ENIC

[DubaiSpur]

and are we not trying to win? arent levy, poch, our players trying their damnedest to win?

Again, it depends. January 2012, was Levy 'trying to win' when he presided over that travesty of a transfer window that ended with Harry receiving Saha and Nelsen on free transfers?

Reducing the phrase 'trying to win' to simply trying to win football games can mean introducing a whole range of variables that are extraneous to the discussion. Perhaps trophies would be a better yardstick.

 

[Neymar]

Again, it depends. January 2012, was Levy 'trying to win' when he presided over that travesty of a transfer window that ended with Harry receiving Saha and Nelsen on free transfers?

Reducing the phrase 'trying to win' to simply trying to win football games can mean introducing a whole range of variables that are extraneous to the discussion. Perhaps trophies would be a better yardstick.

whoever was involved with transfers at the time probably thought saha and nelsen were the best options at the time.

you can try to win, and still not win any trophies, especially when two of your opponents are abramovic and mansour

 

[billyiddo]

Again, it depends. January 2012, was Levy 'trying to win' when he presided over that travesty of a transfer window that ended with Harry receiving Saha and Nelsen on free transfers?

Reducing the phrase 'trying to win' to simply trying to win football games can mean introducing a whole range of variables that are extraneous to the discussion. Perhaps trophies would be a better yardstick.

Was he trying to win when he provided the manager with a squad good enough to be in the title race with with over half the season gone? Id say so

 

[DubaiSpur]

whoever was involved with transfers at the time probably thought saha and nelsen were the best options at the time.

you can try to win, and still not win any trophies, especially when two of your opponents are abramovic and mansour

You seriously, honestly believe that, mate? I'll take you at your word if you do, but just to be clear.....do you?

 

[DubaiSpur]

Was he trying to win when he provided the manager with a squad good enough to be in the title race with with over half the season gone? Id say so

It depends. If he was trying to win the 'half-year' trophy, then yes, he was trying to win (It's the same trophy Wenger competes for every alternate year, btw). If his aim was to give us a legitimate shot at achieving out goals, there is no way in hell that transfer window could have been classed as 'successful'.

 

[billyiddo]

You seriously, honestly believe that, mate? I'll take you at your word if you do, but just to be clear.....do you?

Do you think we needed to spend money on players to secure 4th place? Baring in mind Redknapp had plenty of squad players already here who he over looked including Pav and Defoe in the front position which he wanted to strengthen?

Considering the manager was stalling on a signing a new contract and looking likely to be leaving should England come calling and we had an 11 point lead and looking like the best footballing side in the league - do you not think that it was reasonable pragmatisim from the chairman to not over commit in the transfer market?

 

[DubaiSpur]

Do you think we needed to spend money on players to secure 4th place? Baring in mind Redknapp had plenty of squad players already here who he over looked including Pav and Defoe in the front position which he wanted to strengthen?

Considering the manager was stalling on a signing a new contract and looking likely to be leaving should England come calling and we had an 11 point lead and looking like the best footballing side in the league - do you not think that it was reasonable pragmatisim from the chairman to not over commit in the transfer market?

It returns to that 'winning games vs winning trophies' argument. In January, we had a shot at the title, and the danger of losing Harry to England was held by everyone to be one that would only emerge after the Euros, which meant that we had him for the rest of the season at least, court case notwithstanding.

Given those circumstances, and given Harry's desperate pleas for reinforcements (including at CB, where we lost out on Cahill and Samba (at least) before settling on Bosman Nelsen), I wouldn't view Levy's actions as pragmatic at all. I didn't even at the time (harboured grave doubts about our actions, although I was swept up by the euphoria surrounding Saha's early success), and the passage of the years has merely enforced on me the opinion that Levy balked at the supreme moment, and let cowardice and cheapness overtake him and thus bury any chances we had of competing for the real top prize.

And lo and behold, because of that reluctance to back his manager at a crucial moment, the world decided to kick Levy in the gonads and even took away what I assume he thought to have been a 'safe' CL spot. Yet he didn't learn, and hasn't learned, and in all probability will not learn.

 

[billyiddo]

It returns to that 'winning games vs winning trophies' argument. In January, we had a shot at the title, and the danger of losing Harry to England was held by everyone to be one that would only emerge after the Euros, which meant that we had him for the rest of the season at least, court case notwithstanding.

