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Fey, you still don't get it do you. Transfer spending is just one half of the money equation. Arsenal were spending 1million A WEEK more on wages than Spurs last season. Man United have a player on 220k a week. Bar City and Chelsea, no one else in England can compete with those salaries. However that is just 3 clubs out of 20.
Blut, the caveat here is I am not suggesting money doesn't play a factor, but it's not as black and white as that and I cannot sit in silence listening to this tired accusation regurgitated by wannabee hipsters feeding a lazy generalisation each time the EPL is mentioned.
Choosing to talk about Spurs here because Super Mourinho made a comment about us which sort of acted as a catalyst to where we've got to now ( a comment swiftly batted down by ze cool alternatif Bundesliga boys obviously...
).
A briefest of history lessons for Herr Blut and any of you fuckos proliferating the notion that EPL clubs do not employ a long term vision or strategy: when Jol and Commoli were here circa 2005, the decision was made to stop buying overpriced over the hill journeymen (as was the case prior) and start to buy young - preferably British - players who could be nurtured and sold at a profit. Rather similar to Arsenal's model, except less Frenchies, more Rosbeefs. And shock horror, not only did the team also improve thanks to Jol's brilliance, finances did also as we started to have players people actually wanted to buy. Cue the genius of Levy, squeezing the last penny out of every sale (at times leaving us short in fairness), but meaning that in the last 5-7 years where we ve gone from a midtable side to one consistently fighting for top 4 and overall revenues have increased, our net transfer spend has been in minus figures. Sell Bale (and along with money recouped for Dempsey, Caulker, Huddlestone and Parker), spend will again be roughly even out with sales and and wages will also fall within same bracket.
You talk about lack of youth player development in EPL, but our u21s won the premier league comfortably last season (before admittedly losing to Man United a weird and utterly pointless 1st/2nd playoff) and got to the semi finals of the Nextgen Euro competition. With Rose, Townsend, Walker, Naughton, Lennon representing players in the first team squad who've more or less come through the coached 17+ age group here (and that's not even mentioning Bale), it's hardly a terrible return in a league where most people assume nobody bothers with their academies.
Final point - sure, we're not in the CL and it's a long way before Spurs become a World Class club in the way Bayern or Dortmund are, but a coherent vision aligned with a well handled business strategy has also led to a new training ground being built and new stadium in the works, so the future hardly looks bleak, even though we can't expect to directly compete with Chelsea/Man City/Man United in the transfer market.
15 years ago this club was an complete and utter shambles. It's since gone on to become run very intelligently without an injection of petro dollars, just clever business acumen.
Ultimately, you might cream yourself over the Bundesliga model (and it's a good one, specifically for it's synergy with the National Team), but it's not like clubs in England are sat around scratching their arses treading water and hoping money will solve all their problems. Spurs aren't the only ones. Swansea are a terrific example of an excellently run club with a coherent on and off field strategy. Same goes for Villa, Everton, Southampton, Norwich - all have clear identities and progressing in some form or another. Even Liverpool are starting to bear the fruits of applying a clear strategy to how they want to play football. None of these clubs are solely reliant on being cash rich.
Blut, the caveat here is I am not suggesting money doesn't play a factor, but it's not as black and white as that and I cannot sit in silence listening to this tired accusation regurgitated by wannabee hipsters feeding a lazy generalisation each time the EPL is mentioned.
Choosing to talk about Spurs here because Super Mourinho made a comment about us which sort of acted as a catalyst to where we've got to now ( a comment swiftly batted down by ze cool alternatif Bundesliga boys obviously...
). A briefest of history lessons for Herr Blut and any of you fuckos proliferating the notion that EPL clubs do not employ a long term vision or strategy: when Jol and Commoli were here circa 2005, the decision was made to stop buying overpriced over the hill journeymen (as was the case prior) and start to buy young - preferably British - players who could be nurtured and sold at a profit. Rather similar to Arsenal's model, except less Frenchies, more Rosbeefs. And shock horror, not only did the team also improve thanks to Jol's brilliance, finances did also as we started to have players people actually wanted to buy. Cue the genius of Levy, squeezing the last penny out of every sale (at times leaving us short in fairness), but meaning that in the last 5-7 years where we ve gone from a midtable side to one consistently fighting for top 4 and overall revenues have increased, our net transfer spend has been in minus figures. Sell Bale (and along with money recouped for Dempsey, Caulker, Huddlestone and Parker), spend will again be roughly even out with sales and and wages will also fall within same bracket.
You talk about lack of youth player development in EPL, but our u21s won the premier league comfortably last season (before admittedly losing to Man United a weird and utterly pointless 1st/2nd playoff) and got to the semi finals of the Nextgen Euro competition. With Rose, Townsend, Walker, Naughton, Lennon representing players in the first team squad who've more or less come through the coached 17+ age group here (and that's not even mentioning Bale), it's hardly a terrible return in a league where most people assume nobody bothers with their academies.
Final point - sure, we're not in the CL and it's a long way before Spurs become a World Class club in the way Bayern or Dortmund are, but a coherent vision aligned with a well handled business strategy has also led to a new training ground being built and new stadium in the works, so the future hardly looks bleak, even though we can't expect to directly compete with Chelsea/Man City/Man United in the transfer market.
15 years ago this club was an complete and utter shambles. It's since gone on to become run very intelligently without an injection of petro dollars, just clever business acumen.
Ultimately, you might cream yourself over the Bundesliga model (and it's a good one, specifically for it's synergy with the National Team), but it's not like clubs in England are sat around scratching their arses treading water and hoping money will solve all their problems. Spurs aren't the only ones. Swansea are a terrific example of an excellently run club with a coherent on and off field strategy. Same goes for Villa, Everton, Southampton, Norwich - all have clear identities and progressing in some form or another. Even Liverpool are starting to bear the fruits of applying a clear strategy to how they want to play football. None of these clubs are solely reliant on being cash rich.
