Daniel Levy has become the first Premier League chairman to warn that the current level of spending is unsustainable.
The Spurs chairman sold Kyle Walker to Manchester City last week with Pep Guardiola blasting his way through £200m so far this window.
Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal have also paid out £50m on individual players this summer with as much money flying out the game in wages and agent fees.
While the Premier League offers £100m plus per season for it’s members relegation looks certain to send clubs into administration as they spend spend spend to stay in the top flight.
Spurs have opted to invest in training facilities and a new stadium with Levy, who was once a director of Rangers (IL) in no mood to start throwing the club’s money into the transfer market.
“My view is that it’s totally unsustainable,” The Guardian reported Levy saying in Times Square during Spurs’ pre-season tour of the US. “I’m not sure if that’s the view of the other Premier League clubs, but certainly the prices that are being paid for other Premier League players, I can’t see it being sustainable in the long term. We’ve managed the club, we think, in a very appropriate way.
“I think I am a custodian of this football club. This club has been around since 1882 and when I leave it will be somebody else. I think we have a duty to manage the club appropriately. I don’t think that long term for any club it’s sustainable to spend more than you earn. You can have periods where you do but over the long term you can’t.
“I think that some of the activity that’s going on at the moment is just impossible to be sustainable. If somebody is spending £200m more than they’re earning then eventually it catches up with you. You can’t keep doing it. We’ve invested a lot of money in physical facilities for long-term growth. So we’ve got one of the world’s best training facilities. We’ve invested over £100m in that facility.”
Spurs themselves are still looking to be active and are 5/2 to sign Jean-Michael Seri from Nice this summer.
Any reduction in television money going into the Premier League would have catastrophic implications for the game. With more and more people watching illegal football streams- ironically on their own high quality broadband services- Sky and BT are coming under pressure to justify the sums being spent on football by their shareholders.