part in that. This past summer, I think we did bring good players in. If Lo Celso and Ndombele had been able to play a significant number of matches earlier in the year, I wonder if MP might still be here.
That was because Levy slapped a ridiculous fee on him. There were plenty of suitors, it's just about getting it done. At this level, you have to be ruthless and that is where Levy has always failed as chairman.
Well, he slapped a ridiculous price on Bale and ended up getting the biggest transfer fee in history (at that time). There's a lot we don't know. Maybe MP really wanted to keep him; maybe they thought refusing to sign a contract extension was just a negotiating tactic. Or maybe Eriksen figured (correctly?) that if he waited, he would get a bigger salary if the new club didn't have to pay a big transfer fee. Personally I'm pretty excited. We have 5 new players in (counting Bergwijn), or 6 if you count Tanganga. Still some holes to fill but I think the rebuilding is on track.
Gedson, Bergwijn and Clarke are wait and see types, Lo Celso has been good, Sessegnon I like, Ndombele is a good player - my concern there is more with the manager, who doesn't seem to fancy him after not playing him at all against Norwich or Southampton. It would not be the first time Jose has soured on a talented player. My other concern is with Sessegnon and to a lesser extent Foyth. Foyth has been banished to the bench since his gaffe at Norwich and Sessegnon had that look of "oh shit, I hope the gaffer didn't see that" when he coughed up the pen against Norwich. Hopefully he doesn't get banished as well.
I don’t want to stir an argument, but exactly because we sold all these players and everybody was calling us a selling club, when we had a change in regime and haven’t sold a significant player for several years, that whole stance changed and fans were much happier. the fact that we didn’t buy anybody for 2 windows didn’t help though...
the thing is, he's always asked for high transfer fees, and he usually gets them. I remember Kranjcar griping about it when he wanted out, but at the end of his diatribe about Levy asking too much, he sheepishly conceded that, somehow or another, he usually got it. the problem is that sometimes, e.g. David Bentley, he doesn't. and that's maddening. somehow, though, to Levy's mind - and you know it's a calculated position - it's worth it. it seems penny-wise and pound-foolish to me; but whatever else we may think about him in footy terms, there's no disputing that the man definitely knows money.
From as far as i recall there were quite a few clubs that entertained the idea (Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, ManUre) but they all ran away screaming when they saw the price tag that Levy outfitted him with
He just lost a boatload of cash on Eriksen. Liverpool knew Coutinho was going to go, they got £140 million, Chelsea knew Hazard was going to go, they got £84.5 million, Levy knew Eriksen was going to go, he got £17 million. That is why they win big trophies and we win nothing. At the big boy table, you have to be ruthless.
To use an American sports metaphor people like Levy swing for the fences every time. When it works it’s a home run, when it doesn’t it’s a strikeout. Eriksen was a bust, not a total bust, but not great. On the other hand it worked well with Toby, maybe not a home run, but a better than losing him for the £25m or whatever and needing to find a replacement. It’s easy to look at Liverpool right now with envy, but it wasn't that long ago their transfer dealings were atrociously bad. Levy frustrates me to no end, if he’d put half as much money in the 2015/16 January transfer window as he has in this window it’s reasonable to say we win the Premiere League that season. That said he has a roadmap for where Tottenham will be in 5 years and 10 years time. As much as I look at that 2015/16 season as a hugely missed opportunity, I’d much rather Spurs still be competing for top 4, than doing a Leeds and find ourselves in the lower divisions having gambled and lost.
You can't compare Leeds to us. We are miles ahead of them in size of club, fanbase, ownership, stadium, etc. If we had spent £25 million in January 2016, we may not have won the league, but we wouldn't have ended up in League 1 facing administration. I don't see any roadmap with Levy, the Mourinho hiring and the Eriksen fiasco being the best examples among many. Liverpool is an excellent example of a club with a roadmap. They backed Klopp every step of the way and when they knew Suarez and Coutinho wanted out, they cashed in and didn't dig in their heels. If Levy had a roadmap, he would have backed Pochettino in the summer of 2018 and beyond and we wouldn't be having these discussions. The fact is, Levy in his 19 years as chairman has never backed any of his managers when we were ready to go to the next level and that is why we have always been a nearly club.
