Eyes Wide Shut

I think that by any standards the appointment last month of Antonio Conte as Spurs boss was something of a coup by the club, particularly given that they weren't the only team out their looking for a new manager and they couldn't offer the guarantee of Champions League football either this season or next.

Coprimi di soldi translates from Italian as Show me the money!

Conte after all is a proven winner at the highest level as his record at Juve, Chelsea and Inter proves while in the same period Tottenham have not had to make room in their trophy cabinet once, a source of much frustration and quite frankly embarassment for a club that considers itself to be at the elite level of the sport.

The failings of Spurs and by contrast success of Conte since he became manager of Juve in 2011 can be put down to any number of factors and would require multiple blogs in their own right to consider but the one overiding fact and potential source of concern is how poor Spurs have been in backing their managers in the transfer market during that period vs how much Conte has spent at the 3 clubs mentioned above.

The above table shows the managers that have spent the most on transfers since the beginning of the 2011/12 season up to the present day. This of course includes the 2 year period that Conte spent as coach of the Italian national team and the fact that he was without a club during the last transfer window. A strong argument could be made then that he has been more reliant on the transfer market to deliver success than any other manager over the past decade.

Reports in the media have suggested that Conte will be handed somewhere in the region of £150 million to spend on bringing players into Spurs and when you adjust the above stats for inflation, the general rise in transfer values and the time that Conte spent out of club management then that is about what he has spent on average every season to deliver that success at the 3 big clubs he's managed since 2011.

Is it realistic to expect that he will receive the same backing at Spurs that he did at Chelsea or the 2 Italian giants?

Spurs spending over the last 10 years doesn't suggest so! In fact, in the same 10 year period Spurs have spent £770mil on bringing players in, a figure that is scewed by the transfers made with the Bale money in 2013 and the cash spent in 2019 which account for almost a third of that total.

The even more daming figure is Spurs net transfer spend over the same period which when compared with other Premier League clubs shows just how little they have invested in the squad during this barren run of trophies. For comparison, Inter and Juve are also included in this list.

Being out spent by the likes of Brighton, Palace and Wolves is embarassing in itself but it also shows just what kind of financial commitment on the pitch is required to reach the next level. For the 3 clubs mentioned above that "next level" has been to establish themselves in the Premier League. For Tottenham, the "next level" is presumably to be Champions League regulars and to actually win something!

£150 million this season alone isn't going to make a huge difference in closing the gap. Sustained innvestment in the squad over number of years is what is needed and what has been required really since 2017 when Spurs narrowly missed out on a Premier League title to Conte's Chelsea. The run to the Champions League final in 2019 helped to paper over some cracks but this has been a squad that has been on the way down for 5 years and is in need of a major overhaul.

Conte might be the man to do it if he's given the support and freedom to make the necessary changes but then Mourinho might have been that man too and yet he was expected to deliver primarily off the back of loan signings and free transfers.

Beyond the amount of money available comes the question of who is in charge of making decisions on players coming in and out of the club. Let's be clear in our understanding that major football clubs are run a little differently than computer games like Football Manager would have us believe. The manager is never going to have total control of billions of pounds worth of assests and cash but at different clubs they do have varying levels of influence when it comes to decision making on playing staff.

Conte, if the press is to be believed, always demands a higher involvement in that decision making as this selection of quotes and headlines suggests.

Spurs reportedly sounded Conte out about the vacant managers role this summer. Certain reports in the papers suggested that Conte had turned them down but some more measured accounts revealed that no formal discussions between the 2 parties ever took place, instead neither the club or the individual saw much reason in getting to that point given that they didn't appear to be a good match in regards what could be offered by the club and what was to be expected by the manager.

What then has changed over those last 4 months?

Well for one, both Spurs and Conte may have run out of credible alternatives. This then is more a marriage of convenience for both parties than a long-term relationship, a concept that is supported by the fact that Conte has a contract that lasts only until June 2023.

Some optimists might hope that the appointment of Fabio Paratici as Director of Football singles a change in the way the club is run with more of a focus on investing in the squad and less interference from the likes of Daniel Levy on transfer business. However, Levy has also been responsible for the appointment, followed by the marginalisation of a number of men who have come to the club to do a similar role including Franco Baldini, Frank Arnesen, Damien Comolli and Paul Mitchel.

You don't want to be negative about the chances of your football club but there is nothing here to suggest that Levy is about to change his micro management and tight control over all things at the club or that Conte won't continue to demand more money and more control over who the club signs and sells.

The acid test will of course come in January and again in the summer when we'll no doubt see just how much the Spurs board are willing to back this manager and how patient Conte is prepared to be.

My overall feeling though is that Spurs fan hoping that this apparent clash in expectations will somehow resolve itself to the benefit of results on the pitch are coming into the situation with their eyes wide shut.

All stats on tranfer spends from transfermarkt