Match Day Thread Tottenham Hotspur v Brentford

Really good post, CK.

Only highlighted this bit - and apologies if it was tongue in cheek/ sarcasm, couldn’t quite tell - as that ended up being a really good window too, the on loan Adebayor was excellent and arguably had the best “non-Harry Kane or Berbatov” season of a striker for us in the Prem whilst Scotty Parker won our POTY, we also brought in Friedel too who steadied the ship in goal for us.

 

Number 5 in my opinion is the critical matter. Levy sees transfer targets as investments and thus is seeking to attain a high ROI. This means levy will target those that are not necessarily at the top of their game and will only speculate on those where we may make a good profit.

He wants to buy the Modrics, Carricks, Sheringhams, Bale, Dele type players whose values will dramatically rise and profit from. Obviously he missed the boat with dele and held onto him for too long before he value plummeted.

This policy is fraught with high risks, as with all investments.

 

True but their impacts were extremely short lived compared to most of the other players I've listed. Adebayor reverted to type after two years while Parker's legs finally went at around the same time. So I don't regard that window as nearly as good as most others of that era.

 

I think saying it’s random makes a mockery of good football planning by a club.

ENIC used to have a very sound plan of largely buying young technical players with potential and developing them into top stars for both footballing development and financial success. That worked for a solid 15 years before that plan being thrown out of the window by paying silly prices for players that didn’t fit the MO and then thinking “win now” managers would be a cheaper quick fix. We lost our way massively and are paying the price, it’s only been through Kane’s (and Son’s) brilliance we’ve not nosedived further.

Many clubs have footballing plans that they stick to and it works, both with long and short term success. Brighton are a recent example of a club now following a clear plan but you have clubs like Ajax, Dortmund, Salzburg, Benfica etc who for years have stuck to the same model and continuously enjoyed success both on the pitch and off it financially. Sevilla under Monchi’s DoF stewardship will be in what feels like their 20th Europa final.

Clubs that have a sound plan and stick to it no matter what, generally enjoy more good days than bad. Since we threw our plan out of the window, it’s been the opposite.

 

Your list of clubs that are outperforming includes only one which is even plausibly doing better than their financial status warrants and that is Sevilla.
They have only outperformed in the Europa League though which is weird.
I used to think the same as you, but then I noticed that statistical tests could be applied to football and it has completely changed my view. I think almost everything I ever believed about football was wrong. Almost everything can be explained by money and luck.
I don't think that means you shouldn't try to hire better coaches and better players, simply that you shouldn't expect to succeed. If there are coaches with an edge it's almost impossible to detect them even with hindsight.

 

I rarely believe in luck, especially the idea of luck lasting for sustained periods. Essentially you make your own luck, people that work harder and smarter tend to be more luckier and that for me isn’t a coincidence, nor random.

We didn’t go from being mid table to a big six club via luck either, we got there through sound footballing planning and development over roughly 15 years, though the lack of planning and structure now at the club is quickly seeing us drop back down and that’ll be escalated if/ when Kane leaves unless we seriously sort ourselves out.

Clubs like Brentford and Brighton are also more recent examples of what sound planning can do without having tons of money. Matthew Benham and Tony Bloom took over their respective clubs in 2012 and 2009, both were in League One at the times of their arrivals too. Now both are amongst the most enjoyable clubs to watch in the Premier League with Brighton securing Europa League football for the first time in their history this season. Both of these chairmen have created sound footballing plans for on and off the pitch. Brentford became notorious for becoming one of the first clubs to utilise the moneyball method, whereas Brighton’s scouting has been amongst the very best in Europe these last 3 or 4 years but good scouting only works if the players being scouted fit the club’s style and philosophy, which is also why the Potter to De Zerbi managerial transition was seamless too.

It is possible to create a level of success without just needing tons of money, how you define that success can be subjective but you need the right people making the right decisions and then primarily sticking to it even if there are blips along the way. Right now, there is zero footballing plan at our football club.

