Improvement and Transfers

Improvement and Transfers

A fan, I can't call them a supporter, who ridiculously tried to tell me we had not improved on the field, only off it, obviously doesn't understand how you build success.

Facts of course, those things that get in the way at a time like this, tell us otherwise.

Broke and mid-table, to perennial 5th and 6th with Europa League football to 2nd and 3rd with Champions League football.

The top of the Premier League table in 2000/2001 when ENIC and Daniel Levy arrived finished like this that season:

1. Manchester United
2. Arsenal
3. Liverpool
4. Leeds United
5. Ipswich Town
6. Chelsea
7. Sunderland
8. Aston Villa
9. Charlton Athletic
10. Southampton
11. Newcastle United
12. Tottenham Hotspur

We were a broke club, we are now the 6th richest in the country, although Arsenal have a third more income than us, Manchester City and Manchester United two-thirds more than us, Liverpool and Chelsea around a fifth more than us.

Sir Alex Ferguson reminded us on national TV that you had to build the business side of a club and make that a success before you could have sustained success on the field.

The off the field income pays for the football.

Once we move into the new stadium then our income will increase, perhaps by around £65m, which will put us in the ballpark of Chelsea and Liverpool, although it must be remembered we then have a stadium to pay for and they don't.

I'm expecting it to be a couple of seasons before bigger sums are spent and higher wages paid personally, we'll see.

We will be and are looking to buy better quality young players to improve under Mauricio Pochettino. Whether we can sign them at the moment is a different matter but you don't sign them if you don't try and Pochettino is very specific about which players we should attempt to buy.

We will see more Davinson Sanchez type signings than Georges-Kevin N'Koudou type. There are always going to be hits and misses and everyone will have their own criteria for judging. The only criteria surely though is Pochettino's and whether he plays a player regularly or not.

Obviously, with goalkeepers you can only play one, but I think it is fair to say both our reserve keepers have served us well and not let us down.

Success

1. Davinson Sanchez - £38.485m
2. Moussa Sissoko - £30m
3. Lucas Moura - £25m
4. Serge Aurier - £23m
5. Heung-min Son - £22m
6. Toby Alderweireld - £11.5m
7. Victor Wanyama - £11m
8. Ben Davies - £10m
9. Juan Foyth - £8m 
10. Dele Alli - £5m
11. Michel Vorm - £5m
12. Eric Dier - £4m
13. Kieran Trippier - £3.5m
14. Paulo Gazzaniga - £900,000

Failure

1. Vincent Janssen - £16.726m
2. Fernando Llorente - £15m
3. Georges-Kevin N'Koudou - £11m
4. Clinton N'Jie - £10m > £5.95m
5. Federico Fazio - £8m > £7.65m
6. Benjamin Stambouli - £4.7m > £6m
7. Kevin Wimmer - £4.3m > £18m
8. DeAndre Yedlin - £2.5m > £5m
9. Shilow Tracey - £200,000 (now a 20-year-old youth player)

The top three we will be looking to move on this summer, the rest apart from a youth player we have already sold, generally at a profit.

Those three, plus Mousa Dembele and Michel Vorm will free up some non-homegrown spaces within the squad and allow us to make purchases, two non-association (English) trained would fill the UEFA Champions League squad together with Juan Foyth.

Thus we can't just go out and buy 5 non-homegrown players. We can still only have 17 in the Premier League squad. So unless we sell Victor Wanyama as well, we can only buy three.

Also remember that Ben Davies is not an association trained player (Welsh association) so doesn't count towards the English association trained or club trained player quota.

Eric Dier was developed in Portugal so again is not homegrown, despite being English, a crazy situation that needs to be changed. It should be entirely upon what country you are from, not where you learned the game, but that's the EU for you.

Non-homegrown (Premier League)

1.  Hugo Lloris (captain)
2.  Toby Alderweireld
3.  Jan Vertonghen
4.  Dávinson Sánchez
5.  Son Heung-min
6.   Érik Lamela
7.   Victor Wanyama
8.  Eric Dier
9.   Moussa Sissoko
10.   Juan Foyth
11.   Paulo Gazzaniga
12.   Christian Eriksen
13.  Serge Aurier
14.   Lucas Moura