Mauricio Pochettino

[Bedfordspurs]

You're not wrong here, but as @thfcsteff pointed out, this is a failure on Levy's part probably due to his lack of structure within the club. He's managing a stadium rebuild (and from all accounts was VERY hands on - i've got friends who worked on the stadium that have said the same). He's also managing a club in transition and responsible for contracts and purchases.

We bought no one, we let 3 first teamers fall into their last season at the club - that is wilful neglect and un-Levy like like you mention, but it happened and the buck stops at his door as all roads lead to Levy.

Find me another team in the whole of Europe who had 3 first teamers falling into final year of their contract, with no adequate replacements? Look at all the flak Woodward or Kronke gets, but for some reason Levy is beyond reproach for doing the same or worse?

Anyway, it's done now. Given this is the most 'successful' we've been in over 30 years of football, my little boy will be into his 20's before he sees anything close.

Chelsea had quite a few until recently when they triggered Girouds extension but Pedro and Willian are off on frees
It’s becoming more and more common now actually
PSG Too have the same issue
Players can’t control the situation as much as clubs and directors
Eriksen controlled the situation by possibly intimating he would stay but only on his terms. As I said he was publicly lifting his skirt to the big clubs in Spain but they didn’t want him.... there wasn’t exactly a clamour to sign him even at £17m
Maybe some clubs didn’t fancy him. Could be the mentality he has shown wasn’t right for some for example
In hindsight we should have sold him earlier but whose to say he would have gone to who would have paid the money

 

[Finney Is Back]

I wonder how many of these signings that Luis Campos would’ve approved of...

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/mau...rainer/9044/plus/0/galerie/0?station_id=93545
View attachment 8844

That's actually a pretty good list of signings when you look at it like that.

 

[Finney Is Back]

I’m no Levy apologist but the Eriksen deal was the most unLevy like thing he has done. My feeling is that he would loved to have sold him and bought in a cheaper, younger replacement but with the stadium build going on he couldn’t offer Poch the full or many any of the proceeds to replace him, so given the esteem Levy held Poch in for his achievements up until that time Levy allowed him to run his contract down to not weaken the team. So on the pitch trumped the bottom line on this one. This was possibly extended to a Alderweireld albeit with a smaller hit on the possible fee and first team disruption.
It’s not the losing of the potential 100m that bothers me, it was the loss of form once his future became uncertain. Hindsight is wonderful and I doubt Poch or Levy would support a similar situation in future but there were warning signs the last time Eriksen was nearing the end of his contract and his form dropped again. If we’d sold him and bought a 30m replacement Levy would be being chastised for prioritising the £.
When (if!) things stabilise I’m sure we’ll revert to a more aggressive retention policy or sale of the players with high resale value, as we’ve seen at other clubs anything less than 2 years left the players in a very strong position. The exception will be when a player cannot be sold for less than their ‘book’ value, i.e if a player is bought for 10m on a 5 year contract, if we don’t get offered 2m I the final year their sale would be a loss, yet letting their contract expire wouldn’t be. Our biggest challenge seems to be offloading players though, it must be really frustrating and challenging for clubs aren’t doped that the threat of being dropped isn’t enough for some players to take a move.

He had the perfect opportunity to bring in the (much) cheaper, younger replacement the year before when Grealish was put on a plate for us to sign. We could then have allowed Grealish a year getting up to speed and sold Eriksen for a decent fee of probably 40 to 50 million last summer. We would've been £20 to £30 million up on the transaction and Pochettino would've had the player he wanted as a reasonably direct replacement.

Re: book values and losses on players, that actually doesn't matter to us like it does some clubs (or at least it shouldn't matter to us). We actually have an enormous amount of credit in terms of FFP so could afford to write off huge amounts on player sales. We also do not have any real shareholders to answer to in terms of the club making large paper profits.

 

[MKSpur]

He had the perfect opportunity to bring in the (much) cheaper, younger replacement the year before when Grealish was put on a plate for us to sign. We could then have allowed Grealish a year getting up to speed and sold Eriksen for a decent fee of probably 40 to 50 million last summer. We would've been £20 to £30 million up on the transaction and Pochettino would've had the player he wanted as a reasonably direct replacement.