 

The point is that luck rarely lasts for sustained periods but can explain almost all of the short term changes. I think our plan is very clear. We spend the revenue on football and try to increase the revenue year on year.

 

ENIC are wealthy enough.

They have however chosen not to attempt
( in the "letter of the law" ) some strategic
financial investment nto the club at key moments.

 

I’ve said similar, I don’t really believe in luck and certainly not over sustained periods - which is why some/ most of the clubs I’ve listed clearly aren’t lucky and have genuine plans, something we used to have too.

Our lack of planning has resulted in us regressing at an alarming rate and we won’t have Harry Kane to continue to bail us out and paper over cracks. Raising and spending money on football is pointless when there’s no method to the spending, it’s just wasting money, something we’ve been masters of for about 4-5 years now.

 

There is no evidence that we are regressing at an alarming rate...we've had a period above average followed by a period below average. Brighton have had a couple of above average years. This is all quite normal but as usual people want to see patterns and act on them when there is no real evidence to warrant that.

 

There is though, the quality of the squad shows us that. I think you severely underestimate the impact and quality of Kane and to a lesser degree Son. If we replaced those two over the last few years with simply just good to decent players, we’d be mid table, potentially below.

You and I used to debate quite heavily over the quality of Harry Winks, I’d say nowadays we have a squad of players that are largely on a par with his level of ability - and that level is bottom half/ relegation standard.

 

I've asked you numerous times, without yet receiving a response, at what point you concede that we are seeing a 'pattern' and admit that change is needed. That's what concerns me about some fans. Ten years could pass of consecutively poorer league finishes and you'd still shrug and call it random luck. Your model advocates essentially doing nothing as nothing makes an intentional difference anyway and as long as we can't compete for the very best players financially we might as well throw a dart at a wall collage of the next best 200 players out there and hope that luck is on our side.

I struggle to follow and comprehend this, especially as from your posts over the years you come across as a successful and astute professional or businessman who is both well off and well educated. Was that all down to random luck too?

Where do you draw the line?

 

A widely-known adage is that when something
occurs three times, then a pattern may be in
the process of being uncovered.

 

One of the reasons I had successful business career was that I tried hard to work out what the real issues were and what was noise. It's only recently that I've been applying the same logic to football with results which surprised me.
All I am really saying is that if there are choices of where to spend money to improve a football club then go for the ones with causal correlations. The only one that I can see is really clear is that more money spent on players leads to better outcomes. There may be some impact of coaching or recruitment strategy but in the case of the former the data only shows it with hindsight on at most a handful of coaches out of hundreds. In the case of the latter then there is no relationship at all as far as I can see.
Anyway, if our recruitment is as bad as it looks because we are doing something wrong then signing random players would likely turn out better!
The obvious strategy on coaches is to employ someone you like and keep them a long time. At least you will get a consistent approach.

 

Did your successful business career involve running a football club at the top end of the PL?

If not then I don't think you quite grasp that it's a different ball game all together.

But I can see why you think Levy is always making the correct decision because he also doesn't quite grasp the difference of running say for example a chain of hotels to running a football club.

 

On your specific question, identifying when a trend is changing is a really tricky statistical problem especially when the scatter is large compared to the edge.
I wouldn't want to change something big unless I can see something really obviously wrong.

 

Of course it didn't but the same logic can apply. No-one on here would pass that test so why do you raise it?

 

Because you're the only one who really applies the logic that a football club and it's running is like any other business

I strongly disagree with that due to many factors we have probably touched upon several times.

You apply rules and thinking that I don't think can be applied to running a football club and the psychology involved in it... especially the recruitment aspect of football players who you see as being the same as an office worker.... very much like Levy.

 

Speak for yourself ...

 

In what ways do you contend that running a football club is :

1. just like any other business
2. not like any other business

(I am on record here for both the above ... )