Vital Spurs Debate Section

Spurs U-Turn Is Welcomed But Now It’s Really Over To The Players

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Regular readers of Vital Spurs will already know my thoughts on Tottenham Hotspur’s decision to furlough non-playing staff at the club, particularly doing so prior to coming to an agreement with the playing staff so they could rightly share the burden and show some solidarity – so naturally, I applaud the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust and their ongoing efforts to see the move reversed (which it now has been).

The full statement, as they explain their reasoning and their hopes, make perfect sense to me as football as a whole should be coming together at this moment in time, and not just protecting a club in isolation, but also ensuring the industry as a whole is in a position to come through this intact.

Sadly, given the self protectionist guff we’ve seen from Gordon Taylor at the Professional Footballers’ Association, and Richard Masters’ response from the Premier League, that thought is the furthest from their minds at the moment as they focus solely in on their own renumeration.

With the players themselves setting up their charitable NHS fund, whilst the move should be applauded, it’s left a lot of fans – like me – further disgusted with the wider attitude of footballers.

I should quickly say not all footballers and there are those who have sensible stayed quiet, but the fact it has been used by some to bite back at valid criticism in the direction of footballers and even worse, when you have the likes of Robert Snodgrass suggesting footballers should ‘earn respect’ for simply paying their taxes – the clueless bubble that Premier League football lives in is painted even more starkly.

Football’s response was never about the NHS or taxes, it was about playing their part in firstly, protecting normal club staff who make their lives possible, their club and then – for me – helping out fellow clubs and playing colleagues (who were, in turn, playing their own part and protecting normal staff).

Given the wide-ranging opinions offered up so far, I expect not everyone will agree – but given I’m so steadfast in my thoughts here, I’d certainly welcome the opposite perspective.

I wasn’t actually going to have another mini-rant like this given the topic had been well covered, but our friends over at Vital Villa had their say over the weekend, and not only was I pretty much in 100% agreement, it got my own juices flowing.

So given this isn’t quite ‘furlough’ related and comes at things from a different angle, I thought it was worth raising.

Given the announcement made by Spurs earlier this afternoon, I have had to rewrite some of the above, but I can only applaud the Board for listening to the concerns raised, and although some may question why it took so long to reverse the decision, at least it has been reversed.

I can also only applaud the following announcements.

Now, over to the players, Spurs have played their part.

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  • PompeyYid says:

    ND….your quote “here’s me trying to re-establish football focus” I have to ask what is football lol!
    You also said Eastenders (lol) I’ve not read anything regards Wham on on ere! lol!

    Keep safe mate as with the rest of you Yids. COYS 4 ever

  • block 108 spurs says:

    BS.. You have opinions which I dont agree with. Using your logic, spurs would still be in the old stadium, with a worn out East Stand, and plodding along as we did for 40 years or so. You say I am a Levy apologist.. what a load of nonsense… I am a spurs fan, and have been since mid 1960’s and want what is best for THFC, and future generations.. It seem you do not, going by the long post (and previous ones) you have submitted.

    Yes Levy could have scaled back the stadium design, saving a few ÂŁm’s and in the words of a favourite sitcom.. He who dares wins… which is very similar to THFC logo / banner statement. We are where we are with ENIC as owners and have to give them respect for their vision and financial outlay. Look at the news this week, some PL clubs no income…poss. a couple of steps from bankruptcy mainly due to a ÂŁ200m pa. or so players wages costs, and need to cut back on this. But clubs are meeting resistance …( ozil is one of 3 arsenal players refusing allegedly)

    How many UK clubs have continued success with a 36k seat stadium? even Chelsea 47k before the russian was better. In fact he could not increase the size due to planning consent etc. he put hundreds of millions into the team players instead. Now regulations have forced him to cut back, and their results over recent years show this players before infrastructure business model is short term financial method.

    So we just have to accept ENIC’s runnning to the club as they wish, and see how we progress. As an example.. Newcastle fans have had complaints about Mike Ashley in charge for 13 years,despite have a new stadium built for them of 52k seats. however it now seems they are about to get new owners. Perhaps you may get your opinions to happen and Levy Out… because Amazon could buy out Enic?

  • Niall Gerard Denvir says:

    Good to see a bit of debate back again. And as we say here a bit of craic. All Bants aside. Please stay safe we have plenty of time to go out again once this is over.

  • block 108 spurs says:

    Does anyone think a Levy buying VDV was not a good incoming transfer? Harry Redknapp was surprised Levy presented him with a quality player from Real Madrid on the last day of 2012 summer transfer window…. and Rafa soon became a spurs fans favourite. In fact he still is, and often says he has great affection for spurs as we are a great club to be with. COYS

  • PompeyYid says:

    b108s….certainly was excellent by Levy there, but others will have a down side opinion on the rest.

    A certain Louis Suarez was offered to HR by Levy, who it appears said no thanks! because he was to similar to VDV, now everyone is saying Levy turned it down because HR wanted him, some have strange memories.
    You and your kin keep safe.

