As Tottenham prepare for their final game at White Hart Lane, the club stands at a crossroads.
Fans are reminded to look to the future just by standing in the building site that surrounds the Paxton end of the stadium, but their real destiny lies in what happens on the pitch.
Mauricio Pochettino joked in his press conference last week that Spurs would be champions of a league measuring transfer rumours. Sadly, though, it’s inevitable that their players are going to be linked with moves away for as long as the board keeps their strict wage structure in place.
Last year, Harry Kane became the first player in the club’s history to breach the £100,000-a-week mark. All of Spurs’ most influential players have committed to new deals in the last 18 months, with the two exceptions of Toby Alderweireld, and Victor Wanyama, the latter having only signed from Southampton in the summer.
The concern among the supporters is that players as highly-valued as Spurs’ key men supposedly are, do not earn £50,000-a-week, and there will be other clubs more than willing to fork out those sums.
The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust have raised the issue of new deals in a meeting with the board, but chairman Daniel Levy indicated he would not be pressured into awarding extensions because of another progressive season.
The minutes read:
“DL [Levy] said all players were under contracts, contracts they were happy to sign at the time.
“They would be expected to honour those contracts. They wouldn’t have had a reduction if things had gone badly.”
Yet, on a more positive note, Levy also added that “no player would be sold who Tottenham didn’t want to sell for non-footballing reasons.”
It remains to be seen whether Levy’s stubbornness will be to Spurs’ detriment this summer.
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Oldjdub
May 10, 2017 at 3:20 pm
Levy is first & foremost a business man. The balance sheet has always been his priority over success. No other club has a transfer history like Spurs. Just look at the history of players leaving the club to play for major clubs and the money received for them, against the money paid out in transfers. This has led to Spurs selling their real class players & consequently a lack of trophies.
Players will not leave a club if the money & prospects of success are good. With the current manager & team, Spurs prospects have never looked better, so only money will tempt players away.
A new stadium is obviously the major expenditure of any club & every club has only so much money, but ask the fans, a wonderful new stadium, or success on the pitch? I know what I would prefer & think the majority of fans would choose success also, but a chairman is not remembered for success on the pitch. A new stadium, well that’s another matter.
If the club does not pay the going wages for its top players, they will leave. That’s not rocket science.
Pochitino is on the brink of bringing major success to Spurs for the first time in many years with his coaching, management & current team.
This may well be derailed by Levy’s financial approach to players wages. We all know contracts are not worth the paper they are written on. A player will not perform if he thinks he’s being short changed on the wages front & he’s aware of greater financial opportunities at another club.
I am not optimistic that Levy will secure the continued services of our top players & perhaps even worse, Pochitino himself, if he continues with his miserly approach to players wages.
I think Spurs fans may well see this season as the one in which they almost achieved success, before the club plummets back into the mediocrity that they know all too well for far too long, as one after the other the stars leave for more lucrative contracts.
I do hope I’m wrong!