Wednesday
Jul132011
Flashback
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 4:00PM "We can become one of the best teams if we all stay together for a long time."
Luka Modric, April 2011.
The pressures from back home in Croatia, agent(s) and the reality of a short lived career can make even the most endearing person turn their head away from the thing you love most in life.
Football fans; we live in a marriage. The majority of footballers just have affairs and flings.
Reader Comments (50)
It's such a shame that you're right! I still love him - this is hurting.
Dan Mac dont be soft, it is just a footballer, a good one.
Perhaps this should be RT to Modric14Luca !! just as a reminder
This isn't about Modric really any more. We'd survive his loss but if he goes let it be abroad.
It's now about Levy's credibility and whether every time we take a step forward we are forced back by another club helping themselves to our best players. If we let Modric go it will never end.
If this whole issue had been handled professionally by Chelsea with discrete approaches, and by Spurs with less than ideal comments by Harry, and above all the media who want to ferment this issue till it becomes a best seller, then I suspect most supporters could live with that and have maintined a grudging respect and affection for Modric. But this whole issue has become a disaster and the real culpable players such as Chelsea management and elements of the media will escape totally as neither answer to anyone. certainly not to the farcial FA, in the instance of Chelsea, nor the media to anyone, not even the law, as events over the last week have shown.
So where are we now? I suspect Modric will go, but I would be astonished and even more angry if Spurs traded him to Chelsea. He is however so good I am sure there are a number of clubs who would be interested. I see no comments from SAF who is waiting in the reeds, like an overstuffed pike, for a nice morsel to swim by. I note Man U have yet to sign a midfielder of real skill yet, but I hope Modric will not go there after the Berbatov fiasco. I only hope Spurs hold out for at least 45 millon and accept no trades of players other clubs want to offload in part exchange.
no comment...... ive simply had enough of the whole saga
i can become one of the richest players in my country if i join chelsea FC , Luka Modric , July 2011
If joining the rest of the family on holiday helps him remember the love we once shared, do we, as the wife, forgive & forget?
Keep us in the style we've become accustomed to?
We're all WAGS now.
POTL said he'll stay and be content! Oh happy days... ; )
If this marriage ends in divorce, let Luka leave and start a relationship in a new country, not the with flash bloke who lives down the road who's gonna rub our faces in it every time they stroll past.
Who'd have thought a ratty little bloke like that would do the dirty on us though?
We'll have to get SAS trained chaperones for our next fiancé(e).
Levy has done his best. We have Modric & Bale on long deals.
It is very difficult to keep players against their will....even Utd had to let Ronaldo go despite being a massive club.
When he is sold, I hope it's after we've done our business and not like last time.
He is a wonderful player despite the fact he hardly scores a goal. I think the most damaging part of losing Luka is not losing the player himself, it's more the message it sends to the rest of the squad. If we sell him now it will be Bale next summer, VDV, Walker .........
We have to stand firm and i still do not think Chelsea will offer what Levy thinks he is worth. The new signings have to happen soon. COYS
Villa$-Boa$ must think he's only got one year to get it right otherwise he's out. Doubt whether he'd want to wait for Modric in another window as part of long term plans. I think he'll be under pressure to buy someone now and preferably in time for pre-season. If Man U get Sneider and City get Nasri, Modders might not have anywhere left to go anyways?
"We can become one of the best teams if we all stay together for a long time."
Is that a 'gentleman's statement'?
Spurs are run as a business and a main policy is to buy youngish players, develop them and sell at a profit. In the 1960's Spurs were at the top table and players didn't want to leave and didn't need to be sold.
To get back there, and we're one step away, we need the new stadium generating more income. Crucially it needs to be funded by a share issue or change of ownership, and not by massive external debt that will eat up the extra income.
The law of diminishing marginal utility.
Everything is great at the beginning... the next season it's good... the season afterwards, eh not so much.
To get back there, and we're one step away, we need the new stadium generating more income. Crucially it needs to be funded by a share issue or change of ownership, and not by massive external debt that will eat up the extra income.
Jul 13, 2011 at 7:00 PM | adam smith
Or Joe Lewis could hand over £400m, in return his biggest asset would be in an enviable position. The club could almost double it's revenue with zero debt, increase it's stature worldwide with a state of the art stadium, keep within the financial fair play rules and make the fans extremely happy. Attracting more world class players at the same time and keeping the ones we have while remaining profitable is a win win all-round.
Speculate To accumulate is the order of the day, and it could propel us back towards the top in one easy masterstroke. Maybe it's time to cut a deal with the government, we will leave the OS debacle behind, (putting aside moral taxpayer issues re West Ham and corruption ) if you provide the infrastructure for NDP and we need it starting now.
I can dream, done it all my life it's comes as a package with the football club I love, so therefore I think it's a no-brainer. Who's gonna break it to Levy?
