The College Dropout

City have built pieces to ensure their success. They’ve gone multi-club which has allowed them to hide the cost of non football staff away from PSR. We’ve not done that. they’ve built the best academy in the country. Second best at worst. Increased stadium capacity. Hired the best in class to run the club. But more than anything, they’ve shown an unrelenting desire to win. They are taking on the football establishment to ensure they keep winning. They have money. PSG have money. But the outcomes are v. different. As others have said, the leadership isn’t doing everything they can (as far as we can see) to close the gap. Too slow. Too cautious. Money is one thing but I’ve yet to see elite acumen. Most of the good and bad can be attributed to Staveley and co. In terms of acumen. It’s still relatively early days. 3 years into their takeover City went multi-club. Decided to take on the establishment head on. Announced plans for the campus. We await stadium news.

This is it. But the USP has to be our actual leadership which it is for City. To give him his credit Levy has been wonderful for Spurs. He’s the reason they are where they are. They’ve swapped managers, DOFs and kept building. They are also capped by his own ambition (money).

Sorry pal - that was rude of me. You didn’t deserve that. My bad. I’m just frustrated by the whole thing. There’s no reason a non related party would pay us equivalent to a top 6 team. Unless our owners do some shenanigans - which they don’t seem willing to do. Aye we can’t close the gap unless our owners pump in money. Our owners seem only willing to do this with minimal workarounds. If we can’t close the gap meaningfully in revenues in the short term. We need to have better coaching, better transfer deals. That means top 6 quality for not top 6 wages and fees. You can’t do that if you want to sign several players for £50m+ with massive reputations. We’ll need riskier transfers. Younger players. Lower wages. The Europe thing is overstated - at least in the short term. Qualifying for the conference league doesn’t materially impact PSR for the next season or 2. The PSR - related parties thing is crazy. Because if we get European football 3 years out of 5 - can we justify the same deals as Spurs who do the same thing? Because… no Spurs will still have a bigger brand.

You’re living in cloud cuckoo land. as the rules stand we can’t bridge the revenue gap to Spurs. We are £150m short of Spurs every year. The only way to catch them is to outperform them in the transfer market, coaching, academy etc. we ain’t going to do that signing Guehi for £60m, Tonali for £50m, Barnes for 40m. Our spend on fees and wages is why we couldn’t sign any meaningful players in the summer. If we keep up this approach we’ll be forced to sell our best players in June. Unless the rules change we need to beat the market. Thats what Brighton do. Thats what Liverpool did. That’s what spurs did 20 years ago when they went out and bought Carrick and Defoe and we signed Nicky Butt. They then signed bale Berbatov and Modric.

Been a good game this. Roma been good this second half. Spurs extremely Spursy.

The ownership sets the targets not the manager. If Howe had a mandate to challenge of Europe but happy with top 8 but he had to develop players. He would be happy to do that, that’s what he largely did at Bournemouth. IMO he’s pushing for certified players because his job is to over perform and qualify for Europe. Based on that - don’t give me teenagers, limit the foreigners, keep all my experiences older players.

We were good in the first half. Unlucky to go in behind. Second half was shambolic in comparison.

In light of our FFP position, those people need to recalibrate their expectations. I don’t see a prosperous future where we don’t sign younger players that are not proven. Im on record as being happy to start this season with Minteh. Let the lad develop. I don’t understand pursuing Mbeumo for megabucks. We don’t have the revenues to support it. It’s a fact.

Yeh we don’t have the budget for x25 Harvey Barnes. We need some proper prospects in the squad or else we have the Murphy’s.

We had a RW prospect but had to sell him because we’ve spent too much.

We are neither. We can spend significantly more than Brentford/Brighton. And significantly less than Man City/Liverpool. We must force the revenues up.

Then we must also stop partaking in £50m+ signings and £100k+ wages.

