Tottenham must hold on to stars to continue Pochettino progression
Harry Kane's prematch posting of a pack of hungry lions on social media ended up being the perfect prediction of Tottenham Hotspur's 4-0 ravaging of Stoke City on Monday night. Premier League leaders Leicester City, currently fretting about how long Jamie Vardy might be banned for, may be five points clear at the top but are now looking warily over their shoulders.
Even if Mauricio Pochettino's team fall short of winning the title, the 2015-16 season will still have been Spurs' finest of the Premier League era. The club has not finished second since 1962-63, the era of legends like Jimmy Greaves, Dave Mackay and John White. Even in the glory days when Glenn Hoddle and company were winning consecutive FA Cups in 1981-82 and the UEFA Cup in 1984, the club never came so close to being the best team in English football.
This year's "St Totteringham's Day," when Arsenal's superiority over their North London rivals in the league table is celebrated, looks unlikely to happen. For the first time since 1995, Spurs can prove they are the better team.
At 22, Kane has become the most complete forward in the Premier League; the 20-year-old Dele Alli, who joined Kane in scoring twice at Stoke, is the breakout star of the season. The pair are young guns of the type that rivals will jealously covet, and in days gone by would have fancied their chances of signing. Indeed, amid the many mixed messages surrounding Jose Mourinho's candidacy to succeed Louis van Gaal at Manchester United, it has been strongly suggested that Kane is much admired by Mourinho.
Yet if Tottenham wish to make this season anything other than an anomaly, a sliver of success achieved while usual suspects like Chelsea and Manchester City have slumped, then the loss of Kane, or any other of Pochettino's stars, should not be allowed to happen. However, previous history and the club's current predicament suggests it can't be ruled out.
Gareth Bale, sold to Real Madrid for €100 million in 2013; Dimitar Berbatov, sold to Man United for £30.75m in 2008; Michael Carrick, sold to United for £18m in 2006 -- all stars who have followed the historic pattern of Paul Gascoigne's 1991 sale to Lazio for £5.5m and Chris Waddle's to Marseille for £4.5m in 1989. Each deal came about because of a transfer fee too great to resist.
Might things be different now? Through gaps in the high wooden boards that surround the construction site currently bordering the club's White Hart Lane home can be viewed a good reason why Tottenham may not be able to turn down good money. The Northumberland Project, or "New White Hart Lane," estimated to be complete at the start of the 2018-19 season, will become a 61,000-capacity stadium, a new home for the club, and for NFL games, too. It will cost an estimated £400m, the type of sum that even billionaire financier owner Joe Lewis cannot easily lay his hands on.
An unavoidable cost of that project is likely to be the regression of the team. Tottenham need only look towards Arsenal to see how a stadium project can affect performance on the pitch. Arsene Wenger, when asked last week about the deal that will see West Ham United pay just £2.5m annual rent from next season for the Olympic Stadium, did not shirk the opportunity to remind of the constraints that building the Emirates placed on him.
"I say to West Ham: 'Well done. You have won in the lottery and you do not need to sweat like I did for long years, and fight for every pound'," Wenger said, recalling a time when stars had to be cashed in when clubs of greater cash-flow came calling. While rivals in England and Europe spent freely, Wenger was forced to retrench, as his unearthing of talent served others. Ashley Cole joined Chelsea (£5m-plus William Gallas); Thierry Henry (£16m) and Cesc Fabregas (around £35m) joined Barcelona; Samir Nasri (£24m) and Emmanuel Adebayor (£25m) joined Manchester City and Robin van Persie joined Manchester United for £24m.
Construction of the £390m Emirates stadium at Ashburton Grove -- "Cash-Burning Grove" as some named it -- began in January 2004, midway through Arsenal's unbeaten Premier League season (their last title) and Wenger has frequently intimated that he was handcuffed in his prime, just when he could have dominated English and European football. Tottenham, a club further behind in its development than Arsenal were back then, are likely to be even more hampered.
How might Tottenham's manager react if the brakes are put on, and assets sold from under him? "I think you need to know, and the people need to know, that this is a very tough period for us," Pochettino said in February, after Spurs had failed to land transfer-window back-up for Kane, their sole senior centre-forward. "We need to be careful because we need to arrive at the new stadium in very good condition to try to fight for everything."
With clever signings like Alli (£5m from MK Dons) and Eric Dier (£4m from Sporting Lisbon), the Argentinian has overseen a transfer profit of £6.3m since his summer 2014 arrival, after chairman Daniel Levy stressed in September that "pragmatic player trading has been important in the way we have run the business of the club."
Such sterling work has won Tottenham's manager much admiration across football, with Sir Alex Ferguson said to support his candidacy if Ryan Giggs does not replace Van Gaal at United. After playing for and coaching Espanyol, Pochettino also retains a home in Barcelona, whose eponymous club may soon be looking for new management if Luis Enrique cannot arrest his team's current slide.
The concern for Tottenham is that, just as the club has finally made its way towards the top of the pile, the cost of progress and a new stadium will be the loss of the playing and coaching assets that have got them there.
John Brewin is a staff writer for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @JohnBrewinESPN.
ESPNFC
