Eriktheviking
Pascal Chimbonda
A
Ange never said bid, he said they discussed.
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The Overlap - some interesting comments from Ange
- Thread starter Goatleaf
- Start date
parklane1
Teddy Sheringham
To much sense in that for some.
DubaiSpur
Jack Jull
It's not really news, but it is the first open admission of this.
Up until this year we've had allusions and insinuations from the likes of Danny Rose ('buying players I need to Google'), Poch ('building a mansion and filling it with IKEA furniture') and Conte ('20 years the owners here and they win nothing, why?').
As far as I can recall, Ange is the first one to come out and bluntly say that he wanted players the club were way too tight-fisted to pay for, and thus he got cheap teenagers instead. He even named them - Guehi, Semenyo, Neto, etc. And linked it directly to why we don't operate like a big club.
It's a level of detail we haven't gotten before, and that's what makes it interesting.
To be fair, the club admitted it too - Venkatesham's January statement about boosting spending on wages was as much as anything else, an admission of how utterly short-sighted the Levy/Lewis policy was. But whether that was deceptive window dressing or a genuine commitment to change, we don't know yet.
kb 1984
Anthony Gardner
Nope
DubaiSpur
Jack Jull
Honestly lots of food for thought here. There's two things that I would argue with, though.
The first is that our transfer spending under ENIC has followed a rough trajectory as follows -
1) 2001-2009 - high net spend, low wages, focused on acquiring young talent.
2) 2010-2019 - low net spend, low wages - the austerity years where the priority was the stadium build - coincided with our best ever Premier League side being left to wither and die without support.
3) 2019-present - high net spend, low wages, focused on a mix of young talent and mid-career players willing to accept low wages.
The stadium came with a promise that it would change the way the club operates - it never really did. The club operates now much as it did in the 2000s, except the absolute scale of fees is bigger because the market has changed. This applies to everyone, not just us.
But in terms of wages to revenue, we are by far the lowest in the league, at 42%. And this means we are always immediately out of the conversation when it comes to the best players, because no one worth their salt comes to Spurs for relatively paltry wages.
The Levy gamble post-stadium was that sprinkling a few experienced pros willing to come here on cheap wages amidst our usual spending on young players, would be enough to drive us over the top. It didn't.
And the question now is - what if we operated differently? What if, instead of a high net spend but a very low wage bill, we did the opposite? Paid market rates for the best players, when we needed them, instead of spaffing the same money on 4-5 mediocre deadweights who come cheap, wage-wise?
Ange used the example of Declan Rice - Arsenal needed him, spent 100m, got him. Spurs spent a lot of money in that same window, but on a bunch of far lesser players who didn't provide anywhere near as much value.
That's where things needed changing. And it didn't even need that much more investment, just moving away from the model of keeping wages abysmally low no matter the cost.
Now of course it's too late - the dross we've bought since 2019 has meant that a full rebuild is needed, and that will be supremely costly both fee wise and wage wise. But it didn't need to be this way.
Bullet
Jimmy Cantrell
I presume the thinking from Levy was: What if the player becomes an absolute idiot and hardly plays, but we are paying him a fortune and he just sits there smirking for 2 or 3 years e.g. Alexis Sanchez at the Gooners, Aubameyang, Adebayor, Bogarde at Cheatski, Ndombele at Spurs etc.
Better not to attract mercenaries. Better to pay a lower wage BUT have large bonuses to take a player up to really good money IF they play a lot and the team does well. E.g. Kane and Son.
Not saying that is right, just saying that is a reasonable approach and perhaps that was Levy's thinking.
NOTE I agree there is scope to increase wages and VV agrees too, but we do need to avoid wage vampires.
We can pay higher wages than many clubs abroad can. But not all of course.
Clearly for top talents that are wanted by """THE BIG FIVE""" and ourselves, then wages are a key factor (as well as us about to be relegated).
Better not to attract mercenaries. Better to pay a lower wage BUT have large bonuses to take a player up to really good money IF they play a lot and the team does well. E.g. Kane and Son.
Not saying that is right, just saying that is a reasonable approach and perhaps that was Levy's thinking.
NOTE I agree there is scope to increase wages and VV agrees too, but we do need to avoid wage vampires.
We can pay higher wages than many clubs abroad can. But not all of course.
