email to Comolli and how Spurs handled it

yiddo

Taken from COYS message board

While this is a long e-mail please read as the responses from Spurs are quite interesting.

Dear Mr Comolli,

Further to my earlier email and the ‘read receipt’ you returned to me, I am now satisfied that this is in fact your email address.

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today to express my sheer dismay at the direction of current transfer policy at our once-great club. (Since I am led to believe that in your position as ‘Sporting Director’ you, Mr Comolli, hold sway over player transfer activity at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, it is to you that I have chosen to direct this appeal).

In the interests of brevity, let us take the start of your tenure as our baseline. Before your arrival, and indeed since, we have been in dire need of a natural left-sided midfielder (evidenced by an obvious imbalance in our team and style of play); a strong, aggressive central midfielder (to compensate for the lack of leadership and meaningful tackling currently on offer); and a commanding central defender (to put an end to our worrying inability to defend set-pieces). I must reiterate the lack of leadership, brought on by your nonsensical refusal to buy players above the age of 26. A second endemic problem affecting Spurs over the past three seasons is our dearth of creative talent, notwithstanding the strikers.

Had I been the incoming Sporting Director, I would be excited by the
challenge ahead of me, keen to observe the shortfalls of the squad (see above), and address the issues accordingly. Moreover, I would feel fortunate enough to have been provided with a sizeable transfer fund with which to fulfil my remit of recruiting the right players and disposing of those without the requisite quality. Yet, sadly for me, it is not I in this position, but you – and you, Mr Comolli have summarily failed to perform your duties adequately. Fortunately for you, however, it is the club and its supporters (and, dare I say, Martin Jol) that have suffered on account of your mismanagement.

You, Mr Comolli, quite incredibly remain in the job, a position of considerable influence given that a not insignificant portion of fans’ disposable incomes have been channelled into what can reasonably be described as a wasteful slush fund - a slush fund that continues to sponsor your spectacular misadventures in the transfer market. Let us take a break from the assertions and consider the facts before us. For the sake of clarity, I will place the most galling purchases in sequential order of value.

·
Darren Bent (£15.5m, rising to £16.5m) – I
almost struggled to type the given figures. OVER FIFTEEN MILLION POUNDS. For Darren Bent. This sum will never cease to amaze me, for two reasons: i) Mr Bent is not good enough to justify this price tag. He is an able Premier League striker. No more, no less. ii) He was so far down the list of transfer
priorities as to be rendered not needed. We already had 4 strikers (admittedly
Mido should have been sold, but the 4th choice striker to replace him
should have been elevated from the youth ranks or been called Dean Ashton or Dave Kitson, to name but 2 alternative strikers who would have cost a fraction of the price).

· Didier Zokora (£8.2m) – he is a man who arrived with great promise, but, once again, you had clearly not co-ordinated the club’s scouting duties adequately because we had typically purchased an overpriced player whose talent you had clearly only read about, rather than endeavoured to witness yourself. How is it that Arsenal managed to purchase Cesc Fabregas, Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue (3 extremely superior players) for a combined fee of £1.7m?
· Younes Kaboul (£8m) – a defender in name, but certainly not in ability. He is simply not up to the job.
·
Kevin-Prince Boateng (£5.4m) – an
embarrassingly poor excuse for a professional footballer; and yet you agreed to sanction the equivalent cost of 35 Kolo Toures for him. Once again, I am
convinced that you noted his Germany’s Young Footballer of the Year award and were smitten that such a product would agree to join the club. Did you not realise that the award was given in 2006, not 2007? He therefore spent a further 12 months disappointing onlookers at Hertha Berlin at his failure to develop into a top-class player. Luckily for Kevin-Prince and his club, Damien Comolli spotted his ‘credentials’ and snapped up this supposed ‘prodigy’. He is a walking calamity.
Mr Comolli, I have decided to spare you further criticism and will relent in recalling further failures. The combined transfer fee of the aforementioned players is £38.1m. I will repeat that: £38.1m. Not one of the four players is worthy of the shirt. The supporters are entitled to answers as to how this has come to pass. None of the four players play on the left of midfield, none are commanding centre backs, none are tough tackling centre midfielders. You, Mr Comolli, failed to plug any one of our numerous gaps. To quote The Times (27/11/07): “Comolli’s duties include scouting and negotiating transfers. He was given a rough ride by some shareholders yesterday after apparent tensions with Jol and Tottenham’s curious summer strategy. They spent £16.5 million on Darren Bent, the striker, when there seemed more urgent needs.”
The final sentence sums up my frustrations (and hopefully those of thousands of supporters). Unless you act quickly and in the interests of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, I am afraid to say that your time at White Hart Lane will forever be associated with the acquisition of Darren Bent. Indeed, it saddens me that, for almost every transfer in which you have played a part, we could condemn each example as follows: ‘£x was spent on x, when there seemed more urgent needs’.

