TOTTENHAM ARE STILL A BIG CLUB!

wonder where we are in the table of transfer fees brought in? near the top i'd guess.

According to that chart it's

Man Utd
Liverpool
Tottenham
Arsenal

(xp to self) City, of course, have spent four times as much as Spurs during that period (or 35 times as much as United), and about 90% of that spending has come in the last three seasons.

xps I had a long, unwanted train journey tonight and read that consecutively with this takedown of redknapp. Can't really recommend it as such, but was a fun way to pass an hour.

reading Why England Lose has confirmed what I already knew, clubs that spend anything at market price are suckaz. Or p much anything on transfers tbh. or: loooool that harry article.

"I've never deemed us to be a selling club if you look at the big transfers which have taken place since I've been chairman. Gareth has got a long contract and I can assure you he will not be sold."

no doubt we've been a selling club wrt our top players since sol campbell. Not sure if thats changed since cl qualification, but prob not much. We get value from most forced sales tbf.

i'm not rly big into 'north london rivalry' tbh, but tbph not sure how far an arsenal fan can go on this subjet.

Maybe buying/selling club status should be on number of players out the door as opposed to the grand total value? Like how the above shows Man U to be the biggest selling club of the past five years but most of that is down to the Cronaldo transfer?

Arsenal have sold 25 players over the past four seasons whilst Tottenham have sold 39. All mostly kids from both sides rather than big players but still.

i'd narrow it down further, i think. Players sold against manager's wishes is really where the 'selling club' tag comes in.

Liverpool, whatever else about them this past decade, only ever caved to mascherano, and that was with the club at a particularly low ebb.

tbf to Spurs re Berbatov I recall that he spent his last while there standing around looking sullen not trying very hard not playing very well. See also E Adebayor when it comes to Arsenal as a selling club. Arsenal generally less a selling club than a letting players go for no particular reason club.

i remember that being the accepted wisdom at the time re berbatov, and disagreeing with it. All seemed to centre on his body language and lack of rooneyesque charging, neither of which had changed in the previous two seasons. 102 games, 56 goals in a pretty awful spurs unit

sorry, 46 goals

Yeah but the last few months, when he'd decided he wanted to go to United, he really did just stand around flouncing petulantly.

Part of the problem with Spurs in previous years has been that the best players wanted to be playing in the Champions League. Now they are, so you'd expect it to be theoretically easier to hang onto them. A lot depends on whether or not we finish fourth this season obv.

Depends on Bale's attitude as well. Can see Spurs pricing him out of the range of Man United or Arsenal. He might go to Man City for the money alone.

we might sell him to them for the money alone.

Flouncing around petulantly - berbatov mo

Arsenal generally less a selling club than a letting players go for no particular reason club.

i'm not even sure i know 1 player this refers to. gilberto maybe?

bale will totally be sold for wads and wads and wads of cash and possibly and oil reserve. what is the aulas thing, 'no player is for sale until someone bids way higher than the player could ever conceivably be worth'?

will settle for that tbh, 55m would get us a left back and replacements for king and woodgate.

55m will get you a well scouted team plus a superstar

tottenham are still a big drinking club

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/12/16/article-1339076-0C8098C8000005DC-51_468x561.jpg

also, thank god footballers can't design their own kits

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/12/16/article-1339076-0C809BB8000005DC-552_468x507.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/12/16/article-1339076-0C809908000005DC-758_224x619.jpg

i'm not even sure i know 1 player this refers to. gilberto maybe?

vieira, flamini, maybe hleb? decent transfer fees for the first and the last, sure, but still pretty happy to let first team players go for what seems like no particular reason.

have you never seen hleb play? being fucking frustrating and essentially pointless (remember we bought him to replace the super effective pires and replaced him with nasri who is looking like he will win poty) also vieira was shit in his last season and even if he may have been at winning sides in italy, was shit for them too.

noone was exactly happy to see flamini run down his contract.