Given those circumstances, and given Harry's desperate pleas for reinforcements (including at CB, where we lost out on Cahill and Samba (at least) before settling on Bosman Nelsen), I wouldn't view Levy's actions as pragmatic at all. I didn't even at the time (harboured grave doubts about our actions, although I was swept up by the euphoria surrounding Saha's early success), and the passage of the years has merely enforced on me the opinion that Levy balked at the supreme moment, and let cowardice and cheapness overtake him and thus bury any chances we had of competing for the real top prize.

And lo and behold, because of that reluctance to back his manager at a crucial moment, the world decided to kick Levy in the gonads and even took away what I assume he thought to have been a 'safe' CL spot. Yet he didn't learn, and hasn't learned, and in all probability will not learn.

As you say Cahill and Samba - two targets Reknapp put forward, one choose to wait till the end of the season for Chelsea and their Russian money, the other chose to move to Russia that window for his big payday - not sure what you think we should have done there... Im not sure how many names Redknapp would have put forward after those two either. (Keeping in mind Vertonghen was supposedly lined up for the summer window at that point)

I think anyone can use the I wasn't backed excuse when they **** up, but ultimately if you need to spend money in Jan to secure an 11 point lead then that just points out a fundamental lack of ability. Massive injury problems and other such variables aside...

 

[jimmyb]

I accepted that point a couple of weeks ago, I believe. My reply is simply this: the club earns thirty-five million quid (I believe) a year from matchday revenue alone, going by last year's figures. Even accepting that said figure has reached its current level due to multiple price rises over the years that ENIC has owned us, the amount put in over ENIC's entire tenure by the fans alone considerably outstrips the investment made by ENIC into the club itself, and that's while including the amount ENIC spent to buy the club in the first place.

Hang on........let me get this right......are you trying to suggest that the fans have a right to expect the club's two principal owners to match the annual revenues from each season's combined 900,000 odd ticket sales and give that amount to the club? Every year? That's barking, mate! Absolutely barking. It would be great if they did that but no one......absolutely no one.....has a right to expect it. Or anything like it.

Over the years, ENIC's net contribution to Spurs (i.e. money that has helped Spurs to buy players or clear debt) has been in excess of £60m. Chicken feed by comparison to their counterparts at Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project, granted. But a significant sum of money nonetheless and more than most owners have ever put into their clubs.

That is what I mean when I say that the fans are confused and angry at the current state of the club. They are charged a great deal of money far out of proportion to our league status as a club, and are dissatisfied with the lack of equivalent investment from the owners in keeping with this fact. What 'equivalent investment' actually denotes varies from fan to fan, but the general discontent over our bottom-of-the-table net spend and our regression post-Redknapp (which stands as a bit of a whack across the face to those of us who felt that the managers post-Redknapp would be backed with more than the Saha-Nelsen combo that benighted Harry's last days)...highlights that this discontent is present, and in considerable quantities.

Yes, ticket prices are painfully high. But that's market forces at work - along with the absolute necessity for Spurs to maximise all revenue l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶t̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ sources if they are to have even a hope of competing for a place in the top four.

Quite right. It is more akin to Mercedes creating a CLS-series car with the engine of an Austin Allegro and then charging full price for it.

Hyperbole.....but yes, at least it works as an analogy!

Edit: Grrrrr......very annoying that it's impossible to write the word "s t r e a m" normally without it being swear filtered into "little bustards"!

 

[DubaiSpur]

As you say Cahill and Samba - two targets Reknapp put forward, one choose to wait till the end of the season for Chelsea and their Russian money, the other chose to move to Russia that window for his big payday - not sure what you think we should have done there... Im not sure how many names Redknapp would have put forward after those two either. (Keeping in mind Vertonghen was supposedly lined up for the summer window at that point)

I think anyone can use the I wasn't backed excuse when they **** up, but ultimately if you need to spend money in Jan to secure an 11 point lead then that just points out a fundamental lack of ability. Massive injury problems and other such variables aside...

I think we should have gone out and secured either Cahill or Samba in January, simple as that. We had the attraction at that point (most attractive team in the league, coming off a CL season in 2010-2011, future England manager at the helm), we had the opportunity. What we needed was an infusion of capital, or a calculated risk taken with future proceeds that could have been secured had we acted in that most decisive of windows.

But no, we paid for Levy's intransigence and subsequent miserliness with the ultimate disaster ending to what had up to that point been the most promising season we'd had in the entirety of the time we'd spent in the modern PL. What had been obvious beforehand, became even more obvious in the aftermath of that January window. And today, we're stuck debating whether managers are really 'good' if they dare to ask for a bit of money in January to strengthen an already strong position. Sigh.

