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The Bale money revisited

Discussion in 'Tottenham Hotspur' started by RobSpur, Jun 6, 2017.

  1. RobSpur

    RobSpur Well-Known Member

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    Couldnt really see a thread that this suited.

    Just had another look at transfer fees for our magnificent 7.

    The players are listed below with reported transfer fees in (millions), out, and profit :

    Chadli 7,13 = +6
    Paulinho 17,12 = -5
    Soldado 25.5,13.5 = -12
    Capoue 9,7.5 = -2.5
    Chiriches 8, 6 = -2
    Lamela 25.5, 12* = -13.5
    Eriksen 11.5, 38* = +26.5

    -2.5 ?

    Clearly this takes no account of wages, or of contribution/performance, and also estimated selling figures are included for Lamela and Eriksen.

    There had been a lot of talk previously that we had as good as thrown the money away. Whilst there's little doubt we have invested other money more profitably, thanks to the purchase of Eriksen, it looks to me like we will about break even on these transfers.

    Edit : by the way, I also notice that the aggregate purchase fees for these players were c £105m, which is significantly higher than the reported fee for Bale.
     
    #1
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  2. The RDBD

    The RDBD Well-Known Member

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    In terms of where the club went in the two years since Bale left,
    there is a lot of truth in that. Only Eriksen and Chadli have delivered
    up to / above their perceived potential.
     
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  3. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    Some of those figures are innaccurate, most obviously Soldado's fee was reliant on all manner of clauses which he obviously failed to meet, so the real fee was the best part of £10m less than the quoted one - while there was talk that Paulinho's fee was paid in the Brazilian Real, and since their economy tanked after his signing that means there was a sudden drop in how much we were paying when meeting the installments for his fee.

    In other words we somehow managed to end up with a profit out of the whole affair, albeit a profit that was Levy's work and nothing to do with Baldini.
     
    #3
  4. "Thanks for that Brian"

    "Thanks for that Brian" Well-Known Member

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    Looking at that !of it brings it home how much players from foreign leagues are a complete punt. Especially places like Romania and South America. We can't avoid it altogether but N'Jie, GKN, Janssen all point to how it's a high risk strategy.

    Having a foreign Mr Fixit don't help. Still, he looked smooth!
     
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  5. The Huddlefro

    The Huddlefro Well-Known Member

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    Also worth noting that we sold other players in that window, including Parker, Dempsey, Hudd (*crys*) and Caulker that between them must have fetched us £20m or more, and on top of that as well as a few smaller deals for youth players (e.g. Luongo). The press always conveniently forget that fact when they talk about this window for us.

    Combine that with hbic's point and we did ok financially out of that transfer window, especially considering where we are now.

    Coincidently enough that window, a certain H. Kane went on loan to Leicester City, so we lost two talismans that day, albeit one to return.
     
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  6. PowerSpurs

    PowerSpurs Well-Known Member

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    It isn't just the Bale money: over the last five windows for a net spend of about zero we've managed to put together a squad worth about £500m.

    Our transfer dealings have been nothing sort of sensational.
     
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  7. Dier Hard

    Dier Hard G'day mate!

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    To be picky I'd say your valuations of Lamela and Eriksen are out mate.

    Lamela missing most of last season didn't help but the season before he was very, very good. I'd say he's easily worth £25m, especially in this current market (the fact we paid £30m for Sissoko should tell a story in it's own there).

    As for Eriksen, I'd say he's closer to the £50m mark. Genuine playmakers like him seem a bit rare at the moment and the sheer fact there's rumours that Barca see him as an Iniesta replacement says it all.

    So with that in mind (partly thanks to the inflated fees now) we'd actually have players worth more than the Bale dough.
     
    #7
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2017
  8. RobSpur

    RobSpur Well-Known Member

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    I think there's a lot of uncertainty regarding Lamela. Has he got a long term injury, or other problem ? We don't know.

    Agree you could well be right though, and I could well have been a bit too conservative there on reflection.
     
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  9. RobSpur

    RobSpur Well-Known Member

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    I think we were probably hoping to find another Berbatov. Unfortunately, they don't come along too often !
     
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  10. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

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    If you compare how we spend the Bale money to how we spent the Keane/Berbatov money it's like night and day
    Luka Modric: £16.5m, £33m
    Cesar Sanchez: £0, £0
    Vedran Corluka: £8.5m, £5.5m
    Roman Pavlyuchenko: £14m, £8m
    Gio Dos Santos: £5m, £850k (+ £1m sell-on fee, and £850k in loan fees)
    John Bostock: £700k, £0
    Paul-Jose M'Poku: ?, £340k
    Heurelho Gomes: £7.8m, £0 (+ £340k loan fee)
    David Bentley: £15m, £0
    Mirko Ranieri: ?, ?

    That's a loss of around £17.5m, but that doesn't tell half the story when you consider we wrote off almost £23m on Gomes and Bentley
     
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  11. "Thanks for that Brian"

    "Thanks for that Brian" Well-Known Member

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    The summer of 2008. A low of enormous proportions. I take it that United loaning us Frazier 'BLOODY' Campbell was a freebie and done just to add insult to injury?

    Juande 'Smiler' Ramos, Commolli and most of that lot were enough to make a nun curse. It's hard to imagine a worse set of transfers, Modric and Corluka exempted.

    A Brazilian ****ing goalkeeper? What idiot buys a Brazilian goalkeeper?
     