Clearly for top talents that are wanted by """THE BIG FIVE""" and ourselves, then wages are a key factor (as well as us about to be relegated).
parj
Willem Korsten
Wasn't it Jenas that said Tottenham were low basic salary payers but the bonuses made them compete with top clubs so you just had to back yourself and the team to get paid real money
I find it very weird to hear that Ange was surprised when the club wouldn’t spend more money on wages to attract proven stars. Everyone in football knows that, let alone someone applying to be the club’s manager. Bizarre, or he’s being very disingenuous (and I like the guy).
tommysvr
Pat van den Hauwe
I agree and I actually really like that model. But if that’s what you decide is best for business, then don’t kid yourself on the football side. Don’t prioritise finishing 4th or 5th over actual glory. Don’t sack a manager who wins a trophy. Don’t tell the world you “expect to challenge on all fronts” to set the new manager up for failure before he even fudging starts.
thfcsteff
Ralph Coates
The stadium income keeps us far ahead on FFP.
I think the complaint has massive foundations when you consider that it isn't a request for every player, but how many key players do we miss out on that a manager wants and instead we get a 'stat-friendly alternative'?
Reya? Vicario
Neto? Odobert
Semenyo? Tel (and I like Tel as it happens, but clearly, the manager didn't)
That's just the recent ones. Again, I am all for prudence but I am equally for knowing when to make the signing (s) that will count. Reya is a prime example.
You could even go back to Fernandes versus a loan to buy Lo Celso (and this behaviour from a team who had just been in the CL Final and got 150 million revenue from that run alone!!!!!!)...let's not even go to Mane and Winaldjum again (old drum I know)...
As with everything in life I think it is about the balance.
mudshark
Simon Davies
Well, blow me down. To the surprise of absolutely no-one I know, it seems there was no 4-D chess game going on after all, and it really was just what it looked like. Jam tomorrow, just as it's been from the get-go with ENIC (unless you count what's been smeared across the front of the home shirts for an age now). Of course they've been willing to spend on infrastructure projects like the stadium and training ground, because they know they'll get every penny of that back and more when they sell, but they regard player wages as money down the drain.
I don't know why, but I continue to be amazed by how easy people fall for anything a charlatan says.
- Talks about he didn't get 4 players that happen to be household names 18 months later, doesn't acknowledge club spent 280M for him, including overspending on his target Johnson which club has had to punt at earliest opportunity.
- Talks about how club didn't have winning mentality but takes a team to a set of points that after 10 games no other team has failed to get 4th, gets 5th, follows up with 17th following season, follows up by taking a team in European spots and failing to win a single game. His mentality was to throw the league?
- Took a lifetime to build a system/strategy that was worked out by every bum manager in the PL in 10 games
- No acknowledgment that VDV has basically come out and said he and Romero forced changes to Europa tactics, and that Ange's style caused injuries.
- Not to mention wtf was Semenyo going to do for Ange, run to edge of box and spam crosses to back post for Johnson to tap in? (because that's what he wanted Son to do), and Guehi? constantly run backward from half line high line until his hamstrings exploded?
I liked Ange pushing the mentality, calling out the media, internally pushing the club but his failure is on him, 100% (if he had managed 12th and Europa, he'd still be here), and like Conte (another charlatan that people love to quote) the lack of accountability of their own failures is amazing
- Talks about he didn't get 4 players that happen to be household names 18 months later, doesn't acknowledge club spent 280M for him, including overspending on his target Johnson which club has had to punt at earliest opportunity.
- Talks about how club didn't have winning mentality but takes a team to a set of points that after 10 games no other team has failed to get 4th, gets 5th, follows up with 17th following season, follows up by taking a team in European spots and failing to win a single game. His mentality was to throw the league?
- Took a lifetime to build a system/strategy that was worked out by every bum manager in the PL in 10 games
- No acknowledgment that VDV has basically come out and said he and Romero forced changes to Europa tactics, and that Ange's style caused injuries.
- Not to mention wtf was Semenyo going to do for Ange, run to edge of box and spam crosses to back post for Johnson to tap in? (because that's what he wanted Son to do), and Guehi? constantly run backward from half line high line until his hamstrings exploded?
