Roflham Lolspurs

[TomYam]

52 minutes ago, Gawalls said:

Why all the hatred for spurs? living in North London for 20 years and my flat mates etc being spurs fans I prefer them than any other London club personally as my levels of hatred for Chelsea and arsenal are off the charts, West ham and Fulham are meh but always liked talking football with my spurs mates as they give you a two way conversation and it's not just all me me me.

Over the decades, I've never had any problems with Spurs fans at all - unlike many clubs, especially Everton.

My dislike of the club is informed by the Irving Scholar era of the mid to late '80s.

They were the epitome of that era - flashy, first club to float on the stock market, first club with a dedicated marketing department, the initial driving force behind restructuring the league system in pursuit of greater profits (leading to PL formation), PLUS they tapped up my favourite player of that time, Chris Waddle, a nabbed Gazza 3 years later. Bastards!!!

 

[Newcastle Fan]

I was surprised by their players lack of desire yesterday, a lot of them seem to be on auto-pilot and how Thiaw was allowed to rebound his own header was a good example. some of their signings like Mathys Tel looked awful all game  (but then checking his stats he's doing better than Elanga who costed 25m more) however they are a good example of how investments like new stadium and signings don't guarantee success.

[KingArthur]

They were truly awful. But that squad has a lot of talent. If the boot Frank they will be fine.

[bobbydazzla]

1 minute ago, Newcastle Fan said:

I was surprised by their players lack of desire yesterday, a lot of them seem to be on auto-pilot and how Thiaw was allowed to rebound his own header was a good example. some of their signings like Mathys Tel looked awful all game  (but then checking his stats he's doing better than Elanga who costed 25m more) however they are a good example of how investments like new stadium and signings don't guarantee success.

Don’t think anyone says new stadiums guarantee success, they just give clubs a chance to massively increase matchday revenue and therefore significantly improve their PSR position.

 

How the club spends that money is then critical.
 

And I can’t be arsed to check the latest details but recently Spurs have had one of the lowest turnover to wages ratios in the league despite turnover improving massively and the debt financing for the stadium being very long term and at low interest rates so the annual interest payments don’t restrict their ability to spend money on the squad.

[r0cafella]

Important to remember spurs aren't really owner funded they are more self financing and the club is in a lot of debt too. 

[Nucasol]

26 minutes ago, KingArthur said:

They were truly awful. But that squad has a lot of talent. If the boot Frank they will be fine.

There’s some gutless wonders in their squad. Kolo Muani is pure rank, you can tell he wants to be anywhere but Spurs.

[toon25]

Honestly didn't think Frank would be this inept 

[ramirez]

My hatred for Spurs has wavered over the years but its easy to see why people wouldn't like them , since I got into football in the early 90s they were seen as one of the big 5 despite never really doing anything in the league after winning the cup in 91 with England's gazza and Lineker.   A bit of a media club too, Ginola and Parker winning player of the year there summing this up.  Then after an upturn and some champions league appearances they are somehow considered part of the toxic big 6, getting thei badge on cadburys products et al, despite being largely average and rarely competing for domestic honours.  London is a loophole for psr they can charge ore for tickets than say us, Burnley or Safc etc and have beyonce/nfl on too.  Just look at the emergence of southern clubs like brentford, Bournemouth and brighton and demise of like of Bolton, Blackburn and sheff wed to name but a few and I feel apart from being poorly ran geography definitely is a factor.  I know some spurs fans who are sound too although I've heard more than one say they often struggles as they are  a few teams biggest game - West Ham, Chelsea and Arsenal, which is probably not true.

 

 

[TheBrownBottle]

2 hours ago, toon25 said:

Honestly didn't think Frank would be this inept 

He hasn’t been great, but my take would be that the problems are more deep-rooted and what’s happening is the result of years’ of mismanagement at all levels 

[Abacus]

Only reason I didn't like Spurs was Redknapp and then Levy. Oh and of course the whole ESL plan to ruin football entirely.

[TheBrownBottle]

4 minutes ago, ramirez said:

London is a loophole for psr they can charge ore for tickets than say us, Burnley or Safc etc and have beyonce/nfl on too.  Just look at the emergence of southern clubs like brentford, Bournemouth and brighton and demise of like of Bolton, Blackburn and sheff wed to name but a few and I feel apart from being poorly ran geography definitely is a factor. 

 

It absolutely is - the Smoggies have more top flight seasons than Palace, Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth combined.  You could add Fulham’s to all of those southern clubs and it’s roughly the same number as the Mackems.  PSR is permanently changing the geography of the top flight. 

[Turnbull2000]

12 minutes ago, ramirez said:

My hatred for Spurs has wavered over the years but its easy to see why people wouldn't like them

 

 

 

Nahh, fuck em. Even if they go soft and even if they get relegated, they were and remain a breakaway club that sought to destroy the integrity of football. They can all rot, but just to different degrees.

