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ENIC

It was well worth a read, but ultimately, the argument that 'we got to that 2010-2014 period by taking risks on unproven players' is interesting given that once we got to that stage, it was Levy's utterly dogmatic refusal to entertain any risk whatsoever that sent us tumbling from that peak back to where we now are, with all the recriminations and boardroom politics that said fall entailed.

Taking a risk on a manager (as the article implies we did on AVB) also involves more than just plonking him in the hotseat and then continuing to buy cheap bargain buys that he didn't ask for uninterrupted. And as for the article's argument about AVB's requests for players being facile considering his subsequent lack of ability to forge a cohesive attacking system, it's a chicken and egg argument that fails to take into account the goalscoring tallies of his current side (Zenit), where players that he did want and that were fits for his system currently ply their trade.

Well-written, and well-argued, but ultimately a mite too illogical, apologetic and defensive about ENIC's failings for my liking. Still, I suspect the article wasn't written to convince people like me anyway.

Under Redknapp there was no risks. Known manager to get us out of trouble and then brought in a lot of known premier league players that the manager trusted.
 
Under Redknapp there was no risks. Known manager to get us out of trouble and then brought in a lot of known premier league players that the manager trusted.

Possibly this as well. I highly doubt Defoe, Crouch, Palacios, Keane, Kaboul et al were young, unproven 'risks', and yet those players all contributed to one of the most memorable periods we've experienced in the modern era. This 'backing a manager' lark was paying dividends, shame we abruptly stopped doing it forevermore at some point.
 
Possibly this as well. I highly doubt Defoe, Crouch, Palacios, Keane, Kaboul et al were young, unproven 'risks', and yet those players all contributed to one of the most memorable periods we've experienced in the modern era. This 'backing a manager' lark was paying dividends, shame we abruptly stopped doing it forevermore at some point.

Shame we spent so much money on those players we had to cut back for a while.
 
The problem with these articles is

- Certain percentage of truth
- Large percentage of speculation
- Completely unsubstantiated rule that 1+1 = 3

Lets be clear

- Nothing is "wrong" at Tottenham Hotspur. The club is a globally known brand, with remarkably consistent performances over the last 7 years, including one of the most entertaining CL QF runs by any club. Well developed foreign market strategy with US, great investment in youth system with perhaps the best academy results amongst peers at this point. From a business perspective almost always punches above weight in terms of results vs. income/spend of peers/betters, has had a remarkable roster of quality players (Carrick, Berbatov, Davids, King, VDV, Bale, Modric, etc.)

Not being satisfied with where we are does not equal = something is wrong. (Do you think something is wrong with Cheat$ki/Madrid because they fire managers all the time?). Results matter, and based on income/spend, our results are good (fans not liking it or SKY's BS about CL & 4th place trophy being the only thing that matters doesn't change that).

The other big problem is the

- "if we had bought x player at x time, we would have absolutely got CL"

Sorry, complete and utter bull****, we could have bought Messi & Ronaldo and had them break each others legs in training and still got **** all. Look at the seasons where all of Cheat$ki and City's spending did not pay off, no guarantees here. How much money has United spent to get CL this year, you really think we compete at that level of spend?

Do I personally think that an additional WC player "might" have made a difference and turned one of those 5th -> 4th, 4th -> 3rd? maybe .. but its exactly that, maybe

We live in an instant gratification world, we happen to support a club that is at a massive fiscal disadvantage due to a number of well documented issues with league/sport and we are (admit it) jealous of the results of others ... so what ...

The big problem at Tottenham is the fans need for a spacegoat when the unachievable (or at least very difficult) doesn't happen immediately.
 
Shame we spent so much money on those players we had to cut back for a while.

Implying we'll do it again once this 'a while' period passes, or really ever again under ENIC. AVB would have something to say about that assertion, I suspect. In any case, the point was that the article's assumptions and arguments are flawed, and I'd welcome any evidence to the contrary: Modric THFC's well-made point merely added to the arguments against the article's premise being logically sound. It's a well-written article, but its premise is faulty. It is because we gave the manager what he wanted that he subsequently led us to the prime-time: it is because we didn't give the manager what he wanted that AVB's attacking system failed, a failure compounded by us selling the player he built his 'compromise' system around. Taking risks on young players has little to do with these (arguable) points.
 
