All fair points--the Coutinho sale gave Liverpool the ability to do a lot of things and they spent that kitty very wisely.
Most of you know Spurs' recent history better than me, so maybe you can help determine if there is something though to the Podcast's argument about Spurs not wanting to move on from the golden era cycle. If so, I think it follows that this decision led in part to the current decline/malaise (injuries to Kane and Dier and other factors are also relevant) and it's very apparent that the Summer of 2018 was the inflection point. The reason I've homed in on Summer 18 is because Spurs were clearly going for it in 17-18 and had a great season by most metrics, and the performance really fell off in the back half of last season (18-19). So with the caveat that having hindsight is 20-20, it's pretty clear that Summer 2018 was the genesis of the current slide.
Taking a quick step back to Summer 2017, the club tried to keep their best players and the only major loss was Walker. The club did well to get 20M each (!) for Wimmer (Stoke) and Bentaleb (Schalke), and potentially could've done better with Fazio (Roma - only 3M). The club also invested very heavily that summer and into the season, by bringing in Dav from Ajax (40M (!!)), Moura from PSG (29M - ugh), Serge from PSG (25M - quadruple ALL CAPS UGHHHHHH), Llorente (15M), and Foyth (13M). Net -18M on the transfer year.
Back to Summer 18: No notable acquisitions, and the only notable sale was Dembele (5M). That's it. The club rolled the dice that the band was going to kill it in 18-19 (and it almost did on a fortunate run to the UCL Final), but keeping Eriksen, Rose, Lamela, Dele, Toby, Jan, Trippier, Kane, Wanyama, Dier, Sissoko, and Kane to a degree seems insane with hindsight. Going off memory and probability, it's likely that Lamela and Dier were both injured to some degree and that was depressing their value. But not turning over at least part of the squad at that point set the club back substantially.
One other relevant point in this discussion (also raised on the podcast) is the stadium and its financing. More specifically, the Pod noted how Arsenal stopped investing as much in the squad when they were renovating the stadium and it's not clear if that will help the club long term. Kroenke is also the worst kind of owner, but whether ENIC is any better is a scary thought. I don't know enough to say one way or the other.
I've rambled and there's a lot of different things to look at here, but I think there's definitely fair criticisms to be made of Poch for not realizing he had to turn over this squad and Levy for not recognizing the importance of the same for financial reasons.
Most of you know Spurs' recent history better than me, so maybe you can help determine if there is something though to the Podcast's argument about Spurs not wanting to move on from the golden era cycle. If so, I think it follows that this decision led in part to the current decline/malaise (injuries to Kane and Dier and other factors are also relevant) and it's very apparent that the Summer of 2018 was the inflection point. The reason I've homed in on Summer 18 is because Spurs were clearly going for it in 17-18 and had a great season by most metrics, and the performance really fell off in the back half of last season (18-19). So with the caveat that having hindsight is 20-20, it's pretty clear that Summer 2018 was the genesis of the current slide.
Taking a quick step back to Summer 2017, the club tried to keep their best players and the only major loss was Walker. The club did well to get 20M each (!) for Wimmer (Stoke) and Bentaleb (Schalke), and potentially could've done better with Fazio (Roma - only 3M). The club also invested very heavily that summer and into the season, by bringing in Dav from Ajax (40M (!!)), Moura from PSG (29M - ugh), Serge from PSG (25M - quadruple ALL CAPS UGHHHHHH), Llorente (15M), and Foyth (13M). Net -18M on the transfer year.
Back to Summer 18: No notable acquisitions, and the only notable sale was Dembele (5M). That's it. The club rolled the dice that the band was going to kill it in 18-19 (and it almost did on a fortunate run to the UCL Final), but keeping Eriksen, Rose, Lamela, Dele, Toby, Jan, Trippier, Kane, Wanyama, Dier, Sissoko, and Kane to a degree seems insane with hindsight. Going off memory and probability, it's likely that Lamela and Dier were both injured to some degree and that was depressing their value. But not turning over at least part of the squad at that point set the club back substantially.
One other relevant point in this discussion (also raised on the podcast) is the stadium and its financing. More specifically, the Pod noted how Arsenal stopped investing as much in the squad when they were renovating the stadium and it's not clear if that will help the club long term. Kroenke is also the worst kind of owner, but whether ENIC is any better is a scary thought. I don't know enough to say one way or the other.
I've rambled and there's a lot of different things to look at here, but I think there's definitely fair criticisms to be made of Poch for not realizing he had to turn over this squad and Levy for not recognizing the importance of the same for financial reasons.