Also we are giving teams code that we will punch ourselves out at home. It’s happened twice. That will give travelling sides some hope. ‘Keep these goalless for 30 minutes and the whole stadium will lose belief.’

You could see more tactical variation. Sometimes Liverpool play with a single pivot in midfield, sometimes double. Ours is nearly always single. Our Xg was double of West Ham’s. We should’ve scored and won. Had we scored at any point between nil nil or 1-0 we probably win it. BUT an Xg of 1.64 at home, to a poor West Ham, and being behind for 80 minutes does still indicate a lack of creativity and belief. Both things can be true. The PSG handball is only possible because PSG kept the pressure for 90 minutes. The relentless pressure gifted them a lucky break. We didn’t and never got our break.

Good question. I don't think managers have a real plan B. They just have variations on Plan A. Our variation on Plan A is just making subs.

No I wouldn't. A lack of depth is somewhat understandable. A lack of balance isn't. If we only made 3 signings last season, I would've said a CM, RW & LB. In that order. RCB next. And personally - I think we've got it wrong in totality. We've spent too much with too much on wages. We've not done the "slow build". We seemed set on signing JP for about £30m, then decided to spend double on fees and wages for Isak. Isak's been a success no doubt - but the lack of budget control was apparent then in hindsight. 12 months later, we could've tightened the belt but decided to make another Isak-like signing among others. The whole thing has been wrong. And to top it off - the squad is imbalanced. And I blame leadership for this. We are more aggressive in the transfer market than in the boardroom or courts. We speak of European football every season but can only spend the 7th/8th most in the league. How is overachievement the minimum objective?

Camavinga’s been Madrid’s enforcer and playmaker. He’s been Rodri-like + ball carrying.

Mbappes been so bad. Again.

Guler’s had a mare this half. Nothings coming off. het Endrick on down the middle.

Our problems are 2 fold. Liverpool can sell for crazy money and invest it all back in + FfP headspace. We can’t - some of that money goes to repay FFP deficit. And likewise clubs aren’t throwing the cash around like that anymore. IMO we need to reduce the wage bill and sell if a player wants to break it. Our wage bill is ever increasing. We’ve not sold anyone that would demand a significant wage rise. We’ve just eaten the costs. A number of our players are on top 4-6 type wages. That must be 1 or 2.

This is where our squad building has been poor. No RWs signed. No 10s in the entire squad. Light at RCB. I was never convinced by Szob but I liked his profile. Similar to Kulu, Palmer and Kudus. Probably ideally a 10. But can play RW well and an attacking 8 too. Left footer. Something different to the squad. Choosing to only sign a pure LW never made any sense.

The RCM position isn’t working for him. He’s looked better in a more central role. He’s not had many minutes there. viana was a poor fit for the league. Tonali seems a good fit for the league but he’s only had a run of games in a position that doesn’t seem to work for him.

I think this is true but they’ve always had a core of ‘big players’. Walker Dias Stones Gvardiol - cheapest of these was £50m signed 8 years ago. 3 of them are injury prone now. When Pep joined they had Fernandinho, Silva, KDB, Bilva, Sterling, Sane in midfield. In their pomp they had KDB, Bilva, Gundogan, Rodri, Fernandinho (ageing), Sterling, Mahrez, Jesus. Now they have Rodri (injured), ageing KDB, ageing Gundogan, ageing Kovacic, Nunes, Savinho, Grealish, Doku. What they’ve got now is a drop in quality and increase in age. They’ve messed about and bought a load of squad players. They needed Paqueta’s, Bruno’s and better. They’ve messed should’ve been in for some of those Madrid CMs.

They threw Milan out of the UEFA Cup for less. it’s going to be easy to take UEFA to court. They would 100% try to ban us.

This The first 2 take time. The stadium and training ground I think we are moving too slow. Academy it’s hard to say. The rest - hard agree. I definitely feel progress away from transfers and such has been slow. And it’s slow at best, incompetent at worst.