I will conclude with an appeal: please do not replace the passionate, goal-scoring, popular, young Englishman Jermain Defoe with an unknown quantity called Fred. All that is known about Fred (I should probably tell you, lest this information has passed you by) is that he is not a regular in a football team plying its trade in Ligue 1.

On a more positive note, I must praise you on two counts: namely your involvement in bringing the exceptional Gareth Bale to the club, and our active search for a goalkeeper to replace the hopeless Paul Robinson.


On account of the time I have committed to writing you this note, and the fact that I will be a Tottenham Hotspur fan for the rest of my life (no matter whom we buy or don’t buy), I would greatly appreciate a reply outlining your views in response to the above.

Yours,

Ben.

Their response
(see emails below which they failed to delete before responding):

From: Jonathan Waite [mailto:Jonathan.Waite@tottenhamhotspur.com]

Sent: 16 January 2008 17:38
To: Bell,
Benjamin
Subject: FW: Tottenham Hotspur Transfer Policy



Dear Mr Bell

Thank you for your recent email addressed to Mr Comolli that has been redirected to myself. As I am sure you can appreciate, the staff on
Sporting side of the Club are solely committed to the success and continued
development of the playing staff, from the Academy teams right up to the first team squad and just simply do not have time, especially during the transfer window, to respond to enquiries.

Your email is a very in depth analysis of certain areas, certainly something I certainly couldn't have managed during working hours! It is certainly a testament to your passion that in these days of corporate email surveillance by employers that you have avoided detection!

Ultimately, and despite it's length, breadth and structure, your email is just one opinion from many and one formed without being in possession of the entire picture. As has been endlessly quoted by grizzled ex-professionals, football is game all about opinions; Discussions in pubs, on message boards and in stadiums wouldn't be the same if everyone held similar opinions. Transfer fees/policies and contracts quoted in the media are more often than not inflated, sometimes completely fabricated and certainly do not hint at other clauses that make up such contracts.

Please, whilst we are happy to receive emails that express individual's views (and there are also many online websites where such topics are vibrantly debated), it isn't acceptable to direct email's to the Club that openly accuse a member of staff (whether they be in the Ticket Office or the Sporting Director) of "failure", regardless as to whether the email reaches the intended recipient. The whole of the non-playing staff at the Club work extremely hard behind the scenes to drive Spurs forward and it can be incredibly disheartening when I receive emails that are either abusive (certainly not in your case) or disproportionately critical of individual members of staff when we know that criticism is often completely without foundation. I would like to thank you for your support and taking the time to write to us.

With best regards




Jonathan Waite
Customer
Services Manager
Tottenham Hotspur Football & Athletic Co Ltd
Bill
Nicholson Way
748 High Road
London
N17 0AP

T: 0208 365
5092
F: 0870 420 5001

---

Original Message

---

From: Donna Cullen
Sent: 16
January 2008 16:29
To: Jonathan Waite
Cc: Damien Comolli; Daniel
Levy
Subject: Fw: Tottenham Hotspur Transfer Policy

J please send him a gentle reply (he is guilty of sarcasm but did not descend into outright abuse) and make a large point of saying we note that he has used not only his employers time but also email system and that we have refrained fom forwarding this to his HR department (slightly tongue in cheek but hugely valid point!)
Thanks
d

Regards
Donna-Maria Cullen
Sent from my blackberry

---

Original Message

---

From: Damien Comolli
To: Donna Cullen
Sent: Wed
Jan 16 16:19:00 2008
Subject: Fw: Tottenham Hotspur Transfer Policy

Ben’s final response:

Dear Mr Waite,

Thank you ever so
much for your reply and in particular for your concern as to how I spend my work hours. On that note, I would like first of all for you to issue a retraction,
given that I am on annual leave today and hence was writing to Mr Comolli in my own time. (I am able to access my work account from home and take offence at any suggestion otherwise). I would also recommend that, before replying to emails, you delete the previous conversation you have had (see below your response), in this case from the blackberry of Donna-Maria Cullen. She sounds wonderful.