It was well worth a read, but ultimately, the argument that 'we got to that 2010-2014 period by taking risks on unproven players' is interesting given that once we got to that stage, it was Levy's utterly dogmatic refusal to entertain any risk whatsoever that sent us tumbling from that peak back to where we now are, with all the recriminations and boardroom politics that said fall entailed.

Taking a risk on a manager (as the article implies we did on AVB) also involves more than just plonking him in the hotseat and then continuing to buy cheap bargain buys that he didn't ask for uninterrupted. And as for the article's argument about AVB's requests for players being facile considering his subsequent lack of ability to forge a cohesive attacking system, it's a chicken and egg argument that fails to take into account the goalscoring tallies of his current side (Zenit), where players that he did want and that were fits for his system currently ply their trade.

Well-written, and well-argued, but ultimately a mite too illogical, apologetic and defensive about ENIC's failings for my liking. Still, I suspect the article wasn't written to convince people like me anyway.

It probably helps that, at Zenit, AVB is in charge of by far the biggest spenders in Russia which makes his achievements about on par with winning the Premier League with Man €ity.
 
Implying we'll do it again once this 'a while' period passes, or really ever again under ENIC. AVB would have something to say about that assertion, I suspect. In any case, the point was that the article's assumptions and arguments are flawed, and I'd welcome any evidence to the contrary: Modric THFC's well-made point merely added to the arguments against the article's premise being logically sound. It's a well-written article, but its premise is faulty. It is because we gave the manager what he wanted that he subsequently led us to the prime-time: it is because we didn't give the manager what he wanted that AVB's attacking system failed, a failure compounded by us selling the player he built his 'compromise' system around. Taking risks on young players has little to do with these (arguable) points.

We have taken on too many high earners and struggling to shed them. I do suspect we are offering new signings too much really.
 
Implying we'll do it again once this 'a while' period passes, or really ever again under ENIC. AVB would have something to say about that assertion, I suspect. In any case, the point was that the article's assumptions and arguments are flawed, and I'd welcome any evidence to the contrary: Modric THFC's well-made point merely added to the arguments against the article's premise being logically sound. It's a well-written article, but its premise is faulty. It is because we gave the manager what he wanted that he subsequently led us to the prime-time: it is because we didn't give the manager what he wanted that AVB's attacking system failed, a failure compounded by us selling the player he built his 'compromise' system around. Taking risks on young players has little to do with these (arguable) points.

We couldn't give AVB what he wanted as a lot of the players he wanted = Oscar, Moutinho, Hulk, Willian, Villa etc were out of the realistic bracket of targets we could buy. They were either too expensive or the competition for their signature was too strong from clubs in a superior and more attractive position. We didn't not back AVB we gave him as much as we could as a club. He was just at the wrong club
 
We couldn't give AVB what he wanted as a lot of the players he wanted = Oscar, Moutinho, Hulk, Willian, Villa etc were out of the realistic bracket of targets we could buy. They were either too expensive or the competition for their signature was too strong from clubs in a superior and more attractive position. We didn't not back AVB we gave him as much as we could as a club. He was just at the wrong club

This.
 
Implying we'll do it again once this 'a while' period passes, or really ever again under ENIC. AVB would have something to say about that assertion, I suspect. In any case, the point was that the article's assumptions and arguments are flawed, and I'd welcome any evidence to the contrary: Modric THFC's well-made point merely added to the arguments against the article's premise being logically sound. It's a well-written article, but its premise is faulty. It is because we gave the manager what he wanted that he subsequently led us to the prime-time: it is because we didn't give the manager what he wanted that AVB's attacking system failed, a failure compounded by us selling the player he built his 'compromise' system around. Taking risks on young players has little to do with these (arguable) points.

The problem though is AVB reportedly said in the interview he wanted to sign young players and build a team. Then changed his mind completely when he was appointed to wanting Moutinho, Hulk and Anderson in the first transfer committee meeting.
 
Do we have any evidence that he wanted to sign only young players? That's quite a sweeping policy that doesn't tally with the players we did sign. The players in question were not pie in the sky requests like Zlatan, Ronaldo or Trundle, Willian and Oscar obviously ended up at Chelsea but the rest signed for clubs of equal (or, lets be honest, lower) stature than ourselves for fees lower than we paid for riskier prospects last summer. He was merely trying to build a spine he trusted, not trying to buy a whole new megastar 22.