[Cf]

3 hours ago, Newcastle Fan said:

I was surprised by their players lack of desire yesterday, a lot of them seem to be on auto-pilot and how Thiaw was allowed to rebound his own header was a good example. some of their signings like Mathys Tel looked awful all game  (but then checking his stats he's doing better than Elanga who costed 25m more) however they are a good example of how investments like new stadium and signings don't guarantee success.

 

On replay I did think it was extraordinary that Thiaw was allowed to be in any position to score that goal as well taken as it was.

[SteV]

[Wolfcastle]

7 hours ago, TheBrownBottle said:

It absolutely is - the Smoggies have more top flight seasons than Palace, Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth combined.  You could add Fulham’s to all of those southern clubs and it’s roughly the same number as the Mackems.  PSR is permanently changing the geography of the top flight. 

They've used the cartels legacy, history, fanbase, organic growth as an excuse to justify their protection but happily rendernorthern clubs legacy, history, fanbase and organic growth redundant to a postcode lottery of where you can get more tourists and charge higher ticket prices for smaller, less historic, worse supported southern clubs to usurp

 

 

Edited February 11 by Wolfcastle

[leffe186]

This is going to be really fucking long. A ton of stuff to respond to. It’s a bit of a perfect storm - as you guys well know it needs to be for one of the big clubs to struggle. My bullet points:

 

1. Injuries.

Arsenal shited it after the second half of last season and made sure they pretty much had two top class players for every position. Even so, if they had the injuries we had this year they’d be miles off it. I’ve covered the details of why ad nauseam but you simply cannot maintain any sort of challenge under these conditions. Spence came back from injury, which was nice, but now Odobert is out. I can pretty much guarantee you it will be for a while.

 

2. Squad.

Very young and short on Premier League experience. The idea is that the more experienced players help the younger ones bed in…but they’re not there. Son is gone. Kulu and Maddison will probably miss the whole season, Bentancur and Davies are out for the season too. We’ve somehow managed to sell our top scorer three years in a row now with each sale broadly making sense, but that’s an issue. Then you look at players like Richarlison who’s limited and always injured, Udogie who’s brilliant but always injured. If the whole squad was mainly fit with two or three key injuries it would be decent. It’s not.

 

3. Captain.

We also sold our last two captains two years in a row - might be three this year - and the new manager had to name a new one. It would probably have been Maddison or Kulu but… Vicario is a bit messy, Davies wasn’t going to be involved so Romero was kinda the only option. He’s a leader, but not disciplined enough and we all knew it, just hoped he would take it on. It worked at times, but here we are.

 

4. Manager.

It also had the unfortunate side effect of screwing Thomas Frank. He kinda had to name Romero captain but that’s a double-edged sword - ultimately he’s ended up looking weak. He wasn’t in a position to properly discipline Romero when he spoke out over what was left of the squad, and that just exacerbated things.

 

But it’s been clear for some time that he’s out of his depth - at least in this situation. The injuries have a debilitating effect on everything but his tactics have been regularly found wanting, his football has largely been poor and desperately uninspiring and it really does seem like we’re at our best when we’re not trying to do what he wants us to do. One key criticism of Ange was that he often seemed to completely ignore what the opposition was doing but one key criticism of Frank is that at times he only seems to care about what the opposition is doing. This extends off the pitch - his interviews (in his second language tbf) frequently seemed to big up the opposition at our expense and said things that were very clearly at odds with what we actually saw on the pitch.
 

I’ve not had formal training in football tactics and strategy but I’ve been a fan for nearly 50 years, I’ve played a million games and I’m quite clever. I’m actively offended when I see simple tactical, positional and strategic problems on the pitch because if I can see it then the guy being paid the big bucks better had be seeing it too. Which leads me to

 

5. The fans.

Of course there’s some onus on the fans to create a great atmosphere, but as one of the guys on the View From The Lane says - it

has to come from the pitch, and arguably that’s the real responsibility. We pay through the nose, and they’re getting paid. The atmosphere at home games for the first half of Ange’s first season was incredible. Same ground, same fans for the most part. They were playing exciting, attacking football and the crowd responded. If you don’t even try to play exciting attacking football then Spurs fans will let you know - honestly we could almost live with relegation if that were the case. I watched Glenn Hoddle in the Second Division. It’s genuinely part of our identity and long may it continue.
 