    That’s the same to all my fellow YIDS, keep safe. COYS 4 ever

  • block 108 spurs says:

    PY.. I thought (my memory 🙂 ) it was Harry who turned down Louis Suarez ? Sadio Mane as well ?? Not Good enough?

    • PompeyYid says:

      b108s….your memory is correct, LS was offered to HR by DL, two great memories, but it seems I did forget about Sadio Mane, must be my age lol!

      On top of all this, with those 2 revelations you have to wonder how many other good players were offered to Poch by DL only for him to decline, and yet DL still gets all the bashing, am not sticking up for him but just giving a bit of leeway as we all just don’t know what goes on behind the scenes.

      Keep keeping safe all my fellow YIDS. COYS 4 ever

  • TQ2Spurs says:

    Probably not old enough for ‘Arry! lol

  • PompeyYid says:

    TQ2S….your so right, HR’s way of coaching was, if your old and experienced I do not have to coach and so go out and play a bit lol!

    Oh my god, Young uns means I have to pass on my um! vast experience of winning things, I did it once at Portsmouth persuaded by boss’s to spend big on wages n transfer’s, won FA Cup, but oh dear got relegated and contributed to bankrupting the club, not my fault matey, ask any Pompey fans what they think of the idiot. COYS 4 ever.

  • BelgianSpur says:

    Niall D -were we really knocking on the door though? When Leicester won it, when we were supposedly in the tile hunt, the closest we ever got was 2 points, after match week 27. By match week 29, that gap had grow to 5 points, and we eventually finished 3rd, 11 points away. The following year, we finished 2nd, 7 points behind Chelsea, but never really got close enough to worry them.

    I think we like to talk up how close we were, but the reality is that we never were in the driver’s seat and we would have had to rely on the leaders to severely wobble in order to really be in it. It’s a matter of opinion, but being in the race means you control your destiny. We were never really in that position, sadly.

    I think we did the best we could with an incomplete squad, which was either lacking quality in some areas, or depth in others. At various times we were probably only one or 2 players away, but we were still one or 2 players away. We never really got any closer than that, which is a shame because we had a really good core and but all accounts, the money to get players who could have pushed us over the line.

  • BelgianSpur says:

    TQ2Spurs – “Surely if you want to invest more to buy quality players you also need the revenue stream to afford their high wages, you can’t generate sufficient income from a dilapidated 36k seater stadium.”

    Surely we could have built a simpler 60,000+ seat stadium, without the fancy retractable pitch, fancy beer filling systems, roof platform etc (the examples are many), which would have generated just as much in match day revenues, but cost a lot less to build.

    Time will tell whether those other gadgets eventually generate the expected “non match day” revenue streams to make them worthwhile, but at the very least, they all pushed back the date by which the stadium would have been paid for.

    • TQ2Spurs says:

      BS…..because of the virus the club/promoters have had to cancel/postpone 3 sell out music concerts, the rugby derby between Saracens and Harlequins (which would have sold out) and an Anthony Joshua fight, this in just a few months. I’m guessing there would have been/might be a couple of NFL games in the autumn.

      I think it’s pretty clear that the ability to multi-purpose the use will benefit the club in the longer term and will help to give us a monetary advantage over many of the other PL and top European clubs. Well, at least those that comply with FFP rules!

  • BelgianSpur says:

    Block 108 – Again, I never said we shouldn’t have built a new stadium. But again, surely there is a middle ground between a sensible, revenue-generating stadium and a megalomaniac, ego-fulfilling project Levy himself proudly called the “biggest, most complex real estate project in Europe right now”. Shouldn’t the board’s efforts be focused on trying to build “the best football team in Europe” instead? We are a football club, after all.

    If building pretty stadiums is what you call wanting the best for the club, we have very different visions on that. I would argue that wanting the best for the club should be made evident on the football side, not the infrastructure side. One is a means to feed the other, not an end goal in itself. I think you have lost sight of that.

    I also find it ironic that you would bring up the finances of other clubs. As they say, hindsight is 20/20 and your statement is a perfectly convenient example of that. Which company, football club or not, plans for a global pandemic to shut down the global economy for several months? How many times is such an event likely to happen in a lifetime?

    Every proper business is run with an acceptance that operational risks exist. You can’t mitigate all of them, or you’d be completely unable to run a business.

    If you laud Levy’s ambition on stadium projects, citing the club’s motto in the process, how can you defend his complete lack of ambition in the transfer market? Talk about having different measuring sticks to suit an argument…

    As for VdV, every rule has an exception. For every VdV, I can name 10 failures like Fraizer Campbell, Stambouli, Njie, NKoudou, Wimmer, Pau Lopez, DeAndre Yedlin, Bongani Khumalo, Chiriches, Zeki Fryers and countless other “players we had to Google”, and that various managers did not want but were stuck with because the club would not buy the players they wanted.

    That’s hardly a great success rate, to justify continuing it. That sort of setup leads to good managers like MP saying that he “wasn’t the manager, just the head coach”, and is sure to work wonders with Jose Mourinho, a manager Levy hand-picked himself…

  • PompeyYid says:

    BS….though I hate to admit lol! to a degree you are right, I believe somewhere in the middle ground is probably the correct reasoning, sorry, I have far to many real worries to have the time to go to deep.

