Real Football Man All of the Football, All of the time
As the title suggests Franco Baldini has left Tottenham Hotspur “to take an extended break from Club Football” (or in other terms got given the boot). The man who was pretty much seen as stealing a living by most Tottenham fans I expect won’t be missed by the majority of the Spurs faithful but if he taught us one thing, it was how not to spend £85m or so once Gareth Bale had been sold to Real Madrid.
Let’s have a look at his best work when he purchased the not so Magnificent Seven
Christian Eriksen – £11m – still at the club, probably the best of the signings so that one gets a pass
Erik Lamela – £29m – still at the club, the transfer fee hasn’t quite been lived up to. Seems like he did a favour for Roma but hopefully Saturday’s performance he could be the start of him actually living up to the sizeable fee.
Nacer Chadli – £7m – still at the club, not a bad signing by any means but still doesn’t do it enough on a regular basis, expect to see his game time reduced now with the arrival of Son.
Vlad Chiriches – £8.1m then sold for £4.9m – that’s a £3.2m loss for an absolute War Crime of a Defender.
Etienne Capoue – £8.6m then sold for £6.3m – that’s a £2.3m loss for a generic French Midfielder.
Paulinho – £17m then sold for £10m – £7m loss, after his performances I think we did well just to get £10m
Roberto Soldado – £25.9m then sold for a paltry £12m, less than half of what he paid for him. A staggering £13.9m loss on the Spanish striker.
That means after spending £106.8m that Summer, £63.6m of those signings were then sold on for a £33.2m. This means we lost £30m on the recouping of player sales. £30m for christ sakes. It’s not as if you could even argue that they’ve depreciated due to long service, they’d only been there 2 years. What an abysmal record.
I’m sure if you balanced up every signing in and out we made then I expect we’re actually up by a small margin, but to be given the opportunity to reshape the team after Gareth Bale departing with that much money and to waste it like that probably set the club back a season or two. It’s only now thanks to clearing the deadwood have we finally got rid of the stench of Baldini.
Well at least the reign of transfer terror is over, I hope he doesn’t waste his payoff like he did all that Gareth Bale Money…COYS
