ENIC

[Silly McSilly Face]

I don't think Levy is the issue, Lewis (family) are the ones with money , they are not putting money into the club and don't really seem interested in selling.

We need investment

They actually do put money into the club. Do they put Sheikh Mansour levels of money into the club? No, but they have put money in via rights issues and I believe the last major investment was a £150 million facility offered by ENIC to the club in 2022. I dont think all of it was drawn down but it was a capital injection from the owners nonetheless.

 

[Lilbaz]

I don't think Levy is the issue, Lewis (family) are the ones with money , they are not putting money into the club and don't really seem interested in selling.

We need investment

The problem is that football clubs don't make money. They 90% make a loss.
They just grow in value.

Even spurs has made a loss the last few years.

 

[djp82]

3rd highest net spender in the last 5 years, would you mind explaining to me how that is doing it on the cheap?

3rd highest net spend in last 5 years , very good we are spending. My argument would be it’s spent badly then. Gray 40m over paid , Richy and Solanke over paid. There’s 160m. Gray may come good but our strikers are bang average for 120 m worth.

 

[Lilbaz]

3rd highest net spend in last 5 years , very good we are spending. My argument would be it’s spent badly then. Gray 40m over paid , Richy and Solanke over paid. There’s 160m. Gray may come good but our strikers are bang average for 120 m worth.

What is it you want?

We got a trophy. We bought players.

What would make you happy?

 

[djp82]

Don't meant to be argumentative but the wages feel like chicken and egg

- Reason our wages are so low currently is a lot of our senior players have moved on in last 3 years (Kane, Dier, Lloris, etc.) and a lot of the incoming (Udogie, Bergvall, Gray, Wilson, etc.) are rightfully on low wages.
- Our top ability to buy is seems to still be 65M-80M range, which seems to be the Solanke/Mbeumo/Eze type of player or a top level player with less than a year on contract

So to have a real conversation
- Would you want to pay those Mbeumo/Eze type players >200K/week? personally I think that is a mistake, it's a United type overpay for mid level players
- What top level player (that we could buy for ~80M) that would come to us, that we have been unwilling to match wages for?

I feel like it's a narrative stick more than fact at the moment (our current buying practice is very different than it was even 5 years ago)

When you look at the squad
- Son was elite, obviously on down side of career
- Romero, Porro, Maddison, Solanke, Bentancur (he was bordering elite under Conte pre injury) are very good players
- VDV & Udogie could a step up
- Johnson is the odd one out, I don't think he's a winger, with the right development he could move to a position where his elite level positioning could help him step up
- Bergvall is the obvious next player to step up (his progression in 2nd half of season was impressive)
- Gray, Vuskovich, Moore are top rated talents in their age group.

CM, RW, CF are the places we could do with that elite talent coming in.

I’m not sure on the whole fees wages but we can’t compete with either in terms of what others spend on fees and wages so we won’t be winning leagues.

So was weird for Levy to say that.

Eze probably not a 200k a week player same as others you mentioned.

As for players mentioned Bentancur sadly not same player since ACL looked a talent under Conte.

Maddison and Solanke both live in same bracket for me they are ok that’s it. Solanke best attribute is his work rate. We overpaid for him and Richy.
Maddison blows hot and cold , Leicester fans would say the same.

Bergvail and Gray who knows how that will pan out. Gray at 40m looks steep as not seen anything to suggest he’ll be our answer to needing a top level 6 in the midterm. I hope he comes good.

Johnson , Forest have had our pants down he divides opinion amongst our fan base I’m on the side of he’s an average player.

Anyway moving forward midfield needs serious surgery. That where we need to invest to push on in my view.

 

[djp82]

What is it you want?

We got a trophy. We bought players.

What would make you happy?

I was just pointing out that people go well we got x highest net spend in x years . Brilliant happy days. I was just saying there for me is an issue how it’s been spent.

 

[Lilbaz]

I was just pointing out that people go well we got x highest net spend in x years . Brilliant happy days. I was just saying there for me is an issue how it’s been spent.

I agree. It could have been spent better.

 

[Raziel]

I’m not sure on the whole fees wages but we can’t compete with either in terms of what others spend on fees and wages so we won’t be winning leagues.

So was weird for Levy to say that.

And I am 100% in the same place, why would a conservative chairman who's previous statements usually amount to vague commitment to "success on pitch/football side" comments, in a recorded statement say "a EL trophy is not enough, we want to win PL/CL"? he could easily have said we want to win more trophies, more trophies on a regular basis, but to specifically name the two hardest trophies in football?