They had clearly packed in the league because of all the injuries last year to focus on the Europa. I’m OK with that and it paid off…but if you’re a home season ticket holder you’ve now paid an absolute fortune to watch over a year’s worth of a completely decimated squad playing miserable football. There are “perfect storm” issues - no Son means fewer tourists, no Maddison and Kulu rips some of out soul out, not enough blooding of kids (“one of our own”) because so many are on loan and all the games have ended up being high risk - but we’ve also shot ourselves in the foot by the club/Levy fucking up allocations and fan positioning for the new Kop. Which leads me to

 

6. Higher Management Structure.

In football you now expect to have owners, a chairman or CEO, a Director of Football and a Head Coach - some sort of similar combination. Ideally if you’re bringing in a new manager that structure is in place. The owners provide financial backing and organization in conjunction with the Chairman/CEO, the Director of Football ensures everything is working in the right direction and the manager should slot into that. We previously had some quiet owners in the background, an “owner/Chairman/CEO” and were searching for a Director of Football. Suddenly Frank was in a situation where the quiet owners have fired the “owner/Chairman/CEO” and we have two people being “Director of Football”, neither of whom is actually a Director of Football. It’s a mess. Then you look at the lower management structure which includes a medical and rehabilitation team that is demonstrably doing the worst job in the history of the game. It’s a mess.

 

We were clearly hoping to get through to the Summer and take stock, but that became impossible. Right now we need to get in a coach who can pull what’s left of the squad together enough to win two or three games. With Frank gone I think the fans will respond, and depending upon who comes in hopefully the players will too. We also need to try to get as many players fit as possible - obviously.

 

I think we’re going to make a massive effort to get Poch in the Summer. I even think there’s a chance that he comes if we’re relegated. Will it work? Dunno. It will galvanize the fans. We need a huge effort to sort out pricing with a genuine partnership between fans and the Club. We really, really need a Director of Football with a vision that at least approximates ours of a clubs that plays stylish, attacking football and develops a significant amount of our own players. I think that’s doable in both the Premier League and the Championship.

 

Above all else, if we do get relegated t will be fascinating to see how a team copes with 13 players, 46 league games and a Champions League campaign.

 

 

[La Parka]

Pony

[Turnbull2000]

You injuries don't look much worse than our 23/24 CL season. We had 13 first team squad players out at one point. Our bench was like 3 keepers, 3 kids and a couple of third choices. But we still reached a cup final, finished 7th and unlike Spurs, had the toughest CL draw of the lot.

 

 

Edited February 11 by Turnbull2000

[HaydnNUFC]

12 minutes ago, leffe186 said:

This is going to be really fucking long. A ton of stuff to respond to. It’s a bit of a perfect storm - as you guys well know it needs to be for one of the big clubs to struggle. My bullet points:

 

1. Injuries.

  Reveal hidden contents

Arsenal shited it after the second half of last season and made sure they pretty much had two top class players for every position. Even so, if they had the injuries we had this year they’d be miles off it. I’ve covered the details of why ad nauseam but you simply cannot maintain any sort of challenge under these conditions. Spence came back from injury, which was nice, but now Odobert is out. I can pretty much guarantee you it will be for a while.

 

 

2. Squad.

  Reveal hidden contents

Very young and short on Premier League experience. The idea is that the more experienced players help the younger ones bed in…but they’re not there. Son is gone. Kulu and Maddison will probably miss the whole season, Bentancur and Davies are out for the season too. We’ve somehow managed to sell our top scorer three years in a row now with each sale broadly making sense, but that’s an issue. Then you look at players like Richarlison who’s limited and always injured, Udogie who’s brilliant but always injured. If the whole squad was mainly fit with two or three key injuries it would be decent. It’s not.

 

 

3. Captain.

  Reveal hidden contents

We also sold our last two captains two years in a row - might be three this year - and the new manager had to name a new one. It would probably have been Maddison or Kulu but… Vicario is a bit messy, Davies wasn’t going to be involved so Romero was kinda the only option. He’s a leader, but not disciplined enough and we all knew it, just hoped he would take it on. It worked at times, but here we are.

 

 

4. Manager.

  Reveal hidden contents

It also had the unfortunate side effect of screwing Thomas Frank. He kinda had to name Romero captain but that’s a double-edged sword - ultimately he’s ended up looking weak. He wasn’t in a position to properly discipline Romero when he spoke out over what was left of the squad, and that just exacerbated things.

 

 

But it’s been clear for some time that he’s out of his depth - at least in this situation. The injuries have a debilitating effect on everything but his tactics have been regularly found wanting, his football has largely been poor and desperately uninspiring and it really does seem like we’re at our best when we’re not trying to do what he wants us to do. One key criticism of Ange was that he often seemed to completely ignore what the opposition was doing but one key criticism of Frank is that at times he only seems to care about what the opposition is doing. This extends off the pitch - his interviews (in his second language tbf) frequently seemed to big up the opposition at our expense and said things that were very clearly at odds with what we actually saw on the pitch.
 