Re: book values and losses on players, that actually doesn't matter to us like it does some clubs (or at least it shouldn't matter to us). We actually have an enormous amount of credit in terms of FFP so could afford to write off huge amounts on player sales. We also do not have any real shareholders to answer to in terms of the club making large paper profits.

Agree that the Grealish was an example of an opportunity that was potentially there, but perhaps the the financial constraints were part of the reason we’d only go to 20m or whatever the offer was rather than 40m? Maybe the plan was to get Grealish in within the small budget we had, with the intention to sell Erisken once he’d settled, but once it fell through there wasn’t a player we could get for 20m that Poch was happy to replace Eriksen with. I’d imagine there would have been a few eyebrows raised at our supposed ambition at the time of we had bought Grealish for 20 and sold Erisken for 100!
Re the book value thing, I also don’t think FFP is the driver, I think it’s because Levy looks at transfers through an accountants lens, which is why we seldom take a ‘hit’ on a player even when if they aren’t in first team contention.
As @Bedfordspurs stated, the issue with players running down contracts is becoming one for all clubs as players mentalities are changing. It’s a really difficult situation if a player decides to phone it in over the last two years of his contract. I have the Hunter Davies book The Glory Game which has an appendices regarding the players form the 72 season’s lifestyle and future plans - it’s hard to imagine them not giving 100% in a time where an injury really could make a life changing difference to their families future.

 

[MKSpur]

Re the above, highly recommend the book for anyone who hasn’t read it, here’s an example of the appendix with some very familiar names:


also the players were asked what it takes to become a pro, thought @Nutter-Naylor might appreciate this one! (Every other player picked skill, luck or coaching as their first choice attribute from the lost they were given!

 

[MKSpur]

You're not wrong here, but as @thfcsteff pointed out, this is a failure on Levy's part probably due to his lack of structure within the club. He's managing a stadium rebuild (and from all accounts was VERY hands on - i've got friends who worked on the stadium that have said the same). He's also managing a club in transition and responsible for contracts and purchases.

We bought no one, we let 3 first teamers fall into their last season at the club - that is wilful neglect and un-Levy like like you mention, but it happened and the buck stops at his door as all roads lead to Levy.

Find me another team in the whole of Europe who had 3 first teamers falling into final year of their contract, with no adequate replacements? Look at all the flak Woodward or Kronke gets, but for some reason Levy is beyond reproach for doing the same or worse?

Anyway, it's done now. Given this is the most 'successful' we've been in over 30 years of football, my little boy will be into his 20's before he sees anything close.

Yep it did feel that the massive focus required for the ground build would have distracted Levy from the team matters, perhaps he felt it required less focus as the team had performed beyond expectations. You need to replenish a squad just to stand still in my opinion, to avoid complacency even if not buying massive upgrades.
Like I say I am on the less popular side of the argument that there are some things Levy can do better, but the contract situations I genuinely believe was a trade off against replacing players who were huge for us with weaker replacements, during a period of Financial uncertainty. It’s just typical of us that the the best first team and manager combination we’ve had in eons coincided with a unique infrastructure project that was always going to set us back, both by the financial constraints and playing elsewhere. If we had sold Toby for his release clause of 25m, Eriksen for 100 and Jan for something like 20m, we would have had a real challenge financing moves for replacements of their quality within our wage structure at the time and then integrating them into the first team. Also between Poch and Levy there may have been a feeling that post the stadium completion we could offer them a competitive wage to stay (toby has, jan was our choice and Eriksen was claiming this was not his motivation. If Eriksen has played more like Ramsey in his final throes the decision might be looked back upon in a more positive light.
I have a Spurs mad 7 year old so I share your concerns. He still says he’s sad Poch has gone and thought Eriksens motivation to leave would be to go to a smaller team who would need his help more!
There’s a lot that can happen , we get the right DoF, hopefully a post Covid increased capacity to spend on a FFP basis compared to most of our peers will still happen and we do have a manager who to date has always delivered silverware.

