You ready for some more?
Sunday, May 27, 2012 at 7:52PM
We all know the story writing off by hart. It's white pain on a long and winding lane that is never ending. It's never dull. It's always heart wrenching. You age twice as fast as anyone else around you. The roller coaster won't stop even if there's no more track left to ride. You bite your nails, you slap your face. You shrug and you hold your face in the palm of your hands.
The script is unforgiving. The twists and turns relentless. It jests. There's no luck just lustre. The laughter track spikes when you stare and watch without a smile on your face. Some of it doesn't make sense, no matter how many times you rewind and re-watch. It's all intertwined, a masterful work of majesty and mockery. When it's great it's fantastic when it's not it's dark and distasteful. A tapestry of tease. The obvious always happens yet you wonder how it came to be. It's never ordinary and always extraordinary. It's a script that demands your attention and makes you want to look away and yet you can't ever keep your eyes off it.
It's Greek tragedy. It's pantomime, it's soap opera. It can be Balboa losing to Creed. It can be Balboa losing to Lang. Yet if you rub your eyes and take another look, all you ever see is Balboa fighting Hulk Hogan. It's ridiculous yet familiar. Every finale leaves you physically and mentally drained and yet you know it won't be cancelled and it will return for yet another season.
And you will be back again for more. Because you'll never cancel your subscription. Why would you with all the other boring lifeless crap out there?
The next story arc is now in post-production. Budget being discussed. Casting might see a few changes. The director looks to remain the same. The tagline doesn't change. It never changes.
Love the shirt.
More dramatics on the other side of the summer detox. Guaranteed.
COYS.
Reader Comments (13)
I think a summer of cardiovascular work is in order, just to make sure the heart can take another season!
come to realize lady luck hates and probably always will.
Nice article.I see Levy is annoying yet another team and risking losing a potential signing! I also don't see the sense in haggling all the way upto to deadline day as it's better to have that player and pay the extra few million and have them for the first 6 games and get the points that get you into champs league, but Levy does the same year after year.
What Id settle for is selling modric for 40m, the 2 croats for combined 10m, dos santos and a few others out for 15m...if they let Harry spend 65m we will do ok..but we will sell 65m and spend maybe 35m!!! Same as usual..to really challenge we should spend that 65m that sales will get us plus another 20 or 30m...we would be challenging next year..but it will never happen.
At least we don;t have stuary downing:)
Can you believe what's going on with this Vertongan saga... For Fecks sake sign him before the filth do, haven't we had enough heart ache this season, I couldn't bear it if we lose out on this guy, he is absolute quality and he wants to play for us... HELLO !! DL get your finger out SIGN HIM. I'm sick of everything that has gone on in the last few weeks and i really do not need any more grief.
i honestly thought after the Chavs winning the CL it could not get any worse, well if we miss out on this guy it most certainly will.
We will sign him this week, thats for sure! Just media banter from all sides, Ajax want .... the player wants££££ Levy wants to feck every club hes buying from up the ..... itll get done!
I know that i have been on harrys back in the past, but this vertonghen deal is all levy. What the hell does 2.6mill matter when we have already offerd 10mill?? Ffs levy sign him. If we dont do this deal, and get ollson instead, we all know we are not a club on the up. Beting arsenal will get vertonghen, and we will get ollson and the two wolves dudes. If it happends i cant take more of this top club crap. We are back to the 10th place in the league, and some semis now and then.
An excellent poster on the forum I'm on has an extremely good breakdown on our finances to show why we CAN'T afford to "just pay the money" and failing to get the best value out of the Vertonghen deal may mean missing out on areas that are even more short staffed, like a new striker and cover for the fullbacks.
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Listen, you seem to be a having a hard time understanding the concept of a player being quoted above market value EVEN IN AN INFLATED MARKET. Players of a similar ability, similar contract situation, have been bought by clubs for significantly less money than we're talking about with Vertonghen. He's not the only prospect in football around his age and of a similar ability contrary to belief. There are other players we could buy if we couldn't come to terms. So when you consider there isn't a limited supply that's what sets the price. We can pay over market value but we can go out and buy another player at value, which is the point and how this negotiating thing works.
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You seem to have missed the point again, when looking at our areas of need next season, regardless how you feel about them it's factually incorrect that it's an area of need that exceeds a new striker. So on limited funds we should be prioritizing our needs because if we didn't sign Vertonghen for some reason and signed another CB but also signed Ade and Remy, we would have filled bigger holes. If we signed Vertonghen and could only afford strikers like Yakubu, then what?
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Levy sat down with Cahill and his people. What do you think they were talking about? Other transfers going down on deadline day. The fee and his inflated opinion of what players wages are these days made the deal unpalatable for us. His fee wasn't more then what we're negotiating with Ajax. We've had extensive talks with Vertonghen, even showed him around the ground and we haven't agreed on a fee. This isn't football manager, when clubs negotiate over a fee quite often they give permission to talk to the player to see if the deal is even feasible.
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Yes we aren't Leeds but you say we haven't borrowed money to fund our status? That's news, we must be paying these debts for sh|ts and giggles. Whether it's overspending "in your eyes" or rather "in your opinion", it technically is overspending.
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Crash course on our finances, FFS will someone listen this time, because I don't have the energy or time to do this again.
