Objectively, the Surgeons believe Spurs to have the most eye catching and most importantly balanced team in the league. Pocchetino has managed to balance a potent attack, led by perennial golden boot winner Harry F****g Kane, with the stingiest defense in the league conceding a league low 22 goals.
Early elimination from the Champions League aside, this has been a wildly successful year for the London club with a legitimate title chase currently under way and a position locked in above hated rivals Arsenal. But…..what comes next? Well, a temporary move to Wembley beckons next season in order to finish their spanking new stadium. Great. Champions League nights will also beckon again next season. Great again.
That though is where the great news ends…. as what comes next possibly is a tsunami of player exits given the dire task to pay every inflated ego that squeezes through Daniel Levy’s office in the next few months.
As a benchmark, let’s examine the wages of a few players at competitor clubs, ignoring Chelsea for now. That exclusion deemed useful given player agents tendency to examine the wages of players with comparable or worse production/success:
Sadio Mane (Liverpool) – £90,000
Adam Llalana (Liverpool) – £120,000
Joel Matip (Liverpool ) – £112,000
Henrik Mkhitaryan (Manchester United) – £140,000
Juan Mata (Manchester United) – £140,000
Wayne Rooney – (Manchester United) – £260,000
Raheem Sterling – (Manchester City) – £180,000
Knowledgeable Spurs fans already are aware of their limited wage structure. The gap to their rivals in the past was actually much worse but still lags way behind. Behold the majestic wages of the starting unit below:
| Player | Age | Weekly Wage | Contract Left | Contract Until |
| Hugo Lloris | 30 | £120,000 | 3 Years | 2019 |
| Jan Vertonghen | 29 | £100,000 | 2 Years | 2018 |
| Kyle Walker | 26 | £70,000 | 5 Years | 2021 |
| Toby Alderweild | 27 | £75,000 | 4 Years | 2020 |
| Ben Davies | 23 | £30,000 | 3 Years | 2019 |
| Danny Rose | 26 | £30,000 | 5 Years | 2021 |
| Kieran Trippier | 26 | £35,000 | 4 Years | 2020 |
| Eric Dier | 22 | £70,000 | 5 Years | 2021 |
| Dele Alli | 20 | £50,000 | 6 Years | 2022 |
| Victor Wanyama | 25 | £70,000 | 5 Years | 2021 |
| Christian Eriksen | 24 | £75,000 | 4 Years | 2020 |
| Moussa Sissoko | 27 | £95,000 | 5 Years | 2021 |
| Moussa Dembele | 29 | £80,000 | 3 Years | 2019 |
| Heung Min Son | 24 | £85,000 | 4 Years | 2020 |
| Harry Kane | 23 | £100,000 | 4 Years | 2020 |
The players in bold are all woefully underpaid..not only compared to their rivals mind you but to their own teammates which can harbour the type of jealousy that destroys teams. The whole structure perplexes really.
Yes, he is the club captain but why is the goalkeeper, LLoris allowed to be the highest paid player? Not even at Juventus is that true.
Why was Sissoko recruited and handed more than Eriksen – the assist leader for a large part of the season? Well, his agent would have surely ripped up his contract signed just in September after his game winning goal at Crystal Palace – forget the rhetoric about “money not being important”. That line of thought was before this stellar season.
Dele Alli certainly will also rip up his contract at the end of the season and be looking at his production compared to that of Raheem Sterling who earns almost 4 times his wages currently. He will have a strong negotiating hand given his status as a homegrown player. You can see the homegrown quota rules explained here to understand why that would be attractive to pursuing teams.
Toby Alderwield has been Spurs best defender this season and somehow is paid 25% less that his centreback partner. Quite odd.
Danny Rose has a checkered injury history. No argument. However, a pay pack of $30K is embarrassing for a team starter who also plays for the national team and in the prime of his career. Add to that he gets even less that Kyle Walker who is the same age.
The most worrying and perhaps least worrying case all at the same time would be that of club symbol Harry Kane. Most worrying is that Manchester United will need a Rooney replacement sooner rather than later, preferably with an “English face”. Added to this an offer in excess £200,000 i.e double current wages is not hard to imagine or justify to United’s board or the commercial sponsors who influence the club. The great hope for their fans and why it could potentially be no concern would be that Kane grew up in Chingford and came through the club’s youth setup. Normally this would endear some allegiance that does not generally seem to reside in the modern footballer. Time will tell if it does or his agent and girlfriend get in his ear on his need to “look after himself”.
The move to the new stadium is part of the overall aim to advance the club’s ambitions. More precisely the new stadium would advance the club ‘s finances. That won’t aterialise though until 2019 so the question is what commitments will the club be prepared to make this summer? The club’s future probably rides on it even more than its decision to sell Gareth Bale in our view.