FFS SPEND SOME MONEY LEVY has been the rallying cry of every angry Tottenham Hotspur fan for nearly two decades, from the ENIC OUTers to the people with purple/gold emoji in their social media profiles. According to the Guardian, months after former Spurs chairman Daniel Levy’s departure, the club is preparing to do just that.
The report suggests that if Spurs are able to play their way to Premier League safety in what remains of this season, they will “rip up the wage structure” and heavily invest in players in what’s being called a “major overhaul of the squad.” This article appears to be corroboration of comments by Spurs Sporting Director Johan Lange that acknowledged that the wage structure needed to be updated.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that “IF” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that last paragraph. Tottenham are currently in 16th, two points ahead of Nottingham Forest and four ahead of West Ham in the relegation zone. Spurs realistically need 12 points from their last 11 league matches to secure safety from relegation, but the new manager vibes brought by Igor Tudor are a little tarnished already after Sunday’s 4-1 home North London Derby loss to Arsenal. Still, there’s optimism within the Spurs camp that they’ll be able to get the job done and then fully focus on next season.
The Guardian notes that Tottenham have the lowest wage bill of any club in the so-called “big six” — Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs. That’s borne out from this chart, taken from the excellent Swiss Ramble from 2023-24, which showed Spurs with the second lowest squad cost ratio (which includes amortization of wages and fees) in the league. (It should be noted that Spurs spent heavily this past summer and have been offering increased wages to players like Mohammed Kudus, Xavi Simons, and Conor Gallagher; Gallagher is now the club’s highest-earning player at £200k/wk after the departure of Son Heung-Min this summer and the ratio is probably not as low as depicted here).
But that doesn’t really change the core issue at play here, which is Spurs haven’t been offering wages competitive to the teams they want to compete with for a long time. If you want to believe this report, that’s going to change this summer, assuming Spurs are still in the top flight.
So what does that mean? Well, we don’t really know, but “major overhaul” suggests Spurs will be active in the transfer market this summer with players both out and in the door. We can also probably assume Spurs will be trying to offer current players they want to keep new deals on substantially higher wages to entice them to stick around, while being more competitive for incoming players. That could be a pretty enticing carrot, since no matter how bad a club is operating at the moment he one thing you can say about professional footballers is that they 100% like money. Throwing money at players is basically how Manchester United has been able to stay relevant over the past five seasons or so. If it works for them, why not us?
Now, of course that also means Spurs need to knock it out of the park this summer and there’s a significant percentage of the fan base that doesn’t trust Lange to do that based on his existing track record (myself included). But let’s sideline the cynicism for a hot minute here — there isn’t a lot to hope on this season, but this suggests ENIC and the club are, finally, ready to put its money where its mouth is.