TOTTENHAM last season moved into a remarkable new stadium and reached the final of the Champions League. They held on to their highly rated manager and have in their squad the England captain plus two young midfielders who, if fit and in form, are probable England regulars.
Their goalkeeper captained France to the World Cup last summer while their centre-back pairing played together for Belgium in the World Cup semi-final. From a distance, it may appear all is well at Tottenham. And yet it clearly isn’t.
Defeat at Leicester on Saturday means they haven’t won away in the league since January. Although they lie eighth in the table, in terms of points, they’re two and a half times nearer the relegation zone than the top of the table. Although they might have won at Leicester – denied a 2-0 lead only by the tightest of VAR calls on an offside – they have only really played well once this season, in the 4-0 win over a Crystal Palace side who played weirdly high against them. The pace and aggression that used to define them have gone, and Saturday exposed major questions about their defensive capabilities.
There was a moment in the post-match press-conference that seemed telling. Asked about his side’s run of poor away form, Pochettino began with what seemed like it would be a dismissive answer but then checked himself and acknowledged it was “a good question”. Whether he realised he couldn’t brazen his way through when the statistics are so stark, or whether he released the goodwill of journalists who generally admire his candour, or some combination of the two, in that hesitation as an acknowledgement of the seriousness of the issue.
It goes beyond Tottenham’s away form – they did, after all, win 11 or 13 away from home in the earlier part of last season so it may be that what we are seeing is at least in part a regression to the mean. Pochettino arrived at the club in 2014. In his first season, they collected 64 points. The next season, as they came third behind Leicester, it was 70, then 86 as they were runners-up to Chelsea, then 77 and last season 71.
He went up the mountain, and now he is going down again. His own star is perhaps waning a little, not helped by the fact that there are such doubts about so many of the players who were once his lieutenants on the pitch.
Perhaps that’s only natural. In terms of resources, Spurs are very much the sixth of the Big Six. On the face of it, Tottenham’s revenue last season of £379m, although it places the sixth of the Big Six, suggests a measure of comfort. That is, after all, pretty much double the revenue of the seventh club in the list, Everton and, although it ranks them sixth, they are just £10m behind Arsenal in fifth, even if the gap to the wealthiest club by revenue, Manchester United is £211m.
Think Pochettino has clocked out at Spurs. We’ve all had a job where we either don’t get on with our bosses or feel it’s time to move on in order to progress, once that motivation goes it’s almost impossible to get it back.
— Sibs (@SibsMUFC) September 21, 2019
But revenue is only part of the story. There is also owner investment. Spurs have had more than Arsenal over the past decade, but not by much, and it is dwarfed by the other four members of the Big Six.
That, allied to the extreme caution of Daniel Levy, explains why Tottenham’s spending is so limited. Last season, they spent £205m on wages and player amortisation, which is not merely only around two thirds of the equivalent figure for Arsenal and less than half the figure for United, it places them seventh in the Premier League list, behind Everton. In that sense to be widely regarded as the third-best team in the country is some achievement.
It’s not even that Tottenham, with their recent consistency, are closing the gap. In the past decade, their revenues have risen by slightly more than Chelsea’s, as Roman Abramovich’s interest has waned, but by rather less than any of the other members of the Big Six. Trying to close that gap was the principle financial motive behind the move to a new stadium and it may be that in the next two to three years, especially if Tottenham continue to qualify regularly for the Champions League, that the gap begins to narrow. But they only have to glance four miles across north London to see the risks inherent in investing in a new stadium.
This feels like a crunch time. The young players of promise are becoming senior players who demand trophies. A number of players – Christian Eriksen, Danny Rose, Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen, Victor Wanyama – have come close to the exit. Even Pochettino seems frustrated and has hinted regularly about possibly leaving.
Football’s economics always meant that the likelihood was that the main purpose of Pochettino’s first Tottenham side would be to fund the creation of a second that, starting from a higher base, had even more potential. This now is the time of the transition.