 

[Finney Is Back]

Agree that the Grealish was an example of an opportunity that was potentially there, but perhaps the the financial constraints were part of the reason we’d only go to 20m or whatever the offer was rather than 40m? Maybe the plan was to get Grealish in within the small budget we had, with the intention to sell Eriksen-sen-sen once he’d settled, but once it fell through there wasn’t a player we could get for 20m that Poch was happy to replace Eriksen with. I’d imagine there would have been a few eyebrows raised at our supposed ambition at the time of we had bought Grealish for 20 and sold Eriksen-sen-sen for 100!
Re the book value thing, I also don’t think FFP is the driver, I think it’s because Levy looks at transfers through an accountants lens, which is why we seldom take a ‘hit’ on a player even when if they aren’t in first team contention.
As @Bedfordspurs stated, the issue with players running down contracts is becoming one for all clubs as players mentalities are changing. It’s a really difficult situation if a player decides to phone it in over the last two years of his contract. I have the Hunter Davies book The Glory Game which has an appendices regarding the players form the 72 season’s lifestyle and future plans - it’s hard to imagine them not giving 400% in a time where an injury really could make a life changing difference to their families future.

We could've got him for £20m but tried to screw Villa into the ground with silly low offers, only to then end up offering over £30m in desperation near deadline day after Villa's ownership situation had changed. It was an absolute clusterfcuk of a transfer deal. It's a bit like my wife on ebay - she sees something she wants with a buy it now price of (say) £200. I say - just buy it now, it's easily worth that money and you want it, don't fcuk about and let somebody else get it. Instead she doesn't listen to me and take the buy it now option, but makes a few early low bids on it, as more bids come in the owner removes the buy it now option.... she ends up bidding £300 for it with 5 seconds left in the auction, but it goes to someone else for £320. She then says "I should've made my final bid £350!".... I say "No you should've just bought it now on day 1 for £200".

Regarding book values. That is the exact reason why I want a DoF in place at Spurs. Footballers aren't like normal assets. It can be better to sell a player early and make a small paper loss than keep them (and keep paying them) when they are of little use to the manager. Paper profits/losses on player sales shouldn't concern Spurs at all. The only concern should be whether the squad is becoming better (and therefore probably more valuable anyway) and whether we are operating within the boundaries of FPP (I think our owners could inject as much as £300 million of their own funds and we still would be).

 

[parklane1]

I see the old Grealish gonad*s is being used again, probably wasting my time ( again) but we had a deal with Villa ( they agreed a 25 million fee, even shook hands on it). What happened was the new owner ( who at that time the deal was agreed had not taken over) said that IF Grealish was sold he would pull out of the deal.

So it was put on hold until the new owner took over and then asked for treble the fee ( and rightly we pulled out as he was not worth that). That is what happened but as i say some will still say different.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

I see the old Grealish gonad*s is being used again, probably wasting my time ( again) but we had a deal with Villa ( they agreed a 25 million fee, even shook hands on it). What happened was the new owner ( who at that time the deal was agreed had not taken over) said that IF Grealish was sold he would pull out of the deal.

So it was put on hold until the new owner took over and then asked for treble the fee ( and rightly we pulled out as he was not worth that). That is what happened but as i say some will still say different.

Is this from your contacts in the game still?

 

[parklane1]

Is this from your contacts in the game still?

It is.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

We could've got him for £20m but tried to screw Villa into the ground with silly low offers, only to then end up offering over £30m in desperation near deadline day after Villa's ownership situation had changed. It was an absolute clusterfcuk of a transfer deal. It's a bit like my wife on ebay - she sees something she wants with a buy it now price of (say) £200. I say - just buy it now, it's easily worth that money and you want it, don't fcuk about and let somebody else get it. Instead she doesn't listen to me and take the buy it now option, but makes a few early low bids on it, as more bids come in the owner removes the buy it now option.... she ends up bidding £300 for it with 5 seconds left in the auction, but it goes to someone else for £320. She then says "I should've made my final bid £350!".... I say "No you should've just bought it now on day 1 for £200".

