Let's all laugh at Totteringham

[cavan4ever]

Garteh Bale has started 20 league games for Spurs and in those 20 games they have won none!

So its his fault

[Doogie Browser]

Not at all, but it is an alarming stat and not one any player would want on their CV I bet.

[spiritof91and94]

Not at all. With the cavalry arriving before the end of January, we will finish in the top half, win the Carling Cup and possibly the UEFA and FA Cups as well....and we wont complain about the negativity of other clubs either. What a joke, claims of negativity from a club that made its name on winning 1-0

Typical Tony to deflect it all on to Arsenal!
Why did Wenger sell Bentley? Because he wasnt up to it - what did Tottenham do - buy him for £17million of which £7m went straight back to the Emirates, they then buy back Defoe for double what they sold him and pay off a 700k loyalty bonus to him as part of the deal!
Pompey got 5m for redknapp to leave,Ramos and staff all got big pay offs, jol got in the region of 5m as well to go - all in all it doesnt look good for the spurs.
What are the shares worth now tony?

[Billys Boots]

Spurs at the moment remind me of Leeds.

Ah c'mon now Dinny, I think Leeds would give (figuratively) their left bollock to be in Spurs position at present.  And I know, you meant Leeds during the (first, second, third??) meltdown period. 

[wherefromreferee?]

Did Harry say on the box last night, that they've only managed 2 points from the last 8 league games?  Surely this isn't right.  2 points from a possible 24?  Relegation form if you ask me!

[Dinny Breen]

Ah c'mon now Dinny, I think Leeds would give (figuratively) their left bollock to be in Spurs position at present.  And I know, you meant Leeds during the (first, second, third??) meltdown period.

The 1st when the saviour Peter Reid saved them for relegation, Leeds had wasted so much money by then that the fire sale and relegation the following season was a mere formality.

This was ain intersting article on the Defoe transfer in the Tribune yesterday...

Paper trail leads back to the Lane
Ciaran Cronin
Jermain Defoe's return to Tottenham Hotspur, where just £3m switched hands, highlights the increasing complexity of modern-day transfers
Willing Defoe: the striker is back with Spurs after a one-year sojourn with Portsmouth

When Jermaine Defoe walked out on the White Hart Lane pitch on Tuesday night and gave a little wave before Tottenham's Carling Cup semi-final against Burnley, the striker not only proved in wearing a Dickensian winter outfit that money cannot buy taste, the story behind his return to north London also established that modern football's transfer market is an increasingly complicated place. An oversimplified picture – put in a bid, get the selling club to accept, agree terms with the player and then get him to pass a routine medical – is often painted as the normal sequence of events in the transfer of a player from one club to another but the details of Defoe's move back to Tottenham reveals a market where motives are less straightforward.

When Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy sat down with Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie to work out a deal, the pair had a number of issues to consider on account of the widespread practice of clubs paying for players in instalments. Portsmouth agreed a fee of £9m with Tottenham for Defoe last January, with half the amount being paid up front and half due this month. Therefore, Levy was straight away able to knock £4.5m off his cash outlay and then the pair would have spoken about the money due to Tottenham in the next 12 months from Portsmouth in the form of instalment payments for Younes Kaboul and Pedro Mendes.

That, along with the Defoe money, meant Tottenham were due about £9m from Portsmouth but there was one further complication before a deal could be struck. Tottenham had inserted a sell-on clause in the sale of Defoe's contract which entitled them to a reported 20 per cent of his sell-on value, also deducted from Tottenham's final bill. A fee of around £15m was agreed upon which meant, all told, Levy only paid about £3m for Defoe.

"Instalments are the only way in which most clubs can buy a player over the price of £5m," says one football agent, "and Portsmouth have done this for most of the guys they've got in over the past few years. In this case, I would suggest that the transfer would not have gone ahead had Portsmouth not been due to pay Tottenham so much money in the next few months. If you think about the situation rationally, with Portsmouth short on cash and them owing Tottenham so much, Harry Redknapp really had the pick of Portsmouth's players in this transfer window."

One trend to look out for, then, is that if you sell a player to another club and accept payment in instalments, the chances of you buying one of their players before the second instalment is due are quite high. "The sales of Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov this summer will mean that it is highly likely that Spurs will get who they want, within reason, from Liverpool or United over the next one or two years," says the agent. "The finance men at clubs love writing off money that might be due in the future and in most cases, the buying club are willing to write off more than a player might be worth in order to ensure the deal goes through."

Another point to consider is that by buying players in instalments rather than buying them outright, clubs are really participating in a kind of calculated gambling. Think about it. When Portsmouth bought Defoe, they only handed over £4.5m to Tottenham. By having the player on their books, they gambled that they would earn enough success to pay the other half of the deal the following year. In this case their gamble pays off, Portsmouth enjoyed a degree of success while the player's value increased. However, if Portsmouth had flopped last season and Defoe played poorly, they would have been stuck with a £4.5m bill to Tottenham for a player who might be worth just half that. It's exactly what happened to Leeds.

There are other factors to consider, too, in the world of footballing hire-purchase. Tottenham, who are the best example of a lot of what is going on because of their recent frenetic transfer activity, are believed to have struck deals for Luka Modric and Roman Pavlyuchenko this summer in Euro and agreed to pay in instalments.

Now, with the British pound having fallen in value against the Euro, the club find that the second instalments they pay for the players will be significantly higher than what they would have expected. So where the fees for the Croatian and Russian were agreed at £15.8m and £14m respectively in the summer, the pair will end up costing a couple of million pounds more by the final instalment. Manchester City, on the other hand, won't be caught in such a pickle by the signing of Robinho as the club's Arab owners paid the entire £32.5m up front to Real Madrid.

Sometimes, in this complex world, paying more can actually work out as less.

[ONeill]

Any chance of a league table screenshot?

[FermGael]

And is there not something about Robbie Keane leaving a club and then they get relegated??
Leeds and Coventry spring to mind.  Could Spurs be next??

[ziggysego]

Any chance of a league table screenshot?

[ONeill]

I suppose they've made up ground:

[ONeill]

To be fair to the spuds, a win tomorrow and they're nearly midtable - it's that tight.

[Square Ball]

To be fair to the spuds, a win tomorrow and they're nearly midtable - it's that tight.

yip up to 12th, but its still funny

[The Watcher Pat]

Play up Pompey...pompey play up

Wilson FGS today...

[stiffler]

Play up Pompey...pompey play up

Wilson FGS today...

50/1 at ladbrokes!

[ONeill]

Anyone watching this?

Spurs 4-1 up from first leg.

Burnley 2-0 with 15 left.