robburton.bsky.social
2,154 posts
141 followers
297 following
Getting Started
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It’s a bit of a mess overall! I think Gray’s flexibility gets him in the squad (CM, RB, CB). We’ll be looking to move on Biss, but if he’s still with us I think he’d miss the cut.
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Feels somewhat suboptimal to leave out 2 defenders from the CL squad after last season.
Drag definitely given his injury status, but Davies will surely be required, and they’ll have to remove/sell a surplus midfielder.
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As random as possible within some pretty tight parameters!
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Starting and finishing with a home fixture though. Have Arsenal finally lost their influence over the PL?
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This can only precede next weeks announcement that he’s stepping down and has sold the club to Elon Musk.
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Chelsea and city are gonna start the new season at 100mph then crash and burn sometime around Christmas.
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Went last night, and Jarvis was fantastic. You’ll have a great night.
At my age I particularly enjoyed there being a 15 min interval so everyone could have a toilet break and grab beers. All gigs should do it!
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Almost as if footballers (and their agents) don’t care who they play for, unless it’s in their interests to kick up a bit of a fuss.
…yeah I’m looking at Cuti.
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If he’s happy to stay, then he’ll stay. If I was Son I’d want to be playing at the top level going in to a World Cup year.
I’m optimistic we’ll see a return to old goal scoring Son this season, with a bit more flexibility to his role.
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Very excited to see what TF can get out the wide forwards next season. He’ll allow Son, Odobert and Tel lot s more freedom from the left hand side than Ange did.
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Not a bad first game to have in charge. Chance to win a trophy on game 1.
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I think so. A bit of sulking. I’m sure everyone will be excited once the fixtures come out next week.
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I bet even talksports more balanced than Bluesky at the moment!
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Looking forward to all the new danish fan returning from the wilderness years since Allan Nielsen left.
(Sorry, Christian).
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It leaves us looking like Liverpool or Arsenal…this has been their exact strategy for the last 5 years. And it’s successful.
No ones ready to hear it after a traumatic week but a smart club sells Romero this summer. It’s our last chance to maximise return on him (unless he’s signing a new contract)
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Totally agree. Of course we need someone who can outperform our budgets. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to increase those budgets!
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You support Tottenham Hotspur. 2 league titles in our history.
No one has a devine right to win stuff. Enjoy the journey, and don’t sweat the destination too much.
If you think you’ve got it bad try being a Reading supporter or an AFC Wimbledon fan. Cos that’s been real hardship.
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We’re playing a different game to the oligarchs and private equity owners. That’s not a Tottenham or an ENIC problem, that’s a football (frankly capitalism) problem. Not worth getting angry about it.
Fixtures come out next week. Lets see if we invest in some young exciting talent. Then we go again.
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Do people think that? I’ve not seen that discussed here.
I’m more pessimistic on our spend this summer than most. Given our transfer debt, I think TF is going to have to sell to buy, and we’ll need loans with options.
Thats why TF is here because he’s show he can maximise a small budget.
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It shouldn’t really need saying but PSR headroom is very different to having actual funds/cash.
We can be annoyed that ENIC don’t want to throw loads of their cash at their investment, but it’s always been this way, so it’s a bit like shaking your fist at the clouds at this point.
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There’s trade offs to being spurs manager you’ve got to work around. The successful ones manage that, but if you can’t do manage that trade off we move on quickly. 2 years and a trophy is better than most.
Ultimately, he just fell short tactically in the toughest league. There’s no shame to that.
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Ange was probably the best available option at the time so it wasn’t a mistake to appoint him. They also kept him until Bilbao when previous incumbents would’ve been sacked. They then assessed the situation and decided those flaws were too deep and change was needed.
All good decisions by the board
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Totally. Would I take coming 6th every year and winning a trophy every ~10 years with ENIC, over title races with some Middle East sports washing project? Absolutely I would!
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I’ll believe a takeover will happen when I see it!