Unlike others, I don't think the guy is a buffoon, don't think he does things off the cuff, do think his use of PR usually falls on the say less side vs. say more. And it wasn't necessary ..

The only way that statement makes sense is if he is expecting external investors ..

 

[BrainOfLevy]

And I am 100% in the same place, why would a conservative chairman who's previous statements usually amount to vague commitment to "success on pitch/football side" comments, in a recorded statement say "a EL trophy is not enough, we want to win PL/CL"? he could easily have said we want to win more trophies, more trophies on a regular basis, but to specifically name the two hardest trophies in football?

Unlike others, I don't think the guy is a buffoon, don't think he does things off the cuff, do think his use of PR usually falls on the say less side vs. say more. And it wasn't necessary ..

The only way that statement makes sense is if he is expecting external investors ..

Interesting. I agree with you. He’s always been super conservative with his PR. So this was either a way to show the club was ambitious post the Ange sacking - like a way of saying the Europa is not enough, we need the biggest prizes - or he really does think we can realistically challenge for them soon. Fingers crossed on the new investors.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Empty words to get Levy off the hook short term. We all know his only real target is regular qualification for the CL on the cheap.

He got really lucky getting to the CL final with Poch, but none of that squad cost a bomb. In addition to the home-growns (Kane, Winks, Walker-Peters) he pulled off a clutch of absolute steals (Rose £1m, Trippier £3.5m, Walker £4m, Dier £4m, Dele £5m, Davies+Vorm combined c£13m); plus several excellent bargains (Eriksen £9m, LLoris £10m, Aldereiweld £11m, Verts £11m, Wanyama £11m). Even most of his his medium-priced buys proved really shrewd investments (Son £22m, Aurier £23m, Lamela £25m, Moura £25m).

Ironically his most expensive buys were his poorest value for money (Sissoko £30m, Sanchez £42m).

I’ve turned into one of the most ‘ENIC needs to spend some money’ guys around, but I don’t think we can blame Levy for having a strategy of developing younger players and hiring the right coach to execute that strategy. I don’t think he thought we would ever get to a CL final so I agree it is lucky that Poch was so perfect for us at that moment in time that he over performed so much. But I don’t think in general he was getting lucky by signing those players and pairing them with that coach. It was well executed until he had a meltdown and decided to throw it all out and try to squeeze more out of the same players with Jose.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Different era, if you look at the spend of last 5 years, it's very different to Poch era (obvious reasons, hint, $B stadium) or pre Stadium.

But just for arguments sake, how does getting CL on cheap benefit Levy? Spurs owners don't take dividends out, at best he gets a bonus (irrelevant number in scope of Spurs revenue/costs), and the additional CL revenue goes back into squad (23+ years of financials show this), how does that benefit Levy?

More regular CL participation boosts the value of the club. They don’t take money out, but they put relatively little in too, and that’s the issue. Self sustainability works for their strategy, but it doesn’t necessarily benefit us wholly as fans if we want to see the team win the league. They are trying to get as much profit out of their initial investment in the club as possible when they eventually sell it. Any money that goes in is a hit against that. I don’t think he wants CL on the cheap, I think he wants regular European football, with enough CL seasons thrown in, to make the case that Spurs justifies the value ENIC places on it. And this is likely why he cannot countenance volatility in the league. Anything that makes it look like we aren’t consistently one of the top 6 clubs is a hit on that story we tell. We need to be in the conversation when something like the Super League comes up. We need to do the Amazon stuff. We need to act like a multi billion dollar valuation as much as possible.

Where I think the interests of ENIC and the fans may converge is external investment. Which is why I find that so interesting. I wonder how it would work. Eg do they sell 20%? And how much of that 20% do they bank as profit, and how much do they invest in the team, or raise the wage structure? How much do they loosen the ‘self sustainable’ ethos with other partners on board? Do they sell more or less than 20%?

For a quick hypothetical I just did £3bn, 20% of which is 600m. Might not be the value, and they might not need to sell that much. But it would be really interesting to think about what we could do with say half of that money, especially if we have so much headroom for PSR rules.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

If ENIC’s plan all along was to build the club’s value to such a degree that they could sell a relatively small portion, and that portion would be so valuable as to truly allow us to then compete with the biggest clubs, and to then do that on the foundation of a club that has the discipline to keep throwing off as much cash as possible so that we can genuinely afford the new class of player we can buy over the long term, I’d have to say bravo. It would have been an unbelievably well executed 25 year strategy, and the life’s work of a pretty remarkable man.