Spurs' Transfer Dealings a Cut Above the Rest Despite League Critics

Part of the fun and sometimes the derangement of the downtime between the end of the campaign, international matches and the silly season is the idea of speculating on transfers.

In truth—even while I personally believe Tottenham might be slow to pull the trigger—their business sense is pretty sharp.

And it is that intelligence that should shield them from some of the criticism a columnist blanketed the Premier League with.

According to part of a report released by CIES Football Observatory every year, Tottenham represent the second-best value in the Premier League when comparing transfer fees to current player value.

An excerpt shown in the Daily Mail—the full review price is €299.00, if you have that kind of cash just lying about—presented two separate valuations.

The first, a value analysis based on certain criteria from the Football Observatory, showed that Spurs only trailed Arsenal in terms of value of the squad based on their transfer fee.

Tottenham have a current squad value of £226.24 million, compared to their outlay of £151.39, for a positive difference of £74.85 million.

This valuation, as stated, concerns players purchased who actually played for the club in the last campaign.

That tidbit is helpful because one could imagine the valuation dropping about £10 million simply for having David Bentley on the cards.

At the same time, because the actual evaluation numbers are not present—unless someone has €299.00 they do not have anything better to do with—the specific values of each are up in the air.

For instance, the whole positive value could be taken up completely by Gareth Bale, meaning the rest of the squad breaks even.

Regardless, the good news is that even as far back as Martin Jol, Daniel Levy and the manager in charge have had good eyes for talent.

The other valuation is based on the transfer fees compared to the amount of points procured in the previous campaign.

Among the top five, Tottenham spent the lowest amount of cash per point acquired, gaining a point for every £2.10 million spent.

In comparison, Chelsea, who were third with 75 points compared to Spurs’ 72, spent £4.93 million per point.

The rate of spending based on the rate of success should make it easy for others to appreciate the brain trust at White Hart Lane.

Apparently, however, simply being in the Premier League means that Tottenham are not as wise as they should be.

Jeff Powell’s rant in the Daily Mail, while primarily belittling the league for missing elite talent and English players, hammers the league for the spending on foreign players that has already happened this term.

For Powell, it appears that the whole of the Premier League is gambling on second-tier players and overpaying rather than building up from the bottom.

Never mind if a club is actually spending well like Tottenham has.

To supposedly augment his point, he cites several players, including Jesus Navas, Fernandinho, Razvan Rat and Ricky van Wolfswinkel as players who did not fall into the “elite” category.

It’s as if he did not notice that Shakhtar Donetsk, the club that Rat and Fernandinho came from, made it just as far as Arsenal or Manchester United did in the Champions League.

Maybe he was napping back in 2012 when Jesus Navas, part of the Spanish national team, scored the winner over Croatia in the group stage of Euro 2012?

Ricky van Wolfswinkel, meanwhile, is not the biggest name out there. His 14-goal return for a Sporting Lisbon team that only netted 36 league goals is a pretty healthy return and as many as Grant Holt and Robert Snodgrass had combined for Norwich this term.

Just because Neymar, one of his centerpiece players, decided to go to Barcelona does not mean the Premier League is getting the scraps off of the Bundesliga or La Liga’s plate.

There are plenty of flops out there, but lumping the whole league together when clubs like Tottenham have been fairly astute in their selections is heavy-handed at best.

Sure, Emmanuel Adebayor did not replicate his play under Harry Redknapp, but is that enough to say that Spurs are wasting money on subpar talent?

I’d like to think that Hugo Lloris, Jan Vertonghen, Mousa Dembele, Clint Dempsey and Gylfi Sigurdsson were okay signings, after all.