    As for the “players we had to googled” I think somebody at the club knew about them and maybe even recommended them, as for DL buying players the “manager” did not want, how do we know? is there any proof on that subject? am not saying it is wrong but I am also not saying it is right, because we just do not know, everything is conjecture, its as simple as that.

    Keep safe all. COYS 4 ever

  • TQ2Spurs says:

    BS….all of the failures you mention were brought in while we were in the old stadium which is the point I made, if you don’t have sufficient revenue stream to pay the top players the ones you mention are all we could afford. I think you have to admit that we have shown much more ambition in the past couple of windows by not just breaking our transfer record but also with the overall spending. It was confirmed that we only missed out on Dybala because his image rights were owned by a third party who was asking silly money but it does confirm the intent of the club to buy better quality.

  • Niall D says:

    Hi BS glad you came back on this. I agree we were a couple of players short at that time. However I feel in that particular season there was, a ground swell of opinion in support of Leicester getting the title.which may have affected a few decisions, I distinctly remember them getting a dodgy pen at at W/Ham toward the end of that season which gave them a favourable result. I just think that in those 2 seasons mentioned we had as good a squad as any. And as good a chance. As PY says we don’t really know the discussion on signings who was offered who wanted which player. There was discussion re Mane with Arry Rednapp, did we not miss him again under Poch when he went to Liverpool for a couple of mil more than Nkodou and Jansen. Sorry guys have to terminate, this discussion. I can’t see what I’m typing because of invasive adverts. Please all stay safe.

  • TQ2Spurs says:

    Morning guys and gals, hope all are well.

    Interesting noises about talks between the government and PL clubs medical staff, sounds like they are discussing ways in which the season can start up again, most likely behind closed doors, but interestingly with some matches shown live on free to air TV!

    Can’t see it happening before the middle to end of May but, as is suggested, it would be a welcome distraction and help relieve the boredom of lockdown. Of course player and staff safety would be paramount, mind you, with so many players seemingly happy to ignore the lockdown rules it wouldn’t make too much difference. That said, it would probably be those same players who would refuse to play on the grounds that it puts their health at risk! Alternatively, they might (knowing how selfish some of them are) hold their clubs to ransom and ask for danger money before agreeing to play! :- )

  • TQ2Spurs says:

    I watched the full replay of our last NLD at WHL on the Spurs website yesterday afternoon, tell you what guys, we played some great football! Would be good to see some of the same when we eventually get back to playing.

  • PompeyYid says:

    Afternoon TQ2S think it will be like mid June before we might see any football, think if the players go back in a
    by end of this week or so it will take about 6 weeks to get em back up to speed, then there is going to be all the virus testing, which could be at a cost to the NHS staff, a bit negative I know but just a thought.

    You keep safe like all you YIDS out there. COYS 4 ever

  • BelgianSpur says:

    TQ2Spurs – the deal Spurs signed with the NFL is worth a reported 10 million a year. I don’t know what the extra cost was for that retractable pitch, the NFL-size changing rooms etc but I a mguessing that it’ll take quite a few years, at 10 million per, to repay the investment.

    I will also point out that other football stadiums such as Wembley, the Emirates and Old Trafford also hold concerts from time to time, and all they do is cover the pitch to protect it. Likewise, rugby games have been played in football grounds before, with cheaper alternatives found to host said games.

    I’m pretty sure we could have saved quite a lot of money by building a simpler stadium in some areas, without compromising its versatility.

  • BelgianSpur says:

    One more thing TQ2Spurs – you mention us breaking our transfer record recently, and showing more ambition. Now if you’re honest, couldn’t the same be said about every club in the PL right now, regardless of whether they’re building a new stadium or not?

    The reality is that TV rights have increased in such a way across the board that every club is now operating more daringly than it was 10 years ago. We’re not suddenly doing something differently because of our financial prospects with the stadium, we’re just following a general trend across the PL. Name a single PL club that hasn’t broken its transfer record in the last 2 or 3 years.

    Don’t you think that’s a fair observation?

  • BelgianSpur says:

    Niall – my point was even if Leicester had a couple of decisions go their way in 2016, we weren’t really in a position to capitalise, had they gone the other way. In fact, the best opportunity to close the gap was when we played Leicester at home that year, and we lost 0-1 thanks to a Huth header.

    As the media said at the time, Spurs “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” in those days. Our failure to win the league was our own doing, rather than Leicester being given the title.

    Anyways, we can certainly look back fondly on what was a good period for the club, but I think it’s also fair to point out that it got us nothing in terms of trophies. I am therefore reluctant to give Levy high marks, despite anything else happening off the pitch.

    Until we reach a point where the stadium is a) keeping its promises as far as increased revenues and b) those revenues are being reinvested in the squad to make us contenders, I will not only reserve my judgment, but also be hugely skeptical. As I’ve said before, even if the stadium does finally generate lots of revenues, I still don’t trust Levy to invest what it takes. That’s a personal opinion, shared by some of the Spurs family – we shall see.

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