I place Spurs above any individual player, specially Modric.
Spurs need players who can produce a significant end product, not mass heroes.
Steveyid - well put especially the point about being able to do it within financial fair play regime - we have a relatively cheap site for a stadium in a capital city - if Chelsea tried to build a new stadium there would cost much more - so to an investor wanting to stay with FFP Tottenham makes more sense than Chelsea. JL and/or someone else, please notice !!
elwehbi - about right if you start in 1961 !
Two 60,000 stadia - one in Chelsea and one in Tottenham would yield the same football related income - which dictates financial fair play - whereas the stadium in Tottenham would cost less than in Chelsea because of relative site values - and though stadium provision comes outside of FPP this should give Tottenham an advantage with a potential investor.
elwehbi - about right if you start in 1961 !
Jul 13, 2011 at 9:43 PM | adam smith
No - From the beginning, ONLY amateur club to win the FA cup.... That can never be repeated!
First British club to win European trophy won't get taken away either, no matter what the press tell you.
One day the Phoenix ( or cockerel ) will rise from the ashes.
Modders - How many goals did he score this season.
Carrick - Grass, Greener ??? another star midfiellder that was found lackin.
Surely what we need is not Modric but Lampard, Gerrard, Krank... Hang on whats Nico's goals to games ratio compared to Modric, Carrick??
Bit of flair you say? Gio I say.
Adam - We do not have a Russian billionaire or a billionaire who wants to finance massive signings, which means we have to be self-sufficient. We are run most prudently and you could easily fill a 65,000 seated stadium, probably more with no loyalty point season tickets and children for £1 like certain other clubs need too!
My point being regardless of cost, would be - for Tottenham to remain debt free, no burden of massive loans and the fiscal way we are run, with the right manager and loyal fan base, there would be a new player in town. No longer would we be the poor but plucky club with their unique brand of football but a financial powerhouse which could compete without the need for financial stimulation.
One Michael Dawson is worth twenty Luka Modric's, he's proud to pull on the white shirt, he is both proud and humbled to have captained our club, and whenever and whereever he plays for Tottenham Hotspur his heart and soul are always on the line for everyone to see.
One Michael Dawson is worth twenty Luka Modric's, he's proud to pull on the white shirt, he is both proud and humbled to have captained our club, and whenever and wherever he plays for Tottenham Hotspur his heart and soul are always on the line for everyone to see.
Can we marry Piennar instead or is he un-fullfillling???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-2REeroTAg
Guess What ! / Modric has put in a 'Transfer Request'. Surely not. He said it himself that, that would be disrespectful, and Harry said he was 'Low Maintenance'.
Let him go, I say. He was good, but he wants to go. Let the rich club buy another trophy. I'ts the way it has been and will continue that way for a long, long time, until someone with balls gets the playing field level again and I'm hoping Platini is going to be that person.
Put a price on his head that no one (but Shitty) will pay, 80 mil should do it, then see how much Ambramovic wants him. Lika Modbitch.
The goon has put in a transfer request - the best SNUB is to say NO.
Or, 40 million please. In cash.
Short lived career? We're supposed to feel sorry for a millionaire missing out on his opportunity to make more millions? The little prick has made more money in a few months of the last season than most of us will make in our lifetimes.
Wilshere is right. Man (City) up.
Just give me some players who want to wear the lilywhites and piss off Luka.
Modric is just a symptom of the incredibly bad ownership and overall management of our great club over the last 50 years. The Irving Scholar and associates started the rot and it has been downhill from there. Sugar at least stabilised the financial side and had the good grace to recognise that his expertise was not about running a football club, especially after sections of the supporters abused the man.
After 10 years of ENIC and Levy we are not really any further forward. Many argue that we have made progress on the basis of the current squad of players but when one of the key players openly says he wants to join a club that competes for every honour it says a lot about how top-class players view Spurs. Effectively it says that they have no faith in Levy ever delivering a successful, dominant football team, and who can blame them. If Modric goes, personally I don't think it will be a great loss in playing terms but the message it sends could well destabilise the squad and the ability of the club to recruit quality players.
Currently, good young prospects would do well to avoid us as they will only get a chance to play through injury to others, the club cannot afford to pay top wages so that rules out established top players and we do not seem to have the scouting network to unearth a consistent supply of unknown gems.
Liverpool were in a similar situation to us but their owners know how to run a sports franchise. Start by hiring an inspirational manager, back him up with solid, proven coaching staff and then buy a number of good p[layers, not great ones, that can be moulded into a team with consistent patterns of play just like the Liverpool team of the '60s...no great stars but what a team.