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Levy contrary to popular belief has spent quite a bit of money building this squad. I don't know what would drive the point home for people who never consider the financial liability in transfers, that relative to our turnover we spend an awful lot. Do you know what turnover/revenue means? That's all the income the a company or entity generates in a financial year. Our turnover without the CL is around £125m. Our wages, without CL football are around £67m. The total cost of maintaining our football staff, squad, and other football related costs is around £100m. So let's just stop there for a minute, for a club that generates around £125m without the CL spends £100m, which leaves us with £25m to service our running costs. One of our most significant liabilities is our amortization, which is the remnants of the squad Levy has expensively assembled (actually Levy and mostly Comolli), every year now we pay around £39m in amortization. So let's recap after our costs of maintaining and football operations we still have another expense on top of that, that's basically like buying another player worth £30m and with a £150k per week contract every year. Spurs actually do turn a profit in one sense, it's called EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxation, Depreciation and Amortization). Before we factor in those expenses Spurs show a profit of £40m, afterward we show a loss.
Interest = -£1m
Taxation = £0.3m (showed a profit weirdly)
Depreciation = -£7m
Amortization = -£39.5m
So the non-EDITDA figure minus our operating profit equals...... a loss of £7.5m - not considering other infastructure related.
So what does that mean? Every season if our squad stays intact and we don't spend any money we reflect a loss, around £7m. If that doesn't get the point across nothing will. Levy has spent a lot of money relative to our turnover on building this squad, to a point now where we post a loss just maintaining it. It's why when people complain about player sales not being properly reinvested are off base. Many times those sales go to covering our losses and we do reinvest the money in players. Thing is the players we buy are ones our fans think are beneath our status, basically because they think we can buy players we really can't. A player like Pienaar even though he came at a small fee is actually a significant commitment for the club. A little reminder of what we actually pay Pienaar.
Take Pienaar for example reports say he was on around £60k (I think it might be around £50k), which actually puts him in the same range of our highest earners. He signed a 4-year contract which would mean his contract is in line with other top players at the club players, because it's a 4 year contract his incentives would mirror other players on long deals. Even if we take my what I believe his wages are how much does he cost us? Well his fee was £3m, his salary is around £2.6m, and I'd estimate his agent fees are around £400k-£500k (minimum). The transfer fee gets amortized over the life of the contract so, every year we pay around £3.75m for Pienaar in net salary.
Now the thing universally fans never care about is tax, which these days are covered in part by the club, that's the cost of doing business in modern football. Usually when papers report on wages the figure mentioned is the net wage/salary. So if Pienaar gets paid £50k (£2.6m) it's more likely his gross is a bit more then that I wouldn't be surprised if Spurs pay around £5m all things considered per season for Pienaar's services.
It's not over because Pienaar's contract has bonus incentives, even though he came mid-season I'm pretty sure his are in line with others, possibly reduced. Spurs bonuses really kick in with CL football which has been discussed before, most players on larger contracts have their wages increased a minimum of 50% during CL seasons. I believe the bonuses use the net as a base not the gross. Let's assume Pienaar came at the beginning of last season, during the course of the year he would have earned around £4.5m the equivalent of £86k. Spurs that season would have spent around £6.3m for his services, if you don't amortize his fee you're talking £8.6m (using the same rough tax estimate). So that's what we spent adding to our squad in a window we apparently didn't spend much money. If Pienaar sees out his contract we will have paid well over £20m for a player who doesn't play.
I know Pienaar went on loan so we aren't paying his wages (even though I think we subsidize a hefty portion), that estimation is working under the assumption he's in the squad. This is the main point which nobody is grasping the concept of, squad players like Pienaar cost money, a lot of money. I think these figures get thrown around so regularly of £25m transfer fee etc, it's made football fans jaded and not aware of the realities. Relative to our size signing players who can fill our squad that are of Pienaar's quality is a costly proposition. I think we all want to sign Hoilett, he'd be a similar situation to Pienaar. I think his base wages and agent fees would be higher. It's possible that "free" transfer could be around can cost upwards of £5m and in CL seasons over £7m.
These squad players that Levy regularly gets criticized for buying cost a club our size a lot of money.
We actually do have around £25m-£30m in cash assets, that have been generated by the club which are held in reserve. The point with that money, it doesn't reflect how healthy our financial situation is at the moment. It's like having an unpaid bill but having cash in pocket. Yeah you have cash but you have bills too, if you paid off all our liabilities then you wouldn't have much cash, so that's really a false amount. This club makes up losses by selling players and the remainder we put to cost effective players. That's been the strategy now for a few years. For us to really take a step forward and improve our squad with the likes of Adebayor, Vertonghen, Remy, Dembele a huge commitment will be required and players will have to be moved and buy simply negotiating or bidding for these players Levy has already conceded taking a massive loss, which hopefully will be short term.
We can do it but it's going to take some clever negotiating, and EVERY MILLION COUNTS. Which is why in the case of Vertonghen, yes £9m and £12m is a huge difference. Quite simply that's what we are as a club, deal with it.
Dustin. That is really intresting. Can the guy who posted all that clarify roughly how much not qualifying for CL this season will cost us ?
I appreciate how much you get depends on how far you progress in the competition so any answer would have a upper and lower figure.
Thanks Dustbin... I'm so much wiser now
Yes thats all well and good but I THOUGHT WE HAD A RICH OWNER WHO WOULD INVEST IN THE CLUB TO MAKE IT GREAT AGAIN.
Yes we have a rich owner but he owns a chain of shops, we are still in a recession and because of this his sales are down! Therefore he has less money to invest in spurs! If we can keep hold of modric and bale for atleast one season to see if we can qualify for the CL! If we do as we will have less off pitch distractions (court case, England job etc) we should be aiming for 3rd place realistically!
COYS - LOVE THE SHIRT!!!
So 50% salary bonus for CL means we make no extra for making CL almost. Now I feel better about the chelsea win.
Dustin: Just the fact that levy waits to buy players 6 games in to save a few million is retarded!! He saves a few million and then loses tens of millions missing out on the champions league. He is a doughnut...a complete jammy doughnut who has failed in 12 years to deleiver a single trophy of note! Time for him to go!