Revealed: The £215.2m payments that show why Tottenham sacked Pochettino
Tottenham sacked Mauricio Pochettino and immediately replaced him with Jose Mourinho amid fears of missing out on the Champions League gravy train next season, Football Insider understands.
Analysis of Spurs' latest set of financial results, lodged this week with Companies House, brings into sharp focus the significance of top-level European football to the club's business plan.
The accounts for 2018-19 show the club earned £108.4million in gate receipts and prize money from reaching the final of last season's Champions League.
This comes after the previous two Champions League campaigns earned Tottenham £62.2m (2017-18) and £44.6m (2106-17).
The earnings from the competition in the past three campaigns total £215.2m and help explain why Pochettino was dismissed last November.
Mourinho was appointed 24 hours later with the brief to secure a top-four finish and maintain Spurs' place at Europe's top table.
That is now in some considerable doubt as the team were eighth in the Premier League and seven points short of fourth place before the season was suspended.
Tottenham were still completing their group stage campaign in this season's Champions League when Pochettino was let go, five months after taking the team to their first-ever final in the competition.
The Spurs board have secured massive revenue growth and profits in the last seven years, and that has been underpinned by progress in Europe.
The revelation comes on the day Tottenham announced they have given 550 non-playing staff a 20 per cent pay cut as part of furlough measures to "protect jobs" amid the coronavirus crisis.
The Londoners made a pre-tax profit of £82.3million (the post-tax profit was £68.6m) for the year ended 30 June 2019 and a record £460.7m revenue.
Analysis by Football Insider has showed that Spurs' pre-tax profit for the 2018-19 season was the fourth highest ever recorded by a Premier League club.
It is behind only Leicester City (£92m) in 2016-17, Liverpool (£125m) in 2017-18 after they sold Philippe Coutinho and Tottenham themselves, who hold the record with their astonishing £139m profit in 2017-18.