Analysis: A finish this season for Spurs above 6th place is over performing

With 14 games left to play the Premier League seems to split into 4 sub divisions. Spurs look to be in a straight fight for fourth place with Liverpool, Everton and Manchester United.

To know where you are going, you need to know where you are. So where are Spurs?

Where is Tottenham Hotspur?

It’s hard to find measures that track club performance accurately, otherwise we’d all be beating the bookies, but there are some impartial ones that give us some clues.

Overall club revenue gives an idea of success through sponsorship, ground size & expansion and also increased reward from league and cup revenues. Delloite recently published their football money league for 2014. Here is how the top 6 clubs measure:

Another measure comes from www.transfermarkt.co.uk they provide dynamic player and team values. A look through shows it’s not perfect, but it’s not miles out either. Top 6 here as follows:

OK just numbers, but it tells us Arsenal are currently over performing and Manchester United are underperforming – so go figure. It also highlights that for Spurs to finish Fourth would be punching above our weight and either Manchester United or Liverpool would need to underperform.Levy deserves great credit for building our team up over the years to get into this position.

What’s the target for Fourth Place?

Here are the Fourth place points totals for the last 6 years:

The points spread across the division this year indicate a highest ever fourth place points total perhaps in the 74-76 point range.

What does this mean for Spurs?

The 73 points Spurs achieved last season was a club record, meaning this year we’d have to break that again.

So rounding up we need to be thinking about an average of 2 points a game or even a bit higher. Right now we have:

Tim’s stats look more impressive:

OK, so only 8 games, but included in that was Man U away and City at home. Even so the facts stand up, I don’t think anyone can accuse Sherwood of doing badly at all

OK so a bit behind the curve. Can we catch up, win games against lesser competition, be solid at home and the answer looks like yes, despite everything it will be possible to record our highest points total in the Premier League. Only 3 of the remaining games are against clubs above us in the league.

However we need to look at the facts, we have no right to be in the Top 4. To do this would require us to seriously over perform.

The team that is over performing now is Liverpool. Is that really a surprise? They have spent much more money on players than we have over the last three season, have kept their world class player and have a stable management team, and as yet they have not addressed the issue of upgrading their ground.

We run our club as a business rather than a billionaires plaything, have delivered a world class training centre and have our Ssadium plans well underway. We haven’t chosen to sell our best players, but have got the best possible price when we learned they wanted to leave.

Also we stand to finish this season with a heathly transfer budget available for Tim or whoever may be coming in and a current squad with depth in a number of positions.

So even more patience is required from us fans and the understanding a finish outside of the Top 4 is not disaster.

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COYS – Adam Wright