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ENIC

I was focused on discussing our transfer success....We used to sign the likes of Modric etc while Levy was more central. Now we sign the 'proven' players that the top sides don't want.

Again, I think you're misinterpreting our transfer 'successes' by assuming Levy was more central. He was arguably *less* so - here's the general timeline (I stress, *general*) -

  1. 2004-2009-ish: he put people in place who then discovered players, and once he'd done his infamous and destructive haggling, some of them got over the line and improved us.
  2. 2009-2012-ish: Got rid of DoF model because Redknapp didn't like it, directly dealt with transfers. Some hits (VdV, Walker, Sandro), some misses (all the players we missed out on because the cheapskate spent too long haggling - Aguero, Llorente, Tevez, etc). Note - despite this, Edwards was our chief analyst around this time (2009-2011-ish), so the players we were identifying was good - Levy just fudged most of them up.
  3. 2012-2015-ish: Bandini brought in as DoF, scattergun approach to signings that saw some hits (Verts, Lloris, Eriksen, Dembele), some misses. Note Verts, Dembele and Lloris came in around the same time Baldini started, so hard to say there were 'his' - probably Edwards'.
  4. 2015-2016-ish: Our best era, recruitment wise. Mitchell and co. brought in, hit after hit - Son, Toby, Wanyama, Dele and so on. Where we cheaped out on the players identified, the cheapo replacements were useless (Fazio, Stambouli, N'Jie, and so on).
  5. 2016-2021: Mitchell leaves due to being frustrated by Levy, after having missed out on Mane and Wijnaldum because Levy wouldn't pay for either. We buy Sissoko and N'Koudou instead. Next five years are just atrocious, recruitment-wise - led by Levy and 'I hate January' Hitchen. Sanchez, Lucas, no signings for 18 months, Lo Celso, Ndombele, Jack Clarke, Joe Rodon, Matt Doherty and so on.
  6. 2021-2023: Paratici steps in. Scattergun approach, some hits (Romero, Deki, Bentancur), some misses.

The constant through that timeframe is when Levy is more involved,we struggle because he's a mediocre cheapskate. When he's less involved, things get a little better, but he tinkles off the people who identify players with his miserliness, they leave (Mitchell, Edwards),and we go back to being crap at buying players. Levy is at best a hindrance, and at worst the cause of why we fail.

At best he was once good at identifying the men who identified the players, but he is no longer good at that, as I explained. And there are no margins for error anymore - everyone in the league can outspend us, and thus build better squads while we stagnate.

So no, you're wrong and should want Levy to stay very far away from everything mate - I would prefer permanently, but if not, I'd take him spending his dotage on Lewis' yacht so we can move on from his mediocrity poisoning everything.
 
If Saudi Sportswashing Machine spend double what City do for the next few windows, will that make Mansour a bad owner, is it simply about spending more? Where does it stop?

Re: Mansour, nope, because they won things directly because he spent money. They became a top club because of Mansour, nothing else. So even if Saudis outspend him, that legacy is there.

And re: spending more, always has been that way. We bought Jimmy Greaves for a British-record fee of 99,999-quid, and that was only to save him from being the world's first 100,000-pound player.

Unless every club is fan-owned and there are American-style draft rules in place to encourage randomness + level out leagues, no way around it.
 
Again, I think you're misinterpreting our transfer 'successes' by assuming Levy was more central. He was arguably *less* so - here's the general timeline (I stress, *general*) -

  1. 2004-2009-ish: he put people in place who then discovered players, and once he'd done his infamous and destructive haggling, some of them got over the line and improved us.
  2. 2009-2012-ish: Got rid of DoF model because Redknapp didn't like it, directly dealt with transfers. Some hits (VdV, Walker, Sandro), some misses (all the players we missed out on because the cheapskate spent too long haggling - Aguero, Llorente, Tevez, etc). Note - despite this, Edwards was our chief analyst around this time (2009-2011-ish), so the players we were identifying was good - Levy just fudged most of them up.
  3. 2012-2015-ish: Bandini brought in as DoF, scattergun approach to signings that saw some hits (Verts, Lloris, Eriksen, Dembele), some misses. Note Verts, Dembele and Lloris came in around the same time Baldini started, so hard to say there were 'his' - probably Edwards'.
  4. 2015-2016-ish: Our best era, recruitment wise. Mitchell and co. brought in, hit after hit - Son, Toby, Wanyama, Dele and so on. Where we cheaped out on the players identified, the cheapo replacements were useless (Fazio, Stambouli, N'Jie, and so on).
  5. 2016-2021: Mitchell leaves due to being frustrated by Levy, after having missed out on Mane and Wijnaldum because Levy wouldn't pay for either. We buy Sissoko and N'Koudou instead. Next five years are just atrocious, recruitment-wise - led by Levy and 'I hate January' Hitchen. Sanchez, Lucas, no signings for 18 months, Lo Celso, Ndombele, Jack Clarke, Joe Rodon, Matt Doherty and so on.
  6. 2021-2023: Paratici steps in. Scattergun approach, some hits (Romero, Deki, Bentancur), some misses.