Sad to say, I see no prospect of change for our team until/unless there is change in the boardroom and ENIC aren't about to relinquish control there. I am amazed that Levy has so much apparent support from fans when it is obvious that he has no more idea than Sugar about running a football club. I guess most of the support comes from fans who became supporters after the brief Glory days and can only see improvements over the last few seasons. I agree that superficially we had some success the season before last but underneath the foundations are still built on sand just like our new stadium that was unveiled 3 years ago.
DaveK has said it. We missed the boat during the formative years of the EPL and are playing catch-up, only we have little chance of catching up thanks to the advent of the billionaire sugar daddy with deep pockets.
The UEFA FInancial Fair Play rules, however, are not going to change a thing. The rule will supposedly be that you can only spend what you take in. Man City have inked a massive long term deal with airline Etihad, boosting their income presumably up to a level where they can continue o offer 200K a week wages. Who owns Etihad? Sheikh Mansour's brother. The whole sport is skewed, and unless UEFA have the spine to start docking points we will have to accept these clubs helping themselves to our best players until we get a comparable income. Dropping out of the CL didn't help either. It's akin to being relegated albeit from a smaller more elitist league. We are now in the brave new world of looking forward to one of three teams always winning the title, marginally better than enjoying the annual thrill ride of whether Celtic or Rangers will win this year.
DaveK you're so right!!
With the money we can get from Modric we could buy a player playing in a similar position with a more effective end product if we had a proper president, a suitable manager or/and an appropriate DoF.
555, I like the Rangers/Celtic comparison....that's exactly what the EPL has become which in turn mirrors most of society in that those with the most money get the material things they want....of course there is always a Murdoch moment waiting around the corner, hopefully.
However, I still believe that with vision, passion and organisation we could still challenge these anti-football, rich-guys' toys just as I am sure that Liverpool will do next season it's just that I don't see Levy providing that type of leadership. Ho Hum.
I could not disagree more with you, DaveK. Do we really want to be like Chelsea, City or United? Funny that you are mentioning Liverpool as the grand example of how to do things...Overpaying for mediocre players, Implementing COMMOLI as DOF and bringing back the inspirational leader. I do not think Dalglish will be any more successful than Keagan 2nd spell at Newcastle. Maybe we should fire Redknapp and have Hoddle back as manager because things were so much better then.
In the last 10 years under Levy football has changed. It can´t even be compared to what it was under Sugar. Levy could have jumped on the carousel and we would have ended up like Leeds. I would find it worrying if we were in citys shoes. Once their arab owners get bored playing real football manager; city will have serious troubles.
Dave K - i think part of your assessment is misguided. 'Sugar at least stabilised the club financially' sounds worryingly like you are a Sugar apologist to me. Sugar took Spurs over for peanuts, rode the wave of the newly enriched PL and sold at a huge profit. He took millions out of the club, both while running it and on its sale. The latter I can live with, the former, no. He presided over the tranformation of our club from being one of the great names of English football to a poor man's Aston Villa. I may be taking too much from your comment, but it seems as if you hold him in some regard as an owner. Infact, he was the absolute worst in our history.
Its easy to dismiss Scholar, but the fact is, Scholar was ambitious and had his heart in the right place. He was unlucky with interest rates increasing - not great financial management but frankly, it could (and did) have happened to anyone - including Sugar. Scholar's problem was that he overleveraged the club - something ironically that most of our fans are keen to see happen today with the NPD. But whereas Scholar was leveraging us up with a few million, NPD would be hundreds of millions. The aim was the same - invest to increase long term revenues. In Scholar's plan this was new East and West Stands with market leading corporate hospitalty (which we still benefit from today, by the way), plus an investment in sports and leisure wear, as he rightly saw the boom in sports merchandising coming. As I said he was undone by a rapidly escalating cost of borrowing - something which could very well impact us if we do the NPD, but that doesnt make his strategy wrong (it wasnt, as has been proved today).
Sugar didnt give a shit - he was just in it for the money, regardless of what he now says. He had no strategy and certainly no vision for what he wanted Spurs to become. He bought Spurs partly to influence the FA vote on the TV rights being sold to Sky, primarily as Amstrad was the sole manufacturer of Sky dishes at the time. Throughout the 90s the club paid out millions every season to himself and his cronies (Litner, Kelmsley - even his fucking half witted son Daniel!) in salaries and 'consulting fees'. He was a disastrous owner. When other clubs were investing in the future and building huge stadia and even huger fan bases around the world (not least our neighbours - powered ironically by a man from Jewish Spurs supporting family who would have loved to have got his hands on Spurs in the 80s), we were being de-invested in and milked like a cash cow. At the start of the Sugar reign there was nothing between Spurs and Man U. Nothing. By the end, they were 10 times bigger than us. All in the space of a decade. Even the stadium expansion was done on the cheap and with a hopeless lack of ambition. Thats how we ended up stuck in lower / mid table for a decade. Thats how winning the league cup became the pinnacle of our aspirations. Thats how we ended up being viewed in the same category - or even smaller - than clubs that 10 years before looked up to use as one of the greats. Doesnt it strike you as odd that the likes of Newcastle, Leeds, Villa, Sunderland, even Sheff Weds, have bigger stadia than us? Its because they invested in them in order to grow, throughout the 90s. Sugar rebuilt WHL on the cheap - no expansion to the East Stand when he had the opportunity, cheap, nasty, small stands behind both goals. Just like he did to the club, he turned a once great stadium into an also ran thats no longer fit for purpose.
