|
..
.. |
3rd September 2009 – The definitive article on
Spurs transfer dealings
On one level it has been an uninspiring
transfer window, as no ‘Robinho-like’ superstars have deigned to join the premier
league and Spurs have not added an Edgar Davids or Jurgen Klinsmann type
player to the squad to bring in some star quality over the summer. However it
can still be said that Spurs are deemed to have had a good window, buying in
proven premiership class players and jogging on what can largely be said to
be weaker members of the squad, whilst avoiding the mad upheaval of previous
seasons. The window has however been very
interesting if you dig a little deeper. Despite the flow of riches into
English football and the daily announcements that ‘Player X’ has just signed
a contract worth another £1m+ a year, the general message is that times are
hard and it appears the Sky4 are having to watch the pennies. Man City are an
exception to the rule and are spending over the odds, building up their squad
as quickly as an arsenal player can throw himself to the ground, and as you
can see from the lists above, jumping to No 1 in the net spending lists to
break the Sky4 cartel, mostly spent within the last 12 months. The end of the transfer window provides
an opportunity to try and cut through the hype of the media and to
considerthe direction in which Spurs are heading. The team has strengthened
in needed areas, has added proven Premiership performers to the squad in
Bassong, Kranjcar and Crouch, as well as moving on more peripheral members of
the squad. The trouble for Spurs is that the media then make a quantum leap
between total transfer spending and what should be the reported level of
achievement, leading to the popular myth that Spurs are perpetual
underachievers, conveniently forgetting details like clubs that have bigger
stadiums, richer owners and champions league money. Measuring teams by looking at what they
spend on transfers only ever tells half the story. It conveniently forgets to
mention little important facts like the wage bill for a club and how much a
club pays in signing on fees etc. Without such little details we would never
have known what exactly motivated Judas to ever contemplate leaving Spurs, or
Gareth Barry to turn down Liverpool for Man City ,
or for Tevez to leave Man Utd. If we add the wage bill into the equation, the
Sky4 would shoot to the top of the table for expenditure, and there would be
a massive gap between them to Newcastle in 5th, Spurs and then Villa. Without
reprising the figures here, as a rough guide Spurs spend around £45m per year
on wages, whilst Liverpool spend at least twice that on wages, Arsenal spend
around £90m, Man Utd around £100m and Chelsea £120m. At this point I would
add that I have taken these tables from another source on the web, so please
do not shoot me for any inaccuracies, and a cursory look would suggest there
are some within the reported figures. The tables above show the estimated net spending
of the premier league clubs since the start of the Premier League and over
the last 5 years. You will see that historically Spurs feature strongly
on both lists as we would expect, given the level of player turnover since
Enic walked through the door. The table at the bottom of this lists the
individual players that have been bought and sold in this period. The figures
can, in the murky world of football only ever be a rough comparative as the
details aren’t always released by the club, can be inaccurately reported
(unless Spurs have had to announce the deal under the requirements as a plc),
and can be subject to a large number of conditional clauses so that the
actual money paid can differ from the reported figure. The list also
appears to be inaccurate, if only using the non-mention of David Bentley in
the list as an example (although that might reflect some wishful thinking of
some at Spurs). Even if we factor in his supposed £15m+ transfer into the
equation, it doesn’t really change the overall picture too much. It would
mean Spurs have spent around £100m in the last 5/6 years and have been in the
top 4 transfer spenders, over the period. Whilst the sums above suggest that
Spurs have tried to match Liverpool in the transfer stakes, in reality the
high figure would possible be better accounted for by the fact that Spurs
have been a player trading agency over the last few years rather than a
football club, and you can see from the list below that Spurs have traded at
least 127 players since Hoddle was sacked. Over the same period Spurs
have probably spent something like £200m+ less on wages for the players they
have signed. When comparing Spurs with their nearest rivals in the league,
within the champions league wannabe contenders, it would suggest that
Newcastle have woefully underperformed, and Spurs have performed on par with
Aston Villa, but have been out-performed by Everton. Maybe this is indicative
of the talent of David Moyes, as he continues his search for the One Ring. The list can also provide some way to
measure the impact of Arry especially during a rare period when Spurs are
sitting at the top of the league with a 100% record. We can see with
the benefit of hindsight that Spurs spent over £70m during 2005/06, 2006/07
and 2007/08 under Levy and Comolli, Jol and Ramos. Clearly that level of
investment in theory would have an impact on the quality of the squad even
though it seems the majority of the players signed during that period have
either moved on or have been moved on and bought back by the club. Whoever is
ultimately responsible for the transfer dealings however, the recent past can
be contrasted with the fact that the club has a net spend of £8m during the
accounting period that Arry has been in charge. On
the face of it, whilst Arry has a reputation as a spendthrift wheeler-dealer,
the above tables also demonstrate that the 2 clubs he is most heavily
associated with in Pompey and West Ham have made a profit in their transfer
dealings during the Premiership years that he has been associated with them,
