Spurs the country’s best run club? Only if you don’t count trophies

Who are the best-run football club in the country? Any response will be subjective, obviously. Some will look at the champions in five of the past six seasons, the club who have recruited the best manager and the best players, many for a comparatively reasonable price, and conclude that it can only be Manchester City. Others will counter with 115 reasons why that can’t be true.
A case could be made for Brighton & Hove Albion, or Brentford, shrewdly remaining competitive in the Premier League on well-managed, limited budgets. Aston Villa are worth a mention, too, after claiming a spot in the Champions League. They have bought well and their head coach, Unai Emery, is very impressive. Yet this is a question with an apparent finite, quantifiable answer, according to the football campaign group Fair Game. As far as English football is concerned the answer is . . . Tottenham Hotspur.
Yes, Tottenham, an elite club who last won the league in 1961. Tottenham, now without a trophy since 2008. Tottenham, experiencing the least successful period in their history since the 30-year drought after winning the FA Cup in 1921. Tottenham, the club who have lent their name to an adjective meaning to crumble inexplicably to defeat with victory in sight, one that is being monitored for usage and potential inclusion by dictionaries.
Also, the club who feature in one of the shortest yet most famous team talks in the history of the game, Sir Alex Ferguson’s deathless “Lads, it’s Tottenham” speech preceding an inevitable Manchester United win.
Fair Game is a collection of self-interested football clubs, from Accrington Stanley to Dorking Wanderers — although with no one higher than mid-table in Sky Bet League One — that likes to pretend it wants what is best for everyone. Its last big idea, giving the fourth Champions League place to the FA Cup winners, would have denied Villa a first crack at elite European football since 1983 in favour of those plucky underdogs United.
Yet, undaunted, Fair Game has presumed to compile a list of all clubs across all divisions, rating them on a range of touchpoints: “Financial sustainability; good governance; equality and ethical standards; and fan and community engagement — all measures expected to be part of the remit of the new independent football regulator.” And that’s what these geniuses came up with: Tottenham.
For Fair Game appears to have forgotten one touchstone that is really rather important when evaluating success or failure. Achievement. And in doing so, it neatly encapsulates what is wrong with so much thinking around modern football. It’s meant to be a sport. Not an accountancy exam. A sport. Not an outreach exercise from the local youth club. A sport. Even egg-and-spoon races at primary schools acknowledge that first across the line matters. So for the eighth-richest club in the world — bigger than Arsenal, Chelsea, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid and Newcastle United, according to Deloitte — to have won nothing for 16 years makes them something of a colossal failure.
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Not in every way, of course. One day Tottenham’s sale is going to make some extremely rich men even richer, and don’t we all love to celebrate that? Also, Tottenham are no longer owned by the billionaire tax exile, insider trader and prison dodger Joe Lewis, a state of affairs that might once have set them back on Fair Game’s governance touchstones.
Plus, they have a lovely stadium. They really do. And when the supporters aren’t all singing for the chairman, Daniel Levy, to get out of their club — as they were as recently as the end of last season, although that might be the fan engagement Fair Game was so taken with — it is indeed the best in the country. So Tottenham are, in many ways, extremely well run. But football’s a balancing act. The dividends may be high, the arrows on the graph may all be going up, but if the team’s not winning, that’s a disaster. Postwar, Tottenham delivered trophies in 1951, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1967, 1972, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1991, 1999 and 2008. So to now be deprived for 16 years is not insignificant. Being unable to keep Harry Kane happy should be another signifier, given what he meant to the club.
Yet modern football doesn’t recognise those old-fashioned barometers any more: the trophy cabinet, the talent, heroes like Danny Blanchflower with his antiquated idea that the game was about glory. Fair Game makes absolutely no mention of the exciting football Tottenham play, either, which is all that has changed the mood around the place in the past year. “Each club is scored out of 100, with 40 points coming from financial sustainability metrics, 30 coming from governance measures, 20 for equality standards, and ten for fan engagement,” it is explained. Yet Tottenham’s motto is: “To dare is to do” and that’s just not suited to this age. These days, daring just gets you in trouble with the Profitability and Sustainability wonks, and anyone who actually does is treated with immediate suspicion.
