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Daniel Levy - Chairman

Bedfordspurs said:
I don’t think fans care what we pay players in reality. Why should we?

Here’s an analogy

I don’t care what the guy who fixes my car gets paid... I just care about my bill and that’s it’s done right to the best their abilities

If VW make a commercial decision to pay less than say BMW and this guy is happy with that then good luck to them. And if VW see a new supper engineer out there that will cost more but will give them a better offer they may choose to pay him more to get him in...

similarly if BMW choose to a pay a lazy German engineer with really large eyes something like 3 times the normal salary for a player of his effort and delivery then that’s their choice too. It may mean people stop going to that garage

It’s in every clubs interest to pay less if they can. Emirates Marketing Project didn’t buy Maguire as the deal wasn’t right for them financially. This is city who have burned money to date but their model is about getting their house in order aligned to their financially fudged model

a side like United which is less attractive now has to offer more as they can’t offer a pep, or a trophy cabinet as well as the £££
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I don't think City had any real interest in sanchez or maguire, they fudged utd over by driving up the price. They drew utd into bidding wars utd couldn't afford to lose.
 
Bedfordspurs said:
But whose to say they wouldn’t have won those trophies still and that we wouldn’t now be financially stable to viable and could have done a Leeds???

It’s all guess work

What we do know now is that the club is on its strongest financial footing ever so there is no excuse not to spend
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I think operating a wage bill to turnover ration of 45%, by some distance the lowest in the league, is excessive, regardless of infrastructure projects. I hope this will be resolved in the near future as well.

Regardless, as you and Raziel have pointed out, the past is the past now and hopefully we are now set up to spend like the other clubs. If we don't, I think serious questions will be asked, even by his most ardent supporters.

My concern has also been that football is not linear and that fans are often blinkered about their team. Just because you are successful now, it doesn't mean that you will continue to be so. There is a slight nag in my head that we may have missed the opportunity to win a big trophy for the next few years at least, when in the last 4-5 years, much of the rest of the top 6 were having near simultaneous meltdowns, we had an academy striker coming through as one of the best in the world etc etc.

I sincerely hope not.
 
Bedfordspurs said:
I don’t think fans care what we pay players in reality. Why should we?

Here’s an analogy

I don’t care what the guy who fixes my car gets paid... I just care about my bill and that’s it’s done right to the best their abilities

If VW make a commercial decision to pay less than say BMW and this guy is happy with that then good luck to them. And if VW see a new supper engineer out there that will cost more but will give them a better offer they may choose to pay him more to get him in...

similarly if BMW choose to a pay a lazy German engineer with really large eyes something like 3 times the normal salary for a player of his effort and delivery then that’s their choice too. It may mean people stop going to that garage

It’s in every clubs interest to pay less if they can. Emirates Marketing Project didn’t buy Maguire as the deal wasn’t right for them financially. This is city who have burned money to date but their model is about getting their house in order aligned to their financially fudged model

a side like United which is less attractive now has to offer more as they can’t offer a pep, or a trophy cabinet as well as the £££
Click to expand...

It may well be a defence mechanism (the same one Liverpool fans used when they were winning the net spend trophy or wage bill or whatever crap they used to come up with, amazingly ones they don't care about now they're winning big trophies again) but I have definitely seen Spurs fans on here showing seemingly genuine pride at our wage bill or net spend compared to other clubs.
 
Hootnow said:
I think you can only compare it to the situation around you. Compared to the other members of the top 6, we are underpaying. Compared to almost the entirety of the rest of the world, we are not, we're overpaying.

I think there will have to be a bit of an attitude change in Spurs fans over the next few years. I've still seen disparaging remarks about the 'sky 4' or people talking about how rich clubs will be looking to do business in the future, as if we weren't a part of that conversation.

The reality is that we are now part of the elite Sky 6. The other 14 clubs and their fans note that. The reality is that there are only 7 clubs in the world. WORLD. With more revenue than us. That may fluctuate a bit with CL runs etc but we probably won't drop too far out of the top 10 even at the worst of times. Our fans need to stop seeing us as little old paupers. To most clubs in Europe, we are now a financial powerhouse.

Frankly, as long as the club is still running and not doing a Leeds (ie almost all clubs), I couldn't really care that much about £ spent per position or better value for money. I want to see my team win games and trophies. I want to see our club having iconic moments I and the rest of our fans will remember for life. Not the time we finished 5th but actually only had the 8th highest wage bill and the 10th highest net spend so pound for pound had the most efficient league placing.

I think I've mentioned before that it probably comes across as me being far more anti-Levy than I actually am on this board, purely because the prevailing wind of opinion on here is so set on one direction. If you asked me, I would say Levy is one of the best chairmen in the league and the work he's done for the club has been incredible.