The constant through that timeframe is when Levy is more involved,we struggle because he's a mediocre cheapskate. When he's less involved, things get a little better, but he tinkles off the people who identify players with his miserliness, they leave (Mitchell, Edwards),and we go back to being crap at buying players. Levy is at best a hindrance, and at worst the cause of why we fail.

At best he was once good at identifying the men who identified the players, but he is no longer good at that, as I explained. And there are no margins for error anymore - everyone in the league can outspend us, and thus build better squads while we stagnate.

So no, you're wrong and should want Levy to stay very far away from everything mate - I would prefer permanently, but if not, I'd take him spending his dotage on Lewis' yacht so we can move on from his mediocrity poisoning everything.
Again
Your making so many assumptions
You could work in the UK press if you ever wanted a job
 
Re: Mansour, nope, because they won things directly because he spent money. They became a top club because of Mansour, nothing else. So even if Saudis outspend him, that legacy is there.

And re: spending more, always has been that way. We bought Jimmy Greaves for a British-record fee of 99,999-quid, and that was only to save him from being the world's first 100,000-pound player.

Unless every club is fan-owned and there are American-style draft rules in place to encourage randomness + level out leagues, no way around it.

how long will that last, would that still be the case in 20 years or would City fans be on his back that they never win anything?

there is a way around it, a really easy way, reasonable expectations, appreciating progress and relativity

if you have to buy an achievement there is no value in it
 
Again
Your making so many assumptions
You could work in the UK press if you ever wanted a job

Read the links I posted earlier mate, re: Mitchell. Clear enough why he left at least, and then it's up to you if you want to extrapolate that to all our other struggles under our esteemed chairman over 20 grinding years.

I think it's reasonable to do so - others differ, fair enough.

As for those links, you mentioned earlier a Talksport interview with Webb - I haven't seen it mate, what does he say? (Only say his quotes floating around)
 
Read the links I posted earlier mate, re: Mitchell. Clear enough why he left at least, and then it's up to you if you want to extrapolate that to all our other struggles under our esteemed chairman over 20 grinding years.

I think it's reasonable to do so - others differ, fair enough.

As for those links, you mentioned earlier a Talksport interview with Webb - I haven't seen it mate, what does he say? (Only say his quotes floating around)

destructive haggling, penny pitching, ignores the reality of our finances, unless you really do think they were squirrelling away money from the club somewhere and hiding it in the publicly available annual financial results, which would have been a massive crime
 
Read the links I posted earlier mate, re: Mitchell. Clear enough why he left at least, and then it's up to you if you want to extrapolate that to all our other struggles under our esteemed chairman over 20 grinding years.

I think it's reasonable to do so - others differ, fair enough.

As for those links, you mentioned earlier a Talksport interview with Webb - I haven't seen it mate, what does he say? (Only say his quotes floating around)
Webb basically lies or is mistaken … what is key is he is irrelevant in modern football and certainly said some wrong things. He said Poch wanted mane and was using his experience of managing him at Southampton to help

There is talk that Mitchell wanted cuts in deals. Guy hasn’t lasted anywhere. Doesn’t mean he is good or bad of course, but his lack of a long lasting CV could also mean we can speculate….

We havent actually struggled though. We have gradually got better and better as the league has got harder and harder. What would have been a big leap 20 years ago is now a small step. Get those steps wrong and you can fall backwards. We have regressed in the last 4 years but still maintained a competitive level which must mean we have been doing some things right

if you really want to know what is progress… when I got my ST 19 years ago I could pick a seat anywhere. Now that we’re really brick there is a waiting list and the games are full even with the ticket protestors not turning up. That’s without trophies and with some really turgid football
 
Cool
He looked around and decided to go to play for Klopp
We wouldn’t pay Mane’s wage demands (which weren’t actually particularly unreasonable0.

