Mails: Some brilliant responses on the Spurs/Arsenal question…

Daniel Storey

No sniping at opposition fans, just a sensible and detailed discussion. How lovely. Keep your Mails coming to theeditor@football365.com…

 

The responses on the Spurs/Arsenal praise/criticism question
While I agree with Brad S in theory, his argument is lacking because the comparison between the two is not overtly apt. Yes, Arsenal were tighter financially during their stadium build, and in some corners, were ridiculed but you have to understand this was coming off the back of extreme success.

I agree with you that they ‘earned’ the right – although any club can, and possibly should, take a sensible and sustainable approach to running their club financially – to be tight, the ridicule was because this was a champion in visible decline, losing their best players without replacing them. The difference with the current Spurs model is that they are not coming off of the back of success, but rather have climbed their way into this position of potential success, but are doing it in a different way from the current norm.

Spurs have been the most consistent team over the last two seasons, and while some may call it a ‘bottle job’, I would see it as progress. They finished 4th in 2015-16, and 2nd in 2016-17.

Where will they finish in 2017-18? They are growing into something, and would be my dark horse for the title this season because they are not buying a new squad for millions and millions. They have no striker to blood in, no new fullbacks to get used to the system. They have arguably the best starting 11 in the League, and squad of players who have been part of this learning process.

Sissoko and Jansen may have flopped, but people said Son flopped in his first season and should have been sold; look how he did last season. Why should Spurs buy anyone when there is no one for them to buy to improve themselves?
Néill, (Trippier’s crossing ability is worth £50m alone), Ireland

 

…I just thought I’d have the good grace to point out the several fallacies in your argument:

– Arsenal were regular trophy winners prior to the move; Spurs are quite clearly not.

– Arsenal were the sixth richest club in the world prior to the move; Spurs are currently tenth.

– Arsenal spent £36,900,000 in 2005-2006. I don’t think I need to point out Spurs’ transfer spend.

We have regularly performed above our wage budget (the most reliable indicator of expected league finish), and are starting from a much lower point than Arsenal did. So, whilst it’s terribly sad that everyone has been so mean about your underachievements since, I’m afraid there’s no real comparison with us. I would also say that the progress we’ve made over the last ten years has been dramatic, and it’s the culmination of this that gets the praise.

What I can agree with you is the crass nature in which the oil clubs operate. Yesterday, Conte said that Spurs “cannot be considered an elite club” because we don’t casually shell out £120m for THREE players – apparently it’s also far easier competing spending nothing than spending whatever the f*ck you want (he seems to talk about us a lot – very unbecoming of someone everyone thinks is a classy guy). This puts the final nail in the coffin containing the corpse of football as a normal sport, as opposed to the wholly-unsustainable, money-obsessed mess we see today. Forget the fact that we’re currently the second best team in the country and competing in the premium competition: nope, we’re not elite because we don’t have someone haemorrhaging money for our manager to throw around because actually developing players has gone out of fashion (see also Pep Guardiola and fullbacks), and because we don’t sack our manager if we don’t win the league.

Yes, it may be partly bitterness that the playing field has become so synthetically uneven, but I think that this (along with all of the tragic social media ‘banter’ that being a football fan seems to pretty much solely consist of – those moving head things make me want to kill myself), has finally meant that the sport I grew up loving has almost completely died a death; it’s now essentially a competition of who can spend the most money, and I’m actually very glad that Spurs are playing no part in this financial dick-swinging contest. I have a team that I, as a fan, can actually relate to – there is very little else in football I can say that about anymore.

I realise I sound like a grumpy and nostalgic old man, which may well be adjusting to now being in my thirties (urgh), but some of you guys must be feeling like this too, right?
Alex G, THFC (Geoff sounds cool)

 

…The reason for the difference in treatment between Arsenal and Spurs is nicely embedded in Brad’s email. “As a side note, since Spurs last won the league, Arsenal have won 6 leagues. Since Spurs last won the FA Cup Arsenal have won it 8 times.”

Spurs are a smaller club with lower expectations. Last season they crashed out of the Champions League and Europa League at the first hurdle, were handily beaten in an FA Cup semi-final and finished second and it was lauded as a great season because they were punching above their weight. Arsenal had a comparable season in 2015-16 and it was treated as a crisis because expectations are higher (and resources are larger).