I’ve not had formal training in football tactics and strategy but I’ve been a fan for nearly 50 years, I’ve played a million games and I’m quite clever. I’m actively offended when I see simple tactical, positional and strategic problems on the pitch because if I can see it then the guy being paid the big bucks better had be seeing it too. Which leads me to

 

 

 

5. The fans.

  Reveal hidden contents

Of course there’s some onus on the fans to create a great atmosphere, but as one of the guys on the View From The Lane says - it

has to come from the pitch, and arguably that’s the real responsibility. We pay through the nose, and they’re getting paid. The atmosphere at home games for the first half of Ange’s first season was incredible. Same ground, same fans for the most part. They were playing exciting, attacking football and the crowd responded. If you don’t even try to play exciting attacking football then Spurs fans will let you know - honestly we could almost live with relegation if that were the case. I watched Glenn Hoddle in the Second Division. It’s genuinely part of our identity and long may it continue.
 

They had clearly packed in the league because of all the injuries last year to focus on the Europa. I’m OK with that and it paid off…but if you’re a home season ticket holder you’ve now paid an absolute fortune to watch over a year’s worth of a completely decimated squad playing miserable football. There are “perfect storm” issues - no Son means fewer tourists, no Maddison and Kulu rips some of out soul out, not enough blooding of kids (“one of our own”) because so many are on loan and all the games have ended up being high risk - but we’ve also shot ourselves in the foot by the club/Levy fucking up allocations and fan positioning for the new Kop. Which leads me to

 

 

6. Higher Management Structure.

  Reveal hidden contents

In football you now expect to have owners, a chairman or CEO, a Director of Football and a Head Coach - some sort of similar combination. Ideally if you’re bringing in a new manager that structure is in place. The owners provide financial backing and organization in conjunction with the Chairman/CEO, the Director of Football ensures everything is working in the right direction and the manager should slot into that. We previously had some quiet owners in the background, an “owner/Chairman/CEO” and were searching for a Director of Football. Suddenly Frank was in a situation where the quiet owners have fired the “owner/Chairman/CEO” and we have two people being “Director of Football”, neither of whom is actually a Director of Football. It’s a mess. Then you look at the lower management structure which includes a medical and rehabilitation team that is demonstrably doing the worst job in the history of the game. It’s a mess.

 

We were clearly hoping to get through to the Summer and take stock, but that became impossible. Right now we need to get in a coach who can pull what’s left of the squad together enough to win two or three games. With Frank gone I think the fans will respond, and depending upon who comes in hopefully the players will too. We also need to try to get as many players fit as possible - obviously.

 

I think we’re going to make a massive effort to get Poch in the Summer. I even think there’s a chance that he comes if we’re relegated. Will it work? Dunno. It will galvanize the fans. We need a huge effort to sort out pricing with a genuine partnership between fans and the Club. We really, really need a Director of Football with a vision that at least approximates ours of a clubs that plays stylish, attacking football and develops a significant amount of our own players. I think that’s doable in both the Premier League and the Championship.

 

Above all else, if we do get relegated t will be fascinating to see how a team copes with 13 players, 46 league games and a Champions League campaign.

 

 

I read that tickets in the South Stand for last night were £94. That’s a fucking disgrace. Even if yous were flying it would be.

[JT24]

adding to their woes, odobert has torn his acl. 

[Interpolic]

6 minutes ago, Turnbull2000 said:

You injuries don't look much worse than our 23/24 CL season. We had 13 first team squad players out at one point. Our bench was like 3 keepers, 3 kids and a couple of third choices. But we still reached a cup final, finished 7th and unlike Spurs, had the toughest CL draw of the lot.

 

 

 

 

We didn't reach a cup final that season.

[The College Dropout]

4 hours ago, TheBrownBottle said:

It absolutely is - the Smoggies have more top flight seasons than Palace, Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth combined.  You could add Fulham’s to all of those southern clubs and it’s roughly the same number as the Mackems.  PSR is permanently changing the geography of the top flight. 

Don't think this is PSR driven from geography.

 

Brighton & Brentford success can be attributed to a data-driven approach to recruitment and extensive owner investment (Brighton). Brentford have the second lowest match-day revenue in he league I believe. Brentford were reliant on player sales in the Championship (Watkins, Benrahma etc.) and are reliant on TV now 

Bournemouth - lowest match-day revenue in the league I believe. Largely owner-funded and the new owners seem v. astute.

Palace - geography has helped them utilise one of the best catchment areas in world football but this is mostly via transfers

 

It does seem the smartest/most ambitious owners tend to focus on midland and southern clubs. But we have PIF, Sunderland's owner seems competent. That matters more than pure geography for match-day income.

[vexred]

@leffe186 wouldn't be an ideal preseason with Poch at the WC. 

[Nucasol]

 

FUCK TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR

[The College Dropout]

Yeh Levy was first to cry to PL to stop us getting sponsorships. Day after the takeover IIRC.