Today I wrote to our Sporting Director as a fan, a shareholder and a oncerned onlooker. I say ‘concerned’ because of the alarmingly defensive nature of Mr Comolli’s redirected response. A true gentleman would have briefly acknowledged receipt of an email of such ‘length, breadth and strcucture’, as you kindly put it, and then issued a fuller, personal reply at a later, more convenient date.

I would also like to take issue with your (admittedly correct) statement that I am not ‘in possession of the entire picture’. I take issue because it is indisputable that this too is the case for Mr Comolli himself. One only has to make the most cursory glance at his record with the club to conclude that the man is, in my opinion, thoroughly unqualified to perform the task laid before him. In terms of Mr Comolli’s credibility, let us consider his
footballing credentials as a player. He failed to gain a professional contract
from Monaco, where he was on their youth books. Hence, a chastened, unwanted ‘footballer’ he entered the world of coaching and has since clung onto the coat-tails of a certain Mr Wenger’s successes in the transfer market. In subsequent interviews following the end of their working relationship, Mr Wenger has been somewhat less than complimentary about the actual benefits delivered by Mr Comolli’s involvement. Alarm bells immediately rang for me when Spurs announced the ‘coup’ appointment of our new Sporting Director. This was no coup, it was a backward step. Indeed, the ‘big four’ are successful for a number of reasons, a prominent one being their rejection of the so-called ‘continental’ structure. In other words, the managers are left to get on with their job, free from interfering external forces, namely a Sporting Director.

You also refer to the ‘fabrications’ surrounding transfer fees and contracts. Again, a misguided statement. As a plc, Tottenham Hotspur is obliged to release such information and I have access to such data should I wish to pursue it.

I will now relieve you of having to digest any more of my opinions. However, may I suggest that we revisit this conversation 12 months from now? If Mr Comolli is in employment at the club on January 16, 2009, I will offer sincere apologies for my misjudgment.
If I am correct, on the other hand, I believe that we will be looking towards a
future for Tottenham Hotspur far brighter than it appears today.


Kind
Regards

Ben.

Chong

Hey yiddo ,

You got a link to the site, be interesting to see if they respond to the latest email.

Will

therecklessone

COYS is restricted access for the transfer window, but there's a link to the site in the links sticky of this board.

Pat will no doubt post updates.

galinka

Superb Pat - i cant believe he responded without deleting the stupid *itch's personal attack - i'm sure as an admintrative assistant she is a world class scout too!!

Now - i'm worried about the club's professionalism.

Take the blackberry off her quick.:mad:

gerrytack@hotma

yiddo wrote: »

Taken from COYS message board

While this is a long e-mail please read as the responses from Spurs are quite interesting.




Their response
(see emails below which they failed to delete before responding):



Ben’s final response:

well done yiddo.i dont agree with everything you wrote,especially about defoe,but ido believe you have the right to write and express them.could be worse,miss cullen could be your boss.anyway when all these people have gone and left the lane we'll still be there.

yiddo

gerrytack@hotma wrote: »

well done yiddo.i dont agree with everything you wrote,especially about defoe,but ido believe you have the right to write and express them.could be worse,miss cullen could be your boss.anyway when all these people have gone and left the lane we'll still be there.

twasn't written by me, I just picked it up on COYS messageboard.

fan4life

Well done Ben,

Not sure if your on the right track about JD, but hey I agree with everything else u said.

Not sure that I like "Donna" or "Jonathan" either, looks like Camolli must have got to the employees of THFC at the christmas party !! :cool:

therecklessone

I think Ben let himself down when he told Comolli "you had clearly not co-ordinated the club’s scouting duties adequately because we had typically purchased an overpriced player whose talent you had clearly only read about, rather than endeavoured to witness yourself" in relation to Didier Zokora.

Comolli was Technical Director at St Etienne, the club we signed Zokora from.

Schoolboy error.

Simple Pieman

fan4life wrote: »

Well done Ben,

Not sure if your on the right track about JD, but hey I agree with everything else u said.

Not sure that I like "Donna" or "Jonathan" either, looks like Camolli must have got to the employees of THFC at the christmas party !! :cool:

Have spoken to Jonathan (re Tel Aviv issues) and to be fair he seems OK - he has that particular job and will never be in a winning position, just treading water.

However Donna is a frightening concept and I already have a picture in my mind.