For Wjinaldum we wouldn’t pay the transfer fee that Saudi Sportswashing Machine demanded (we then paid a higher fee for Sissoko in the last hour of the window).

I think Liverpool signed both players despite having no CL football.
 
In your opinion
You state a lot as fact, but in reality it’s opinions

of you ask a LOT of players if they could sign for us or pool it would be pool for the vast majority

if you ask a player if you wangle to sign for a coach who has win things or one who hasn’t… then would normally go for the former

it’s natural for players with aspiration

It’s literally what Spurs fans say about Kane
Indeed, typically because they pay higher wages and push the boat out to try to win things. Mane was more than happy to come to spurs that summer, indeed we even had the March on Liverpool with the potential transfer, we just wouldn’t meet the wage demands, so Liverpool jumped in and did so.
 
The dippers were paying three times what we could afford.

Thanks to their dodgy dealing and the danger money for the doping their players had to do.
Actually they didn’t pay him much more than we paid Sissoko. We were making record profits back then due to Pochettino’s ahead of schedule CL qualifications.
 
Again, I think you're misinterpreting our transfer 'successes' by assuming Levy was more central. He was arguably *less* so - here's the general timeline (I stress, *general*) -

  1. 2004-2009-ish: he put people in place who then discovered players, and once he'd done his infamous and destructive haggling, some of them got over the line and improved us.
  2. 2009-2012-ish: Got rid of DoF model because Redknapp didn't like it, directly dealt with transfers. Some hits (VdV, Walker, Sandro), some misses (all the players we missed out on because the cheapskate spent too long haggling - Aguero, Llorente, Tevez, etc). Note - despite this, Edwards was our chief analyst around this time (2009-2011-ish), so the players we were identifying was good - Levy just fudged most of them up.
  3. 2012-2015-ish: Bandini brought in as DoF, scattergun approach to signings that saw some hits (Verts, Lloris, Eriksen, Dembele), some misses. Note Verts, Dembele and Lloris came in around the same time Baldini started, so hard to say there were 'his' - probably Edwards'.
  4. 2015-2016-ish: Our best era, recruitment wise. Mitchell and co. brought in, hit after hit - Son, Toby, Wanyama, Dele and so on. Where we cheaped out on the players identified, the cheapo replacements were useless (Fazio, Stambouli, N'Jie, and so on).
  5. 2016-2021: Mitchell leaves due to being frustrated by Levy, after having missed out on Mane and Wijnaldum because Levy wouldn't pay for either. We buy Sissoko and N'Koudou instead. Next five years are just atrocious, recruitment-wise - led by Levy and 'I hate January' Hitchen. Sanchez, Lucas, no signings for 18 months, Lo Celso, Ndombele, Jack Clarke, Joe Rodon, Matt Doherty and so on.
  6. 2021-2023: Paratici steps in. Scattergun approach, some hits (Romero, Deki, Bentancur), some misses.

The constant through that timeframe is when Levy is more involved,we struggle because he's a mediocre cheapskate. When he's less involved, things get a little better, but he tinkles off the people who identify players with his miserliness, they leave (Mitchell, Edwards),and we go back to being crap at buying players. Levy is at best a hindrance, and at worst the cause of why we fail.

At best he was once good at identifying the men who identified the players, but he is no longer good at that, as I explained. And there are no margins for error anymore - everyone in the league can outspend us, and thus build better squads while we stagnate.

So no, you're wrong and should want Levy to stay very far away from everything mate - I would prefer permanently, but if not, I'd take him spending his dotage on Lewis' yacht so we can move on from his mediocrity poisoning everything.
I wonder when it was that Paul Barber left?
 
We wouldn’t pay Mane’s wage demands (which weren’t actually particularly unreasonable0.

For Wjinaldum we wouldn’t pay the transfer fee that Saudi Sportswashing Machine demanded (we then paid a higher fee for Sissoko in the last hour of the window).

I think Liverpool signed both players despite having no CL football.

This.
 
Read the links I posted earlier mate, re: Mitchell. Clear enough why he left at least, and then it's up to you if you want to extrapolate that to all our other struggles under our esteemed chairman over 20 grinding years.

I think it's reasonable to do so - others differ, fair enough.

