Skip to main content

Spurs hit by stadium saga

The delay in Tottenham Hotspur moving to White Hart Lane is hitting the club on a number of fronts. One concern is that Mauricio Pochettino, who is clearly exasperated, may accept one of the offers to move elsewhere he will inevitably be made, although probably not until the summer.

Spurs were right to rebuild their stadium in the way they have because it offers them a better future. However, they should have been more realistic about the delays that inevitably occur in complex construction projects on brownfield sites - and whatever their apologists say, this one does not seem to have been particularly well managed. Having run into difficulties, they should have been more honest with the fans.

The club has now had to extend its borrowing facility from £400m to £637m which will cost them approximately £10m more pounds a year in interest payments alone. They will have to pay rent at Wembley until the end of the season, even if they only use it for a short period in the New Year. It took Arsenal six years to recover from the move to the Emirates, with inevitable knock on effects on the pitch.

Attendances at Wembley have been falling, even before Monday's farcical game against Manchester City on a NFL pitch. The disappointing figure of 56,854 for the City game was the third time in four Premier League matches this season that the crowd has been less than 60,000. There will be run of games against mid-table opponents after next month's clash with Chelsea. Last year good attendances at Wembley enabled Tottenham to increase their revenue to £381m in the year ending June 2018. As the novelty wears off, inconvenience is becoming more of a consideration.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reports about Charlton sale exaggerated

Reports have appeared in The Guardian and elsewhere that Charlton has been put up for sale. Richard Cawley is an authoritative local journalist who runs a South London Sport substack site.  He reached out to the club yesterday evening to ask for comment on The Guardian’s article. Early indications from the club have been that nothing has changed since the story about them seeking investment, except that it is now a different company doing it. Charlton have since managed to consolidate their place in the Championship, avoiding an instant return to League One, with their women’s side promoted to the WSL, returning to the top flight for the first time since 2007, although staying there is likely to be costly. It would be counter-intuitive for owners Global Football Partners not to progress the club when looking for investment, that the focus remains on driving it forward, that their spend this summer is in line with long-term planning and will see an increase in wages spent on players...
Post a Comment
Read more

Levy's anomalous status at Spurs

It is now nearly a year since Daniel Levy was dismissed as Tottenham Hotspur chairman by the Lewis family.  It has been 12 months of dramatic twists and turns, with Spurs avoiding relegation on the final day of the Premier League season, and then spending unprecedented sums this summer to try to make sure such a scare never happens again. But while most fans focus on the football — and a dubbing by Brentford   — another set of issues have been bubbling away separately. These relate to Levy’s continued position as a minority shareholder in the club. This has been in the news for much of this summer, even as we approach the first anniversary of Levy’s dismissal, and specifically this month, after he missed the opportunity last week to participate in the Lewis family’s latest equity injection into the club. On Thursday morning the club confirmed that his shareholding has been diluted, down by roughly two per cent, after the creation of new ENIC shares. Levy’s dism...
Post a Comment
Read more