I'm eagerly anticipating the Arsenal tantrum when Bale beats Nasri.

Should probably be Malouda over both, but he's faded a bit recently.

oh come on, bale would win it for some very good european games, he has been p average in the league

ah, forgot that nasri's entrance coincided with hleb's exit. i accept that hleb is pish obv, but i was thinking that he left with no particular replacement.

http://friendly.no/thorstvedt.php

This is Erik Thorsvedt's daughter...

omg

http://charlotteblogg.no/files/2011/01/DSC05094-630x418.jpg

Real life Photoshops!

She is repping for 1x awesome Jamie Lloyd/Quarion track and one lame James Blake song.

"There'd be nothing worse than, five years down the line, for a failing club not being able to meet its obligations because it's not getting 60,000, fans saying there's no atmosphere," he said, pointing out numerous problems with football being played in athletics stadia.

Love the strategy of 'well we'll pull down the olympic stadium if we get it to build our proper one' line of shocking the government into just sorting out naming rights instead. Of course this all falls apart if West Ham get relegated though. Or maybe QPR could have it.

The stats they've pulled out for this are quite sobering though - nearest seat something like 45m from the pitch, 20% of seats 190m+ away. If West Ham do get it, it'll be the worst ground in the country.

Charlotte Thorsvedt played a few minutes from my house the other week, headlining what appeared to be a night for Norwegian students - can't tell you how delighted I was when I saw the poster and Google confirmed the blood link a few minutes later \0/

Or maybe QPR could have it.

nah we're having tv centre once the beeb fucks off oop north.

is thorsvedt daughter one of the only ever natural blondes to look way better as a brunette? i'm calling it.

http://www.kickette.com/tottenham-hotspur-manbag-musings/

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48791000/jpg/_48791836_fritschx475-1.jpg

Huge blue cockerel set for fourth plinth and champions league place

This AND the year ending in a one. IT IS A SIGN.

"I couldn't say they (United) are on another level and are going to walk away with the title. I can't see them going the year unbeaten. There are lots of teams who could beat them on any given day."

they could they just don't wanna, just to piss off mcnulty

The unbeaten run is getting perplexing. Spurs were pretty decent yesterday yet never really looked like laying a finger on them. It's not even like there's a conspiracy or United have an invisible force-field around their goal or anything - it's more like a collective failure of imagination, or consensus to settle for draws as some sort of danegeld.

can't wait to read a run of play article on it

It's been easy to forget how good Ferdinand and Vidic actually are over the last couple of seasons, when one or the other has mostly been injured.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKCm5uWwtaQ

Can Spurs maintain their current level of spending? Been looking at the figures, and over the past five years their gross and net spends are huge. I imagine wage bill is also rising. But the capacity is the same and the prize money won't have gone up until this year's CL money comes in. Is there a danger they are overstretching? How important is repeated CL qualification? Can they keep this up while building a new stadium? Where's all the money coming from?

These are the questions I've been asking myself, and am now asking you.

http://www.transferleague.co.uk/league-tables/2006-2011.html

revenues have always been high, and i think an increase in wages and transfer spend both are inevitable consequences of cl participation.

Not particularly worried, and i'd hope they're not banking on cl every year because that wont be happening.

Damn.

my word's not gospel or anything, there's hope for you yet

I think it's already been established that that Transferleague site is not particularly accurate but yeah if Levy's let Harry off the leash then it's worrying in the longer term.

Redknapp's not actually spent that much on players overall but the wage bill could be growing at an alarming rate. £6.6m loss on turnover of nearly £120m is not great though.

xp

Am sticking voodoo pins on relevent grid of A-Z as we speak.

I wrote this about London football history this week by the way, maybe of some interest to some of you.

http://greatwenlondon.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/how-the-london-football-map-might-have-looked/

The big spend was Ramos, wasn't it?

Was looking at player turnover as well. Chelsea signed just 18 players in last five years; Spurs 43.

signs of flawed policy either way there though