Arsenal and Spurs’ achievements being treated equally is not something Arsenal fans should aspire to or complain about, because then, the gap really will have closed.
Tim Stillman

 

…Interesting mail about Spurs doing an Arsenal which I have to disagree with. Arsenal had to stop spending to fund the new stadium, Spurs have always balanced the books transfer wise and this summer will be no different. We can’t afford the wages that Man City, Chelsea and United pay so we can’t compete with their signings.

If Dele Alli and Harry Kane were at a different club do you think Spurs would have a chance of signing them? Of course not. Unlike Arsenal back in the time of their new stadium build we are used to this way of operating and have planned for it. We will not be selling our best players, they are all tied down on long contracts, Kyle Walker was our weakest defender and in Trippier we have a potentially better player so his sale made sense.

Ask a Spurs fan if they’d rather we sign Ross Barkley for £40m or see Harry Winks continue to get chances in the first team. I know my answer and I applaud Spurs’ approach.

Similarly, do I want Spurs to spend £25-30m on another striker or do I want Vincent Janssen to be given another chance now he has his first season under his belt. Definitely the latter, any Spurs fan will tell you he’s a very talented player who has a lot of goodwill from our fans and under Pochettino I have no doubt he’ll improve.

We have the most consistent team in the premier league over the last 2 years and we’re gradually bringing through some very talented academy players. It’s exciting times, I don’t expect us to win the league next season but it’s going to be an enjoyable watch and if we lose out to Man City’s or Chelsea’s galacticos then so be it.
David (actually hoping we don’t sign anyone)

 

..Short version: Arsenal were criticised for taking a step backwards, Spurs are being praised for taking a step forwards.

Longer version: Although the circumstances and recent histories are very different (even around building their respective new stadiums), essentially Arsenal were the best team in the country, but when the new stadium came along they sold their best players (Vieira, Henry, Fabregas, Nasri and van Persie as mentioned), stopped winning trophies, and tried to build around a core of young players who then either left, or failed to become the players Arsenal hoped, led by a manager who increasingly became a parody of himself, as they repeated the same trophyless season over and over again. Ergo, they were criticised.

Spurs on the other hand, were a rubbish mid-table side enlivened only by the occasional be-shorted genius (is be-shorted a word?). Over the last few years they’ve put together a mostly young team that have just achieved the club’s best league finish in more than half a century, they no longer sell players to bigger/rival clubs unless it’s for a record fee, and they have a smart, flexible, personable manager whose team play exciting attacking football (not that Arsenal don’t). Ergo, they have been praised.

Every club is going to be the target of some sort of criticism. For instance, Chelsea get criticised for not developing young players and instead spending their oil money on big-names. Southampton on the other hand, are criticised for being an unambitious selling club, happy to see all their young talent sold to the highest bidder (or just Liverpool). Meanwhile, Arsenal are criticised for NOT spending all their riches on big-names and for trying to rely on young talent, and Spurs get flak for being a “selling club”, or “bottle jobs”, “lacking ambition” for not buying anyone, or that “they need to win silverware soon otherwise everyone will leave”. The only conclusion I can draw from this (and it’s hardly a revelation), is that football fans often talk one-eyed, deranged BS. I guess we should try to avoid taking it personally.

In a period where rapidly inflated transfer fees (£50m for a FB?!) are making many of us wonder how much crazier things are going to get, a club which tries to do things differently to the unsettling trend will always garner praise while this approach seems to be working. Only time will tell whether that approach leads to trophies or not. Either way, they’ll probably still get criticised for it!
Neil, (I don’t actually think that trophies are the most important thing in football, but that’s a debate for another day) THFC

 

…Very valid points from Brad this morning. As a Spurs fan myself, I have given this a lot of thought lately, seeing as we are basically going through the same period Arsenal were 11 years ago.

I always admired Ars*nal back in the day for the way the club was run and how they dealt with their move to their new stadium, I never really understood the criticism. They had a great team, were sensible with their money, refusing to pay big fees for players. But as has been seen with Ars*nal, you run the risk of your best players being sold to cover costs. The criticism only really came after the stadium was paid for and you had £200m in the bank gathering dust (like the Emirates Stadium trophy cabinet at the time).

Hopefully for Spurs, we are in an age where we don’t have to sell all our best players thanks to the Sky & BT money. Added to the fact that you can also sell a defender, who isn’t particularly good at defending for £50m. That’s a hell of a jump from the £5m they got for Cole from a direct London rival a decade ago (I know they got Gallas as part of the deal also, but Chelsea wanted rid). Man U and Liverpool have expanded their stadium in recent years, so they didn’t have the huge financial restraints Ars*nal and Spurs had to and will deal with.

