With football, a look behind the story can often reval interesting details.

 

 

 

• How Arsenal stuck with Arteta, but other clubs won’t follow the example
• Why it’s going to be a summer of failure for Arsenal – according to the media

By Tony Attwood

OK this is another article about Tottenham, and we have had quite a few.  Cue comments from any Tottenham supporters that stray here that I am fixated on the club.

But what fascinates rather than fixates me is the PR campaign that the club is running, and why it is so successful.  

The campaign is based on the concept that the club is doing well financially and on the pitch – and improving.  I question the financial issue because everything I see is based on one financial metric – the increase in revenue from the new stadium.  There is little data that I have found on who is paying for the stadium and how, and yet someone has to be.

I have read the claim that the owner of the club is paying for it and not charging Tottenham, but if that is so, the club has to pay more tax because it is making more profit.  Meanwhile the owner pays tax on the income he would have got (in business you simply cannot just say “I’m not charging them” and have no consequences), and the stadium remains with the owner, which means he could sell it to anyone he wishes at any time. It’s a dangerous and expensive game with no real benefits, and I doubt it is true. 

But moving on we had on 6 May a headline in the Guardian reading Ange Postecoglou has reinvented Spurs. 

Reinvention has many meanings but let’s see what happened on the pitch.

 

Season	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts	Lge	FAC	LgCp
2018–19	38	23	2	13	67	39	71	4th	R4	SF
2019–20	38	16	11	11	61	47	59	6th	R5	R3
2020–21	38	18	8	12	68	45	62	7th	R5	RU
2021–22	38	22	5	11	69	40	71	4th	R5	SF
2022–23	38	18	6	14	70	63	60	8th	R5	R3
2023-24	35	18	6	11	69	58	60	5th	R4	R2

This season compared to last, Tottenham have scored five more goals,, conceded one more and so have taken their goal difference up from +7 to +11.  Last season after 35 games they were sixth, this season 5th.

And yet we read “Ange Postecoglou has reinvented Spurs.” And “Tottenham’s improvement from a year ago should not be forgotten.”  How can this be justified in terms of results?

Last season they were 25 goals behind the leading club.  Now they are 19.  Last season they were 29 points behind the top club, this season it is 23 with three to play.   If this were Arsenal not a single journalist would call this “Arsenal’s improvement”.  

So what is going on?   

In fact all the frenzy about Tottenham actually improving when really they are pretty much stagnat, can be explained through the notion that the owner will eventually sell.  Tottenham are classified as the ninth biggest club in the world in financial terms, behind Arsenal but above Chelsea.  That’s the asset he has.

In fact America rather likes the idea of football clubs, and here is one with a brand spanking new stadium, with compliant journalists happily providing stories that say Tottenham are on the up, when that actually means creeping from 8th to 5th, while quite regularly knocking Arsenal.

Of course the owner of Tottenham is free to sell the club whenever he wishes, and the purchases of Newcastle and Manchester City a while back shows that the Premier League doeesn’t really care who owns what club, no matter what their human rights or criminal records.  All that matters is money.   And it seems there is quite a bit of that waiting to be used on football teams, by people in the States.

That a respectable newspaper goes along with the tale that Tottenham has been reinvented on the grounds that its results over the last five seasons has been 4th, 6th, 7th, 4th, 8th and probably 5th, with defeats in the League Cup and more notably Champions League final en route.

It’s not bad, but it’s not regular top four (much as that was derided when Arsenal did it for 20 consecutive seasons).

So the story benefits Tottenham, and the journalists can knock out another “Tottenham on the up” tale, without actually bothering with facts.  Everyone’s happy.  Except the people who like facts.