I liked Ange pushing the mentality, calling out the media, internally pushing the club but his failure is on him, 100% (if he had managed 12th and Europa, he'd still be here), and like Conte (another charlatan that people love to quote) the lack of accountability of their own failures is amazing
DeanoAustin
Cecil Poynton
As a business model, it's brilliant. I've always said that. Paying for performance would be a great model if everyone does it. But they don't. This is competition as much as it is business and if you guarantee the big wages, come what may, you will attract better players than those clubs trying to have performance related bonuses. And in a sporting environment, clubs will do anything to gain an edge.
Why would any top player come here and have 40%-50% of their pay relying on the performance of 10 other lads when he can get the money guaranteed elsewhere? What we do is responsible, it's sustainable, it's good business but it won't make us competitive.
When your wages to turnover ratio is the lowest in the league and has been for years, you're deciding to do things differently to most other clubs. It's not that we can't spend more on wages, it's that we don't want to.
There isn't an absolute right answer or wrong answer here, there are degrees of risk (by spending, you're putting faith in lads to deliver and you're risking having an Alexis Sanchez or Casemiro situation) and, historically, we've been extremely risk averse.
DeanoAustin
Cecil Poynton
I'm not an Ange fan but that's unfair. And he's basically reiterated what Poch, Jose and Conte said.
A lot to unpack.
1. On the 280m, Ange said that we compete on transfer fees - we don't compete on wages. That's the point. You can't get top players paying relatively poor wages.
2. We finished 5th having lost Harry Kane. That was a very respectable finish whatever the circumstances.
3. VdV didn't say they forced a change in tactics, they suggested it and they worked with Ange to make it happen. That's good management in my book.
Ange does have accountability for his sacking here. No doubt. But that doesn't discredit what he's said in any way especially when so many others, who have been on the inside, have said exactly the same thing.
And Jose and Conte will sell their mother down a river not to accept accountability for their own failures.
Yes, there is a lot to unpack but so much of it is surface nonsense
- Spurs was dependant on Kane, no brick, team is dependent on a generational elite striker, is Harry covering up cracks at Bayern too?
- How did his team go from 5th - 17th? how can you not address that elephant? and no, it isn't because he didn't get the 3 players he named, and it isn't because we prioritized Europa, it's 100% because he got sussed out in the league and couldn't figure how to adapt.
If he and/or Conte had acknowledged 5% of it was on them, I'd have a lot more time for it
The club has issues, the owners are liars, they are Nepo babies that look out of their depth (although even more scary is it seemed they needed to pull the trigger vs. Vinai/Lange re Frank), I don't agree with out recruitment (but not in the way most people don't), wages is just the latest stick (it was spend, then net spend, now wages, if we change that, it will be something else) and again, not single person acknowledges the closest club to us in wages/turnover is Real Madrid and the furthest is clubs like Palace/Villa and everyone is trying to get it down, not increase it.
It's funny in a way, a huge part of the reason Spurs is the media kicking target is how Spurs fans refuse to defend anything about the club, lap up any critique of the club, refuse to accept that the game is rigged, it's always us 100% shooting ourselves in the foot, nothing else. And honestly I liked Ange for being one of the few to try to defend us, but this interview is a PR piece to save himself using same old same old Spurs narrative
fernadez
Edgar Davids
The review the club should be undertaking is
Has the proces of buying x amount of cheaper players and paying them less vs buying less players but paying them more been benfical?
It's not like we're a Brighton how farm these players out for big fees a few years later. What is the value in buying Tel, Odobert and Johnson for example vs having Son, spending big on Semenyo and having Moore coming through (not saying that was the maths).
Seems to be that our method actually ends up costing us more, buy cheap buy 8 times in the case of our centre midfield.
Has the proces of buying x amount of cheaper players and paying them less vs buying less players but paying them more been benfical?
It's not like we're a Brighton how farm these players out for big fees a few years later. What is the value in buying Tel, Odobert and Johnson for example vs having Son, spending big on Semenyo and having Moore coming through (not saying that was the maths).
Seems to be that our method actually ends up costing us more, buy cheap buy 8 times in the case of our centre midfield.
DeanoAustin
Cecil Poynton
Jose and Conte are narcissists and don't accept responsibility easily. I don't dispute that. Conte combusted for his own selfish reasons in my book. Doesn't make them wrong. Poch said the same thing. Harry Redknapp got Saha and Nelson when we were in the mix for the league. Lots of players and ex players have been liking the posts on social media from Romero and Ange (via the Overlap). The weight of opinion, allied to the evidence in front of our eyes, means the criticism is very difficult to refute.