To suggest that ENIC have not improved Spurs as a club is laughable, its ridiculous. ENIC has masisvely increased our revenues, way ahead of other clubs. On the pitch we have a really good team and a strategy for building it further. Before they came it was a joke. The team was absolutely useless - cheaply acquired dross like Sinton, Fox, Clemence, Howells etc bolstered by randomly acquired panic buys like Ferdinand, Klinsmann, GInola and Rebrov. Some of the panic buys worked, most didnt. There was no real youth policy - the whole new training ground at Chigwell was done on the cheap, so much so that the current owners are looking to move to the new site at Enfield, only 12 or 13 years after Chigwell was completed.
To criticise ENIC for Modric wanting to go is laughable. Its a joke - what can Levy do? What is he supposed to have done wrong? Its just a symptom of the PL today, where 2 clubs have distorted everything with annual subsidies of more than £100m
Sorry, it seems I've just written something akin to an essay in about 2 mins. Good luck decyphering the inevitable typos
'I'd take 50% efficiency to get 100% loyalty'
(Sam Goldwyn)
Oh and 'I never make predictions, especially about the future'
Spooky
Got a great idea: why don’t we sell Chelsea this player:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tottenham-Hotspur-FC-Garden-Gnome/dp/B004FC5V9E/ref=pd_ys_qtk_general_recs?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2HNZ45Q7S8GYA&colid=2SLM3XN6U0925&pf_rd_p=231460247&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=home&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0PTR1MD0QKS1QWAM46JK
@ £22M he's a snip!!!
Paul F: Great stuff!!
Good history lesson there.
I had a season ticket through much of the nineties and I remember how disorganised it all was. And some of the terrible players we had.
Modric gone bad made me think of this for some reason...
http://sazothedementor.tumblr.com/post/4664366627/warriors-come-out-to-play-yay
http://www.artofstas.com/bilder/year_of_the_rat.jpg
Our new badge for one season........................
Fuck that creepy little Chorlton and the Wheelies lookalike, stone-throwing gypsy peasant. I'm in South African and think I might go find him in Johannesburg with a 12-gauge. Little prick.
Luka's transfer request has been leaked...........
Just incase you haven't seen it yet...it's doing the rounds..
http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg738/scaled.php?tn=0&server=738&filename=m19qg.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640
@Nordic Yid, well we will have to see how Liverpool progress this season. You could be right, but unless Levy signs some goalscorers I cannot see us improving on last season whereas the type of players that Dalgleish is buying I can see moulding together very well, especially under Clark's guidance, the deliverable being greater than the sum of the parts. We are still waiting for Abramovich to tire of Chelsea so I think it will be many years before the other oil barons tire of buying success at City.
@PaulF, thanks for a very instructional history of the Sugar years as you saw them. Unfortunately, for me, ENIC have not really grown the club in the way that someone with a football vision would have done. Your defence of Scholar and his cronies I don't buy. It just shows their lack of business acumen. Thousands of businesses have gone to the wall on the basis of "it could happen to anyone" when in reality it only happens to the incompetent.
10 years on we still have the cheap nasty ground that Sugar built (your words not mine). You apparently realised at the time of Scholar that upgrading the stadium was the key priority, Sugar made some attempt at that but ENIC put all their efforts in to the new training ground which is due to be delivered this year.
ENIC have spent millions on players, that much is true, but in 10 years the highest we have managed to finish is 4th. Now while that is the holy grail of the PL at the moment, it is still only 4th. So why with all the money that has been spent do we still not have the stadium that we need, or the team to seriously challenge for the title?
Answer must lie with ENIC and Levy and their lack of understanding of the football business.
So ENIC have failed then, DaveK. Look forward to hearing your solution for success. I read something about vision and leadership. Presumably in combination with a very large amount of someone elses money? Or is it just a case of willing clubs to sell us their players for low fees?
My intention wasn't defending Scholar by the way, just pointing out a few facts. Take it or leave it buddy. But one thing I will defend scholar for - at least he didn't employ his talentless halfwitted son as CEO of the club.
By the way, are you seriously suggesting that ENIC haven't put enough in to develop a bigger stadium?