- Why, when it is a case of rescheduling games, for one club the rules don’t apply
- Managers are not just about trophies: Arteta is far more than that
By Tony Attwood
There have long been suspicions that if Tottenham were to be relegated the biggest problem they would face would not be getting promoted the following season, but paying the interest on their debts with a much, much reduced income.
A report in the New York Times has focused on Tottenham’s current issues, and have noted that “Tottenham have gone from England’s most profitable and self-sustaining club to one where costs are racing past revenues and transfer debts have piled up.”
Now I didn’t know that Tottenham were “England’s most profitable and self-sustaining club” but even if we accept that, and even without access to the 2024/25 financial report or projection, they must be in trouble. So much trouble that relegation could be a financial catastrophe, the likes of which the League has never seen.
We do know that in 2024/5 Tottenham won the Europa League and lost £120.6m. Not too bad except that it means that since 2020, they have lost £450m, which is rather careless.
In fact, digging into Tottenham’s reporting of itself, we find a fair bit of self-aggrandisement based on notions like “top six finishes” in relation to which they are behind all the other big clubs.
The point is, in fact, that the building of the new stadium was undertaken to make Tottenham look like a Big Six club, even if the results weren’t so good. The problem is that no one expected them to be this bad.
A new stadium always means a restriction on money for buying players. Arsenal, we might remember, were winning and winning until the move from Highbury to the new stadium. But Arsenal stayed in the top four and kept getting European money. Some fans repeated the “fourth is not a trophy” slogan, but Tottenham fans are more likely to be faced with either administration or relegation because they simply won’t have the income to pay for everything if they slip out of the top four. In short, they don’t have a Wenger.
Tottenham have also been living on unsubstantiated claims, such as the notion that as they were profitable a few years ago, they will be in their new stadium. Although possibly not if they are in the Championship. And the simple fact is that in 2024/25 a club that had been making money year after year started losing money just when they needed it to pay the interest on the money they borrowed to build the new stadium.
The losses come because it turns out that running the new Super Stadium costs almost three times as much as running the old WHL ground did. Worse, new players who come along and see the new ground expect big wages to go along with it. As a result the club with the sixth highest wages bill for a club that ends up 17th in the league.
If Tottenham do go down, they will still have to pay all those wages, but they simply won’t have the income from marketing etc..
But the biggest problem is that Tottenham have spent a lot of money on players who ain’t that good, just when they have to start paying for the stadium. In fact, they are the fourth highest spenders, but they haven’t bought players who will take them to the top of the league.
So they won the Europa but lost the regular profit on player sales that they made through the 2010s, and generally seem to sell players for less than they cost, while at the same time claiming that they always made a profit on player sales. But poor transfers mean they have players who are on high salaries but not delivering on the pitch, and are not sellable at the price they cost.
To meet their immediate bills, Tottenham seem to have started spending next season’s TV money. That simply sent the problem down the road to next season.
Now, when a company doesn’t have enough money to pay its staff, its interest and its debts, it either sells more or cuts costs or both. I’m told the last part of the stadium development around the ground has stopped.
In fact, Tottenham will probably be ok if they don’t go down, but if they do, then one of their main streams of income – TV – will collapse as would top value entertainment suits etc. If they went down, they would have the highest income in the Championship, but given the way they have performed under a range of managers this season, that doesn’t guarantee an immediate return. They would have to start selling players big time, but many players might not want to go, given their current high wages. A player could just sit it out, and then at the end of the contract walk away and pick up another high salary, as he would be moving on for free.
So salaries would come down a bit, but the interest on past deals would still be there. How many valiant Tottenham supporters would turn up for Tottenham v Lincoln, or Stockport?
So Tottenham will still have all its costs of interest payments no matter what, plus salaries, unless they can sell most of the first team, playing in a three-quarters-empty stadium and with no European games either. I think they might be in some difficulty.
Although of course they could turn it all around and shoot up the league!
I read all the way through that article, thinking to myself ‘this doesn’t seem to be correct’, ‘where are these facts coming from’ and ‘well, that just opinion based upon absolutely nothing’……
Then I saw it was from an Arsenal fan site. Now it makes sense! That’s 5 minutes of my life I’m not going to get back!
I’ll just close this delusional web page. I truly hope that not all Arsenal fan-sites are as misinformed as this total fabricated dross!
I do see comments like this from time to time, and they bemused me. The article to which the writer replies has the source of information and indeed a link to the article that provided the data right at the start. And yet somehow a) he missed it and b) he then discredits the article because he eventually finds out that it is written by an Arsenal supporter. Maybe the title of the site might give a clue – – but really, how can anyone miss the source of the data when it is announced near the start of the article and has a link to the oroginal article.
Except… there are people around who have com ments such as this on file, and send them off to any site they find of another club. It is a really weird thing to do, but missing the source of data when so readily revealed does suggest something odd is going on.
Dear old Gary.
It’s a site called Untold Arsenal and has the word Arsenal plastered all over the page literally dozens of times, along with the club badge, references to Gooner News and a list of recent articles most of which mention the word Arsenal or Arteta. And Gary, you didn’t spot one of these? But when you got to the end of the article you did! I mean you didn’t even stop to think why, in the middle of the article, there were several references to Arsenal, Highbury and Wenger!
If I’m honest Gary, it sounds more to me that you came on the site to see what Arsenal fans were writing about your club and when you didn’t like what was being reported looked for a reason to both justify your criticism of the story and excuse yourself as to why you, accidentally (LOL), opened a website run by your greatly more successful north London neighbours. Of course, without any attempt to counter the article with facts, you merely decided to throw in a completely unjustified denial of everything and express your dislike of Arsenal.
However Gary, I do agree with you on one point. There is indeed some “fabricated dross” on this page; sadly, it’s your comment!
Enjoy playing Lincoln next season, Gary.
Feeble Gary,
you really need medical help.
Given the number of posts we get which are not based on evidence or facts I think if they started being referred to psychiatrists for help, then the people with more serious medical conditions wouldn’t get a look in.