Strange club Tottenham, but a win is a win and they had two on Thursday. A doppelgänger, if you want to trigger older fans with different memories of the term.
We can return to the merits of passing Hoffenheim in Europe, but first let's rewind to a few hours earlier, before their slog against the 15th-ranked team in Germany. Which brings us to the morning and the publication of Deloitte's Money League report, which shows where the bean counters at our various clubs are doing.
Now those are happier rankings for Spurs because the beans are stacked as high as the eye can see. Big beans for big boys, and in terms of turnover they are the ninth biggest boy in the football world. Fifth largest in the Premier League.
It's all in the bars of a graph: Tottenham's revenues for the 2023-2024 season were £519.5m, not including transfer transactions, and that's a huge deal. For the accounts drawn a year after their last Champions League appearance, in the 22-23 period, the numbers are actually sublime.
So happy shareholders, happy lives; the flick, the trick, the graphs that make Daniel Levy tick.
The details of his government are no longer a secret, not after 24 years, but they are always worth re-examining when new figures come in, as they did on Thursday. I'm thinking specifically about wages as a percentage of sales, which sounds dry. And it is. But it is the benchmark that tells us whether a club is willing to live a little or too much.
In Tottenham's case, spending on wages in 2024 was 42 percent of turnover, so around £218 million, and this figure requires some context in comparison. That's both a comparison to their own behavior, which shows this is Spurs' lowest percentage commitment in the last five seasons, and a comparison to their competition.
Based on the revenues with which Deloitte ranked the nine British clubs in the top 20 in the world, Manchester City spent 57 percent of their £706.8 million turnover on wages (£403.4 million), and they could be seen as our standard bearer. pending the outcome of deeper investigation.
Next is Manchester United, who operated at 56 percent (£364 million in wages), followed by Arsenal at 53 percent (£320 million) and Liverpool at 63 percent (£380 million). Then it was Spurs, followed by Chelsea (72 percent, £331.7 million), Newcastle (68 percent, £213 million), West Ham (58 percent, £157 million) and Aston Villa (96 percent, £251 million) .
We could look at one of the two outliers in that sample, namely Villa, who gambled away 90 percent or more of their turnover on wages in three of the last five seasons. It helped secure a spot in the Champions League, so they're probably cool with their fate, but the fact that Douglas Luiz is now playing for Juventus suggests they're close to the brink. Just as United have shown that £364 million can easily be wasted.
These figures highlight an inaccuracy in the technique, but also provide a guideline for where the wealthier clubs draw the line. How they quantify ambition. And when we look at it this way, Levy's beans suddenly don't seem so big after all.
They are the beans of a man who has only paid more than 47 percent of his salary once in the past five seasons. These are the beans of a man who falls far short of the balance between extreme caution and recklessness. The beans of a manager who could sign three top players for £250,000 a week, £39m a year combined, and still stay within 50 per cent of turnover. Levy should be ashamed of those beans. They are the beans of institutional cowardice.
And isn't that terribly out of place at a club that markets itself on daring and action?
It is a club that appointed a cavalier in Ange Postecoglou, but left him to rely on five teenagers for the match against Hoffenheim on Thursday. A club that was four players short of a full bench, with a cast of depleted men on the field, and has yet to sign a senior outfielder in the January market.
I admire Postecoglou, I find him exciting and different, which is not the same as believing that there is enormous wisdom in his method.
A question can also be raised about the usefulness of hiring a manager with a high-intensity style, with all the burnout issues we've seen, if you're not prepared to provide him with a team that can meet the demands. .
But Postecoglou has big beans and we all agree on that. He strives, is courageous and his annoyance grows every week. On Friday, ahead of Sunday's much-needed match against Leicester, he said Tottenham would be “playing with fire” if reinforcements were not added in the coming week.
But is Levy listening? Is he paying any attention to the social media posts indicating that his previous three managers were first in Italy, second in Turkey and third in the Premier League this weekend? Were they all just the problem? Was Antonio Conte a mile out of bounds with his moaning?
If we want to give Levy his due, apart from the beauty of the stadium, it is that he has spent the last few seasons on transfers and that he has protected the club from the PSR buzzards.
But wages, not fees, are the key to landing the best players and so far only Levy's salary, which has fluctuated recently between £3.5m and £6.5m, would be the best in his class for the division.
Go over his £200,000-a-week ceiling to change Tottenham's narrative? Good luck to Postecoglou as he moves in that direction privately, even if these latest figures prove once again that the club is operating a mile within itself.
And that's really a mess. A stain. A contradiction to what Levy says publicly about feeling the same heartbeat as Tottenham fans. These are words he has used since day one, as recorded in his very first series of program notes, in March 2001.
I dug them out this week and he talks about being a supporter at the West Stand on White Hart Lane, wearing rosettes and idolizing Gazza and Lineker. That kind of tone.
But there is also something about expenditure, as has happened, and that is of course what stands out now.
“Sir Alan (Sugar) faced the same challenges we face now, balancing the needs of shareholders, who want profits, with those of the fans, who want success on the pitch,” he wrote. 'Sometimes the two don't go together. It's a balancing act.'
With each series of bills, it becomes clearer that only one side of the line ever mattered. Postecoglou should give himself a dime.
Ratcliffe burns bridges on the water
In the latest installment of Sir Jim Ratcliffe's adventures in the sport, he has had a complete breakdown in his relationship with Sir Ben Ainslie and has decided he can win the America's Cup without him.
That's Ainslie, four-time Olympic champion, 2013 Cup winner for the USA, and a man who recently took a British yacht to the final for the first time since 1964.
There's a lot to be said for trust and even more to be said for those who recognize when the other guy in the room is smarter in his field.
So good luck to Manchester United as those rocks close in, but at least they have Captain Jim at the helm.
Sweeney digs his heels in
Rugby Football Union chief executive Bill Sweeney this week refused to apologize for accepting a £358,000 bonus and £1.1 million salary at a time of record losses and redundancies at Twickenham.
With so much copper on his neck, he would certainly be of more use on the field than off it.
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