I think the stick you received was down to the fact you were expected to be amongst it every year as you had only just gone a whole season unbeaten before your Stadium move. We have won it twice in over 100 years, the last time being way back in 1961, 19 years before I was even born. Add the fact we have pretty much had been mid-table since 1991 up until the past 10 years where we have dabbled with 4th/5th, of course lowers expectations.

As mentioned, after your stadium move you had nearly £200m in the bank in the days where a decent striker would cost you £10-20m and you still wouldn’t buy. Now even a basic defender with half a decent season in the EPL is fetching £30m (Sakho as example). Brexit has also added hundreds of millions to our new stadium, hence we need to be extra careful as we have about half the revenue Ars* have.

The reason for the in-house optimism is because we actually have real class academy players coming through and the excitement with the likes of Walker-Peters, Carter-Vickers, Edwards, Onomah, and of course Winks playing for the team they grew up supporting (in most cases I believe) is something rare in any top league in Europe these days.

Even 10 years ago you would be lucky to have a couple of players in the team who were “one of our own”. But the press and social media will always try to bring the big boys down through ‘bantz’ and Arsenal are just an easier target cause their fans are so sensitive (just watch Ars*nal fan TV). On the pitch, Spurs are on the up. And for me are the best Spurs team I have ever seen since I started watching football properly at the end of the 80’s.

It just so happens, we are transitioning to a new stadium at the same time as the money has gone bonkers in the PL which could help us pay for it quicker. Of course, if we can sell a player like Walker for £50m every year, when we have a ready-made replacement, then the stadium will be paid off in no time. And with a capacity of 61,000 we can really loosen the purse strings and try and become part of the elite. Mind you, by the time the stadium is paid off, a premium striker will cost half as much as the £800m stadium we just built.

What I’m saying is time will tell and we will inevitably get stick if we underperform and focus just on youth. But that argument is for another day, the transfer window is still open for another month or so, so we can’t criticize anyone for not buying until the window shuts.
Stuart M (it’s actually only 9 years 4 months since we last won something;) Jersey CI

 

Stop throwing your toys out about playing kids
I’ve heard all the arguments and criticism of teams buying players from other teams, rather than developing graduates from their own academies.

On the face of it, I do agree that it would be nice to see more youngsters like Rashford and Asensio breaking through the ranks at Europe’s top clubs (although, this is definitely one of those ‘British problems’).

However, I don’t really see why this is such a big problem. I’m a Chelsea fan, so I’m used to us training promising youngsters, only to deprive them of first team opportunities to the point where they begin to look elsewhere, often thriving at their new club. Thing is, I have absolutely no problem with this.

If the player was less talented at a young age, they would’ve been signed by the academy of a less successful club. They would have been given more opportunities early on in their career to experience first team action for their less successful club. Then, when they get good due to stated first team action, they are snapped up by a more successful club and become very good footballers.

I suppose the point I’m making here is why does it even matter if young players don’t get lots of opportunities at big clubs? There’s a thing called the transfer market and players will always get an opportunity for first team football if they want it. If they move to a smaller club in the hunt for first team football and become superstars, they’ll end up back at a top team anyway. If this doesn’t happen, they’ll have found their level and still enjoy decent careers as professional footballers.

Stop throwing your toys out just because every English club doesn’t have the saviour of English football in their starting line-up.
Sean, CFC, London

 

Why ‘kids for points’ doesn’t work
In response to IK’s mail about introducing wage caps. I wouldn’t make it a set maximum wage limit, but a wage cap for an entire squad, then it’s up to the club whether they have one star on say, 1 million per week and the rest of the players on 50k, or pay every player an equal 100k.

It would be interesting to see what wage structures teams would adopt and to have situations where clubs would have to release players before bringing in new stars. You could even scale the club’s wage cap with revenue to make it fairer economically and less Marxist.

Unfortunately what would inevitably happen is that player x would sign for club z for 50k per week but also receive a giant signing on fee or suddenly land himself a convenient sponsorship deal with we-are-not-club-z ltd for an additional 50k per week.

A quick response to Gareth’s kid points proposal; ‘Congratulations Premier League Champions 2017/18 – Burnley u12s. They didn’t win a single game but they gave a lot of youngsters a lot of minutes, well done!’

My suggestion would be an appearance based wage system where young players are encouraged to play regularly during their crucial development years (see D. Alli) and clubs are faced to use ‘em or lose ‘em (see P. Pogba).