I doubt we'll ever know the truth of AVB's reign and I'm sure he's partly to blame for the wheels coming off, but ENIC were right there with him.
 
Do we have any evidence that he wanted to sign only young players? That's quite a sweeping policy that doesn't tally with the players we did sign. The players in question were not pie in the sky requests like Zlatan, Ronaldo or Trundle, Willian and Oscar obviously ended up at Chelsea but the rest signed for clubs of equal (or, lets be honest, lower) stature than ourselves for fees lower than we paid for riskier prospects last summer. He was merely trying to build a spine he trusted, not trying to buy a whole new megastar 22.

I doubt we'll ever know the truth of AVB's reign and I'm sure he's partly to blame for the wheels coming off, but ENIC were right there with him.

We agreed what would have been a record breaking (for us) £25m+ deal with Porto for Moutinho but they (and / or third party interests) pulled out at the eleventh hour. He subsequently went to Monaco who were, at the time, spending Russian oil money like it was going out of fashion.

We did all we could to tempt David Villa to the club but he didn't want to leave Spain and ended up signing for Atletico Madrid for less than we had offered.

We didn't sign Hulk because we couldn't compete with the £40m plus huge wages that Gazprom backed Zenit offered.

As to comparisons between summer 2012 and what we spent last summer, we didn't have £85m of Bale money burning a hole in our back pocket in summer 2012.
 
Somebody said once, maybe it was Comolli, that work on signings begins as early as a year in advance.
 
My guess would be that we enquire about lots of players. Only pursuing your number one target would be foolish.
This has to be it. I'm sure Baldini & Co have a prioritised short-list of players and each of them is an option until they are not. Fazio might have been contacted early but that does not mean he was top of our wishlist.
 
Sevilla now saying this proves Tottenham were just trying to make them accept a lower fee than his buyout clause. Last minute panic buy he was not. Say we tried for all of Fazio, Moreno and Mussachio. Fazio was the one that was gettable.
 
Do we have any evidence that he wanted to sign only young players? That's quite a sweeping policy that doesn't tally with the players we did sign. The players in question were not pie in the sky requests like Zlatan, Ronaldo or Trundle, Willian and Oscar obviously ended up at Chelsea but the rest signed for clubs of equal (or, lets be honest, lower) stature than ourselves for fees lower than we paid for riskier prospects last summer. He was merely trying to build a spine he trusted, not trying to buy a whole new megastar 22.

I doubt we'll ever know the truth of AVB's reign and I'm sure he's partly to blame for the wheels coming off, but ENIC were right there with him.

You see, this is the problem with most criticisms of Levy. Valid criticisms and observations get lost in a sea of, quite frankly what can only be described as a load of horse-sh*t where mythical statements based on pure fantasy become fact.

The criticism that Levy failed to land AVB's top targets is ridiculous.

All of them were frankly pie in the sky targets that we nevertheless attempted to pursue to the fullest of our ability.

AVB himself released some kind of statement at the end of summer window 2012 praising Levy for his attempts to sign Moutinho. While some might read this as club propaganda you have to remember that if AVB didn't think Levy went over and above in attempts to sign this guy he could have just said nothing on the subject.

Oscar, Willian and Villa were all reportedly close before other clubs in more prestigious or advantageous positions intervened.

If anyone really thinks we had a chance of buying Hulk given his fee and wages then I will have a draw of whatever pipe you've been smoking sir as I coukd sure do with an injection of blind optimism.

Levy's role in AVB's failure at Spurs has in my view more to do with s failure on both Levy and AVB's part to realise what Spurs needed immediately post-Redknapp and that AVB was not the man with the experience or skill to carry out a top-to-bottom rebuild utilising unproven talent and youth players and that what he needed was a stable club with a quality playing squad who he could work the extra 10% out of on the training pitch.

Clearly, somewhere between pitching of the job description by Levy and the board and the selling of the suitability for the job by AVB, and the resulting expectations on both fronts something fell down. My guess was that everyone involved was not smelling of roses.
 
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