It's an interesting debate. But in your paradigm surely jumping into the elite would massively benefit ENIC (as doing so provides the biggest jump in revenue a football club can get). Given how close we came to doing that between 2010 and 2012, why do you think ENIC would have purposefully limited net spend on players during that period? An oversight on their part, thinking that we were going to achieve it without needing to spend more? Just being risk-averse, and focusing on building the stadium instead?
Risks weren't worth it in ENIC's mind, most likely. Consider that they paid some 22 million pounds in total to gain control over Spurs - they would probably have to spend at least that to ensure our CL qualification in 2012 (a top player + wages), and they would also have set a precedent of (gasp!) backing a manager on the cusp of achieving something, which would likely have meant more expenditures further on in similar situations. Why do that, when the reward to them wouldn't have mattered much? Again, consider that Lewis apparently wants one billion pounds for the club (forty-five times what he paid for it), and that's without the exposure of being in the elite, with only the new stadium to show as a reason for his ludicrous valuation of THFC. Very, very, very few people would want to pay that sum for a football club. How much more could he have inflated the price if we had entered the elite via ENIC's financial backing? I'd wager not much more than what he's asking for now, since the price already stretches the bounds of reason. So the cost (increased spending to aid Spurs live up to their damn motto) probably wasn't worth the risk. And again, that's where our interests diverge.
He pulled out of the U21 squad for the chance to train and possibly get games for our first team. I wish that was much more common, the international u21 teams should be focused on helping the clubs develop players instead of on winning games.
He has been RB cover. He's started 15 league games there this season, that makes him RB cover. He was even preferred to Naughton as RB cover early on in the season.
He pulled out of the U21 team to get games at CB. He said it himself, and so did Southgate. The issue wasn't him not getting games, he got quite a few of them and would have got more. The issue was him wanting to play at CB and develop his attributes for that position, while absolutely hating the thought of playing RB unless the team genuinely needed him to do so.
We did him no favors by making him play at RB, and are doing him no favors by playing him there now, while making our team suffer for the lack of a specialist right full-back who can maraud down the flanks and provide crosses/through-balls from the by-line, to say nothing of Dier's own struggles in that position.
He was never RB cover. No one here considered him an RB when we signed him, and he himself did not consider himself an RB (or even suited to the position of full-back) at all. There is no conceivable way that he was signed to cover at RB. The fact that he did is a result of his barnstorming start in the position, but he regressed to the mean very quickly after that. Despite this, we sell Naughton, our only specialist backup RB, and replace him with Yedlin, who we never play. And now we are supposed to believe that this was a decision that was made in order to 'develop' Dier? Again, braine, that's simply inconceivable in light of all the above.
