- Jul 7, 2012
- 38,247
- 104,143
If we sign Bale then I’m taking credit due to the e-mail I sent him last night:
Dear Daniel, Jose and Steve,
I've been a Spurs supporter all my life and a season ticket holder for 25 years, my family are also huge lifelong Spurs fans. On viewing the recent All or Nothing series I wanted to take the time to email you as you claim in the show that you do read emails from supporters so here's to hoping you're true to your word...
Firstly I wanted to say thank you for all the good you've done during your time at the club, the transformation of the club during the time has been remarkable, I don't think there is another Premier League club comparable in terms of the improvements on and off the pitch without a billionaire sugar daddy ploughing money into the club. I believe we've gone from a rough average league position of around 12th to 4th, mid-table mediocrity to at times under Pottichitino title contenders playing some of the most attractive football in the league.
Off the pitch we now have one of the best stadiums in the world the envy of many rival fans and I don't think our fans in particular quite understand the complexity with regards to acquiring businesses and land in the surrounding area to the old stadium as well as planning permissions so the time and effort and thoughts spent over many years to get us to the point of stadium completion needs to be absolutely commended. The training ground is equally impressive, so the foundations have now been built for us to be a sustainable top top class top tier football club.
I also understand the decision to replace Potticitino with Mouriniho, Poch did brilliantly for 5 years but ultimately ran out of steam and I commend the difficult emotional decision to sack him but it was indeed the correct one. I also completely commend the decision to hire Mouriniho especially as we're now at a point as a club where the next step is to start winning trophies again so who better than Jose Mouriniho. I also appreciate as you mention in the documentary the difficulty and complexity of transfers and appreciate that we did partake in a large net spend last summer which makes sense with the stadium finally being up and running that we can start to be a bit more ambitious with our net spending to really take the team and squad to that next level.
What I would like to express my concerns about are two things:
1) The style of football being played under Mourinho (not all Jose's fault at all, he's doing a commendable job considering the unbelieveable issues last season with injuries and big players contracts running down and coming in mid-season etc): You mentioned in the documentary that you want us to win and play in style. Unfortunately as much as I respect Mourinho as a manager I have to say that the tactics and style of play are constantly extremely negative, we have such little possession and create so few chances that not only is it often very dreadful to watch but time and time again it is showing to not be effective.
I believe this is partly down to tactics but also more so down to the fact that our midfield lacks creativity and has done since Dembele and Eriksen left. We cannot just rely on Lo Celso and clearly Ndombele cannot be trusted or needs more time to adapt so not only is signing another striker to support Kane imperative but also a creative central midfielder and ideally a top top class attacking midfielder ‘Baleesque type player’ as we cannot just rely on Son and Kane every match.
We all want to win trophies but as a Tottenham fan as you say you are hopefully you're familiar with Danny Blanchflowers quote below because Bournemouth away last season and the 2nd half of the game against Everton in the first game of this season were up there with the most toothless and inept and uncreative performances I've ever seen as a Spurs fan in 30 years and I fear you will lose a lot of season ticket holders if we continue playing in this manner, especially if we don't get good results.
“The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”
2) The set-up of the football decisions: Now I respect that I don't know the full goings on behind the scenes but a real frustrations as fans is that year after year after year we either don't address the glaringly obvious issues with our squad by either not moving players on at all or quickly enough and not signing players in positions we actually need and/or making signings so late in the transfer window that we have a really disrupted start to the season where we are constantly playing catch-up to other clubs.
I personally find it sad how you as a chairman and the board get so much negativity from the fanbase given that all you've done for the club, you could say a lot of the fans are ungrateful. However to me it seems from the documentary that you're stretched too thinly and are having to be too involved in the football decisions of the club which should be much more down to a Director of Football type role and or the manager. I'm concerned that whilst we've made huge strides off the pitch during the last few years our rivals have made big strides on it and we've gone from the 2nd best team in the league under Poch only 3 seasons ago to now struggling against mid and lower table teams. I hope Jose can be successful for us but he needs the quality of players to be able to get us playing for example like his last most successful Chelsea team and right now we are a good 4-5 players away from that level of squad.
The signings of Hart, Hoyjbjerg and Doherty have been a good start but we still need to improve by making signings for:
We need absolutely minimum to sign a striker and either a creative centre midfielder or a top top class game changing attacking midfielder and a centre back otherwise it doesn't matter who are manager is we have zero chance of finishing in the top4 or even the top6. These next 3 weeks are crucial and I really hope that Jose and Steve Hitchen can see these squad weaknesses and address them as if all of us fans can see them week in week out on forums and podcasts etc then surely a manager getting paid £15million a year and a so called expert Head of Recruitment can also recognise these areas of weakness.
- Left back : upgrade on Davies
- Centre back: replacement for super Jan
- Creative centre midfielder: replacement for Eriksen
- Attacking midfielder : to improve on Lucas and Lamela who consistently give the team very little in the way of goals or assists especially compared to players in similar positions for our rival teams
- Striker : to play WITH Harry Kane not just as a back-up
Many thanks for your time Daniel and a huge thank you again to you and all the staff at the club to make us so proud of our great club, I just hope that my two points can be addressed and improved upon so we can see the type of football we as Tottenham fans would want to watch and we have the squad we need to finally win a trophy again which would be the icing on the cake of your tenure as our chairman.
I look forward to your response.
Probably left scratching his head wondering who Pottichitino is
