Home
Transfer Talk

Two questions answered

4 min read

TRANSFER TALK


Daniel Levy was asked about the spending by other clubs in the Premier League that has got some Spurs fans jealous and has seen them panic into thinking Spurs must try and match spending in some way. Identifying targets and trying to get them at the right price is not good enough for a section of our fans, they want anyone bought as long as someone is bought it seems or they want us to pay unsustainable wages without considering the knock on effects on everyone else's wage.

"My view is that it's totally unsustainable. I'm not sure if that's the view of the other Premier League clubs, but certainly the prices that are being paid for other Premier League players I can't see it being sustainable in the long term.

"I think I am a custodian of this football club. This club has been around since 1882 and when I leave it will be somebody else. I think we have a duty to manage the club appropriately. I don't think that long term for any club it's sustainable to spend more than you earn. You can have periods where you do but over the long term you can't.

"I think that some of the activity that's going on at the moment is just impossible to be sustainable. You know if somebody is spending £200m more than they're earning then eventually it catches up with you. You can't keep doing it.

"We've managed the club, we think, in a very appropriate way. We've invested a lot of money in physical facilities for long-term growth. So we've got one of the world's best training facilities. We've invested over £100m in that facility.

"We're now investing in the stadium. The stadium is fundamental because with that we get more fans and more income and that's the way to clearly have a more sustainable business.

"At the same time the academy is important because we can produce our own players. We don't have to go and spend £20, £30m, £40m on a player and obviously that homegrown player has an affinity with the club that a player we buy doesn't. That's what the fans want to see. They want to have that passion. That's what you get with a homegrown player and that's why people love Harry Kane and sing that he's one of our own."

That is all logical and make sense, a sensible way to approach things and thr next question again shows the influence of Pochettino on our transfer dealings, which a section of our fans again choose to ignore as it doesn't fit in with an anti-Levy agenda, yet we who see and understand it are apparently rose tinted.

Does the new stadium impact the club's activity in the transfer market?

"I'd answer that in two ways. Regardless of the stadium project, today our position on transfers is that we have a coach that very much believes in the academy.

"Unless we can find a player who would make a difference he would rather give one of our academy players a chance so that's regardless of the financing of the stadium.
"Obviously when you're building a stadium of this magnitude in a UK context it all has to be privately financed. There's no state help whatsoever.

"It is a challenge and we have to find the right balance but it's not impacting us at the moment on transfer activity because we're not yet in a place where we've found the player who we definitely want to buy but can't afford to buy."

Not wanting to pay the prices quoted and not being able to afford to buy a player are two different things, paying an extra £3.64 million for a player is a years wages at £70,000-a-week, overpaying by £7.28 million is 2 years wages.

If you can save a year or more wages on a transfer fee then it is common sense to do so. On right-back Serge Aurier we are £8.93 million apart with PSG on what we want to pay and what they want to receive. That's nearly two and a half years wages.

If we simply paid their price we would then have to find additional money to pay two and a half years wages so we would actually be paying out £17.86 million more than we want to, if we were offering him a £70,000-a-week wage packet.

Trending at THBN - No1 Spurs Website
Champions League Draw, who do the British clubs draw?
Spurs supposed inactivity is our activity

Previously from THBN - No1 Spurs Website
Pochettino, sad WHU fan and Social Media
Sissoko to Turkey
Lamela to Inter doesn't have the ring of truth






6 comments

  1. If we simply paid their price we would then have to find additional money to pay two and a half years wages so we would actually be paying out £17.86 million more than we want to, if we were offering him a £70,000-a-week wage packet.


    No we wouldn't. Paying the extra transfer fee doesn't then mean ALSO paying extra wages. We pay the extra £8.93 - that's EQUIVALENT to 2.5 years salary. Paying an extra £8.93m, is just that, why you think it doubles is a bit confusing.

    I agree with your overall point but your maths seems a bit shit
  2. One last plea to the great unwashed and that’s me done (on the subject of our owners) until this time next year.
    What amazes me the most is the catastrophic failure to acknowledge the plain and simple truth of the facts as they currently present themselves, and, which are once again presented in DL’s latest statement above.
    No amount of wailing and bleating is going to change the current transfer policy, especially when everyone at THFC is in agreement with it so can we all agree to disagree and leave it that?
    Moving on and looking at our ’25 squad’ for the coming season, we have lost 2 HG players (Carroll & Walker) so we are at present a ’25 squad’ of 18 of which 4 are ‘home grown’.
    Winksy is 21 now but I think that, as he was born after 01.01.1996, he gets another season on the U21 list…please correct me if I’m wrong on that assumption.
    So I still expect that we shall see some activity on our behalf in the transfer market…IMHO a right-sided defender at the very least.
  3. We don't need to spend 20/30/40 mil on players because we have an academy.

    Great if they were actually good enough to properly push for places but 9/10 of them aren't so do not improve the side.

    Yes you do need to spend to improve!
  4. Tell Harry Winks and Harry Kane that will you.
    • 2 out of how many?

      And Winks is still very much a prospect.

      The success to dud ratio far outweighs the other.
    • Harry Winks is a prospect that most clubs in our division would give their eye-teeth for. It's only because we have the genius who is Mousa Dembele that we don't play him ourselves all the time.

      Furthermore, our academy is worth so much more to us than simply those that jump straight into the first team squad. How many of our academy already have been sold to other Premiership sides? How many of those are now among the top names at those clubs?

      The academy is a project that is maturing year on year. In the coming years it should take on more and more of the load for getting players to play for us, as well as producing vast amounts of money in order to allow us to compete at such high levels. It may be unrealistic to expect the whole team to be provided from there but certainly each season sees more and more players blooded and nurtured into higher levels of play.

      MP is clearly of the opinion that we can use these players more than we have been with previous managers. Person…