Big Spenders: How Tottenham used to dominate the British transfer market
Tomorrow marks the opening of the summer transfer window. Usually a nervous few months for Tottenham fans as Daniel Levy haggles and penny pinches until its dying hours, but it wasn’t always that way. . .
Then (1971/72)
Let’s spool the reel back to the 1971/72 season. Tottenham were captained by Alan Mullery, a veteran half-back who had arrived in ‘64 for £72,000, a record amount paid for a defender at the time in a Man City-esque splurge. Martin Chivers, the quick and powerful goal-getter, had just cemented his place as the club’s main talisman after moving from Southampton in ’68 for a British record fee of £125,000.
Coming into the season, Tottenham again smashed the British transfer record to bring in Ralph Coates from Burnley for £190,000 – a fee-only surpassed by Martin Peters, another Spurs man, who had cost a total of £200,000 if one includes the value of an offloaded player in the deal.
The manager at the time was far from ostentatious Bill Nicholson. He was backed by a board not made up of middle Eastern oil oligarchs, but of local businessmen.
Sidney Wale, the owner of a nuts and bolts firm, was the chairman and majority shareholder. Like Bill, Sidney lived a modest life but, in Hunter Davies’ The Glory Game, stressed the importance of spending big:
"“You have to pay the money to get the star player. . . You just can’t replace a team of the quality of Spurs purely from home-grown players, so you have to buy. On balance, I think it’s a good thing to buy. A bit of competition does no harm.”"
So did such an outlay result in glory?
Although Tottenham’s league position fluctuated around that period, the definitive answer is yes. Spurs went into the campaign as League Cup champions and won the UEFA Cup that year, before recapturing the League Cup the following season.
Now (2018/19)
Mauricio Pochettino had some ill-omened comments for Daniel Levy after Tottenham’s final game of the season: back him this summer, or else.
Levy has a well-earned reputation for merciless negotiating and brinksmanship. In Sir Alex Ferguson’s book Leading, he described doing business with the Tottenham chairman as ‘more painful than [his] hip replacement.’
With a history of the property market, Levy’s transfer model is based on buying young players and selling them on at an inflated price. However, Poch now feels that he is banging his head against a glass ceiling and has urged Levy to be a little more daring in this window.
What complicates the matter is Spurs’ new stadium. The club will have little, if any, change out of a billion pounds.
Levy has described other club’s spending as ‘unsustainable’, and he may well be right. After the Neymar deal once again catapulted the market to new levels of ridiculousness, it may finally be due to level off.
But Pochettino may also be right: to get back to the glory days, like in the 70s, Tottenham have to spend big.
The truth is there is no set precedent on the matter. One can only speculate as to how revenue streams may change in the future, and the pair will sit down this week in an effort to reach an equilibrium.
Next: Davinson Sanchez inks new six year deal
Some good news for Spurs fans is that the window now closes on August 9th rather than the 31st which will hopefully limit Tottenham’s umming and ahhing and allow the team to kick off their new era with a full and adept squad.