I would criticise Ange to high heaven for finishing 17th. It was a disgraceful finish regardless of circumstances and EL but it doesn't render his criticism any less valid.
You can't compare us to Real Madrid. Madrid have the highest revenue in world football and pay the highest absolute wages in world football. They don't increase their ratio because they don't have to. They already attract the best because they pay the most money. The difference is that we don't want to increase our ratio despite never competing for the top players.
Lots of clubs need to reduce their wages to turnover ratio. Villa would be another club who have spent an insane amount of their turnover on wages. Everton too IIRC. They've gone too far in the opposite direction. That doesn't make the criticism of us any less valid. We're bottom of the pile when it comes to the ratio. It's a risk averse policy that stops us getting better players. There can be no dispute about that.
Ange has been asked questions and answered them honestly. Of course, I'd expect he's diminished his own role in our decline over the last 2 seasons. That's what people do. But that doesn't mean you can dismiss all of the criticism. Taking it on its own merits, looking at the facts, looking at what others in the know have said it's very hard to argue that he doesn't have a point.
There's a lot in here, and I like a lot of what you are thinking.
I'd defend the squad a little though at the moment. We're far from the 2019 peak Dele era, but we have internationals across the squad and one of the lowest age groups of any team in the league - Frank for all his faults saw the need along with dippy dippy Lang Lang for some experience, so by doing this we do have the potential with some choice additions to the squad, window by window, to improve quite fast.
Gallagher is a budget version of this - instead of getting someone with leadership and elite status we went for a player that Cheatski considered dispensable, and sadly we don't need that, even if he will moderately improve us.
We need established and Elite players front to back - it starts with the keeper, we should have been in for Donnarumma (whether he would come or not, we had just won the Europa League so maybe if we'd gone early on it) and prepared to pay the cash for him - bizarrely there were very few takers for the best keeper in Italy since Zenga - and City did it more because he was available than because they wanted him. I could go position by position, but you could make a case for the fact that we should have been there or thereabouts for every top player that moves each summer, if they fit what we need - right now we seem to be wired to go looking for the cooky clever alternative, and it rarely works out. This needs to change, along with the wages we are paying - which thankfully Vinai has acknowledged so its now in the public domain.
If we survive this fudged up mess we're in right now in the league, there has to be a complete change of approach or we need to be sold. I think that the powers that be probably recognise this in purely financial terms if not footballing ones - relegation means less cash.
The bigger issue is the lack of strategy/objectives
- Personally I think the club stuttered under Levy because his overarching goal in first 20 odd years was to get us in and around top 4, and when we got there, some combination of not knowing what to do next (or how to do it) and financial restrictions kicked in, and as often the case, if you try to stay in place, others pass you.
For all this talk of wages, spend, squad quality, the big question is for what.
- Ange said he wanted Semenyo, Guehi, etc. for what? to push top 4, challenge for league? is that what the heirachy wanted/expected? (I'll leave out his inability to achieve it)
If we look at current squad
- Romero, Bentancur, Maddison, Deki, Solanke, Porro, Gallagher, Kudus, Spence, Palhinha, all represent good PL proven (lets say top 6-8) players, none for me scream need to replace
- VDV, Udogie, Xavi, Gray, Bergvall, Odobert, are the young side of team that have already shown decent promise, again no concerns here
- That's 16+ of a 25 man squad ready to go.
- Vusckovic, Moore, LWB represent a decent academy that should provide 2-3 players to squad in next year or so.
What the club needs is not some grand rebuild/reset but addition of core quality
- GK (upgrade Vic)
- CF (real competition for Solanke, upgrade Richi)
- CM, this depends on style incoming manager wants to play, could be a deep lying passer, could be a goal scorer, could be someone that just keeps possession/tempo
If your goal is top 4-6, those 3 players could be 70M types (e.g. United won't win the league with Mbeumo & Cunha)
If your goal is win something consistently, those players need to be 100M (see Liverpool and Scum)
I honestly don't think the wages are as big an issue at the 70M range, at 100M it sorts itself out (you will pay it or player won't come)
The club can't come out and say this is our strategy, but they need to have one internally and it doesn't feel that way right now.