Maybe an American hedge fund / private equity firm comes in with an initial 10-15% stake to inject some capital, but I don’t think there’ll be anything seismic on the horizon. DL still in charge for another decade.
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It’s smart to keep DL on short term for continuity. He’s a minority investor so he would eventually get voted out if new owners came in, so I doubt it’s a huge blocker.
The ENIC ownership model is murky. it might be that DL doesn’t want to sell his 29%. Whether Joe Lewis allows that is unknown.
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This is purely my opinion, but I felt AP didn’t surround himself with good enough specialist coaches, and for that reason I think it’s vital TF is able to bring as many of his back room staff with him as possible.
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Brentford are extremely well run, like Brighton. They’ll have planned for losing TF and have a replacement lined up ready to go (sounds like McKenna).
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Spurs biggest issue is whether an investor sees further scope for growth. Why buy spurs at £4bn and you could see a £1bn increase if global tv money goes up - when you could buy another prem club for £800m and double or treble your money pretty quickly with the right moves?
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We’re definitely attractive. Our earnings before deductions (EBITA) is consistently about £150m since the new stadium.
The transfer debt is an issue, but I expect that to reduce this year so it’s more manageable. An investor would inject cash to pay off that and invest in capital projects.
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Spurs are a curious case whereby most of the recent losses are ‘paper’ losses - amortisation of stadium and training ground mainly… but we still owe a lot on transfers from 4-2 years ago, that are due this summer, so cash flow is an issue.
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They had a bunch of games 5-3 v wolves, 4-3 v Ipswich and Man Utd, a couple of 4-2s as well.
We won’t be short of goals…not sure the defending will improve much!
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The thing I’ve noticed from @notthatmilo.bsky.social thread is how much TF likes talking to the media and how much access he gives to his methods and thinking.
It’s pretty unusual…I suspect he’s been pitching himself for a big job, and might be more guarded at spurs.
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Love how he talks about “taking risks” at the start here. Anyone who’s worried that we’re bringing in a defensive manager should think again.
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At about the 11”30 mark TF inadvertently shows how they setup to defend the back post from a crossing position, and then mentions “structure” 3 times to emphasise the important of having a defensive base to in-turn unlock on ball creativity.
I am already in love.
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A ‘par’ season probably means 7th-8th, domestic semi and last 16th CL.
Anything better than that and the manager has outperformed. Progress in the cups is mostly luck of the draw, so the focus is always going to be on outperforming in the league to make CL that way.
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Unfortunately, there is one immovable object and that’s the money available. The strategy has to be built with that in mind.
Levy was pretty explicit in our latest financial report that they understand they’ve taken the club as far as they can financially and require outside capital to grow.
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Obviously spurs want to target young talent before we need to pay top dollar transfer fees and wages… big problem we have is Chelsea and Brighton have exactly the same strategy and will pay more wages or offer them a better route to the 1st team.
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So I hear. I don’t think it’s official yet, but with a new ceo it’s hardly a surprise.
Lange’s in charge of the football, so this decision and the decision to target Frank obviously comes from him first. It’s his department. He’ll have made the deep arguments and everyone will then have agreed.
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100%. When we were in a position of strength 2016-18 we did nothing and frankly never recovered.
Arsenal came 2nd and went sout and paid £100m for Rice. They’ll spend well and make money selling the reserves for decent prices again this summer.
We’ll give away players like Gil, Solomon, Biss,etc.
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Yeah - they had a 60,000 seat stadium and ours was half that. The problem Arsenal faced was that they thought that stadium would lock them in to title races, only to be blown out the water by Chelsea and City.
Spurs obviously a million miles from that at the time.
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We just need to hold our nerve, he’ll be at Man Utd once they sack Amorim in October.
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Is Southgate being linked?! Arghhh!
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Frankfurt were decent, and in the home game we battered them. Probably the last real Ange ball type performance.
After that it was all mid/low block in EL (the right choice), but it wasn’t going to be sustainable this season.