Spurs Upward Journey Continues

Spurs Upward Journey Continues

I wrote at the beginning of the season that this was a critical season for Arsenal and that if they failed to qualify for the UEFA Champions League they were in serious trouble.

Like it or not money rules football and being in the Champions League is vital to your income. A sustained period out of it and your relative income to other sides drops meaning your wage bill becomes like a noose around your neck.

You can't go out and simply spend huge amounts on wages, you have to get some of the big earners off your wage bill or several lesser wages to be able to afford to bring players in on high wages.

In addition, players want Champions League football. It is easier to get Champions League football in Italy, France and Germany where there are one team leagues, Spain already has three places filled each season while the Premier League has six sides fighting for four places.

We found when we were finishing 5th and 6th, players would wait to see if a Champions League club would come in for them rather than sign for the UEFA Europa League football we could offer.


The latest figures from Deloitte show the gap now closing between Arsenal and Spurs financially. In 2016/17 Spurs were £100m poorer than Arsenal, now the gap is just £10m.



The Deloitte figures show Tottenham have increased their income by £73m while Arsenal's has actually reduced.

Tottenham have an exciting squad with a new stadium coming live soon. Qualifying for the Champions League is a must if the club is to achieve what the fans what achieved, trophies.

Last season we were around £200m poorer than Man City and Manchester United and £70m poorer than Liverpool and Chelsea. These figures show, despite our increased income we are not gaining fast, the status quo is being maintained. Champions League football does that.

Manchester United have fallen behind Barcelona and Real Madrid, but have a very strong well established commercial income so remain £200m+ away from us, Man City £125m, Liverpool £78m and Chelsea £69m.

As our income increases so do others, it is only by increasing our stadium capacity and increasing our commercial deals that we will close the gap on the major players above us, to compete financially for players and on wages.

Tottenham planned to break into the top 4 last season and start regular Champions League football this season so in that respect we are ahead of schedule. Maintaining Champions League football is central to the growth of the club and winning trophies.

Obviously, the next part of the plan is to buy better young players, hence our very keen interest in players like Frankie de Jong, Matthijs de Ligt, Adrien Rabiot and Anthony Martial. That, while we can't afford the top wages, is, as Mauricio Pochettino points out, very difficult. Buying players just to appease fans isn't the answer, buying the player Pochettino actually wants is.

The type of player we are looking at now are the type of player we planned to try to sign in a couple of years. That isn't to say we will still not look for bargains, every club does and we have to be very mindful of the homegrown quota of course.

You can't have a squad of 25 players from abroad, you can only have 17 in your squad and in Europe, Scottish, Welsh or Irish trained players are overseas players. That's why Jarrod Bowen's name keeps coming up, young English talent, the type of talent that is now being snapped up by German and French clubs.

It will be interesting to see how Premier League clubs counter that. Several Man City youth players are looking abroad and Chelsea look set to lose their brightest young talent because they simply won't play him in the Premier League.

My ideas haven't changed in 5 years on this and for me, clubs, including ourselves, should have taken more action by now. Those thoughts are in the article below. Proactive instead of reactive.

Premier League clubs need to change the youth system

It is the same with mentally assessing players before we buy them, we should become world leaders in that too by using psychologists and sports psychologists. That way we can increase the success rate of our purchases.

Football still has a lot to learn from other sports I feel.

Anyway, our income is increasing, although so is our expenditure with a new stadium, which should then increase it again and help continue our upward journey towards regular trophies.

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