Regarding book values. That is the exact reason why I want a DoF in place at Spurs. Footballers aren't like normal assets. It can be better to sell a player early and make a small paper loss than keep them (and keep paying them) when they are of little use to the manager. Paper profits/losses on player sales shouldn't concern Spurs at all. The only concern should be whether the squad is becoming better (and therefore probably more valuable anyway) and whether we are operating within the boundaries of FPP (I think our owners could inject as much as £300 million of their own funds and we still would be).

What a clusterfcuk analysis of the Grealish deal

 

[thfcsteff]

Eriksen has even replaced with Lo celso
I’d say that the issue was he was injured at the start of the season hence why we played Eriksen who wasn’t really motivated
Strangely the issue with Eriksen was that he wanted certain clubs and that was clear... those clubs didn’t want him. You can’t make a club buy him TBF
So it ended up with only one club wanting him and he went there in the end.
Not sure how that ties in exactly with Tanguy and his lack of effort

Mate,
Without wishing to sound like a dingdong, I know the Eriksen story and have posted about it often.
My point was that you cannot expect a new player to fit in immediately anyway, especially when the manager is dealing with squad issues and styles of play.
LoCelso was wanted at the start of pre-season, he arrived on deadline day.
Of course Ndombele is not blameless, but we cannot ignore the turbulence around him.

 

[Bedfordspurs]

Mate,
Without wishing to sound like a dingdong, I know the Eriksen story and have posted about it often.
My point was that you cannot expect a new player to fit in immediately anyway, especially when the manager is dealing with squad issues and styles of play.
LoCelso was wanted at the start of pre-season, he arrived on deadline day.
Of course Ndombele is not blameless, but we cannot ignore the turbulence around him.

At the start of pre season Lo Celso was away with Argentina
Yeah there has been upheaval and that affects the whole team team. Some adapt and others crumble

 

[MKSpur]

We could've got him for £20m but tried to screw Villa into the ground with silly low offers, only to then end up offering over £30m in desperation near deadline day after Villa's ownership situation had changed. It was an absolute clusterfcuk of a transfer deal. It's a bit like my wife on ebay - she sees something she wants with a buy it now price of (say) £200. I say - just buy it now, it's easily worth that money and you want it, don't fcuk about and let somebody else get it. Instead she doesn't listen to me and take the buy it now option, but makes a few early low bids on it, as more bids come in the owner removes the buy it now option.... she ends up bidding £300 for it with 5 seconds left in the auction, but it goes to someone else for £320. She then says "I should've made my final bid £350!".... I say "No you should've just bought it now on day 1 for £200".

Regarding book values. That is the exact reason why I want a DoF in place at Spurs. Footballers aren't like normal assets. It can be better to sell a player early and make a small paper loss than keep them (and keep paying them) when they are of little use to the manager. Paper profits/losses on player sales shouldn't concern Spurs at all. The only concern should be whether the squad is becoming better (and therefore probably more valuable anyway) and whether we are operating within the boundaries of FPP (I think our owners could inject as much as £300 million of their own funds and we still would be).

So I understand that for some people it’s human nature to always make an offer against the original asking price, I’m guilty of it myself and there have been times when I’ve lost out on something that would have been a good deal by over haggling. I’m getting better now and if you know your market there are times you pay the asking price before someone else notices the item is under valued. The thing with transfers is we don’t know what really took place as @parklane1 has shown, however we do know Levy is capable of brinkmanship to the point where he has pulled out of an agreed fee to try and drive down the price. This technique was used on my parents when they had sold their house to an investor and it meant both they and their seller up the chain ended up losing out on some cash rather than going back to the market, so taking the sentiment out of it it was a good move by the investor who was possibly using the technique across several properties. Something similar happened to me around 15 years later, however this time it was a sealed bid situation. I was fortunate enough to be in a position to ask the couple who wanted the property to match what he offered, but I was also in a position where I could say I wouldn’t deal with the investor under any circumstances and that was in a market where I wouldn’t likely deal with this person again. I did read that we’d offered Onomah in a straight swap which if true would certainly have irked the villa
Chairman at the time!

I couldn’t agree more on the book value approach versus the team, not saying we ship Ndombele out for 5m but if it’s not working out there is the tangible cost of his wages over the remainder of his contract, the blocking of a squad place and the inside his behaviour has on the rest of the squad. This could be more costly than a 20 % hit on his purchase price.