Still, they’ll take any trophy they can get at Tottenham these days. “This ranking further demonstrates the huge strides that are being made off the pitch, with our world-class stadium and innovative partnerships,” Levy said. Even he couldn’t bring himself to mention events on the pitch, and with good reason. Levy’s a Tottenham fan too. He’s also 62. So he’ll remember when success in football was not measured by the whims of government regulation but by results and trophies and the special days those quests inspired. And not every club got to play at Wembley or compete in Europe, but in every tier they still had measures of achievement — a cup run, or a promotion battle, survival against the odds — and these measures were as much part of a successful football club as community spirit or financial propriety.
And yes, those aspects remain important too. But they are part of it, not all that matters. This is a new metric that puts Tottenham top of the league. But if it’s the only thing they win again this season, the crowd will be sparse around the open-top bus.
Jadon Sancho is too good to lose another season with Manchester United. If Juventus pursue their interest, he has got to get out. Either Erik ten Hag doesn’t rate him as a player or that hatchet was buried straight between Sancho’s shoulder blades, contrary to positive reports.
The player was not involved in week one and Ten Hag has since offered few words of comfort or encouragement. He said Sancho, and others, needed to cope with not being picked. Alternately, Sancho could go somewhere he is picked. Falling out with Ten Hag after the transfer window closed a year ago meant his season only started in earnest last January, with his loan to Borussia Dortmund. At 24, these should be his peak years. With the transfer deadline looming, he can’t waste time again.
Between them, Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Alan Shearer have played more than 2,000 games of club football. Yet before the season started, they were among the broadcasters invited on to a conference call with the refereeing chief Howard Webb to explain the rules of the game.
The new rules, obviously. The ones that have overtaken clear and obvious understandings around laws governing commonplace events such as handball and offside. And no doubt it was very helpful. The wider media were afforded something similar, because referees get upset when professional observers blame them for errors that turn out to be the result of an updated rule or fresh guidance.
Yet that shows how foolish this process has become. That men with thousands of games’ experience no longer comprehend a sport they have been immersed in all their lives. It really is time to leave it alone.
Not every strange transfer is the work of Chelsea. Liverpool are edging closer to buying the goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili from Valencia for £34 million. What does Caoimhin Kelleher make of that? Kelleher’s consistency was one of the triumphs of Jürgen Klopp’s final season. He ended up starting ten Premier League games when Alisson was injured, plus 16 in cup matches. Much like Pep Guardiola with Stefan Ortega at Manchester City, Klopp got a lot of credit for grooming an understudy who was so plainly ready to step into the main role when necessary. All goalkeepers make mistakes but Kelleher’s were rare and it seemed that if Alisson did want a move — there was talk about Saudi Arabia – his replacement was in the wings.
Now this. Who needs a £34million understudy, certainly with academy product Kelleher already on the books? It is suggested Mamardashvili could go straight out on loan, but what would be the point of that? Alisson has a contract until 2027 so there is no need for urgency. It seems bizarre. Liverpool’s previous recruitment has been outstanding and demands trust but, even so, if Kelleher is pushed out in any reshuffle, he surely won’t be idle for long.
Transfer rules are supposed to prevent dirty dealing; so why do so many of them also circumvent common sense? Cameron Archer’s move from Aston Villa to Southampton is a case in point, and under investigation by Fifa.
