Spurs - An open question for Daniel Levy

Open Question
By Daniel Hewson
January 29 2006

There's a very fine line between success and failure, and having seen the transfer speculation, some bordering on the absurd, come and go during this transfer window, one has to wonder what the intentions of our board are. The recent failure to capture the signature of Nigel de Jong is a case in point. It's being reported that we failed to get him because his wage demands were too high for the club's pay structure. That may or may not be true. The fact is, he chose Hamburg instead of Tottenham, apparently deciding that the potential for Champion's League football weighed far lesss than the actual promise of it. Hamburg currently lie second in the Bundesliga and, barring a disaster of the kind we are more familiar with, have pretty much already guaranteed their qualification for Europe's top competition. Unfortunately, we are far from having done so, and therein lies the problem. We have Arsenal and Bolton, who have two games in hand, snapping at our heels and we have yet to play Arsenal at Highbury in what could turn out to be the mother of all six pointers. De Jong exactly fits the player profile set out in our transfer policy. At only 21 years of age, he is already a full international for the Dutch and is highly regarded as a player by his coaches at club and national level. He is also highly versatile, able to play anywhere at the back or in midfield, and was unsettled at his club and available for next to nothing. Yet we turned him away because we'd have to pay him more than the rest of our players.

Success, like it or not, costs money. Our deficiencies down the left side and up front are well documented, and we have a manager who still believes the Champion's League to be an unrealistic target, despite our being four points clear in fourth. Our hugely embarrassing exits to lower division clubs in both cup competitions cut off a more likely route into Europe, and yet people are mistakenly calling it a blessing in disguise. Believe me, it is no blessing. The cup competitions create revenue for the club and that is revenue which could have been invested in players that we have now lost. With Mido away at the African Nations Cup and apparently now injured, we have lost one of our more important players at a crucial time in the season. I would contend that now was the time to take full advantage of the current window in an effort to consolidate fourth spot while Arsenal are weakened and somewhat off form. Unfortunately, the powers that be at the club have chosen not to do so. In the case of De Jong, it was a win-win situation. had we bought him for 1m, even at 50k a week, he would have been a good investment. Had we, say, signed him on a three year contract at 50k a week, and he turned out, for whatever reason, not to be the player we thought him to be, we could then have sold him at substantially more than we paid before that contract expired and recouped our money. If, in the meantime, the gamble paid off and we did qualify for the Champion's League, we would have gone in a much stronger team and come out with a lot more cash in the bank. But the club, or more specifically, Mr. Levy, chose not to gamble. In fact, he chose, as he so often seems to when a transfer window opens, to leave the country, leaving noone at the helm of the club with the power to make decisions regarding transfers.

There can be no doubt that significant progress has been made, but it does beg a question which merits an answer: Mr. Levy, what are, exactly, your plans for this club?