As for those links, you mentioned earlier a Talksport interview with Webb - I haven't seen it mate, what does he say? (Only say his quotes floating around)
I don’t mind the fact that various people involved in recruitment at Spurs have left the club (good people always leave as it’s only human nature to want to better yourself). Though I do think that on occasion we have allowed them to leave too easily (good people are worth paying top money for). However the most galling thing for me is the complete neglect of our recruitmet structure that happened post Mitchell and pre Paratici, that period of shocking direction and leadership from the top has cost us dearly.
 
Again, I think you're misinterpreting our transfer 'successes' by assuming Levy was more central. He was arguably *less* so - here's the general timeline (I stress, *general*) -

  1. 2004-2009-ish: he put people in place who then discovered players, and once he'd done his infamous and destructive haggling, some of them got over the line and improved us.
  2. 2009-2012-ish: Got rid of DoF model because Redknapp didn't like it, directly dealt with transfers. Some hits (VdV, Walker, Sandro), some misses (all the players we missed out on because the cheapskate spent too long haggling - Aguero, Llorente, Tevez, etc). Note - despite this, Edwards was our chief analyst around this time (2009-2011-ish), so the players we were identifying was good - Levy just fudged most of them up.
  3. 2012-2015-ish: Bandini brought in as DoF, scattergun approach to signings that saw some hits (Verts, Lloris, Eriksen, Dembele), some misses. Note Verts, Dembele and Lloris came in around the same time Baldini started, so hard to say there were 'his' - probably Edwards'.
  4. 2015-2016-ish: Our best era, recruitment wise. Mitchell and co. brought in, hit after hit - Son, Toby, Wanyama, Dele and so on. Where we cheaped out on the players identified, the cheapo replacements were useless (Fazio, Stambouli, N'Jie, and so on).
  5. 2016-2021: Mitchell leaves due to being frustrated by Levy, after having missed out on Mane and Wijnaldum because Levy wouldn't pay for either. We buy Sissoko and N'Koudou instead. Next five years are just atrocious, recruitment-wise - led by Levy and 'I hate January' Hitchen. Sanchez, Lucas, no signings for 18 months, Lo Celso, Ndombele, Jack Clarke, Joe Rodon, Matt Doherty and so on.
  6. 2021-2023: Paratici steps in. Scattergun approach, some hits (Romero, Deki, Bentancur), some misses.

The constant through that timeframe is when Levy is more involved,we struggle because he's a mediocre cheapskate. When he's less involved, things get a little better, but he tinkles off the people who identify players with his miserliness, they leave (Mitchell, Edwards),and we go back to being crap at buying players. Levy is at best a hindrance, and at worst the cause of why we fail.

At best he was once good at identifying the men who identified the players, but he is no longer good at that, as I explained. And there are no margins for error anymore - everyone in the league can outspend us, and thus build better squads while we stagnate.

So no, you're wrong and should want Levy to stay very far away from everything mate - I would prefer permanently, but if not, I'd take him spending his dotage on Lewis' yacht so we can move on from his mediocrity poisoning everything.

it’s a lot of text but doesn’t prove anything. You are suggesting that Levy was less involved in transfers in early ENIC days when we had more hits. And is more involved in transfers recently when we’ve had a DOF or manager led recruitment and more expensive misses. :confused:

Who am I to challenge your telling of history, it’s your narrative so indulge your vision and have a great whinge!
 
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Our first PL top 6 finish was in 2005/06, since then, we’ve only dropped out of it 4 times, and that’s including this season (which isn’t definite yet).

Suggesting other clubs are better run for the odd good season is disingenuous, it’s Brighton this year, but not that long ago it was Leicester, who are about to get relegated again.

I think we should be careful what we wish for.
 
Indeed, typically because they pay higher wages and push the boat out to try to win things. Mane was more than happy to come to spurs that summer, indeed we even had the March on Liverpool with the potential transfer, we just wouldn’t meet the wage demands, so Liverpool jumped in and did so.
Yep he wanted more than every player we had here who had achieved more than him and he chose Liverpool
 
I don’t mind the fact that various people involved in recruitment at Spurs have left the club (good people always leave as it’s only human nature to want to better yourself). Though I do think that on occasion we have allowed them to leave too easily (good people are worth paying top money for). However the most galling thing for me is the complete neglect of our recruitmet structure that happened post Mitchell and pre Paratici, that period of shocking direction and leadership from the top has cost us dearly.

I agree with this, except Baldini who seemed to love the profile and looked to be enjoying himself too much whilst doing little haha, but that aside I agree. I only hope now this whole structure we seem intent on implementing is a change back to that longer term look. Thats my big hope, if Mumm gets a good DOF and a progressive manager
 
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