albeit largely with the legacy of the players he brought into the club and
were then sold on. What is certain however is that
for all his flaws, Arry does seem to be able to coax the players to perform. On a deeper analysis the summer transfer
window has confirmed the power shift in English football. This isn’t due to
anything that Tottenham have done, however we may find that Spurs benefit as
a result. With their owners Man City have come
along and upset the apple-cart. They have poached players from and
destabilised all of their main rivals, signing Tevez from Man Utd,
Adebayor and Toure from the goons, Barry from Villa (at the expense of
Liverpool undermining their plans to replace Alonso) and Lescott from
Everton. Spurs have probably been immune from this thus far if only because
we are already the feeder club for one club in manchester and Man City don’t
need any more midfielders at this point in time. The transfer window would suggest that
Chelsea apart, the rest of the Sky4 are worried
about their future. None of the established Champions League clubs have
bought any star names on extravagant contracts. The reason I would imagine is
that Liverpool, Arsenal and Man Utd cannot guarantee that with the arrival of
Man City , they will be in the champions league
money in 3 or 4 years time. As the average star footballer will sign for the
club on a 4 or 5 year contract, it seems to me that the clubs are reluctant
to commit themselves to large potential liabilities in wages that they may
not be able to pay in 3 or 4 years time, and this means that the 3 of them
are currently retrenching and keeping their costs and liabilities down. Chelsea’s only worry is that Abramovich
disappears over the north sea in his helicopter so that he is no longer
around to sign the cheques to reward Brave John Terry’s loyalty or that he
loses interest in football. Whilst he is there underwriting the bills,
Chelsea will be able to protect their position within the champions league cartel. Arsenal as we know are experiencing
financial problems due to the property crash, and the fact that they decided
to branch out as a property development company rather than concentrating
their business as a football club. The rumours are that the boardroom unrest
is down to the level of personal debt the directors had to assume to pay for
the stadium which ended up far over the budget. Whatever they say publicly,
the costs of the stadium have interfered with the football club and the team
building of Wenger, so much so that a team that once went through a league
season unbeaten, is now happy to finish 4th. A lesson there
for Spurs, if ever there was one. However their long term future is probably
brighter than most of their rivals, as Wenger remains their manager and
probably will do so until he dies in the dug-out and they continue to produce
top players nicked from barcelona ’s academy.
Ultimately they will be in a position to print money
if and when the bulk of the stadium debts have been paid. Whilst they have been the team to beat,
Man Utd have sold their prize asset, they have failed to replace him and they
have put their prices up in the face of the worst recession this country has
seen for decades. What does that tell you? Their American owners have
experienced problems with their finances in America, and they have struggled
to meet the interest payments on the leveraged deal to buy the club, never
mind seek to reduce the level of debt (at least until they sold the winker).
Their midfield looks to be the weakest it has been for years and it seems
they will be reliant on the talent of Rooney and the misfiring Berbatov to
maintain their place at the top of the tree. As this is a world cup year
Rooney is bound to get injured and if he does,
Man Utd may be in relative trouble. They also have the problem that OWF is
approaching 70 and at some point in the near future he will have to step aside . Despite the problems at Man Utd however,
Liverpool are the most vulnerable of the Sky4. Their owners have more
financial problems than the Glazers, and despite negotiating a £350m loan
deal with the banks when they took over the club to finance the new stadium,
it appears Liverpool have spent most of it on debt payments and player wages,
and they still are no where nearer getting a new stadium and they now have 2
star players instead of just the one when the Americans took over. As we saw
at the first weekend of the season, Torres and Gerrard apart, the rest of the
squad is no better than any of the champions league wannabe teams, it is
probably weaker than Spurs and Everton’s. In the short term future, given
their financial liabilities, and the competition for the champions league
places, it is difficult to see how Liverpool will be able to adequately replace
$tevie Me when he gets too old to run the show for them. It is probably a season too early for
Man City , but given their wealth and their ability
to destabilise their rivals, they will take their place at the top table so I
would expect to see them in the top three by the end of next season. At the moment, the clubs threatened by
their arrival have all sought to retrench and to limit their liabilities.
However, when City have established themselves, the
next stage for the 3 threatened members of the cartel will be one of panic.
They all need the money from the champions league to
pay their debts. Whichever club is at threat of losing their Champions league
money will either have to cut their costs and sell their assets (eg like
Ronaldo) or throw money at the problem to try and buy their place back (eg
Leeds). The hope is that City destabilise the cartel so much that 2 or more
of them get dragged back into the pack, or better still go into meltdown,
which would leave the door open to a club like Spurs to capitalise. If that
does happen, on the basis of what he has achieved so far, both financially in
the transfer market, and on the pitch, Spurs may have their best chance of
doing so under Arry.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||