The club has gone from a run down training facility and stadium to arguably the finest training facility in England and perhaps the best stadium in the world. It really undermines the premise "Levy doesn’t have a roadmap" when objectively speaking Spurs have been one of the best run clubs in all of Europe and seen some of the greatest strides both on the pitch and financially over the past decade. He’s built a world class training centre and stadium in a notoriously difficult real estate market while simultaneously overseeing the transition of the club from mid-table mediocrity to consistently competing for top four. I certainly appreciate and understand your frustration. To have gone more than a decade without a trophy casts a shadow on all the other accomplishments. His hesitation to take that next step on the surface is deeply frustrating, going an entire season without signing a player was infuriating, but I don’t have the insight in to the financial situation and based on the slow and steady progression on all fronts it’s hard to argue his approach isn’t successful or that he doesn’t have a roadmap.
I've never had an issue with the training ground, stadium and finances, but what is the point of having all that if the chairman can't deliver on the football side or doesn't delegate someone to do that? We are just a richer Newcastle United. Like I've said before, everything is in place for us to do special things, we just need a chairman with the ruthless streak to deliver it and that man is not Daniel Levy.
We went from finishing outside the top 10, to a side that regularly finishes top 4. The trend line from Levy/ENIC taking control is pretty clear. We are a objectively speaking better and more consistent team since Levy took over. We’ll see how he navigates the post-Pochettino era. I’m not sure José is the right manager, but for all the talk of “not backing the manager” he’s approaching £100 spent this window.
Yes, you can. You can compare us to Leeds, to Bolton, to General Motors, to MC Hammer, and to my Uncle Ken. The analogy works, and the upshot is this: if you spend significantly more money over time than you take in, you get f*cked in the end. And just saying 'he needs to spend more' without knowledge of costs relative to income is utterly pointless. How he spends it? That's fair game. But there's not much evidence that Spurs are tight with the checkbook.
You were comparing us spending a hypothetical £25 million pounds in 2016 to Leeds going into administration. We were never going to go into administration. The 2 clubs were and are operating in different solar systems, to say otherwise is a total nonsense. If you are happy with finishing 4th and winning nothing, wonderful. If we are the club we are today, it is because of the honours we won, mostly during the Nicholson-Burkinshaw era. You don't build a tradition on finishing 4th.
Rose has agreed a loan to Newcastle for £2 million with an option to make the move permanent. Looks like he got his wish to go "up north", hopefully he'll stay there.
I don't recall having said anything about 25m quid, though I can't be arsed to look. More to the point is that this club has taken on debt to the tune of almost one billion US dollars. That's a fooking shit ton of money. I'm sure that Levy's done his maths, and the numbers are sound. But significant economic shifts (i.e., the financial crisis of 2008) can bring serious instability to vastly smaller liabilities than ours. The notion that we are impervious to administration is not correct (and is something that the old-timers on this board can confirm that I've expressed concern about going back to the earliest days of our 'new stadium planning'). And yes, our turnover is "in a different solar system" to Leeds', but so is our debt. Where do relatively minor sums like 25m quid fit into the equation? I don't know. You don't know. Levy knows. Neither of us can say with certainty whether it shouldn't or should be spent. Again, how what's spent is spent is fair game. If one wants to look at, say, Poch's payoff plus Mourinho's salary and say "that could have gone to this or that player" … hey, go for it. But just saying "write that check!" without context or concern isn't well grounded to my mind. I simply don't understand where you're coming up with the notion* that Levy is happy with finishing 4th and winning nothing. It's as though you're saying that the fact that we haven't won the League is evidence that the chairman doesn't want it enough. Granted, he doesn't get the football bits right every time. Everyone knows that after every two steps forward comes one step back, and that's admittedly frustrating. But why is it down to a lack of ruthlessness or ambition? I'd say he was plenty ruthless with Martin Jol, and lord knows he's taken plenty of heat for having been too ruthless with Poch. And the other side of the coin is that, thus far at least, after every step backward has come two steps forward. Thus far, every suggestion that Levy/ENIC are not prepared to advance us on the pitch has been answered with advancement on the pitch. … this is soooo weird. I'm really not prepared to be the 'glass half full' presence this forum. *implied, at least. Apologies if I've misinterpreted that. Unless, of course, the subject you're addressing really is what I want, in which case you should prepare yourself for an even longer-winded, more rambling response.
Just because I feel I’m going soft defining Levy. Kane goes down injured for three months and we have no striker on the books so we sign a three midfielders. Ok.