    #11
  12. Citizen Kane

    Citizen Kane Danny Rosebud

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    pepG.jpg
     
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  13. "Thanks for that Brian"

    "Thanks for that Brian" Well-Known Member

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    #13
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  14. littleDinosaurLuke

    littleDinosaurLuke Well-Known Member

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    As the leading PL clubs become richer and richer, it becomes harder to look at one part of a balance sheet, like transfers, in this way and make sense of it. Looking at the Bale money now, at a time when clubs are awash with cash and aren't so bothered about profits and losses in the transfer market, seems to be an irrelevance.
    Commercial revenues are vast now. Sponsorship, shirt sales, image rights etc - as well as wages of course - have to be factored in when buying (and selling players). It's no longer as simple as looking at the headline transfer fees when deciding whether buying/selling a player represents good business (commercially).
    It's also worth pointing out that PL clubs are usually the wealthiest buyers for foreign selling clubs and that will have a bearing on the price, how it's paid (instalments etc), add-on clauses etc. The richest of the rich can structure transfers in a way that enables them to pay over time. As they are so cash rich they can afford large instalment payments on a number of transfers at the same time without having to shell out the full fee for these transfers at one go. They will pay over the odds to get the player in these circumstances.
    Spurs are one of those group of clubs, albeit not the richest of them yet.
    It wouldn't surprise me if Spurs paid £40M+ for a player this summer if it was the right one to improve the team (another forward). The fee paid might be £20M more than the true value of the player, but the club can afford it, might have to pay it to get the player and it will make sense commercially if the player is a success. It only looks like bad business when the player is sold at a knockdown price if he fails. But the club can take that risk. The real issue for Spurs is fitting that type of player into the wages structure.
    With at the top end of the PL and in the CL every year, the club can only get richer. Levy can't afford to be conservative on transfer fees or wages if he wants the club to be competitive in both unless he believes that the miracle of acquiring top class players from the youth system or through cheap transfers can continue.
     
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  15. lennypops

    lennypops Well-Known Member

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    To me that looks eerily similar to the list of the magnificent 7. Only if anything this list includes two nailed-on successes (Modric and Corluka) whilst the Magnificent 7 only boasts Eriksen (with Lamela almsot sort of becoming a valuable player for us). Probably add in the fact that Pav (though never my cup of tea) and Gomes did bring some positives in much the same way as Chadli did even though none of them were good enough overall.

    Profit-wise the lists might be different but overall these two lists show me again something I said at the time of the Magnificent 7 signing - if you sign 7 players you'll be doing well if 2 of them end up being valuable additions to the playing staff.
     
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  16. Citizen Kane

    Citizen Kane Danny Rosebud

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    Excellent article and OP Rob <ok>

    So many of the failings of that fateful transfer window were of our own making, and I have nothing but sympathy (to some extents) for the players we signed and indeed for the much-derided AVB...

    1) The seeds for disaster were well and truly sown the summer before that debacle. OUTGOINGS of: Modric, VDV, Ledley left 3 gaping holes in the squad that Dembele, Dempsey and Jan quite simply failed to plug and, truth be told, it was cruel to expect any better of them. We were by all means a one-man team that year, relying almost exclusively on Bale's brilliance to carry us to some admittedly superb performances. But make no mistake, one long-term injury to the Welshman and we would've finished mid-table.
    2) Bringing in multiple new faces in one window is recipe for disaster, especially when those faces have never been seen before in the PL. As Huddlefro mentioned, it wasn't just Bale we were looking to replace that summer; Parker, Dempsey, Gallas, Defoe & Hudd were all pretty regular starters or key squad players; which meant that we needed at least 6 of the 7 to integrate instantly into the match day squad. Never happening.
    3) Bringing in a DOF having allowed a manager a full season of independent authority is another recipe for disaster, and had all the hallmarks of the car crash relationship between Commolli and BMJ after the latter had done plenty to prove himself a perfectly capable manager. Installing a DOF with zero knowledge of the PL to recruit 7 new players with zero knowledge of the PL was just utter lunacy; a decision that seriously made me question Levy's ability to steward the club for the first time since the BMJ sacking.

    I tend to agree that Chadli justified his fee whilst Eriksen has gone on to make his look like pittance. I don't think Lamela has quite justified his (even in the 'post-truth' era of Trump and Sissoko), but at the same time I see him as an integral part of our squad and a true 'Poch type' of player.
     
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  17. lennypops

    lennypops Well-Known Member

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    As an addendum: I do think that our transfers have had a much higher than 2/7 hit-rate since that time. I really think we've improved on this front.
     
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  18. "Thanks for that Brian"

    "Thanks for that Brian" Well-Known Member

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    However, the Bale money did lead to Brendan Rodgers making a bigger tit of himself than Seaman when Nayim lobbed him from the half way line. I nearly soiled myself that night but I was off my face at the time and full of chocolate crêpes as he did the 'dying fly' in the back of the net.
     
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  19. Citizen Kane

    Citizen Kane Danny Rosebud

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    I've always felt that it is reasonable to expect a 50% success rate with transfers. We hit 5/7 in Poch's 1st season and 4/5 in his second. They were both phenomenal windows that represented excellent value for money, at the same time as clearing out plentiful deadwood to record an overall profit.

    Our dealings last summer were a step down from this with a 1/4 success rate. As I've said in other threads, if any one of Sissoko/GKN/Janssen had hit the heights of Wanyama in terms of impact last year, we would've won the league. It's as simple as that.
     
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  20. RobSpur

    RobSpur Well-Known Member

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    Corluka will always be worth his weight in gold though tbf.
     
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