 

[billyiddo]

Literally in his last season at the club, several journalists reported Spurs were asking for £100m last summer, for Eriksen who would be available for free a year later?

I know we're not allowed to criticise Levy in this world, but his last contract extension was 2016, and by 2018 he didn't agree a new deal so it was clear we should have either sold, or offered terms he would agree to for a player consumerate of his ability.

We ended up losing Eriksen for £17m, and more importantly it destabilised the squad, needing us to rely on a player who was obviously leaving. We started this season with Eriksen, Jan, Toby all on last year of their contracts but no other signifcant replacements for them at beginning of the season, if that's not poor management or failure, i'm not sure what is?

I think with Eriksen it was possibly decided we'd do better on the field keeping hold of him as his contract wound down rather than cashing in and attempting to replace - we were close to achieving big things with the team we had when in the final year at WHL and with the stadium build on the horizon money was obviously going to be tight so maybe we thought persevering with what we had was the way to go during the following year or two.

 

[Finney Is Back]

It is.

It’s true.... but also true that we could’ve done the deal 2 weeks before Villa even started talks with their new investors. We spent those weeks making low ball offers. A bit like my wife ignoring the buy it now option....

 

[parklane1]

It’s true.... but also true that we could’ve done the deal 2 weeks before Villa even started talks with their new investors. We spent those weeks making low ball offers. A bit like my wife ignoring the buy it now option....

We agreed a fee of 25 million ( and shook hands) but the new owner put a block on it. Then trebled the asking price once he took over. But as i said before some refuse to believe it ( for some reason ).

 

[Finney Is Back]

We agreed a fee of 25 million ( and shook hands) but the new owner put a block on it. Then trebled the asking price once he took over. But as i said before some refuse to believe it ( for some reason ).

I don’t dispute that at all. My point is that we could’ve had the deal done two weeks before Villa’s new investors even started their talks to invest. We commenced talks with Villa before Leicester started their talks with Norwich for Maddison. Leicester signed Maddison on 20th June, well before Sarwiss and Edens started their talks with Xia. Our dilly dallying cost us the transfer.

 

[Baleforce]

It’s true.... but also true that we could’ve done the deal 2 weeks before Villa even started talks with their new investors. We spent those weeks making low ball offers. A bit like my wife ignoring the buy it now option....

one of those low ball offers was accepted

it’s called negotiation

two decades plus of successful transfer policy suggests to me that Levy knows what he’s doing, every player has a hard limit to what they are worth, even Messi would be a bad signing if you overpaid for him

as for your wife on eBay, why don’t you just buy all these nice things for her at retail price in the first place, that would be the equivalent of Lewis funding transfers with his own money right?

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I don’t dispute that at all. My point is that we could’ve had the deal done two weeks before Villa’s new investors even started their talks to invest. We commenced talks with Villa before Leicester started their talks with Norwich for Maddison. Leicester signed Maddison on 20th June, well before Sarwiss and Edens started their talks with Xia. Our dilly dallying cost us the transfer.

We, as a club, are not privvy to what is going on at Villa. From what we did know from the outside we knew that when we were starting the negotiations Villa were in dire straights. Their owner couldn't extract money from his home country anymore and they had a FFP hammer over them. That s an incredibly weak position, a position that any self respecting bottom feeder would take advantage of. If what @parklane1 suggests is correct, i'd say that at £25m we have been far too respectful, prized asset or not they were in the sh.it.

So we shake on it, the transfer wheel starts turning. Now at this point the bit we don't know is if any murmur, enquiry, first contact has been made with potential new owners. If it has, (or even two weeks later) it takes nothing for Villa to put the transfer on go slow. As soon as the new owners are in anyway part of the dynamic the ball is then firmly with them, they have a magic money tree after all. Shaking on it means eff all at this stage. It certainly looks like a big intervention took place based on the angst of Grealish himself.

I don't think we've 'lowballed' them and i don't think its a clusterfcuk. We lost control of a transfer because we left our crystal ball at home