Spend spend spend is not the transfer answer

There seems to be two factions, one that thinks an owner should be spending his own money on Tottenham and those of us who accept football is a business and we have to live within the revenue Tottenham generate.

Spend spend spend is not the transfer answer


Financial Fair Play has tried to prevent owners simply spending their own money to buy players and pay wages, Manchester City and PSG for instance both have sanctions, though quite why they were allowed to negotiate them so they had little effect is a mystery. Barcelona have a transfer ban, Real Madrid are under investigation.

Clubs can only increase their wage bill by a set amount per season so Tottenham have pushed their wage bill up, now we are looking to bring it down again. Arsenal pay several layers £140,000-a-week ($212,674 - €186,737 - AU$268.335), we can't afford that, we are stuck around £70,000-a-week ($106,337 - €93,368 - AU$134.168) with Adebayor earning more, thus while we can buy players, they can get better wages elsewhere, that makes signing them extremely difficult.

This cry of get the cheque book out doesn't solve the wages issue, only building the new stadium and increasing revenue will do that. For now we have to buy players before they become stars while we can still afford them. Some we will be successful with and they will move on to double, treble their wage, others won't be a success but it's the game we have to play at the moment.

Over the last few years we have had to look at players coming towards the end of their contracts so the transfer fees are lower, freeing up more money to pay wages. If we can sign a player on a free transfer and pay him a £3 million ($4.56m - €4m - AU$5.75m) signing on fee instead of paying £5 million ($7.6m - €6.67m - AU$9.58m) or £7 million ($10.63m - €9.34m - AU$13.42m) for him then the transfer fee saving is in effect partially offsetting his wages.

If you pay a transfer fee then the whole deal becomes a lot more expensive , you may well still be paying the player a signing on fee anyway.

A £7 million transfer fee + £3m signing-on fee + £60,000-a-week wages (£3.12m-a-year) over 4 years = £22.48 million ($34.15m - €29.98m - AU$43.09m).

A free transfer for the same player saves you 116.67 weeks wages, basically 2.24 years, over half his contract. Of course with no transfer fee you may well pay him £70,000 a week instead which would equate to a 100 week saving on wages, just about half.

Sign someone at the height of their contract when they have three years left and paying the £15 million ($22.79m - €20.01m - AU$28.75m) or £25 million ($27.98m - €33.35m - AU$47.92m) plus everything else skyrockets the cost, you can't do that with too many players, the policy would damage the stability of the club and if that happens it's a downward spiral that's vet hard to get out of.

Looking now to tie up free transfers for the summer for players like Danny Ings (Burnley), Yevhen Konoplyanka (Dnipro) and Ezequiel Muñoz (Palermo) makes far more sense than throwing money at a problem now for a 3-month fix.

We tried to buy players who we felt would increase in value, like a Luka Modric, but few have actually increased in value, Eriksen, Lloris, Chadli of the recent purchases perhaps, but they are countered by Soldado and Lamela halving in value. Arsenal had to tighten their belts when they built their stadium, they didn't have the money to spend in the transfer market, we have the same financial pressures.

Building off field revenue is crucial, thus building the club in overseas markets is crucial, especially America, Asia and China. Build your fan base and you build your appeal to advertisers and thus potential future investors. It;s why all Spurs blogs like this one should be shared to increase awareness, the more people talking about Tottenham the better, whether we agree with what they have to say or not is immaterial.

The club has to market itself and the fans can play their part by marketing it too.