Unfortunately both systems would be impossible to implement without a global roll out from FIFA and it’s not like Blatter & co. to upset the oligarchs.
Nik (NUFC) Liverpool

 

And on the wage cap
In reply to IK:

I’ve heard the wage cap argument before, mainly in reference to the NFL, NBA and MLB.

The difference of course is that those sports are played in a single country, with a single tax regime. Trying to apply that across 100+ countries, with different exchange rates, tax rates, income streams and other factors. As an example, in 2009 Spain’s top tax rate was 29% compared to UK’s 40%. So Ronaldo on 200k per week would have lost 22k every week staying at Man U. It gives different countries a huge advantage and would therefore be unworkable.

The main problem with such a cap though is that in the end, the players are the product. And I like that they more from their work being watched by more people and selling more shirts. It makes them partners in the sport rather than employees, while the owners skim off all the extra money.

Yes, it’s a huge amount of money for one person to get and people who do more socially valuable work get less than they should. But in the end, it brings joy to millions and arguments of it being ‘just kicking a ball’ reek of snobbishness. A Ronaldo or Messi earning 25m a year for being at the top of their profession is not a huge amount when you compare it to being the best at most other jobs, especially in sports or entertainment.
Neil V

 

Brexit and the England team
With daily transfer gossip of who is coming here and who is going there I started thinking about the age old problem of English home grown players.

I don’t want to bring politics into this but after the Brexit vote this is the great opportunity for the England team, after being told by the FA that they were powerless to stop the influx of foreign players due to EU law they will soon have no more excuses. The Government and FA will be able to set their own criteria about which players are allowed to come and play in the Premier League and the Football league, no cheap labour, teams will have to scout and develop.

Football league teams will be able to develop players which can be sold on at commercial rates, not knockdown fees because they are competing with a cheaper option from the continent.

This is probably the most excited I have been about the England team in years.
Paul (I voted remain) Davies

 

Football is back!
I know what you’re all thinking. After all the pre-season US and Far East shenanigans, after transfer fees spiral upwards at a ridiculous rate, after Mourinho already winding people up and Kenedy already winding a nation up, I know the question that’s on all of your lips:

Why is no-one talking about the opening weekend of the Czech League?

Don’t panic.

The season kicks off tomorrow evening with my very own Zbrojovka Brno playing host to newly-promoted Banik Ostrava. The Miners spent last year out of the top flight, which gave their cadaverous, Thor Steinar-clad followers the chance to cause havoc in a different selection of towns, so the fact that their first game back is against us (it’s a big rivalry) means that it’s been moved to Friday. The idea is that it’ll be a great game to start with on TV – which it will – but it also means there’ll be far few travelling fans to police at a 6pm Friday game than a 5pm Saturday game.

Brno have welcomed back striker Michal Škoda from a 6-month loan at Helsingborgs (in which he did nothing of note – we’re his level) to join new signing Francis Kone up top, and with some combination of the rapid Musefiu Ashiru, the ultimate confidence player Milan Lutonský, and the as-yet unknown quantity Alvin Fortes on the wings, we should be better off for goals than last year. Central midfield still looks a little light, but a solid-enough back four of Kuba Šural, Petr Pavlík, Lithuanian international Tadas Kijanskas and Tomáš Jablonský, as well as the indomitable Dušan Melicharek between the sticks, there’s talk of a push for a Europa Cup place (I’ll believe it when I see it, mind).

Elsewhere, what’s going on? Well, after a slightly surprising title victory last term, Slavia are coming to terms with being hated almost as much as Sparta, due to being backed by some Chinese mega-conglomerate. Viktoria Plzeň will challenge again with their lovely football and ugly shirts, as will Sparta, and there will always be some oddity pushing those three along – last year it was freshly-promoted Zlín, the year before it was a Baroš-inspired Mladá Boleslav. This year? Well, after an uncharacteristically ropey season last time out, I’m backing Slovan Liberec to improve markedly.

For the drop? Jihlava can’t sustain their level of cliff-hangery much longer. Sigma Olomouc, despite winning the 2.Liga, I think will struggle due to an inability to attract fresh blood. It’ll be Karvina’s second season at this level and I don’t see their bounce lasting, and, much to my despair, I think Bohemians Prague will struggle. (If you go to Prague, they’re the club to go and see – weird little ground in a cool area, lovely fans). Two of that lot will go.

So there you have it. Breathe easier. Football’s back.
David (we’ll probably finish 10th again) Szmidt, Brno, Czech Rep