Why Spurs are Feeder Club

I realise that the title is provocative and for that I apologise, however, you only have to watch Match of the Day to be amazed at how many ex-Spurs are plying their trade at other Premiership clubs. I think that we must have set some form of a record this year with virtually half the league having ex-Spurs at their disposal and Sunderland, Fulham and Portsmouth being able to field the best part of half a teams-worth! Based on our current, albeit temporary league position I guess you could say that makes us a feeder club!!!

In the past many of us have seen this as "clearing the deadwood", but whether you think that coaching these ex-players was the football equivalent of polishing turds or not, this policy has stripped us of the kind of continuity that every good team cultivates by having a group of players stick together for a substantial amount of time. Players, even mediocre players, play better as a team over time and although the Tottenham carousel has ensured Spurs are on a sound financial footing, the flip side is we have not really had an opportunity to see our players develop as a unit over 4, 3 or even 2 years (although I suppose we'd actually need to keep the same manager for that period for it to work, and there's not much chance of that in Spursland).

The latest nail in this coffin are the whispers that the Arshavin deal fell through because of Levy's concerns regarding the player's sell on value. When did Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea or any other club with genuine ambition ever worry about a player's sell on value? They don't, and that is because when they buy players they buy them to play, and more often than not they expect them to play for at least the length of the contract they sign.

They do not regard them as an investment opportunity to be bought and sold as if playing some sort of bizarre stocks and shares game: Make a few mill here, lose a few mill there but as long as we are operating a profit then who gives a shit?

The pattern seems to be:

1. Buy a bunch of young, promising players, foreign unknowns, British boys on the brink of international recognition etc etc
2. Play them for a year
3. Sell those that attract critical acclaim for a vast profit
4. Clear the deadwood at a small loss
5. Keep the rest for another year
6. Repeat
   

Am I saying they do it deliberately? Well yes, as a matter of fact I bloody well am! You may say that Man United engineered the sales of Carrick and Berbatov, and that the players wanted to leave and so on. But the reason they got away with it is because Man U and the rest KNOW that every player at Spurs has a price because every player at Spurs DOES have a price. Of course to save face the club is going to blame everybody but themselves, tell you that the player got tapped up, tell you that his head was turned, tell you that they didn't want to sell - but sell they do and that my friends is why every one of us should be worried by the Gareth Bale talk.

Of course, they won't sell for £10m mind you. No, that is not enough profit for a young international like him. But if Liverpool get serious and the talk escalates to £18m, £20m or more then he'll be out the door before the champagne corks have even hit the wall.

The phrase "financially stable" is probably more palatable to the average Spurs fan than "feeder club" and we should probably thank Mr Levy for the former. However, if Tottenham are to achieve success in terms that are not measured by how far into the black the balance sheet is every year then we need to stop selling our best players - more than that, we need to consider not selling our average players!

Unfortunately the evidence suggests that the ENIC business model has zero contingency for this and for that reason I say...

...bring on the billionaires!!!