Probably peoples' expectations are converging though, regardless of which side they fall on. I think most people are saying that now we've finished all of the major infrastructure projects, know where we are financially etc, we can start to unleash some of this financial power we've been building towards for years. That we can now prioritise the footballing side sometimes, rather than always the business side. If in 5 years time we're still operating in a similar way...I'd have a few more questions to be honest.
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I'm with you, I don't get the balance sheet fetishism either. The fact is, a couple of League Cups aside, all we've ever had from ENIC on the football side is jam tomorrow. Maybe that will start to change and maybe it won't. My own personal suspicion is all we'll get will be different excuses why the only thing going in our trophy cabinet is a framed copy of the club ledger, but I'm prepared to give it a few more seasons of wait and see.
 
glasgowspur said:
Liverpool are an interesting one, their worldwide fanbase is as good as almost anyone's, but it would seem like they haven't properly tapped in to it. I would expect this to change now they are having sucess on the field.
From what I can see their low wage bill is down to some shrewd signings but also a fairly small squad. Utd, City and Chelsea pay big wages for second and third choice players. Stones at City is probably on as much as some Liverpool first team regulars. Sanchez at utd would be Liverpool top earner I think, and by quite a distance.
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Interesting that you consider Liverpool's wage bill to be low. In 2018 it was £120 million larger than ours (a whopping 80% bigger).

That £120 million extra is 12 £200,000 a week players. We have only one such player in our whole squad. Liverpool can have a second string earning what our first team earn and then field a full first team of £200k+ a week players on top of that.
 
Finney Is Back said:
I can't wait for that time in years to come when I get to tell my grandkids about the glory days of us having the best value for money squad in the Premier League....

"Oh Granddad, tell us that story again about how Levy squeezed the price on Lo Celso by £2 million by waiting for transfer deadline day, what a day that must've been, I wish that we were around to see it". It doesn't quite compare with my Granddad's tales of the double winning team I must say. :D

I think (and it was a while ago so I could be wrong) the discussion started with the suggestion that perhaps our players weren't so underpaid after all. Compared to all of the clubs below us (except Everton) that is indeed true. However compared the 5 clubs we are competing (badly) with for trophies that isn't true.
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Thats not the end, but it's a key part of the journey.
 
Hootnow said:
I think operating a wage bill to turnover ration of 45%, by some distance the lowest in the league, is excessive, regardless of infrastructure projects. I hope this will be resolved in the near future as well.

Regardless, as you and Raziel have pointed out, the past is the past now and hopefully we are now set up to spend like the other clubs. If we don't, I think serious questions will be asked, even by his most ardent supporters.

My concern has also been that football is not linear and that fans are often blinkered about their team. Just because you are successful now, it doesn't mean that you will continue to be so. There is a slight nag in my head that we may have missed the opportunity to win a big trophy for the next few years at least, when in the last 4-5 years, much of the rest of the top 6 were having near simultaneous meltdowns, we had an academy striker coming through as one of the best in the world etc etc.

I sincerely hope not.
Click to expand...
I believe that wage bill has gone up and may have Gone up more if the players actually win something and earned these bonuses
And I agree footy isn’t linear. There are always outliers and random teams that come out of nowhere
Similarly there are always bigger teams dropping their levels which crates opportunities
 
Finney Is Back said:
Interesting that you consider Liverpool's wage bill to be low. In 2018 it was £120 million larger than ours (a whopping 80% bigger).

That £120 million extra is 12 £200,000 a week players. We have only one such player in our whole squad. Liverpool can have a second string earning what our first team earn and then field a full first team of £200k+ a week players on top of that.
Click to expand...

I was replying to a post relating Liverpool wages to City and Chelsea wages, not ours.
 
Bedfordspurs said:
But whose to say they wouldn’t have won those trophies still and that we wouldn’t now be financially stable to viable and could have done a Leeds???

It’s all guess work

What we do know now is that the club is on its strongest financial footing ever so there is no excuse not to spend
Click to expand...
My main point isn't really whether we would've won those trophies or not. My argument is that up to this point we have underpaid compared to our competitors. Unless we consider our main competitors to be Everton then I think it's clear that we have.
 
mudshark said:
I'm with you, I don't get the balance sheet fetishism either. The fact is, a couple of League Cups aside, all we've ever had from ENIC on the football side is jam tomorrow. Maybe that will start to change and maybe it won't. My own personal suspicion is all we'll get will be different excuses why the only thing going in our trophy cabinet is a framed copy of the club ledger, but I'm prepared to give it a few more seasons of wait and see.
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Think it's actually only one League Cup isn't it?..... Probably the leanest 20 year period in our entire history.
 
galeforce said:
Thats not the end, but it's a key part of the journey.
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If we win some trophies then I doubt I'll be telling stories to the grand kids about us having the 'best ROI'. If we don't win any trophies I still doubt I'll be telling stories to the grandkids of our 'best ROI'.
 
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Bedfordspurs said:
No I Said whose to say we would have
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Indeed. Who's to say?

We can only really look at the facts.

1. We didn't win any trophies when operating a wage bill much lower than our competitors.
2. Our competitors won multiple trophies when operating wage bills reasonably similar to their direct competitors.

Let's hope that we will be able to show that we did win some trophies in the forthcoming years when (hopefully!) we operate a wage bill that is a closer match to our competitors.
 
Bedfordspurs said:
Why would we?
You buy players in on bigger money thean there on (were a really high payer compared to most clubs)... then they perform and get a pay rise
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I think that buying a player today is so convoluted now. My Son said there are very few 'normal' financial rules and that was a few years ago.
 
glasgowspur said:
I was replying to a post relating Liverpool wages to City and Chelsea wages, not ours.
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In 2018 Liverpool's wage bill was higher than that of both Emirates Marketing Project and Chelsea?

In fact you could probably make a very direct correlation to Liverpool increasing their wage bill up above their direct competitors and suddenly starting to win the big trophies (CL last season and PL (as a minimum) this season).
 
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