 

[billyiddo]

I m sorry but i don't think failing to sign a player ahead of Chelsea or ahead of a bumper contract abroad is a fair criticisim at all.

 

[DubaiSpur]

Hang on........let me get this right......are you trying to suggest that the fans have a right to expect the club's two principal owners to match the annual revenues from each season's combined 900,000 odd ticket sales and give that amount to the club? Every year? That's barking, mate! Absolutely barking. It would be great if they did that but no one......absolutely no one.....has a right to expect it. Or anything like it.

Like I said, what 'equivalent investment' denotes varies widely from fan to fan. I think those expecting 300-million pound investments from ENIC (back of the envelope calculation about how much matchday revenue the club's received over the last ten years) are probably on the outer end of the spectrum, even if 300 million quid is still easily within the reach of Joe Lewis' overall net worth (and about a third of the Sheikh's investment into City, all things considered). However, there is a fairly broad consensus emerging that the owners simply haven't spent enough to justify the absurdly high prices they charge for tickets, prices that ultimately only serve to make the club that much more profitable for ENIC when they sell up. The discontent over that 'net spend' table that I occasionally fish out and post on these forums is proof enough that said consensus is growing, even as stalwarts such as yourself still stick firmly to your own more conciliatory views regarding our owners.

Over the years, ENIC's net contribution to Spurs (i.e. money that has helped Spurs to buy players or clear debt) has been in excess of £60m. Chicken feed by comparison to their counterparts at Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project, granted. But a significant sum of money nonetheless and more than most owners have ever put into their clubs.

Yes, ticket prices are painfully high. But that's market forces at work - along with the absolute necessity for Spurs to maximise all revenue l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶t̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ sources if they are to have even a hope of competing for a place in the top four.

Again, refer to the points above. Market forces may set our prices absurdly high, but it sticks in the damn craw when City fans have their tickets well subsidized while also watching a successful team, in a stadium owned by a club that is fanatically devoted to making the fans' experience as friendly as possible. And the money our fans pay ultimately go straight into ENIC's pockets via the immense profit they'll make when they sell up. It isn't 'entitlement' (I f*cking hate that word now) to ask why this practice has to continue, why the fans in a time of economic hardship have to pay as much as they possibly can pay to keep Spurs going while watching the owners contribute as little as they can get away with in the process. Sure, fans will pay the prices to keep Spurs competitive. But with no success to justify having the second-highest ticket prices in the league, it isn't 'entitlement' to ask what the owners are doing to get us the success that makes paying such prices justifiable.

Hyperbole.....but yes, at least it works as an analogy!

Edit: Grrrrr......very annoying that it's impossible to write the word "s t r e a m" normally without it being swear filtered into "little bustards"!

It gets filtered into all sorts of things. 'Yellow-bellied sapsuckers' is a personal favorite of mine.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Hang on........let me get this right......are you trying to suggest that the fans have a right to expect the club's two principal owners to match the annual revenues from each season's combined 900,000 odd ticket sales and give that amount to the club? Every year? That's barking, mate! Absolutely barking. It would be great if they did that but no one......absolutely no one.....has a right to expect it. Or anything like it.

Over the years, ENIC's net contribution to Spurs (i.e. money that has helped Spurs to buy players or clear debt) has been in excess of £60m. Chicken feed by comparison to their counterparts at Chelsea and Emirates Marketing Project, granted. But a significant sum of money nonetheless and more than most owners have ever put into their clubs.

Hmmmm - hasn't all of that money been in terms of underwritten rights issues that have effectively diluted their cost per share price? I don't think the owners have actually ever just "given" money to the club. Of course one could argue that they shouldn't have to (and I'd agree with that argument) but I just want to ensure the facts are out there

 

[DubaiSpur]

I m sorry but i don't think failing to sign a player ahead of Chelsea or ahead of a bumper contract abroad is a fair criticisim at all.

Llorente - ha, you thought we were actually going in for him? Harry, you rube
Aguero - ha, you thought we were actually going in for him? Harry, you rube
Rossi - ha, you thought we were actually going in for him? Harry, you rube
Cahill - Chelsea were in for him, what could we do?
Samba - bumper contract abroad ,what could we do?
Any striker that actually cost money, as opposed to Saha - sorry, too expensive and we can't be sure you'll stick around, Harry, so here's Saha instead
Moutinho - too expensive for our tastes, Andre, here's Dembele instead
Hulk - too expensive for our tastes, Andre, here's Chadli instead
Willian - Chelsea were in for him, what could we do? Here's Lamela instead
Lovren - too expensive for our tastes, Poch, here's Musacchio instead
Musacchio - too expensive for our tastes, Poch, here's Fazio instead
Schneiderlin - too expensive for our tastes, Poch, here's Stambouli instead

Net profits after the window closes - time after time after time

And then Levy wonders why managers **** us off and why we've fallen flat after that magical season in 09-10.