The accusation is that it is a bridge transfer. A player cannot be bought and sold by a club inside a 16-week period, making it impossible to come and go in the same transfer window. It is intended to stop insider trading or deals in which one club in effect operates as a middleman — a bridge — to do another a favour. And that is understandable. Yet Archer’s deal is not like that. He was sold by Villa to Sheffield United for £18 million last summer, on the condition that if United were relegated he would be bought back by Villa for roughly £4 million less. When United went down that is what happened. Yet Archer remained surplus to requirements at Villa, who sold him again, this time to Southampton, for almost £15 million. And that’s a red flag at Fifa. Archer’s move becomes a bridge transfer, which can bring sanctions for both clubs.
Yet it isn’t nefarious. It’s just a set of circumstances brought about by United’s relegation. If Archer’s deal had been a loan last season, this would all have been legal. Yet it was, in part, structured exactly like a loan. If United had survived it was a permanent deal and if they went down, the transfer operated like a loan, with the difference between the sale and the return amounting to a loan fee. And if that seems a little tricky, that is when Fifa should have stepped in — not 12 months later, pursuing Southampton, who have done nothing wrong. Unless they’ve made the same arrangement as United, of course.
Chelsea will feel it is open season on the club right now so, amid the criticism, a word of mitigation. Ben Chilwell’s circumstances are nothing like those of Raheem Sterling.
While Sterling must be mystified that a promising pre-season campaign careened into exile two days before kick-off, Chilwell must surely have seen the end coming with the performances of Marc Cucurella under Mauricio Pochettino. A regular in the team from last March, as Chelsea appeared to turn a corner, Cucurella took that form into Spain’s triumphant European Championship campaign in the summer. Even with Pochettino gone Cucurella was, in all likelihood, going to be Enzo Maresca’s first-choice left back too. Whatever may be said of the logic behind Sterling’s fall, Chilwell would probably have been deemed surplus to requirements at just about any elite Premier League club. His job was always going to go to a younger man — or, in an emergency, Levi Colwill — with Chelsea trying to recoup some percentage of his £45 million fee. It makes sense.
What does not, however, is Maresca’s insistence that he is calling the shots on the make-up of this squad. If Sterling was never his sort of wide player, why has Maresca favoured two players, João Félix and Mykhailo Mudryk, who model his style?
One of the more admirable policies of the Premier League is to offer no help to the English clubs in Europe. No special privileges, no favouritism. Other countries do it, managers bleat. Yes, and that’s why domestic football in other countries often lacks the competitive edge of ours. Obviously the schedule should be adjusted sympathetically.
Jürgen Klopp was right to say that a club playing away in Europe on Wednesday should be kept away from the 12.30pm kick-off on Saturday if possible. Yet wholesale rescheduling for clear weekends, or the arrangement of tame fixtures, would be an insult to the rest of the league.
One of the few advantages the smaller clubs have is that the elite must balance their commitments and won’t always be able to field their strongest team once European football starts. Yet they fought hard to be that busy, they all lobbied for more Champions League fixtures and Uefa delivered. Now deal with it.
And the same applies in the women’s game. Sonia Bompastor had been working with Chelsea’s players a full 11 days before she started moaning that the Women’s Super League (WSL) should be kinder to the clubs in Europe. “Sometimes when you play a midweek Champions League game, you still have to play your very big games on weekends,” she said. “This is very difficult for the players to be able to perform.” Is it? Tough.
The alternative would be to tee Chelsea up with weaker opponents, as happened when Bompaster was coach of Lyon. Fortunately, in the Premier League, the executives are not so craven. And if the chiefs of the WSL care about the integrity of their competition, they won’t be either.
Agreement with Michel Platini is rare here, but he is spot on about Pep Guardiola. Platini said he was disappointed by the European Championship because too many managers tried to ape the modern game’s guru, who has convinced his peers that all goalkeepers should pass out from the back like sweepers.
Southampton would have got a point away to Newcastle United on the opening weekend had Alex McCarthy not passed straight to Alexander Isak on the edge of the penalty area for the winning goal. At least Russell Martin, Southampton’s manager, had the honesty to take some of the blame for demanding his goalkeeper plays this way. McCarthy is 34. It really is no age to have to learn to play football.