 

[billyiddo]

If you target players outside of what we can afford then you're not going to have much joy in the market :rio:

Willian Mussacio and Moutinho were all agreed in principal before hitting snags at the final hurdle tbf - don't think you should be including them.

Were we in for Lovern? First i have heard of it if so

Kinda looks like you're just windmilling with that post Dubai - throw enough **** and it may stick?

 

[jimmyb]

Hmmmm - hasn't all of that money been in terms of underwritten rights issues that have effectively diluted their cost per share price? I don't think the owners have actually ever just "given" money to the club. Of course one could argue that they shouldn't have to (and I'd agree with that argument) but I just want to ensure the facts are out there

In theory, then, neither Abramovich nor Mansour have given any money to their clubs. Their investment has also all been converted into equity.

And ENIC have even more reason for getting equity in return for their investment. Reason being that they do not own 100% of Spurs. In other words, if they just gave money to Spurs with nothing in return, they would effectively just be giving money to all the other shareholders.

All that matters, ultimately, is that as a consequence of ENIC's investment, Spurs have been able to spend £60m, that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to spend, on buying players and clearing debt.

 

[DubaiSpur]

If you target players outside of what we can afford then you're not going to have much joy in the market :rio:

Willian Mussacio and Moutinho were all agreed in principal before hitting snags at the final hurdle tbf - don't think you should be including them.

Were we in for Lovern? First i have heard of it if so

Kinda looks like you're just windmilling with that post Dubai - throw enough **** and it may stick?

'Outside of what we can afford' is the central issue here, but an awful lot has been written about that particular topic.

Willian, Musacchio and Moutinho are not here a present, and I suspect snags at the final hurdle are a feature of a lot of the deals we ended up successfully concluding. Levy can overcome snags if he feels the player is worth it. He didn't in these three cases.

Yes, we were in for Lovren, judging by the sudden proliferation of articles around the late May-early June period, including by the hitherto respected sources in the Telegraph. I suspect Liverpool scared us off by bidding more than we were willing to for said player, in terms of both wages and the fee itself.

The list I put out is a list of all the transfers we were strongly linked with but failed to close, for various reasons. Some before the Saha-Nelsen fiasco, some after. Point being, Levy hasn't learned the lesson that should have been burned into his mind as he watched Terry lifting the CL trophy in 2012, and will leave this club without having learnt that lesson.

 

[jimmyb]

'Outside of what we can afford' is the central issue here, but an awful lot has been written about that particular topic.

Willian, Musacchio and Moutinho are not here a present, and I suspect snags at the final hurdle are a feature of a lot of the deals we ended up successfully concluding. Levy can overcome snags if he feels the player is worth it. He didn't in these three cases.

Yes, we were in for Lovren, judging by the sudden proliferation of articles around the late May-early June period, including by the hitherto respected sources in the Telegraph. I suspect Liverpool scared us off by bidding more than we were willing to for said player, in terms of both wages and the fee itself.

The list I put out is a list of all the transfers we were strongly linked with but failed to close, for various reasons. Some before the Saha-Nelsen fiasco, some after. Point being, Levy hasn't learned the lesson that should have been burned into his mind as he watched Terry lifting the CL trophy in 2012, and will leave this club without having learnt that lesson.

There was no snag at all with Willian. He was at the training ground, having completed his medical and ready to sign on the dotted line when Spurs were gazumped at the eleventh hour by Abramovich making a deal with his fellow slavic gangster baron. By that point, it was a fait accompli. Nothing Levy could have done.

There was indeed a last minute snag with Moutinho. But not one of Levy's making. Again, the deal was agreed until Porto / third party interests moved the goalposts at the last minute.

As to Musacchio, there was no last minute snag for the simple reason that it never got that far. Third party interests (the player's former club, edible-nest swiftlet Plate, and his agent) refused to agree to any compromise with current club, Villarreal, leaving the latter no choice but to demand the full buyout value of €50m in exchange. Clearly, that meant that the deal was a non starter.

Edit: Hahahaha! For ****'s sake!! Now we have "edible-nest swiftlet" for "r i v e r"??? :lol:

 

[metalgear]

conceicao? it was about money in the end right?

 

[Rorschach]

edible-nest swiftlet Plate